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Worcester, Massachusetts

Worcester is the 2nd most populous city in the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the 114th most populous city in the United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city had 206,518 people at the 2020 census, also making it the second-most populous city in New England, after Boston. Worcester is about 40 mi west of Boston, 50 mi east of Springfield, and 40 mi north-northwest of Providence. Because it is near the geographic center of Massachusetts, Worcester is known as the "Heart of the Commonwealth"; a heart is the official symbol of the city. Worcester is the historical seat of Worcester County.

Worcester developed as an industrial city in the 19th century because the Blackstone Canal and railways facilitated the import of raw materials and the export of such finished goods as machines, textiles, and wire. Many European immigrants made up the city's growing population. After World War II, manufacturing there waned; economic and population decline was not reversed until the 1990s, when higher education, medicine, biotechnology, and new immigrants started making their mark. The population has grown by 28% since 1980, reaching its all-time high in the 2020 census and effecting urban renewal.

Modern Worcester is known for its diversity and large immigrant population, with significant communities of Vietnamese, Brazilians, Albanians, Puerto Ricans, Ghanaians, Dominicans, and others. Twenty-two percent of Worcester's population was born outside the United States. A center of higher education, it is home to eight colleges and universities, including the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), and Clark University. Worcester has many 19th-century triple-decker houses, Victorian-era mills and related buildings, and lunch-car diners, such as Miss Worcester.

Worcester is the principal city of Central Massachusetts, and is a regional hub of government, industry, and transportation hub. Since the 1970s, and especially since the construction of Route 146 and interstates 90, 495, 190, 290, and 395, both Worcester and its surrounding towns have become more integrated with Boston's suburbs. The Worcester region now marks the western periphery of the Boston–Worcester–Providence (MA–RI–NH) U.S. Census Combined Statistical Area (CSA), or Greater Boston.

Colonial era
The area was first inhabited by members of the Nipmuc tribe. The native people called the region Quinsigamond and built a settlement on Pakachoag Hill in Auburn.

In 1673, English settlers John Eliot and Daniel Gookin led an expedition to Quinsigamond to establish a new Christian Indian praying town and identify a new location for an English settlement. On July 13, 1674, Gookin obtained a deed to eight square miles of land in Quinsigamond from the Nipmuc people and English traders and settlers began to inhabit the region.

In 1675, King Philip's War broke out throughout New England with the Nipmuc Indians coming to the aid of Indian leader King Philip. The English settlers completely abandoned the Quinsigamond area and the empty buildings were burned by the Indian forces. The town was again abandoned during Queen Anne's War in 1702.

Finally, in 1713, Worcester was permanently resettled for a third and final time by Jonas Rice. Named after the city of Worcester, England, the town was incorporated on June 14, 1722.

On April 2, 1731, Worcester was chosen as the county seat of the newly founded Worcester County government. Between 1755 and 1758, future U.S. president John Adams worked as a schoolteacher and studied law in Worcester.

Worcester also had a role in the start of the American Revolution, with an event that is oft-forgotten. On September 6, 1774, 4,622 militiamen from 37 towns in Worcester County assembled and marched on Main Street, Worcester; they sought to shut down the Crown's court before it could sit for a new session. The event was dubbed the Worcester Revolution, or the Worcester Revolt. Having seized the courthouse, the militiamen waited for the 25 appointees from the Crown to arrive, where they were denied entry and later forced to disavow their appointments by King George III. Bloodshed and violence was avoided, with not a shot fired. British authority had been demonstrably overthrown in the American colonies for the first time.

Growth and industry

In the 1770s, Worcester became a center of American revolutionary activity. The Worcester Revolt on September 6, 1774, was an early successful attempt to throw off British rule. British General Thomas Gage was given information of patriot ammunition stockpiled in Worcester in 1775. That same year, Massachusetts Spy publisher Isaiah Thomas moved his radical newspaper out of British occupied Boston to Worcester. Thomas would continuously publish his paper throughout the American Revolutionary War. On July 14, 1776, Thomas performed the first public reading in Massachusetts of the Declaration of Independence from the porch of the Old South Church, where the 19th-century Worcester City Hall stands today. He would later go on to form the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester in 1812.

During the turn of the 19th century, Worcester's economy moved into manufacturing. Factories producing textiles, shoes and clothing opened along the nearby Blackstone River.

However, the manufacturing industry in Worcester would not begin to thrive until the opening of the Blackstone Canal in 1828 and the opening of the Worcester and Boston Railroad in 1835. The city transformed into a transportation hub and the manufacturing industry flourished.

Worcester was officially chartered as a city on February 29, 1848. The city's industries soon attracted immigrants of primarily Irish, Scottish, French, German, and Swedish descent in the mid-19th century and later many immigrants of Lithuanian, Polish, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Armenian, Syrian, and Lebanese descent. Immigrants moved into new three-decker houses (which originated in Worcester) lining hundreds of Worcester's expanding streets and neighborhoods.

In 1831, Ichabod Washburn opened the Washburn & Moen Company. The company would become the largest wire manufacturing in the country and Washburn became one of the leading industrial and philanthropic figures in the city.

Worcester would become a center of machinery, wire products and power looms and boasted large manufacturers, including Washburn & Moen, Wyman-Gordon Company, American Steel & Wire, Morgan Construction and the Norton Company. In 1908, the Royal Worcester Corset Company was the largest employer of women in the United States.

Worcester would also claim many inventions and firsts. New England Candlepin bowling was invented in Worcester by Justin White in 1879. Esther Howland began the first line of Valentine's Day cards from her Worcester home in 1847. Loring Coes invented the first monkey wrench and Russell Hawes created the first envelope folding machine. On June 12, 1880, Lee Richmond pitched the first perfect game in Major league baseball history for the Worcester Ruby Legs at the Worcester Agricultural Fairgrounds. The first three-decker homes were built by Francis Gallagher (1830–1911) in Worcester.

Urban changes and recovery
After World War II, Worcester began to fall into decline as the city lost its manufacturing base to cheaper alternatives across the country and overseas. Worcester felt the national trends of movement away from historic urban centers. The city's population dropped over 20% from 1950 to 1980. In the mid-20th century, large urban renewal projects were undertaken to try to reverse the city's decline. A huge area of downtown Worcester was demolished for new office towers and the 1,000,000 sqft Worcester Center Galleria shopping mall. After only 30 years, the Galleria would lose most of its major tenants and its appeal to more suburban shopping malls around Worcester County.

On June 9, 1953, an F4 tornado touched down in Petersham, northwest of Worcester. The tornado tore through 48 mi of Worcester County including a large area of the city of Worcester. The tornado left massive destruction and killed 94 people. The Worcester tornado would be the deadliest tornado ever to hit Massachusetts. Debris from the tornado landed as far away as Dedham. In the 1960s, Interstate 290 was built right through the center of Worcester, permanently dividing the city. In 1963, Worcester native Harvey Ball introduced the iconic yellow smiley face to American culture.

In the late 20th century, Worcester's economy began to recover as the city expanded into biotechnology and healthcare fields. The UMass Medical School has become a leader in biomedical research and the Massachusetts Biotechnology Research Park has become a center of medical research and development. Worcester hospitals Saint Vincent Hospital and UMass Memorial Health Care have become two of the largest employers in the city. Worcester's many colleges, including the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Clark University, UMass Medical School, Assumption University, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, and Worcester State University, attract many students to the area and help drive the new economy.

On December 3, 1999, a homeless couple accidentally started a five-alarm fire at the Worcester Cold Storage & Warehouse Company. The fire took the lives of six firemen and drew national attention as one of the worst firefighting tragedies of the late 20th century. President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and other local and national dignitaries attended the funeral service and memorial program in Worcester.

Recent investment and growth
In recent decades, a renewed interest in the city's downtown has brought new investment and construction to Worcester. A Convention Center was built along the DCU Center arena in downtown Worcester in 1997. In 2000, Worcester's Union Station reopened after 25 years of neglect and a $32 million renovation. Hanover Insurance helped fund a multimillion-dollar renovation to the old Franklin Square Theater into the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts. In 2000, the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences built a new campus in downtown Worcester. In 2007, WPI opened the first facility in their new Gateway Park center in Lincoln Square. In 2004, Berkeley Investments proposed demolishing the old Worcester Center Galleria for a new mixed-used development called City Square. The ambitious project looked to reconnect old street patterns while creating a new retail, commercial and living destination in the city. After struggling to secure finances for a number of years, Hanover Insurance took over the project and demolition began on September 13, 2010. Unum Insurance and the Saint Vincent Hospital leased into the project and both facilities opened in 2013. The new Front Street opened on December 31, 2012.

Worcester has become home to many refugees in recent years. The city has successfully resettled over 2,000 refugees coming from over 24 countries. Today, most of these refugees come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Somalia, Bhutan, Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan.

Geography
Worcester has a total area of 38.6 sqmi: 37.6 sqmi of land and 1.0 sqmi, comprising roughly 2.59%, of water. Worcester is bordered by the towns of Auburn, Grafton, Holden, Leicester, Millbury, Paxton, Shrewsbury, and West Boylston.

Worcester is known as the "Heart of the Commonwealth" because of its proximity to the center of Massachusetts. The city is about 40 mi west of Boston, 50 mi east of Springfield, and 38 mi northwest of Providence, Rhode Island.

