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John Le Mesurier

John Le Mesurier (, born John Elton Le Mesurier Halliley; 5 April 1912 – 15 November 1983) was an English actor. He is probably best remembered for his comedic role as Sergeant Arthur Wilson in the BBC television situation comedy Dad's Army (1968–1977). A self-confessed "jobbing actor", Le Mesurier appeared in more than 120 films across a range of genres, normally in smaller supporting parts.

Le Mesurier became interested in the stage as a young adult and enrolled at the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art in 1933. From there he took a position in repertory theatre and made his stage debut in September 1934 at the Palladium Theatre in Edinburgh in the J. B. Priestley play Dangerous Corner. He later accepted an offer to work with Alec Guinness in a John Gielgud production of Hamlet. He first appeared on television in 1938 as Seigneur de Miolans in the BBC broadcast of The Marvellous History of St Bernard. During the Second World War Le Mesurier was posted to British India, as a captain with the Royal Tank Regiment. Following the war, he returned to acting and made his film debut in 1948, starring in the second feature comedy short Death in the Hand, opposite Esme Percy and Ernest Jay.

Le Mesurier had a prolific film career, appearing mostly in comedies, usually in roles portraying figures of authority such as army officers, policemen and judges. As well as Hancock's Half Hour, Le Mesurier appeared in Tony Hancock's two principal films, The Rebel and The Punch and Judy Man. In 1971, Le Mesurier received his only award: a British Academy of Film and Television Arts "Best Television Actor" award for his lead performance in Dennis Potter's television play Traitor; it was one of his few lead roles.

He took a relaxed approach to acting and felt that his parts were those of "a decent chap all at sea in a chaotic world not of his own making." Le Mesurier was married three times, most notably to the actress Hattie Jacques. A heavy drinker of alcohol for most of his life, Le Mesurier died in 1983, aged 71, from a stomach haemorrhage, brought about as a complication of cirrhosis of the liver. After his death, critics reflected that, for an actor who normally took minor roles, the viewing public were "enormously fond of him".

Early life
Le Mesurier was born John Elton Le Mesurier Halliley, in Bedford on 5 April 1912. His parents were Charles Elton Halliley, a solicitor, and Amy Michelle ( Le Mesurier), whose family were from Alderney in the Channel Islands; both families were affluent, with histories of government service or work in the legal profession. While John was an infant the family settled in Bury St Edmunds, in West Suffolk. He was sent to school, first to Grenham House in Kent, and later to Sherborne School in Dorset, where one of his fellow pupils was the mathematician Alan Turing.

Le Mesurier disliked both schools intensely, citing insensitive teaching methods and an inability to accept individualism. He later wrote: "I resented Sherborne for its closed mind, its collective capacity for rejecting anything that did not conform to the image of manhood as portrayed in the ripping yarns of a scouting manual".

From an early age Le Mesurier had been interested in acting and performing; as a child he had frequently been taken to the West End of London to watch Ralph Lynn and Tom Walls perform in the series of farces at the Aldwych Theatre. In his childhood in Bury St Edmunds, the family lived less than 300 yards from the Theatre Royal, and his autobiography records meeting actors from that theatre as his earliest childhood memory. These experiences fuelled an early desire to make a career on the stage. After leaving school he was initially persuaded to follow his father's line of work, as an articled clerk at Greene & Greene, a firm of solicitors in Bury St Edmunds; in his spare time he took part in local amateur dramatics. In 1933 he decided to leave the legal profession, and in September he enrolled at the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art; a fellow student was the actor Alec Guinness, with whom he became close friends.

In July 1934, the studio staged their annual public revue in which both Le Mesurier and Guinness took part; among the judges for the event were John Gielgud, Leslie Henson, Alfred Hitchcock and Ivor Novello. Le Mesurier received a Certificate of Fellowship, while Guinness won the Fay Compton prize. After the revue, rather than remain at the studio for further tuition, Le Mesurier took an opportunity to join the Edinburgh-based Millicent Ward Repertory Players at a salary of £3.10s (£3.50) a week.