The Blackstone River forms in the center of Worcester by the confluence of the Middle River and Mill Brook. The river courses underground through the center of the city, and emerges at the foot of College Hill. It then flows south through Quinsigamond Village and into Millbury. Worcester is the beginning of the Blackstone Valley that frames the river. The Blackstone Canal was once an important waterway connecting Worcester to Providence and the Eastern Seaboard, but the canal fell into disuse at the end of the 19th century and was mostly covered up. In recent years, local organizations, including the Canal District Business Association, have proposed restoring the canal and creating a Blackstone Valley National Park.

Worcester is one of many cities claimed, like Rome, to be found on seven hills: Airport Hill, Bancroft Hill, Belmont Hill (Bell Hill), Grafton Hill, Green Hill, Pakachoag Hill and Vernon Hill. However, Worcester has more than seven hills, examples of which include Indian Hill, Newton Hill, Poet's Hill, and Wigwam Hill.

Worcester has many ponds and two prominent lakes: Indian Lake and Lake Quinsigamond. Lake Quinsigamond (also known as Long Pond) stretches 4 mi across the Worcester and Shrewsbury border and is a very popular competitive rowing and boating destination.

Climate
Worcester's humid continental climate (Köppen: Dfb) is typical of New England. The weather changes rapidly owing to the confluence of warm, humid air from the southwest; cool, dry air from the north; and the moderating influence of the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Summers are typically hot and humid, while winters are cold, windy, and snowy. Snow typically falls from the second half of November into early April, with occasional falls in October; May snow is much rarer. The USDA classifies the city as straddling hardiness zones 5b and 6a.

The hottest month is July, with a 24-hour average of 70.2 °F, while the coldest is January, at 24.1 °F. There are an average of only 3.5 days of highs at or above 90 °F and 4.1 nights of lows at or below 0 °F per year, and periods of either extremes are rarely sustained. The all-time record high temperature is 102 °F, recorded on July 4, 1911, the only 100 °F or greater temperature to date. The all-time record low temperature is −24 °F, recorded on February 16, 1943.

Worcester is known for being particularly snowy in the cold months, sometimes even experiencing intense autumn blizzards. The city averages 48.07 in of precipitation a year, as well as an average of 64 in of snowfall a season, receiving far more snow than coastal locations less than 40 mi away. Massachusetts' geographic location, jutting out into the North Atlantic, as well as Worcester's elevation relative to the surrounding terrain, makes the city very prone to Nor'easter weather systems that can dump heavy snow on the region. Extreme winters have brought up to 120 in of snowfall, as happened in 2005. In late January 2015, a blizzard traversed over the city as it shed almost 32 in of snow. This was the highest single-day snowfall total for anywhere in Massachusetts since data collection began in 1892.

While rare, the city has had its share of extreme weather. On September 21, 1938, the city was hit by the brutal New England Hurricane of 1938. Fifteen years later, Worcester was hit by a tornado that killed 94 people. The deadliest tornado in New England history, it damaged a large part of the city and surrounding towns. It struck Assumption Preparatory School, now the site of Quinsigamond Community College.

2020 census
According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Worcester had a population of 206,518, of which 104,911 (50.8%) were female and 101,607 (49.2%) were male. In terms of age, 81.0% were over 18 years old and 13.6% were over 65 years old; children under 5 made up 5.2% of the city's population.

In terms of race and ethnicity, Worcester's population as of 2020 was 67.7% White (including Hispanics), 13.0% Black or African American, 0.5% American Indian and Alaska Native, 7.2% Asian, <0.1% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, 5.2% from Some Other Race, and 6.4% from Two or More Races. Hispanics and Latinos of any race made up 24.6% of the population (of whom nearly half were Puerto Rican). Non-Hispanic Whites were 48.93% of the population in 2020, down from 96.8% in 1970. In 2010, 19.7% of Worcester's population are below the poverty threshold.

Worcester is known for its diversity and large immigrant population, with significant communities of Vietnamese, Brazilians, Albanians, Puerto Ricans, Ghanaians, Dominicans, along with Chinese and Indian Americans. 22% of Worcester's population in 2018 was born outside the United States.

Income
Data is from the 2015–2019 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.

Government
Worcester is governed by a council–manager government, with a popularly elected mayor. A city council acts as the legislative body, and the council-appointed manager handles the traditional day-to-day chief executive functions.

City councilors can run as either a representative of a city district or as an at-large candidate. The winning at-large candidate who receives the greatest number of votes for mayor becomes the mayor (at-large councilor candidates must ask to be removed from the ballot for mayor if they do not want to be listed on the mayoral ballot). As a result, voters must vote for their mayoral candidate twice, once as an at-large councilor, and once as the mayor. The mayor has no more authority than other city councilors, but is the ceremonial head of the city and chair of the city council and school committee. Currently, there are 11 councilors: 6 at-large and 5 district.

Worcester's first charter, which went into effect in 1848, established a Mayor/Bicameral form of government. Together, the two chambers—the 11-member Board of Aldermen and the 30-member Common Council—were vested with complete legislative powers. The mayor handled all administrative departments, though appointments to those departments had to be approved by the two-chamber City Council.

Seeking to replace the 1848 charter, Worcester voters in November 1947 approved a change to Plan E municipal government. In effect from January 1949 until November 1985, this charter (as outlined in chapter 43 of the Massachusetts General Laws) established City Council/City Manager government. This type of governance, with modifications, has survived to the present day.

Initially, Plan E government in Worcester was organized as a 9-member council (all at-large), a ceremonial mayor elected from the council by the councilors, and a council-appointed city manager. The manager oversees the daily administration of the city, makes all appointments to city offices, and can be removed at any time by a majority vote of the council. The mayor chairs the city council and the school committee, and does not have the power to veto any vote.

From 1949 through 1959, elections were by the single transferable vote. Voters repealed that system in November 1960. Despite non-partisan elections, two groups alternated in control of council: the local Democratic Party and a slate known as the Citizens' Plan E Association (CEA). CEA members included the Republican Party leadership and other groups not affiliated with the regular Democratic Party.

In 1983, Worcester voters again decided to change the city charter. This "Home Rule" charter (named for the method of adoption of the charter) is similar to Plan E, the major changes being to the structure of the council and the election of the mayor. The 9-member Council became 11, 6 at-large and 1 from each city district. The mayor is chosen by popular election, but must also run and win as an at-large councilor.

Politics
Worcester's history of social progressivism includes a number of temperance and abolitionist movements. It was a leader in the women's suffrage movement: The first national convention advocating women's rights was held in Worcester on October 23–24, 1850.

Two of the nation's most radical abolitionists, Abby Kelley Foster and her husband Stephen S. Foster, adopted Worcester as their home, as did Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the editor of The Atlantic Monthly and Emily Dickinson's avuncular correspondent, and Unitarian minister Rev. Edward Everett Hale.

The area was already home to Lucy Stone, Eli Thayer, and Samuel May Jr. They were joined in their political activities by networks of related Quaker families such as the Earles and the Chases, whose organizing efforts were crucial to the anti-slavery cause in central Massachusetts and throughout New England.

Anarchist Emma Goldman and two others opened an ice cream shop in 1892. "It was spring and not yet warm," Goldman later wrote, "but the coffee I brewed, our sandwiches, and dainty dishes were beginning to be appreciated. Within a short time, we were able to invest in a soda-water fountain and some lovely colored dishes."

On October 19, 1924, the largest gathering of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) ever held in New England took place at the Agricultural Fairgrounds in Worcester. Klansmen in sheets and hoods, new Knights awaiting a mass induction ceremony, and supporters swelled the crowd to 15,000. The KKK had hired more than 400 "husky guards", but when the rally ended around midnight, a riot broke out. Klansmen's cars were stoned and burned, and their windows smashed. KKK members were pulled from their cars and beaten. Klansmen called for police protection, but the situation raged out of control for most of the night. The violence after the "Klanvocation" had the desired effect: Membership fell off, and no further public Klan meetings were held in Worcester.

Robert Stoddard, owner of The Telegram and Gazette, was one of the founders of the John Birch Society.

Sixties era radical Abbie Hoffman was born in Worcester in 1936 and spent more than half of his life in the city.

Public safety
For public safety needs, the City of Worcester is protected by both the Worcester Fire Department and the Worcester Police Department.

UMass Memorial Medical Center provides emergency medical services (EMS) under contract with the city. Originally operated by Worcester City Hospital and later by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, "Worcester EMS" operates exclusively at the advanced life support (ALS) level, with two paramedics staffing each ambulance. UMass Memorial EMS maintains two community EMS stations and operates a fleet of 18 ambulances (including spares), as well as a special-operations trailer, several other support vehicles, and a bike team; the agency responds to an average of 100 emergencies each day. UMass Memorial EMS operates the EMS Communications Center, which is a secondary PSAP and provides emergency medical dispatch (EMD) services to Worcester and other communities.

Economy
By the mid-19th century, Worcester was one of New England's largest manufacturing centers. The city's large industries specialized in machinery, wire production, and power looms. Although manufacturing has declined, the city still maintains large manufactures, like Norton Abrasives, which was bought by Saint-Gobain in 1990, Morgan Construction Company, since bought by Siemens and then bought by Japanese company PriMetals Technologies, and the David Clark Company. The David Clark Company pioneered aeronautical equipment including anti-gravity suits and noise attenuating headsets.

Services, particularly education and healthcare, make up a large portion of the city's economy. Worcester's many colleges and universities make higher education a considerable presence in the city's economy. Hanover Insurance was founded in 1852 and retains its headquarters in Worcester. Unum Insurance and Fallon Community Health Plan have offices in the city. Polar Beverages is the largest independent soft-drink bottler in the country and is in Worcester.

Worcester is home to the largest concentration of digital gaming students in the United States. The Memorial Auditorium, built as a tribute to World War I veterans of Worcester, is undergoing a renovation and may cater to these Digital Students as a future multimedia and digital center, in conjunction with the twelve Worcester colleges and universities.

As one of the top ten emerging hubs for tech startups, the city's biotechnology and technology industries have helped spur major expansions at both the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The Massachusetts Biotechnology Research Park hosts many innovative companies including Advanced Cell Technology and AbbVie. The Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in nearby Shrewsbury developed the oral contraceptive pill in 1951.

Downtown Worcester used to boast major Boston retailers Filene's and Jordan Marsh as well Worcester's own department stores Barnard's and Denholm & McKay. Over time most retailers moved away from downtown and into the suburban Auburn Mall and Greendale Mall in North Worcester.

In 2010, the median household income was $61,212. Median family income was $76,485. The per capita income was $29,316. About 7.7% of families and 10.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 14.1% of those under age 18 and 7.5% of those age 65 or over. In October 2013, Worcester was found to be the number five city for investing in a rental property.

In January 2017, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed a law allowing 44 acres of unused state-owned land on the former Worcester State Hospital campus to be converted into a biomanufacturing industrial park.

Top employers
According to the city's 2018 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top ten employers in the city are:

Primary and secondary education
Worcester Public Schools educate more than 25,000 students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. The system consists of 34 elementary schools, four middle schools, eight high schools, and several other learning centers such as magnet schools, alternative schools, and special education schools. The city's public school system also administers an adult education component called "Night Life", and operates a Public-access television cable TV station on channel 11.

Worcester Technical High School opened in 2006, replacing the old Worcester Vocational High School, or "Voke". The city's other public high schools include South High Community School, North High School, Doherty Memorial High School, Burncoat Senior High School, University Park Campus School, and Claremont Academy.

The Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science was founded in 1992 as a public secondary school at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

One notable charter school in the city is Abby Kelley Foster Charter Public School, which teaches kindergarten through 12th grade. It is granted status by Massachusetts as a Level 1 school. It is the one of 834 schools in the United States to offer the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme.

Twenty-one private and parochial schools are also found throughout Worcester, including the city's oldest educational institution, Worcester Academy, founded in 1834, and Bancroft School, founded in 1900.

Higher education
Worcester is currently home to eight colleges and universities.
 * Assumption University is the fourth oldest Roman Catholic college in New England and was founded in 1904. At 175 acre, it has the largest campus in Worcester.
 * Fenwick DSC 1272.jpg]]Clark University was founded in 1887 as the first all-graduate school in the country; it now also educates undergraduates and is noted for its strengths in psychology and geography. Its first president was G. Stanley Hall, the founder of organized psychology as a science and profession, father of the child study movement, and founder of the American Psychological Association. Well-known professors include Albert A. Michelson, who won the first American Nobel Prize in 1902 for his measurement of light. Robert H. Goddard, a pioneering rocket scientist of the space age also studied and taught here, and, in his only visit to the United States, Sigmund Freud delivered his five famous "Clark Lectures" at the university. Clark offers one of only two programs leading to a Ph.D. in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the other is offered by Gratz College.
 * College of the Holy Cross was founded in 1843 and is the oldest Roman Catholic college in New England and one of the oldest in the United States. Well-known graduates include Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Nobel laureate Joseph E. Murray; former Poet Laureate of the United States Billy Collins; Basketball Hall of Fame member Bob Cousy; attorney and professional sports' team owner Edward Bennett Williams; College Football Hall of Fame member Gordie Lockbaum; and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In 2013, Holy Cross was ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the nation's 25th highest-rated liberal arts college.
 * The Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences Worcester Campus houses the institution's Doctor of Optometry program, accelerated Doctor of Pharmacy, Post-Baccalaureate Bachelor's in Nursing; Master's in Nursing – Family Nurse Practitioner, Master's program New England School of Acupuncture, as well as the Master's program in Physician Assistant Studies for post-baccalaureate students.
 * Quinsigamond Community College was founded in 1963 and provides associate degree and professional certificate options to its 13,000 students per year. In addition to its main campus, students train and study at multiple program sites throughout Worcester as well as one in Marlborough and one in Southbridge. wpi boytonhall.JPG]]
 * The University of Massachusetts Medical School (1970) is one of the nation's top 50 medical schools. Craig Mello won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Medicine. The University of Massachusetts Medical School is ranked fourth in primary care education among America's 125 medical schools in the 2006 U.S. News & World Report annual guide "America's Best Graduate Schools".
 * Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) is a private research university, focusing on the instruction and research of technical arts and applied sciences. Founded in 1865, WPI was one of the United States' first engineering and technology universities and now has 14 academic departments with over 50 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science, engineering, technology, management, the social sciences, and the humanities and arts. Robert Goddard, the father of modern rocketry, graduated from WPI in 1908 with a Bachelor of Science in physics.
 * Worcester State University (WSU) is a public liberal arts and sciences university located on the city's west side. Founded in 1874 as the State Normal School at Worcester, it was the fifth of nine public teacher training colleges in the commonwealth. Today WSU offers 34 undergraduate majors and 30 graduate programs and includes a student body of 6400.Worcesteracademy3.jpg]]

Many of these institutions participate in the Colleges of Worcester Consortium. This independent, non-profit collegiate association includes academic institutions in Worcester and other communities in Worcester County, such as Anna Maria College in neighboring Paxton. It facilitates cooperation among the colleges and universities. One example of this being its inter-college shuttle bus and student cross registration. Worcester is also the home of Dynamy, a "residential internship program" in the United States. The organization was founded in 1969. The city is also home to many trade schools such as the Peterson School, Porter and Chester Institute, the Fieldstone School, and the Rob Roy Academy, among others. Additionally, the Worcester Technical High School offers adult education classes.

Defunct institutions
Becker College was a private college with campuses in Worcester and neighboring Leicester that closed at the end of the 2020–21 academic year. The college was formed in 1977 out of the merger of Leicester Junior College (Founded 1784 as Leicester Academy) and Becker Junior College (1887). In recent years, Becker's video game design program was consistently ranked in the top 10 in the U.S. and Canada. Clark University started an equivalent program, Becker School of Design & Technology, hiring the majority of the faculty from the original program at Becker College and offering transfers to Becker students.

Worcester Junior College started as a private junior college in 1905 as a branch of Worcester Youth Men's Christian Association Institute, then its only offering was in auto mechanics. From 1926 to 1942 the college was affiliated with Northeastern University. In 1972 it was merged with the new Central New England College of Technology [CNEC].

The Oread Institute was an early women's college that closed its doors in 1934. Founded in 1849 by Eli Thayer it counted among its graduates the founders of Spelman College.

Culture

Much of Worcester's culture is synonymous with broader New England culture. The city's name is notoriously mispronounced by people unfamiliar with the city. As with the city in England, the first syllable of "cester" (castra) is left entirely unvoiced. Combined with a traditionally non-rhotic Eastern New England English accent, the name can be transcribed as "WOOS-tuh" or "WISS-tuh" (the first syllable possibly having a near-close central unrounded vowel).

Worcester has many traditionally ethnic neighborhoods, including Quinsigamond Village (Swedish), Shrewsbury Street (Italian), Kelley Square (Irish and Polish), Vernon Hill (Lithuanian), Union Hill (Jewish), and Main South (Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Vietnamese).

Shrewsbury Street is Worcester's traditional "Little Italy" neighborhood and today boasts many of the city's most popular restaurants and nightlife. The Canal District was once an old Eastern European neighborhood, but has been redeveloped into a very popular bar, restaurant and club scene. Worcester is also famously the former home of the Worcester Lunch Car Company. The company began in 1906 and built many famous lunch car diners in New England. Worcester is home to many classic lunch car diners, including Boulevard Diner, Corner Lunch, Chadwick Square Diner, and Miss Worcester Diner.

There are also many dedicated community organizations and art associations in the city. stART on the Street is an annual festival promoting local art. The Worcester Music Festival and New England Metal and Hardcore Festival are also held annually in Worcester. The Worcester County St. Patrick's Parade runs through Worcester and is one of the largest St. Patrick's Day celebrations in the state. The city also held the second oldest First Night celebration in the country each New Year's Eve until 2017. Since 1916, Worcester has also been the home of the Worcester Kiltie Pipe Band, one of the oldest pipe bands in the United States.

Worcester is also the state's largest center for the arts outside of Boston. Mechanics Hall, built in 1857, is one of the oldest concert halls in the country and is renowned for its pure acoustics. In 2008 the old Poli Palace Theatre reopened as the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts. The theatre brings many Broadway shows and nationally recognized performers to the city. Tuckerman Hall, designed by one of the country's earliest woman architects, Josephine Wright Chapman, is home to the Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra. The DCU Center arena and convention holds many large concerts, exhibitions and conventions in the city. The Worcester County Poetry Association sponsors readings by national and local poets in the city and the Worcester Center for Crafts provides craft education and skills to the community. Worcester is also home to the Worcester Youth Orchestras. Founded in 1947 by Harry Levenson, it is the 3rd oldest youth orchestra in the country and regularly performs at Mechanics Hall.

Mechanics Hall is also home to the Worcester Symphony Orchestra formerly known as the New England Symphony Orchestra. Founded in 1974 the Worcester Symphony Orchestra performs classical works regularly at Mechanics Hall in downtown Worcester.

The nickname "Wormtown" is synonymous with the city's once large underground rock music scene. The nickname has now become used to refer to the city itself.