1934–1946
The Millicent Ward repertory company typically staged evening performances of three-act plays; the works changed each week, and rehearsals were held during the daytime for the following week's production. Under his birth name John Halliley, Le Mesurier made his stage debut in September 1934 at the Palladium Theatre, Edinburgh in the J. B. Priestley play Dangerous Corner, along with three other newcomers to the company. The reviewer for The Scotsman thought that Le Mesurier was well cast in the role. Appearances in While Parents Sleep and Cavalcade were followed by a break, as problems arose with the lease of the theatre. Le Mesurier then accepted an offer to appear with Alec Guinness in a John Gielgud production of Hamlet, which began in Streatham in the spring of 1935 and later toured the English provinces. Le Mesurier understudied Anthony Quayle's role of Guildenstern, and otherwise appeared in the play as an extra. In July 1935, Le Mesurier was hired by the Oldham repertory company, based at the Coliseum Theatre; his first appearance with them was in a version of the Wilson Collison play, Up in Mabel's Room; he was sacked after one week for missing a performance after oversleeping. In September 1935, he moved to the Sheffield Repertory Theatre to appear in Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, and also played Malvolio in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Le Mesurier later commented on the slow progress of his career: "had I known it was going to take so long, I might well have given the whole thing up". In 1937 he joined the Croydon Repertory Theatre, where he appeared in nine productions in 1936 and 1937. During this period Le Mesurier changed his professional name from John Halliley to John Le Mesurier; his biographer Graham McCann observes that "he never bothered, at least in public, to explain the reason for his decision". Le Mesurier used his new name for the first time in the September 1937 production of Love on the Dole.

Le Mesurier first appeared on television in 1938, thus becoming one of the medium's pioneering actors. His initial appearance was in a production of The Marvellous History of St Bernard in which he appeared as Seigneur de Miolans in a play adapted from a 15th-century manuscript by Henri Ghéon. Alongside the television appearance, he continued to appear on stage in Edinburgh and Glasgow with the Howard and Wyndham Players, at least until late 1938 when he returned to London and re-joined Croydon Repertory Theatre.

His second spell with the troupe ended a few months later when, from May to October 1939 he appeared in Gaslight, first in London and subsequently on tour. The reviewer in The Manchester Guardian considered that Le Mesurier gave "a faultless performance", and that "the character is not overemphasised. One may praise it best by saying that Mr. Le Mesurier gives one a really uncomfortable feeling in the stomach".

From November to December 1939, Le Mesurier toured Britain in a production of Goodness, How Sad, during which time he met the director's daughter, June Melville, whom he married in April 1940. After spending January and February 1940 in French Without Tears at the Grand Theatre in Blackpool, he returned to London where he was employed by the Brixton Theatre, appearing in a series of productions. In his time in repertory, Le Mesurier took on a variety of roles across several genres; his biographer Graham McCann observed that his range included "comedies and tragedies, thrillers and fantasies, tense courtroom dramas and frenzied farces, Shakespeare and Ibsen, Sheridan and Wilde, Molière and Shaw, Congreve and Coward. The range was remarkable".

In September 1940 Le Mesurier's rented home was hit by a German bomb, destroying all his possessions, including his call-up papers. In the same bombing raid, the theatre in Brixton in which he was working was also hit. A few days later he reported for basic training with the Royal Armoured Corps; in June 1941 he was commissioned into the Royal Tank Regiment. He served in Britain until 1943 when he was posted to British India where he spent the rest of the war. Le Mesurier later claimed that he had had "a comfortable war, with captaincy thrust upon me, before I was demobbed in 1946".

1946–1959
On his return to Britain, Le Mesurier returned to acting; he initially struggled for work, finding only a few minor roles. In February 1948 he made his film debut in the second feature comedy short Death in the Hand, which starred Esme Percy and Ernest Jay. He followed this with equally small roles in the 1949 film Old Mother Riley's New Venture—where his name was misspelt on the credits as "Le Meseurier" —and the 1950 crime film Dark Interval. During the same period he also frequently appeared on stage in Birmingham.