Due to its location in Central Massachusetts, Worcester is known as the "Heart of the Commonwealth"; a heart is the official symbol of the city. However, the heart symbol may also have its provenance in lore that the Valentine's Day card, although not invented in the city, was first mass-produced and popularized by Worcester resident Esther Howland. Similarly, the invention of the classic yellow "smiley face" design by Worcester native Harvey Ball has gained it an iconic status in the city. This design is now commonly seen in art and merchandise relating to Worcester, including murals, t-shirts and stickers.

Sites of interest
Worcester has 1,200 acres of publicly owned property. Notable parks include Elm Park, which was laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1854, and the City Common laid out in 1669. Both parks are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The largest park in the city is the 549 acre Green Hill Park. The park was donated by the Green family in 1903 and includes the Green Hill Park Shelter built in 1910. In 2002, the Massachusetts Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Green Hill Park. Other Parks, include Newton Hill, East Park, Morgan Park, Shore Park, Crompton Park, Hadwen Park, Institute Park and University Park. Though not within city limits, Tower Hill Botanical Garden is operated by the Worcester County Horticultural Society and is a 20-minute drive northeast of the city in Boylston. The Horticultural Society's former headquarters is now the Worcester Historical Museum, dedicated to the cultural, economic, and scientific contributions of the city to American society. As a former manufacturing center, Worcester has many historic 19th century buildings and on the National Register of Historic Places, including the old facilities of the Crompton Loom Works, Ashworth and Jones Factory and Worcester Corset Company Factory.

The American Antiquarian Society has been in Worcester since 1812. The national library and society has one of the largest collections of early American history in the world. The city's main museum is the Worcester Art Museum established in 1898. The museum is the second largest art museum in New England, behind the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. From 1931 to 2013, Worcester was home to the Higgins Armory Museum, which was the sole museum dedicated to arms and armor in the country. Its collection and endowment were transferred and integrated into the Worcester Art Museum, with the collection now being shown in a new gallery which opened in 2015. The non-profit Veterans Inc. is headquartered at the southern tip of Grove Street in the historic Massachusetts National Guard Armory building.

The Worcester Memorial Auditorium is one of the most prominent buildings in the city. Built as a World War I war memorial in 1933, the multipurpose auditorium has hosted many of Worcester's most famous concerts and sporting events, and is undergoing a renovation to become a multimedia and event center.

Sports
Since 2021, Worcester has been the home of the Worcester Red Sox, the Triple-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. They play their home games at Polar Park.

Worcester was home to Marshall Walter ("Major") Taylor, an African American cyclist who won the world one-mile (1.6 km) track cycling championship in 1899. Taylor's legacy includes being the first African American and the second black athlete to be a world champion (Canadian boxer George Dixon, 1892). Taylor was nicknamed the Worcester Whirlwind by the local papers. Lake Quinsigamond is home to the Eastern Sprints, a premier rowing event in the United States. Competitive rowing teams first came to Lake Quinsigamond in 1857. Finding the long, narrow lake ideal for such crew meets, avid rowers established boating clubs on the lake's shores, the first being the Quinsigamond Boating Club. More boating clubs and races followed, and soon many colleges (local, national, and international) held regattas, such as the Eastern Sprints, on the lake. Beginning in 1895, local high schools held crew races on the lake. In 1952, the lake played host to the National Olympic rowing trials.

In 2002, the Jesse Burkett Little League all-stars team went all the way to the Little League World Series. They made it to the US final before losing to Owensboro, Kentucky. Jesse Burkett covers the West Side area of Worcester, along with Ted Williams Little League.

The city hosts the Worcester Railers of the ECHL, which began play in October 2017. Prior to the Railers, the American Hockey League team Worcester Sharks played in Worcester from 2006 to 2015, before relocating to San Jose. The Sharks played at the DCU Center as a developmental team for the National Hockey League's San Jose Sharks. The AHL was formerly represented by the Worcester IceCats from 1994 to 2005. The IceCats were chiefly affiliated with the St. Louis Blues. The city hosted the Worcester Blades of the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL) for one season, playing their 2018–19 home games in the Fidelity Bank Worcester Ice Center for that league's final season.

Worcester now hosts the Massachusetts Pirates, an indoor football team in the Indoor Football League (where they are the defending United Bowl champions, which started in 2018 at the DCU Center. The city previously was home to the New England Surge of the defunct Continental Indoor Football League.

The city's former professional baseball team, the Worcester Tornadoes, started in 2005 and was a member of the Canadian-American Association of Professional Baseball League. The team played at the Hanover Insurance Park at Fitton Field on the campus of the College of the Holy Cross and was not affiliated with any major league team. The Tornadoes won the 2005 Can-Am League title. The team's owner ran into financial difficulties, and the team disbanded after the 2012 season. The Worcester Bravehearts began play in 2014 as the local affiliate of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League, and won the league championship in their inaugural season.

Candlepin bowling was invented in Worcester in 1880 by Justin White, an area bowling alley owner. The Worcester County Wildcats, part of the New England Football League, is a semi-pro football team, and play at Commerce Bank Field at Foley Stadium.

Golf's Ryder Cup's first official tournament was played at the Worcester Country Club in 1927. The course also hosted the U.S. Open in 1925, and the U.S. Women's Open in 1960.

Worcester's colleges have long histories and many notable achievements in collegiate sports. The College of the Holy Cross represents NCAA Division 1 sports in Worcester. The other colleges and Universities in Worcester correspond with division II and III. The Holy Cross Crusaders won the NCAA men's basketball champions in 1947 and NIT men's basketball champions in 1954, led by future NBA hall-of-famers and Boston Celtic legends Bob Cousy and Tom Heinsohn.

Religion
According to the U.S. Religion Census 2010, most inhabitants of Worcester County report no religious affiliation. Following None, the largest reported religious denomination is Catholicism. The first Catholics came to Worcester in 1826. They were chiefly Irish immigrants brought to America by the builders of the Blackstone canal. As time went on and the number of Catholics increased, the community petitioned Bishop Fenwick to send them a priest. In response to this appeal, the bishop appointed the Reverend James Fitton to visit the Catholics of Worcester in 1834. A Catholic Mass was first offered in the city in an old stone building on Front Street. The foundation of Christ's Church, the first Catholic church in Worcester (now St. John's), was laid on July 6, 1834. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester was canonically erected on January 14, 1950, by Pope Pius XII. Its territories were taken from the neighboring Diocese of Springfield. The fifth and current bishop is Robert Joseph McManus.

The Unitarian-Universalist Church of Worcester was founded in 1841. Worcester's Greek Orthodox Cathedral, St. Spyridon, was founded in 1924. Worcester is home to a dedicated Jewish population who attend five synagogues, including Reform congregation Temple Emanuel Sinai, Congregation Beth Israel, a Conservative synagogue founded in 1924, and Orthodox Congregation Tifereth Israel – Sons of Jacob (Chabad), home of Yeshiva Achei Tmimim Academy. Beth Israel and its rabbi were the subject of the book And They Shall be My People: An American Rabbi and His Congregation by Paul Wilkes. The first Armenian Church in the Western Hemisphere was built in Worcester in 1890 and consecrated on January 18, 1891, as "Soorp Purgich" (Holy Savior). The current sanctuary of the congregation, now known as Armenian Church of Our Savior, was consecrated in 1952.

Worcester is home to America's largest community of Mandaeans, numbering around 2,500. Most Mandaeans in Worcester arrived as refugees from instability in Iraq during the early 21st century.

Media
The Telegram & Gazette is Worcester's only daily newspaper. The paper, known locally as "the Telegram" or "the T and G", is wholly owned by GateHouse Media of Fairport, New York.

The commonwealth's UniMás station, WUTF-TV, channel 27, is licensed to Worcester, but operates from Needham. The region's version of Spectrum News 1, which over the years has expanded from a community access channel to a regional cable news channel, is based in the community.

Radio stations based in Worcester include WCHC, WCUW, WSRS, WTAG, WWFX, WICN and WXLO. WCCA-TV shows on channel 194 and provides Community Cable-Access Television as well as a live stream of the channel on the station's website.

Transportation
Worcester is served by several interstate highways. Interstate 290 (I-290) connects central Worcester to I-495 in Marlboro, the Mass Pike and I-395 in nearby Auburn and the Connecticut city of Norwich. I-190 links Worcester to Route 2 and the cities of Fitchburg and Leominster in northern Worcester County. The Pike can also be reached via a connecting segment of Route 146 from Providence.

Worcester is also served by several smaller Massachusetts state highways. Route 9 links the city to its eastern and western suburbs, Shrewsbury and Leicester. Route 9 runs almost the entire length of the state, connecting Boston and Worcester with Pittsfield, near the New York state border. Route 12 was the primary route north to Leominster and Fitchburg until the completion of I-190. Route 12 also connected Worcester to Webster before I-395 was completed. It still serves as an alternative local route. Route 146, the Worcester-Providence Turnpike, connects the city with the similar city of Providence, Rhode Island. Route 20 touches the southernmost tip of Worcester near the Massachusetts Turnpike. Route 20 is a coast-to-coast route connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, and is the longest road in the United States.

Worcester is the headquarters of the Providence and Worcester, a Class II railroad operating throughout much of southern New England. The city is a significant intermodal shipping hub for CSX's Boston Subdivision. Worcester is also the western terminus of the Framingham/Worcester commuter rail line run by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. Union Station serves as the hub for commuter railway traffic. Built in 1911, the station has been restored to its original grace and splendor, reopening to full operation in 2000. It also serves as an Amtrak stop on the Lake Shore Limited from Boston to Chicago. In October 2008, the MBTA added 5 new trains to the Framingham/Worcester line as part of a plan to add 20 or more trains from Worcester to Boston and also to buy the track from CSX Transportation.

The Worcester Regional Transit Authority, or WRTA, manages the municipal bus system. Buses operate intracity as well as connect Worcester to surrounding central Massachusetts communities. Worcester is also served by OurBus, Peter Pan Bus Lines and Greyhound Bus Lines, which operate out of Union Station.

Worcester Regional Airport (KORH), owned and operated by Massport since 2010, lies at the top of Tatnuck Hill, Worcester's highest point. The airport has two runways, whose lengths are 7000 ft and 5000 ft, and a $15.7 million terminal. The airport was serviced by numerous airlines from the 1950s through the 1990s. After that, the airport encountered years of spotty commercial service, but it has since been given new life with the arrival of jetBlue, Delta Air Lines, and American Airlines.

Healthcare
In 1830, state legislation funded the creation of the Worcester State Insane Asylum Hospital (1833) and became one of the first new public asylums in the United States. Prior the Worcester State Insane Asylum hospital, all other treatment centers were funded by private philanthropists which neglected treatment for the poor.

Worcester is home to the University of Massachusetts Medical School, ranked fourth in primary care education among America's 125 medical schools in the 2006 U.S. News & World Report annual guide "America's Best Graduate Schools". The medical school is in the top quartile of medical schools nationally in research funding from the NIH and is home to highly respected scientists including a Nobel laureate, a Lasker Award recipient and multiple members of the National Academy of Sciences and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The school is closely affiliated with UMass Memorial Health Care, the clinical partner of the medical school, which has expanded its locations all over Central Massachusetts. St. Vincent Hospital at Worcester Medical Center in the downtown area rounds out Worcester's primary care facilities. Reliant Medical Group, formerly Fallon Clinic, is the largest private multi-specialty group in central Massachusetts with over 30 different specialties. It is affiliated with St. Vincent's Hospital in downtown Worcester. Reliant Medical Group was the creator of Fallon Community Health Plan, a now independent HMO based in Worcester, and one of the largest health maintenance organizations (HMOs) in the state.

Utilities and public services
Worcester has a municipally owned water supply. Its water filtration plant is located in Holden near two of the reservoirs. Sewage disposal services are provided by the Upper Blackstone Water Pollution Abatement District, which services Worcester as well as some surrounding communities.

National Grid USA is the exclusive distributor of electric power to the city, though due to deregulation, customers now have a choice of electric generation companies. Natural gas is distributed by NSTAR Gas; only commercial and industrial customers may choose an alternate natural gas supplier. Verizon, successor to New England Telephone, NYNEX, and Bell Atlantic, is the primary wired telephone service provider for the area. Phone service is also available from various national wireless companies. Cable television is available from Charter Communications, with broadband Internet access also provided, while a variety of DSL providers and resellers are able to provide broadband Internet over Verizon-owned phone lines.

Sister cities
Worcester has the following sister cities:
 * Worcester, United Kingdom (1998)
 * Afula, Israel
 * Piraeus, Greece (2005)
 * Pushkin, Saint Petersburg, Russia (1987)

title: Worcester, Massachusetts


text:
Talk:Skunk weed

Untitled
"Said to be", eh? 2 sentences, 806 hits. I think that speaks volumes for our readers... - User:GWO

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

title: Talk:Skunk weed


text:
Betty Cooper

Elizabeth "Betty" Cooper is one of the main characters appearing in American comic books published by Archie Comics. She is the lead guitarist, percussionist and one of the three singers of The Archies. The character was created by Bob Montana and John L. Goldwater, and first appeared in Pep Comics #22 (cover-dated Dec. 1941), on the first page of the first Archie story, serving as a love interest to Archie Andrews.

Betty is in love with Archie, which drives her attempts to win his affections by whatever means possible, and her rivalry with her best friend, vocalist/keyboardist Veronica Lodge, have been among the longest-running themes in the comics. She is portrayed by Lili Reinhart in Riverdale and Khushi Kapoor in The Archies.

Publication history
Betty was named for, and originally based on, Betty Tokar Jankovich, a Czech immigrant who briefly dated Archie co-creator Bob Montana in 1939 when she was 18. Created to serve as a love interest for Archie Andrews, she is portrayed as a smart, talented, sweet, tomboyish yet beautiful girl with blonde hair and blue eyes.

In addition to appearing in many Archie stories, Betty was the star of two long-running comic book titles published by Archie Comics during the period 1965–2012: Betty and Me (later styled as Betty & Me), which published 200 issues from Aug. 1965 to Aug. 1992; and Betty, which published 195 issues from Sept. 1992 to Jan. 2012. She also was featured in Betty's Diary, which published 40 issues from Apr. 1986–Apr. 1990.

Currently, Betty is the co-star of Betty and Veronica Digest Magazine, now known as B&V Friends Double Digest, which was launched in Nov. 1980 and has published more than 250 issues; and Betty and Veronica Double Digest, which has published 250+ issues since June 1987.

She was the co-star of Betty and Veronica, which ran for 347 issues (and eight annuals) from March 1950–April 1987. A new Betty and Veronica series published 278 issues from June 1987–late 2015. The limited series Betty and Veronica, taking place in their rebooted New Riverdale universe, was published in 2017. Betty and Veronica also co-starred in:
 * Betty and Veronica Spectacular (90 issues, Oct. 1992–July 2009)
 * Betty and Veronica Summer Fun (six annual issues, 1994–1999)

Fictional character biography
Betty Cooper is the third and youngest child and second daughter of Hal Cooper and Alice Cooper. Her older brother Chic Cooper and older sister Polly Cooper has moved out of Riverdale, their hometown. Chic moved to New York City and Polly to San Francisco, but both occasionally appear in flashbacks to Betty's childhood, and both occasionally visit their family.

The quintessential girl next door, Betty's middle class upbringing is a world apart from the flashy lifestyle of her wealthy friend, Veronica Lodge. Nowhere is this more evident than when she and Veronica are competing for Archie Andrews' heart, and yet they remain best friends (Veronica once told Archie that she and Betty are only rivals in unimportant matters, like boys).

In the late 1960s, the two girls joined Archie's band, a garage band appropriately named The Archies. Both sang, and Betty played a tambourine, while Veronica played an organ. Some stories indicate that Betty is the better vocalist. Additionally, there is little consistency in the instruments she is able to play. Betty has played the recorder, tambourine, maracas, guitar, banjo, keyboard, saxophone, cello, and the bongos.

Interests and personality
Betty is friends with everybody, and is a loving daughter and sister. She likes to help the homeless, read to senior citizens, and rescue wounded animals and birds.

Betty's hobbies include playing sports (particularly baseball), cooking (the gang thinks her cooking is excellent), and looking after animals (she owns a cat, Caramel). She is also concerned with the environment and other social issues and encourages the rest of the gang to clean up after themselves. She loves children and sometimes babysits Jellybean with Jughead as well as other children in Riverdale. Occasionally, families hire Betty to keep their elderly members company. Betty is a skilled mechanic who frequently helps Archie with his broken down car Betsy. Betty is also good at skiing and car-racing. She is often said to be the best pitcher in the girls' baseball team. Betty is a scuba diver, wearing a red shorty wetsuit, breathing with an air tank she carries on her back and a regulator in her mouth, wears red fins on her feet and a mask on her face, but she prefers to swim underwater.

Betty has an above-average intelligence and is one of the smartest students at Riverdale High School, along with Dilton Doiley. In one story she won an award and was sent to compete in New York and has won numerous academic awards. At one point, she gained ESP when an encyclopedia accidentally fell on her head. This ability took away all hope for the future; Archie asked Veronica for a date, but Betty knew that Archie would dump Veronica for her. Betty lost her ESP power when a ball that Reggie kicked accidentally hit her; in her gratefulness, she gave him a thankful kiss.

Betty's many talents and accomplishments often make her friend Veronica jealous, who then tries to sabotage Betty to steal her glory and make her look bad.

During a stay at the Lodge mansion, while the family are in Europe, Betty is waited on hand and foot by the servants and, true to her personality, she quickly begins to feel guilty about being waited on. Wanting to do something very special for them in appreciation for the tough jobs that they do (and for what also seems to be a thankless job in serving someone like Veronica, who tends to be harsh and rude towards those who serve her), she throws them a pool party which surprises Mr. and Mrs. Lodge and Veronica. In return, Smithers, the butler, and the rest of the staff, who are amazed by what Betty did for them (since they never seem to get any appreciation from Veronica), offer to help Betty with the next party she throws, for free. Mr. Lodge would then scold Veronica about her harsh treatment towards them, much to her embarrassment.

On the TV show Riverdale, Betty participates in many extracurricular activities at Riverdale High School, including cheerleader with the other members of The River Vixens, writing for The Blue and Gold with Jughead Jones and discovering the true identities and intentions/actions of many people in Riverdale, including Clifford Blossom (Cheryl Blossom's father), Penelope Blossom (Cheryl Blossom's mother), Hal Cooper, and Robert Phillips (a.k.a. The Sugarman).

Relationships
Betty's best friend is Veronica. Although the two are often involved in disputes over Archie or something else that evokes jealousy, they have remained friends. The two have commented that Jughead and Archie's friendship could not compare to theirs. In many stories, Betty and Veronica team up or help each other despite Veronica's jealousy and bitterness towards her. Betty's other female friends include Ethel Muggs, Midge Klump, and Nancy Woods, all of whom share common interests and group activities such as shopping and cheer-leading.

Frequently, Betty has been shown to flirt with and date bassist Reggie Mantle early on in the titles' runs and occasionally still, more often than not as a casual date. Once Betty said that sometimes the way Archie and Reggie fight over her, it sounds like she has the plague. In the Life with Archie magazines that depict a future timeline in which Archie marries Veronica, Betty and Reggie are portrayed as a loving couple. It has been hinted they may be planning to get married.