Le Mesurier undertook several roles on television in 1951, including that of Doctor Forrest in The Railway Children, the blackmailer Eduardo Lucas in Sherlock Holmes: The Second Stain, and Joseph in the nativity play A Time to be Born. The same year Tony Hancock joined Le Mesurier's second wife, Hattie Jacques (the couple had married in 1949 following his divorce from June Melville earlier that year) in the radio series Educating Archie. Le Mesurier and Hancock became friends; they would often go for drinking sessions around Soho, where they ended up in jazz clubs. After Hancock left Educating Archie in 1952 after one season, the friendship continued, and Jacques joined the cast of Hancock's Half Hour during the fourth radio series in 1956. In 1952, as well as appearing in the films Blind Man's Bluff and Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, Le Mesurier also appeared as the doctor in Angry Dust at the New Torch Theatre, London. Parnell Bradbury, writing in The Times, thought Le Mesurier had played the role extraordinarily well; Harold Hobson, writing in The Sunday Times, thought that "the trouble with Mr. John Le Mesurier's Dr. Weston is that he approaches the man too snarlingly ... [it is] a notion of genius that would be unacceptable anywhere outside Victorian melodrama". In 1953, he had a role as a bureaucrat in the short film The Pleasure Garden, which won the Prix du Film de Fantaisie Poétique at the Cannes Film Festival in 1954. After a long run of small roles in second features, his 1955 portrayal of the registrar in Roy Boulting's comedy Josephine and Men, "jerked him out of the rut", according to Philip Oakes.

Following his appearance in Josephine and Men, John and Roy Boulting cast Le Mesurier as a psychiatrist in their 1956 Second World War film, Private's Progress. The cast featured many leading British actors of the time, including Ian Carmichael and Richard Attenborough. Dilys Powell, reviewing for The Sunday Times, thought that the cast was "embellished" by Le Mesurier's presence, among others. Later in 1956 Le Mesurier again appeared alongside Attenborough, with small roles in Jay Lewis's The Baby and the Battleship and Roy Boulting's Brothers in Law, the latter of which also featured Carmichael and Terry-Thomas. He was also active in television, in a variety of roles in episodes of Douglas Fairbanks Presents, a series of short dramas.

Le Mesurier's friendship with Tony Hancock provided a further source of work when Hancock asked him to be one of the regular supporting actors in Hancock's Half Hour, when it moved from radio to television. Le Mesurier subsequently appeared in seven episodes of the show between 1957 and 1960, and then in an episode of a follow-up series entitled Hancock. In 1958 he appeared in ten films, among them Roy Boulting's comedy Happy Is the Bride, about which Dilys Powell wrote in The Sunday Times: "[M]y vote for the most entertaining contributions ... goes to the two fathers, John Le Mesurier and Cecil Parker". In 1959, the busiest year of his career, Le Mesurier took part in 13 films, including I'm All Right Jack, which was the most successful of Le Mesurier's credited films that year; he also had an uncredited role as a doctor in Ben-Hur.

1960–1968
Le Mesurier appeared in nine films in 1960, as well as nine television programmes, including episodes of Hancock's Half Hour, Saber of London and Danger Man. His work the following year included a part in Peter Sellers's directorial debut Mr. Topaze, a film which failed both critically and commercially. He provided the voice of Mr. Justice Byrne in a recording of excerpts from the transcript of R v Penguin Books Ltd.—the court case concerning the publication of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover—which also featured Michael Hordern and Maurice Denham. J.W. Lambert, reviewing for The Sunday Times, wrote that Le Mesurier gave "precisely the air of confident incredulity which the learned gentleman exhibited in court". Later that year he played Hancock's office manager in the first of Tony Hancock's two principal film vehicles, The Rebel.

In 1962 he appeared in Wendy Toye's comedy film We Joined the Navy before reuniting with Peter Sellers in Only Two Can Play, Sidney Gilliat's film of the novel That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis; Powell noted with pleasure "the armour of his gravity pierced by polite bewilderment". She compared Le Mesurier with the well-known American straight-face comedian, John McGiver. After appearing in another Sellers film in 1962—Waltz of the Toreadors—Le Mesurier joined him in the 1963 comedy The Wrong Arm of the Law. Powell again reviewed the pair's film, commenting that "I thought I knew by now every shade in the acting of John Le Mesurier (not that I could ever get tired of any of them); but there seems a new shade here". The same year, he appeared in a third Sellers film, The Pink Panther, as a defence lawyer, and in the second and last of Tony Hancock's starring vehicles, The Punch and Judy Man. Le Mesurier played Sandman in the latter film; Powell wrote that the role "allowed a gentler and subtler character than usual". He also appeared in a series of advertisements for Homepride flour in 1964, providing the voice-over for the animated character Fred the Flourgrader; he continued as the voice until 1983.