Betty's relationship with Jughead Jones has mostly been that of close confidant and close friend, as they normally discuss their issues more candidly with each other than anyone else; Jughead will provide commentary on her feelings for Archie, and Betty will attempt to "better" Jughead, by getting rid of his slothful attitude and laziness. Once when she had a sprained ankle, Veronica told both Archie and Jughead to visit her. The four of them were having dinner together when people from the school mistook Jughead as Betty's boyfriend because he was carrying chocolates to her house. Jughead appears to care more about Betty than other girls and there have been hints of a potential romantic relationship between them. He once accidentally asked her out to a school dance. When he was telling Archie what to do, Betty walked up behind him and thought he was asking her even though he was just demonstrating how to ask Betty to the dance. In one story, Jughead even says that if the time ever comes that he would willingly kiss a girl, it would be Betty. A happy tear is seen sliding down Betty's face at this comment.

She had a friendship with an elderly woman named Lydia Wyndham, whom she found when doing research about World War I. With this acquaintance, Betty got to know an accomplished writer and poet with a sharp mind (and a sad past—Betty's research had turned up a beau of Ms. Wyndham's who was killed in combat), but after a while, Ms. Wyndham herself died.

At times, Betty is seen to have a close friendship with Cheryl Blossom, especially in Cheryl's own title. However, at other times, Betty and Veronica regard the seductive Cheryl as a threat because she tries to lure Archie away from them, and the two best friends unite against Cheryl to protect their interests. Jason Blossom, Cheryl's twin brother, is sometimes seen to have a genuine interest in Betty, which makes Archie jealous.

In the late '90s, Betty started dating Adam Chisholm. It was thought by some people that Betty had chosen Adam over Archie. This event made Archie jealous and he concentrated his attention on Betty, ignoring Veronica, as he always does when he thinks someone else may take Betty away from him. Though in actuality, Adam has rarely been seen in the stories after that story arc, and Betty has continued to prefer Archie.

Career
Betty enjoys writing and keeps a diary that is featured in the series Betty's Diary. She wants to be a famous writer someday, an aspiration that her teacher Miss Grundy approves of and encourages. She submits her work to writing magazines and has been published a number of times. She once got to be an intern for a fashion magazine but ended up modeling as well. At the same time, she takes various types of employment, including some work as a mechanic, which is also a career that she is interested in. In some stories she finds employment as an assistant teacher at the local elementary school. Betty is also a well-known babysitter and baker.

Reception
In 2011, Betty Cooper was ranked 66th in Comics Buyer's Guide's "100 Sexiest Women in Comics" list written by Brent Frankenhoff.

Jughead: The Hunger
In Jughead: The Hunger, Betty hails from a long-line of werewolf hunters that have always taken down the Jones werewolves. She only befriended Archie and faked her affections towards him in an effort to get closer to the newest werewolf of Riverdale, Jughead. Archie convinces her to try curing Jughead with wolfsbane, which initially works until it wears off and results in Reggie's death and resurrection/metamorphosis. Jughead leaves town because he knows Betty won't give him a second chance. Betty sets out to find him with the help of Archie and her cousin Bo, with backing by her aunt, the Cooper family matriarch, Elena.

Life with Archie: The Married Life
Betty appears as a main character in Life with Archie: The Married Life. In Archie Loves Veronica, she runs a catering business while her boyfriend, Reggie Mantle, runs a repair shop. They both star in a reality show based on their lives. In Archie Loves Betty, she is an English teacher at Riverdale High. However, in both universes, Betty previously worked as a buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue in New York.

Animated

 * Betty appeared in The Archie Show, a 1968 cartoon series produced by Filmation. She also appeared in the various spin-offs The Archie Comedy Hour, Archie's Funhouse, Archie's TV Funnies, The U.S. of Archie and The New Archie and Sabrina Hour produced in the same format. She was voiced by Jane Webb.
 * Betty appeared in The New Archies, a 1987 re-imagining of Archie and the gang. Betty was portrayed as a pre-teen in junior high. She was voiced by Lisa Coristine.
 * Betty appeared in Archie's Weird Mysteries, voiced by America Young.

Live action

 * Betty was portrayed by Lauren Holly in the 1990 TV movie Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again. Since graduation, she has become a grade school teacher and aspiring author, with an abusive boyfriend named Robert. While attending her fifteen-year high school reunion, her old feelings for Archie resurface, as does her friendly rivalry with Veronica.
 * Betty appears in The CW series Riverdale, with Lili Reinhart portraying the character. As in the comics, Betty is a good-natured girl-next-door who had a childhood crush on her longtime friend Archie Andrews. She is both less innocent and more driven than her book counterpart, partaking in many investigations. She also has less of a tomboy personality than traditionally portrayed. Betty, as depicted in the television series, also has a darker side referred to as "Dark Betty" in the earlier seasons. Still Archie's next-door neighbor and childhood best friend, she dates Jughead and maintains a friendship with Veronica free from competition over Archie. Years after her breakup with Jughead and leaving Riverdale, she later decides to return to her hometown and initiates a sexual fling with Archie. Eden Summer Gilmore plays the young Betty in its first season, while Hannah Bos plays the young Betty in the series' fourth season and sixth season. Michele Scarabelli plays the older Betty in the series' final episode "Chapter Thirty-Seven: Goodbye, Riverdale".
 * Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge, as depicted in the comic series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, were the basis for the characters of the "Weird Sisters" Agatha, Dorcas, and Prudence Night (respectively portrayed by Adeline Rudolph, Abigail Cowen, and Tati Gabrielle) in the Netflix web television series of the same name.

Film

 * Betty appeared in The Archies in Jugman, voiced by America Young. The direct-to-video film takes place after Archie's Weird Mysteries.
 * Gerald Peary's documentary Archie's Betty.
 * Betty appeared in an Indianized film adaptation, The Archies, available on Netflix. The role was portrayed by Khushi Kapoor.

title: Betty Cooper


text:
Burgh Castle

Burgh Castle is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. It is situated on the east bank of the River Waveney, some 3.7 mi west of Great Yarmouth and within the Norfolk Broads National Park. The parish was part of Suffolk until 1974.

History
Burgh Castle was likely the site of a Neolithic settlement due to an abundance of flint and bronze axe-heads being discovered in the area.

Burgh Castle is the location of a Roman Fortification which dates to the third century; the fort was part of system of coastal defence, the Saxon Shore, against Anglo-Saxon incursions on the East Anglian coast. The site is maintained by the Norfolk Archeological Trust and is open free of charge to the public.

It has been suggested by the Elizabethan historian William Camden, that Burgh Castle is the site of Cnobheresburg, the first Irish monastery in southern England founded by Saint Fursey in the seventh century as part of the Hiberno-Scottish mission.

In the Domesday Book of 1086, Burgh Castle is recorded as consisting of 15 households, belonging to 'Ralph the Bowman.'

Burgh Castle was once used to imprison Eleanor, Fair Maid of Brittany.

St. Peter and St. Paul's Church
Burgh Castle's Parish Church is of Anglo-Saxon origin and is dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The church is one of Norfolk's remaining 124 round-tower churches and the majority of the building dates from the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, however, there are a significant amount of Roman tiles in the building, likely repurposed from the Roman Fort. It has been a Grade II* listed building since November 1954.

Local government
In the 2001 census, Burgh Castle had a population of 955 people in 376 households. For the purposes of local government, the parish today falls within the district of Great Yarmouth. However prior to the Local Government Act 1972, the parish was within Lothingland Rural District in Suffolk.

title: Burgh Castle


text:
Steinburg

Steinburg is a district in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, administered from Itzehoe. It is bounded by (from the west and clockwise) the districts of Dithmarschen, Rendsburg-Eckernförde, Segeberg and Pinneberg, and by the Elbe River (and the district of Stade beyond).

History
The district's name is derived from a medieval castle called Steinburg, where the reeves ruled by order of their lords, the dukes of Holstein. This castle was first mentioned in 1307, and it was abandoned and demolished in 1630. However, Steinburg remained the name of the region, and its new centre became Glückstadt before gradually moving to the town of Itzehoe.

When Schleswig-Holstein became a province of Prussia in 1867, the district of Steinburg was established. The borders remained unchanged until 1970 when the newly founded town Schenefeld (formerly part of Rendsburg district) joined Steinburg.

Geography
The district is situated on the northern bank of the Elbe river, close to its mouth. The countryside is very plain. The Stör river, a right-hand tributary of the Elbe, flows through the district. Today the towns in Steinburg gradually become a part of the growing Hamburg metropolitan area. The lowest land point of the Federal Republic of Germany at 3,54 meters below sea level is located near the city of Wilster. Steinburg's highest point is the Itzespitze (83.4 m).