In a change from his usual comedic roles, Le Mesurier portrayed the Reverend Jonathan Ives in Jacques Tourneur's 1965 science fiction film, City Under the Sea, before returning to comedy in Where the Spies Are, a comedy-adventure film directed by Val Guest, which starred David Niven. In 1966 Le Mesurier also played the role of Colonel Maynard in the ITV sitcom George and the Dragon, with Sid James and Peggy Mount. The programme ran to four series between 1966 and 1968, totalling 26 episodes. He also took a role in four episodes of a Coronation Street spin-off series, Pardon the Expression, in which he starred opposite Arthur Lowe.

1968–1977
In 1968 Le Mesurier was offered a role in a new BBC situation comedy playing an upper-middle-class Sergeant Arthur Wilson in Dad's Army; he was the second choice after Robert Dorning. Le Mesurier was unsure about taking the part as he was finishing the final series of George and the Dragon and did not want another long-term television role. He was persuaded both by an increase in his fee – to £262 10s per episode – and by the casting of his old friend Clive Dunn as Corporal Jones. Le Mesurier was initially unsure of how to portray his character, and was advised by series writer Jimmy Perry to make the part his own. Le Mesurier decided to base the character on himself, later writing that "I thought, why not just be myself, use an extension of my own personality and behave rather as I had done in the army? So I always left a button or two undone, and had the sleeve of my battle dress slightly turned up. I spoke softly, issued commands as if they were invitations (the sort not likely to be accepted) and generally assumed a benign air of helplessness". Perry later observed that "we wanted Wilson to be the voice of sanity; he has become John".

Nicholas de Jongh, in a tribute written after Le Mesurier's death, suggested that it was in the role of Wilson that Le Mesurier became a star. His interaction with Arthur Lowe's character Captain George Mainwaring was described by The Times as "a memorable part of one of television's most popular shows". Tise Vahimagi, writing for the British Film Institute's Screenonline, agreed, and commented that "it was the hesitant exchanges of one-upmanship between Le Mesurier's Wilson, a figure of delicate gentility, and Arthur Lowe's pompous, middle class platoon leader Captain Mainwaring, that added to its finest moments". Le Mesurier enjoyed making the series, particularly the fortnight the cast would spend in Thetford each year filming the outside scenes. The programme lasted for nine series over nine years, and covered eighty episodes, ending in 1977.

During the filming of the series in 1969, Le Mesurier was flown to Venice over a series of weekends to appear in the film Midas Run, an Alf Kjellin-directed crime film that also starred Richard Crenna, Anne Heywood and Fred Astaire. Le Mesurier became friends with Astaire during the filming and they often dined together in a local cafe while watching horse-racing on television. In 1971 Norman Cohen directed a feature film of Dad's Army; Le Mesurier also appeared as Wilson in a stage adaptation, which toured the UK in 1975–76. Following the success of Dad's Army, Le Mesurier recorded the single "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" with "Hometown" on the reverse side (the latter with Arthur Lowe). This, and an album, Dad's Army, featuring the whole cast, was released on the Warner label in 1975.

In between his performances in Dad's Army, Le Mesurier acted in films, including the role of the prison governor opposite Noël Coward in the 1969 Peter Collinson-directed The Italian Job. The cinema historian Amy Sargeant likened Le Mesurier's role to the "mild demeanour" of his Sergeant Wilson character. In 1970, Le Mesurier appeared in Ralph Thomas's Doctor in Trouble as the purser; he also made an appearance in Vincente Minnelli's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, a romantic fantasy musical.

In 1971 Le Mesurier played the lead role in Dennis Potter's television play Traitor, in which he portrayed a "boozy British aristocrat who became a spy for the Soviets"; his performance won him a British Academy of Film and Television Arts "Best Television Actor" award. Writing for the British Film Institute, Sergio Angelini considered "Le Mesurier is utterly compelling throughout in an atypical role". Chris Dunkley, writing in The Times, described the performance as "a superbly persuasive portrait, made vividly real by one of the best performances Mr Mesurier [sic] has ever given". The reviewer for The Sunday Times agreed, saying that Le Mesurier, "after a lifetime supporting other actors with the strength of a pit-prop, gets the main part; he looks, sounds and feels exactly right". Reviewing for The Guardian, Nancy Banks-Smith called the role "his Hamlet", and said that it was worth waiting for. Although delighted to have won the award, Le Mesurier commented that the aftermath proved "something of an anticlimax. No exciting offers of work came in".