Coat of arms
The coat of arms displays a castle (symbolising Steinburg Castle) above a wavy line (representing the Elbe river). Below the castle's towers there are three shields depicting Christ, a nettle leaf (from the arms of Holstein) and a swan.

title: Steinburg


text:
Talk:William I of the Netherlands

Disambiguation
There are really three different people that need to be un-confused here: jcwf
 * Willem I Count of Holland, (1203-1222)
 * Willem I, Stadtholder of Holland died 1584 ([[William I of Orange])
 * Willem I King of the Netherlands (this one)

 * It's not that big an issue, at least as far as the title is concerned. The first one is not a problem, since he was count of Holland only. The second, William the Silent never had "of the Netherlands" in his title (stadtholders belonged to each province individually, even if they were stadtholder in most of them at the same time, the United Provinces were not a unified state). So, only the latter was ever properly "William of the Netherlands". A bigger problem would be disambiguating all the different William of Oranges, since the latter could also be called "William I of Orange (Nassau)"... Scipius 18:01 Oct 4, 2002 (UTC)

OK jcwf

POV Issues
'The purpose was exterminating Catholicism and French' is highly non-NPOV and simply untrue. There is no indication of that at all. In fact in protestant cicles there was unhapiness about the king too, because he wanted too much influence on the dutch reformed church. Later there was even a schism about that. The remark that Willem was strongly reformed is probably not accurate either therefore. What is true is that in Belgium this king has long been vilified as 'raison d'être' for the Belgian state. Ironically that is even so in Flanders although the king's insistance of Dutch as national language was one of the main reasons that he lost his mostly francophone/liberal support in the south. Flanders went along with the rebellion because the Catholic church was very powerful there and the Church wanted a political foothold in this part of Europe. The sudden alliance of liberals and catholics is known as the monsteralliance. The Flemish people paid a heavy price for the emergence of the Belgian state however. Their emancipation only came in the 1960s, that of their catholic brethren in the north (still 1/3 of the population there) about a century earlier.

Jcwf

 * I tried to tone this down a little, but I don't know enough about the subject to do it correctly. Jcwf, why don't you rewrite this paragraph to make it more accurate and neutral? RussBlau 10:31, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Dates?
On this page the dates of the reign of William I are said to be 1813-1843, but on Dutch monarchy they claim the dates to be 1815-1840. One of these should be corrected. — Asbestos | Talk 09:20, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

William became Sovereign Prince, or some such, in 1813, but the Kingdom of the Netherlands was only created in 1815. He abdicated in 1840, and died in 1843 (as is explained in the article). john k 20:09, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hereditary stadtholder?
The following statement appears in the article:

 * William was hereditary stadtholder when the Republic of the Seven United Provinces was invaded by the French Revolutionary armies.

Is "hereditary stadtholder" a proper title that refers to the heir to the stadtholdership, as in the current Luxembourgish title "Hereditary Grand Duke"? If so, the title should be capitalized. If not, this sentence should be corrected, as in common English usage it implies erroneously that William had inherited the stadtholdership before the French invasion. RussBlau 10:29, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * He was Hereditary Stadtholder (Dutch: erfstadhouder) in the same sense as Henri of Luxembourg used to be Hereditary Grand Duke. --84.26.109.69 17:01, 17 Jan 2006 (UTC)

 * I don't think so. The Hereditary Stadtholders since 1747 were William IV and William V. They weren't monarchs in the sense that they were sovereigns. No titles existed for the family members of the Hereditary Stadtholder. Gerard von Hebel (talk) 15:10, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Pictures!
We need pictures of the first 3 Williams!

Reignal name
During his reign,, gentlemen, was he styled as Willem or Willem I?--Anglius 20:16, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

 * Willem. Without the ordinal. Gerard von Hebel (talk) 19:52, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Name of republic
I've reverted the changes by Alast0r. The correct name of the state was indeed Republic of the Seven United Provinces. Mvdleeuw 12:15, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * There was no official name in the present sense. The use of the term "Seven Netherlands" was coined by historians. A name used in 18th century diplomacy however was "United Provinces". Gerard von Hebel (talk) 19:55, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Mr. Von Hebel is correct - "The Republic of the United Provinces" is the correct name. 62.238.249.71 (talk) 19:23, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Monarchical Styles Infobox
This infobox, besides looking like a gaudy wine label, doesn't have any practical use in this biography. It's a bit silly (and not at all reverent) to address a King of the Netherlands in English, especially when he has been in his tomb for a long time. I'm going to remove it, as (for instance) happened on the King Christian VIII of Denmark page. Glatisant (talk) 12:32, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Relation to Napoleon
"Napoleon Bonaparte gave him some small German principalities as indemnities for the lost territories."

Yeah sure.. That sounds, to me, like Napoleon gave it to him, like a sort of compensation. I remember that from the history books I read, that Willem I begged Napoleon to give him something. Hence treason, and opportunistic, and not really caring if he would be ruler of the Netherlands or any other part of the world, just as long as it would give him status. Now this might be my person political point of view, but you might want to reconsider that phrase. Ok, I am Dutch, and I am republican, I admit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AntonHogervorst (talk • contribs) 10:57, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

New sections about military career and exile
I have added information about the Hereditary Princes's military career during the Flanders Campaign and his activities in exile, accompanied by citations. Strangely, those are difficult to find, except in the older literature. I was forced to go back to François de Bas and his magisterial books about William's younger son Prince Frederick of the Netherlands, which is now available in Google Books online (so I have provided links). Unfortunately only in Dutch. For English references Simon Schama is the authority, but he is rather hostile to William, rightly so, in my view :-) Though I have provided citations for my additions, the article remains bereft of citations in other parts. I think those may best be provided by the editors who wrote the older text.--Ereunetes (talk) 22:50, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Potential confusion about Erfprins and Erfstadhouder
As Prince of Orange originally was a regnal title, only one person at a time could be "Prince of Orange" (just as there can only be one "King of the Netherlands" at a time). This potentially created the problem what to call his eldest son while both were alive. Interestingly, this problem for the first time arose in practice only with William VI/I, because previously there never were adult eldest sons alive during their father's reign. William the Silent inherited the title at age eleven from René of Châlon by testamentary provision, when the latter died in 1544. Both Maurice and Frederick Henry inherited the title from an elder brother and were referred to as "count of Nassau" before that. William II inherited the principality already in 1647 (at age 21) so there were only three years during which the styling problem potentially arose (as during people's minority there usually is no need to differentiate them from their father), but I think in practice it never arose. William III was a posthumous child and therefore held the title from birth. As he died without issue, things were a mess after 1702 for a while, as there were two claimants for the title (see Second_Stadtholderless_Period), but both claimed the regnal title from 1702 on. This was resolved in 1732 (by which time the regnal title had become defunct) by giving the title to both claimants (but only one per family at the same time). Only in 1748, with the birth of William V the matter became theoretically urgent, as his father William IV lived till 1751, but as he was a toddler during those three years the matter of styling was only theoretical. The matter finally became serious at the majority of his son William VI/I at age 18 in 1790. We see that from about that time contemporaries (and later historians) started calling him by the title Erfprins (Hereditary Prince) to distinguish him from his father, who remained the one and only "Prince of Orange." Presumably this usage was borrowed from the German usage of Erbprinz for elder sons below royal rank (see German_nobility). He kept this moniker until William V died in 1806. But by that time William VI in his own right had received the Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda in exchange for the title of Prince of Orange (by a Franco-Prussian Convention of May, 1802, annex to the Treaty of Amiens). Exit "Prince of Orange" one would expect, but William started using the title again after he was deprived of this German principality. Only in 1815, when he proclaimed himself king of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands did the title change character completely, because William conferred the title as a courtesy title on his eldest son William II (who to my knowledge never was referred to as Hereditary Prince). As long as we are careful to use the title Erfprins for William VI in the period since 1790 and before 1806 no confusion need arise, especially with his father. I have made the necessary edits in Flanders Campaign where he was consistently referred to as "Prince of Orange", while this title still belonged to his father.

Unfortunately, an other kind of potential confusion looms, because especially Orangist historians in the 19th century, trying to make a point, referred to grandfather William IV as Erfstadhouder (Hereditary Stadtholder) for the period after 1748, and for William V for his entire period in the office. This is technically correct, as the stadtholderate became hereditary for all provinces in 1748 (it had been hereditary for William III in the provinces where he was stadtholder since 1673, but as he died without issue the matter never became operational and the office was left vacant after 1702; in Friesland the office had become hereditary before 1664, but for a different brach of the House of Nassau). But Hereditary Stadtholder was only an informal designation and the fact that the office became hereditary did not change its constitutional position: the States-General of the Netherlands and the provincial States remained the sovereigns in the Dutch Republic and the stadtholder just their "First Servant" (as the constitution of the Republic was rather unique I think it is fruitless to try and "explain" what this meant with the terminology of the Trias politica; the answer to the question whether the stadtholder was the "chief executive" has to be "Yes and No", as the Grand Pensionary also had a claim to that designation). However this may be, no contemporary would have referred to the eldest son of the Hereditary Stadtholder as the Hereditary Prince because "stadtholder" was not a regnal title, and it would have scandalized contemporaries (William V, who always was a staunch republican included) to refer to him as a "prince." In conclusion, William VI was called "Hereditary Prince" because he was the eldest son of the Prince of Orange, not because he was the eldest son of a functionary some refer to as "Hereditary Stadtholder". But inevitably the two things became conflated in the minds of many, even those who should know better. This confusion has even often served as justification for conferring "monarchical" status on both William V and VI retroactively. I think we should give no further ground to such confusion and have therefore edited the article in the sense that the spurious link between the designation Erfprins/Hereditary Prince (which remains useful in the article)and Hereditary Stadtholder has been cut.--Ereunetes (talk) 20:38, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

File:William I of the Netherlands.jpg to appear as POTD soon
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Richard Hamming

Richard Wesley Hamming (February 11, 1915 – January 7, 1998) was an American mathematician whose work had many implications for computer engineering and telecommunications. His contributions include the Hamming code (which makes use of a Hamming matrix), the Hamming window, Hamming numbers, sphere-packing (or Hamming bound), Hamming graph concepts, and the Hamming distance.