Le Mesurier made a cameo appearance in Val Guest's 1972 sex comedy Au Pair Girls, and starred alongside Warren Mitchell and Dandy Nichols in Bob Kellett's The Alf Garnett Saga. In 1974 he played a police inspector in a similar Val Guest comedy, Confessions of a Window Cleaner, alongside Robin Askwith and Antony Booth. The following year he also narrated Bod, an animated children's programme from the BBC; there were thirteen episodes in total.

1977–1983
In 1977 Le Mesurier portrayed Jacob Marley in a BBC television adaptation of A Christmas Carol, which starred Michael Hordern as Ebenezer Scrooge; Sergio Angelini, writing for the British Film Institute about Le Mesurier's portrayal, considered that "although never frightening, he does exert a strong sense of melancholy, his every move and inflection seemingly tinged with regret and remorse". In 1979 he portrayed Sir Gawain in Walt Disney's Unidentified Flying Oddball, directed by Russ Mayberry, and co-starring Dennis Dugan, Jim Dale and Kenneth More. The film, an adaptation of Mark Twain's novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, was hailed by Time Out as "an intelligent film with a cohesive plot and an amusing script" and cited it as "one of the better Disney attempts to hop on the sci-fi bandwagon". The reviewers praised the cast, particularly Kenneth More's Arthur and Le Mesurier's Gawain, which they said were "rather touchingly portrayed as friends who have grown old together".

Le Mesurier played The Wise Old Bird in the 1980 BBC Radio 4 series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and appeared on the same station as Bilbo Baggins in the 1981 radio version of The Lord of the Rings. In the spring of 1980 he took the role of David Bliss alongside Constance Cummings—as Judith Bliss—in a production of Noël Coward's 1920s play Hay Fever. Writing for The Observer, Robert Cushman thought that Le Mesurier played the role with "deeply grizzled torpor", while Michael Billington, reviewing for The Guardian, saw him as a "grey, gentle wisp of a man, full of half-completed gestures and seraphic smiles".

He took on the role of Father Mowbray in Granada Television's 1981 adaptation of Brideshead Revisited. He guest-starred in episodes of the British comedy television series The Goodies, and in an early episode of Hi-de-Hi!. His final film appearance was also Peter Sellers's final cinema role, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, which was completed just months before Sellers's death in July 1980.

In 1982 Le Mesurier reprised the role of Arthur Wilson for It Sticks Out Half a Mile, a radio sequel to Dad's Army, in which Wilson had become the bank manager of the Frambourne-on-Sea branch, while Arthur Lowe's character, Captain George Mainwaring, was trying to apply for a loan to renovate the local pier. The death of Lowe in April 1982 meant that only a pilot episode was recorded, and the project was suspended. It was revived later that year with Lowe's role replaced by two other Dad's Army cast members: Pike, played by Ian Lavender, and Hodges, played by Bill Pertwee. A pilot and twelve episodes were subsequently recorded, and broadcast in 1984. Le Mesurier also teamed up with another ex-Dad's Army colleague, Clive Dunn, to record a novelty single, "There Ain't Much Change from a Pound These Days"/"After All These Years", which had been written by Le Mesurier's stepson, David Malin. The single was released on KA Records in 1982.

He appeared opposite Anthony Hopkins in a four-part television series, A Married Man, in March 1983, before undertaking the narration on the short film The Passionate Pilgrim, an Eric Morecambe vehicle, which was Morecambe's last film before his death.

Personal life
In 1939, Le Mesurier accepted a role in the Robert Morley play Goodness, How Sad!, directed by June Melville—whose father Frederick owned several theatres, including the Lyceum, Prince's and Brixton. Melville and Le Mesurier soon began a romance, and were married in April 1940. Le Mesurier was conscripted into the army in September 1940; after his demobilisation in 1946, he discovered that his wife had become an alcoholic: "She became careless about appointments and haphazard professionally". As a result, the couple separated and were divorced in 1949.

In June 1947, Le Mesurier went with fellow actor Geoffrey Hibbert to the Players' Theatre in London, where among the performers was Hattie Jacques. Le Mesurier and Jacques began to see each other regularly; Le Mesurier was still married, albeit estranged from his wife. In 1949, when his divorce came through, Jacques proposed to Le Mesurier, asking him, "Don't you think it's about time we got married?". The couple married in November 1949 and had two sons, Robin and Kim.

Jacques began an affair in 1962 with her driver, John Schofield, who gave her the attention and support that Le Mesurier did not. When Jacques decided to move Schofield into the family home, Le Mesurier moved into a separate room and tried to repair the marriage. He later commented about this period: "I could have walked out, but, whatever my feelings, I loved Hattie and the children and I was certain—I had to be certain—that we could repair the damage". The affair caused a downturn in his health; he collapsed on holiday in Tangier in 1963 and was hospitalised in Gibraltar. He returned to London to find the situation between his wife and her lover was unchanged, which caused a relapse.

During the final stages of the breakdown of his marriage, Le Mesurier met Joan Malin at the Establishment club in Soho in 1963. The following year he moved out of his marital house, and that day proposed to Joan, who accepted his offer. Le Mesurier allowed Jacques to bring a divorce suit on grounds of his own infidelity, to ensure that the press blamed him for the break-up, thus avoiding any negative publicity for Jacques. Le Mesurier and Malin married in March 1966. A few months after they were married, Joan began a relationship with Tony Hancock, and left Le Mesurier to move in with the comedian. Hancock was a self-confessed alcoholic by this time, and was verbally and physically abusive to Joan during their relationship.

After a year together, with Hancock's violence towards her worsening, Joan attempted suicide; she subsequently realised that she could no longer live with Hancock and returned to her husband. Despite this, Le Mesurier remained friends with Hancock, calling him "a comic of true genius, capable of great warmth and generosity, but a tormented and unhappy man". Without Le Mesurier's knowledge, Joan resumed her affair with Hancock and, when the comic moved to Australia in 1968, she planned to follow him if he was able to overcome his alcoholism. She abandoned these plans and remained with Le Mesurier after Hancock committed suicide on 25 June 1968.

Le Mesurier was a heavy drinker, but was never noticeably drunk. In 1977 he collapsed in Australia and flew home, where he was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and ordered to stop drinking. Until then he had not considered himself an alcoholic; he accepted that "it was the cumulative effect over the years that had done the damage". It was a year and a half before he drank alcohol again, when he avoided spirits and drank only beer.

Jacques claimed that his calculated vagueness was the result of his dependence on cannabis, although according to Le Mesurier the drug was not to his taste; he smoked it only during his period of abstinence from alcohol. Le Mesurier's favoured pastime was visiting the jazz clubs around Soho, such as Ronnie Scott's, and he observed that "listening to artists like Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson or Alan Clare always made life seem that little bit brighter".

Towards the end of his life Le Mesurier wrote his autobiography, A Jobbing Actor; the book was published in 1984, after his death. Le Mesurier's health visibly declined from July 1983 when he was hospitalised for a short time after suffering a haemorrhage. When the condition recurred later in the year he was taken to Ramsgate Hospital; after saying to his wife, "It's all been rather lovely", he slipped into a coma and died on 15 November 1983, aged 71. His remains were cremated, and the ashes buried at the Church of St. George the Martyr, Church Hill, Ramsgate. His epitaph reads: "John Le Mesurier. Much loved actor. Resting." His self-penned death notice in The Times of 16 November 1983 stated that he had "conked out" and that he "sadly misses family and friends".

After Le Mesurier's death fellow comedian Eric Sykes commented: "I never heard a bad word said against him. He was one of the great drolls of our time". Le Mesurier's fellow Dad's Army actor Bill Pertwee mourned the loss of his friend, saying, "It's a shattering loss. He was a great professional, very quiet but with a lovely sense of humour". Director Peter Cotes, writing in The Guardian, called him one of Britain's "most accomplished screen character actors", while The Times obituarist observed that he "could lend distinction to the smallest part".

The Guardian reflected on Le Mesurier's popularity, observing that "No wonder so many whose lives were very different from his own came to be so enormously fond of him". A memorial service was held on 16 February 1984 at the "Actors' Church", St Paul's, Covent Garden, at which Bill Pertwee gave the eulogy.