Born in Chicago, Hamming attended University of Chicago, University of Nebraska and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he wrote his doctoral thesis in mathematics under the supervision of Waldemar Trjitzinsky (1901–1973). In April 1945, he joined the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory, where he programmed the IBM calculating machines that computed the solution to equations provided by the project's physicists. He left to join the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1946. Over the next fifteen years, he was involved in nearly all of the laboratories' most prominent achievements. For his work, he received the Turing Award in 1968, being its third recipient.

After retiring from the Bell Labs in 1976, Hamming took a position at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he worked as an adjunct professor and senior lecturer in computer science, and devoted himself to teaching and writing books. He delivered his last lecture in December 1997, just a few weeks before he died from a heart attack on January 7, 1998.

Early life
Hamming was born in Chicago, Illinois, on February 11, 1915, the son of Richard J. Hamming, a credit manager, and Mabel G. Redfield. His father was Dutch, and his mother was a Mayflower descendant. He grew up in Chicago, where he attended Crane Technical High School and Crane Junior College.

Hamming initially wanted to study engineering, but money was scarce during the Great Depression, and the only scholarship offer he received came from the University of Chicago, which had no engineering school. Instead, he became a science student, majoring in mathematics, and received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1937. He later considered this a fortunate turn of events. "As an engineer," he said, "I would have been the guy going down manholes instead of having the excitement of frontier research work."

He went on to earn a Master of Arts degree from the University of Nebraska in 1939, and then entered the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on Some Problems in the Boundary Value Theory of Linear Differential Equations under the supervision of Waldemar Trjitzinsky. His thesis was an extension of Trjitzinsky's work in that area. He looked at Green's function and further developed Jacob Tamarkin's methods for obtaining characteristic solutions. While he was a graduate student, he discovered and read George Boole's The Laws of Thought.

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign awarded Hamming his Doctor of Philosophy in 1942, and he became an instructor in mathematics there. He married Wanda Little, a fellow student, on September 5, 1942, immediately after she was awarded her own Master of Arts in English literature. They would remain married until his death, and had no children. In 1944, he became an assistant professor at the J.B. Speed Scientific School at the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky.

Manhattan Project
With World War II still ongoing, Hamming left Louisville in April 1945 to work on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory, in Hans Bethe's division, programming the IBM calculating machines that computed the solution to equations provided by the project's physicists. His wife Wanda soon followed, taking a job at Los Alamos as a human computer, working for Bethe and Edward Teller. Hamming later recalled that:"Shortly before the first field test (you realize that no small scale experiment can be done—either you have a critical mass or you do not), a man asked me to check some arithmetic he had done, and I agreed, thinking to fob it off on some subordinate. When I asked what it was, he said, 'It is the probability that the test bomb will ignite the whole atmosphere.' I decided I would check it myself! The next day when he came for the answers I remarked to him, 'The arithmetic was apparently correct but I do not know about the formulas for the capture cross sections for oxygen and nitrogen—after all, there could be no experiments at the needed energy levels.' He replied, like a physicist talking to a mathematician, that he wanted me to check the arithmetic not the physics, and left. I said to myself, 'What have you done, Hamming, you are involved in risking all of life that is known in the Universe, and you do not know much of an essential part?' I was pacing up and down the corridor when a friend asked me what was bothering me. I told him. His reply was, 'Never mind, Hamming, no one will ever blame you.'"

Hamming remained at Los Alamos until 1946, when he accepted a post at the Bell Telephone Laboratories (BTL). For the trip to New Jersey, he bought Klaus Fuchs's old car. When he later sold it just weeks before Fuchs was unmasked as a spy, the FBI regarded the timing as suspicious enough to interrogate Hamming. Although Hamming described his role at Los Alamos as being that of a "computer janitor", he saw computer simulations of experiments that would have been impossible to perform in a laboratory. "And when I had time to think about it," he later recalled, "I realized that it meant that science was going to be changed".

Bell Laboratories
At the Bell Labs Hamming shared an office for a time with Claude Shannon. The Mathematical Research Department also included John Tukey and Los Alamos veterans Donald Ling and Brockway McMillan. Shannon, Ling, McMillan and Hamming came to call themselves the Young Turks. "We were first-class troublemakers," Hamming later recalled. "We did unconventional things in unconventional ways and still got valuable results. Thus management had to tolerate us and let us alone a lot of the time."

Although Hamming had been hired to work on elasticity theory, he still spent much of his time with the calculating machines. Before he went home on one Friday in 1947, he set the machines to perform a long and complex series of calculations over the weekend, only to find when he arrived on Monday morning that an error had occurred early in the process and the calculation had errored off. Digital machines manipulated information as sequences of zeroes and ones, units of information that Tukey would christen "bits". If a single bit in a sequence was wrong, then the whole sequence would be. To detect this, a parity bit was used to verify the correctness of each sequence. "If the computer can tell when an error has occurred," Hamming reasoned, "surely there is a way of telling where the error is so that the computer can correct the error itself."

Hamming set himself the task of solving this problem, which he realised would have an enormous range of applications. Each bit can only be a zero or a one, so if you know which bit is wrong, then it can be corrected. In a landmark paper published in 1950, he introduced a concept of the number of positions in which two code words differ, and therefore how many changes are required to transform one code word into another, which is today known as the Hamming distance. Hamming thereby created a family of mathematical error-correcting codes, which are called Hamming codes. This not only solved an important problem in telecommunications and computer science, it opened up a whole new field of study.

The Hamming bound, also known as the sphere-packing or volume bound is a limit on the parameters of an arbitrary block code. It is from an interpretation in terms of sphere packing in the Hamming distance into the space of all possible words. It gives an important limitation on the efficiency with which any error-correcting code can utilize the space in which its code words are embedded. A code which attains the Hamming bound is said to be a perfect code. Hamming codes are perfect codes.

Returning to differential equations, Hamming studied means of numerically integrating them. A popular approach at the time was Milne's Method, attributed to Arthur Milne. This had the drawback of being unstable, so that under certain conditions the result could be swamped by roundoff noise. Hamming developed an improved version, the Hamming predictor-corrector. This was in use for many years, but has since been superseded by the Adams method. He did extensive research into digital filters, devising a new filter, the Hamming window, and eventually writing an entire book on the subject, Digital Filters (1977).

During the 1950s, he programmed one of the earliest computers, the IBM 650, and with Ruth A. Weiss developed the L2 programming language, one of the earliest computer languages, in 1956. It was widely used within the Bell Labs, and also by external users, who knew it as Bell 2. It was superseded by Fortran when the Bell Labs' IBM 650 were replaced by the IBM 704 in 1957.

In A Discipline of Programming (1976), Edsger Dijkstra attributed to Hamming the problem of efficiently finding regular numbers. The problem became known as "Hamming's problem", and the regular numbers are often referred to as Hamming numbers in Computer Science, although he did not discover them.

Throughout his time at Bell Labs, Hamming avoided management responsibilities. He was promoted to management positions several times, but always managed to make these only temporary. "I knew in a sense that by avoiding management," he later recalled, "I was not doing my duty by the organization. That is one of my biggest failures."

Later life
Hamming served as president of the Association for Computing Machinery from 1958 to 1960. In 1960, he predicted that one day half of the Bell Labs budget would be spent on computing. None of his colleagues thought that it would ever be so high, but his forecast actually proved to be too low. His philosophy on scientific computing appeared as the motto of his Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers (1962): "The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers."

In later life, Hamming became interested in teaching. Between 1960 and 1976, when he left Bell Labs, he held visiting or adjunct professorships at Stanford University, Stevens Institute of Technology, the City College of New York, the University of California at Irvine and Princeton University. As a Young Turk, Hamming had resented older scientists who had used up space and resources that would have been put to much better use by the young Turks. Looking at a commemorative poster of the Bell Labs' valued achievements, he noted that he had worked on or been associated with nearly all of those listed in the first half of his career at Bell Labs, but none in the second. He therefore resolved to retire in 1976, after thirty years.

In 1976 he moved to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he worked as an adjunct professor and senior lecturer in computer science. He gave up research, and concentrated on teaching and writing books. He noted that: "The way mathematics is currently taught it is exceedingly dull. In the calculus book we are currently using on my campus, I found no single problem whose answer I felt the student would care about! The problems in the text have the dignity of solving a crossword puzzle – hard to be sure, but the result is of no significance in life." Hamming attempted to rectify the situation with a new text, Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985). In 1993, he remarked that "when I left BTL, I knew that that was the end of my scientific career. When I retire from here, in another sense, it's really the end." And so it proved. He became Professor Emeritus in June 1997, and delivered his last lecture in December 1997, just a few weeks before his death from a heart attack on January 7, 1998. He was survived by his wife Wanda.

Hamming's final recorded lecture series is maintained by Naval Postgraduate School along with ongoing work that preserves his insights and extends his legacy.

Awards and professional recognition

 * Turing Award, Association for Computing Machinery, 1968.
 * Member of the National Academy of Engineering, 1980.
 * Harold Pender Award, University of Pennsylvania, 1981.
 * IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, 1988.
 * Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, 1994.
 * Basic Research Award, Eduard Rhein Foundation, 1996.
 * Basic Research Award, Eduard Rhein Foundation, 1996.

The IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, named after him, is an award given annually by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), for "exceptional contributions to information sciences, systems and technology", and he was the first recipient of this medal. The reverse side of the medal depicts a Hamming parity check matrix for a Hamming error-correcting code.

Lectures

 * 1991 - You and Your Research. Lecture sponsored by the Dept. of Electrical and Computer engineering, University of California, San Diego. Electrical and Computer Engineering Distinguished Lecture Series. Digital Object Made Available by Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.

title: Richard Hamming