Approach to acting
Le Mesurier took a relaxed approach to acting, saying, "You know the way you get jobbing gardeners? Well, I'm a jobbing actor ... as long as they pay me I couldn't care less if my name is billed above or below the title". Le Mesurier played a wide range of parts, and became known as "an indispensable figure in the gallery of second-rank players which were the glory of the British film industry in its more prolific days". He felt his characterisations owed "a lot to my customary expression of bewildered innocence" and tried to stress for many of his roles that his parts were those of "a decent chap all at sea in a chaotic world not of his own making".

Philip French of The Observer considered that when playing a representative of bureaucracy, Le Mesurier "registered something ... complex. A feeling of exasperation, disturbance, anxiety [that] constantly lurked behind that handsome bloodhound face". The impression he gave in these roles became an "inimitable brand of bewildered persistence under fire which Le Mesurier made his own". The Times noted of him that although he was best known for his comedic roles, he, "could be equally effective in straight parts", as evidenced by his BAFTA-award-winning role in Traitor. Director Peter Cotes agreed, adding, "he had depths unrealised through the mechanical pieces in which he generally appeared"; while Philip Oakes considered that, "single-handed, he has made more films watchable, even absorbing, than anyone else around".

Portrayals
Le Mesurier's second and third marriages have been the subject of two BBC Four biographical films, the 2008 Hancock and Joan on Joan Le Mesurier's affair with Tony Hancock—with Le Mesurier played by Alex Jennings —and the 2011 Hattie on Jacques's affair with John Schofield—with Le Mesurier played by Robert Bathurst. In ''We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story, a 2015 comedy drama about the making of Dad's Army'', Le Mesurier was portrayed by Julian Sands. Le Mesurier was portrayed by Anton Lesser in the BBC Radio 4 drama Dear Arthur, Love John on 7 May 2012.

title: John Le Mesurier


text:
Parking meter

A parking meter is a device used to collect money in exchange for the right to park a vehicle in a particular place for a limited amount of time. Parking meters can be used by municipalities as a tool for enforcing their integrated on-street parking policy, usually related to their traffic and mobility management policies, but are also used for revenue.

History
An early patent for a parking meter, U.S. patent, was filed by Roger W. Babson, on August 30, 1928. The meter was intended to operate on power from the battery of the parking vehicle and required a connection from the car to the meter.

Holger George Thuesen and Gerald A. Hale designed the first working parking meter, the Black Maria, in 1935. The History Channel's... History's Lost and Found documents their success in developing the first working parking meter. Thuesen and Hale were engineering professors at Oklahoma State University. They began working on the parking meter in 1933 at the request of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma lawyer and newspaper publisher Carl C. Magee. The world's first installed parking meter was in Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935. Magee received a patent for the apparatus on 24 May 1938.

Industrial production started in 1936 and expanded until the mid-1980s. The first models were based on a coin acceptor, a dial to engage the mechanism, and a visible pointer and flag to indicate the expiration of the paid period. This configuration lasted more than 40 years, with only a few changes in the exterior design, such as a double-headed design (to cover two adjacent parking spaces) and the incorporation of new materials and production techniques.

M.H. Rhodes Inc. of Hartford, Connecticut started making meters for Mark-Time Parking Meter Company of Miami, where the first Rhodes meters were installed in 1936. These were different from the Magee design because only the driver's action of turning a handle was necessary to keep the spring wound. At the same time, Magee's meters needed a serviceman to wind the spring occasionally.

Upon insertion of coins into a currency detector slot or swiping a credit card or smartcard into a slot, and turning a handle (or pressing a key), a timer is initiated within the meter. Some locations now allow payment by mobile phone (to remotely record payments for subsequent checking and enforcement). A dial or display on the meter indicates the time remaining. In many cities, all parking meters are designed to use only one type of coin. Use of other coins will fail to register, and the meter may cease to function altogether. For example, in Hackensack, New Jersey, all parking meters are designed for quarters only.

In 1960, New York City hired its first crew of "meter maids"; all were women. It was not until 1967 that the first man was hired.

In the mid-1980s, a digital version was introduced, replacing the mechanical parts with electronic components: boards, keyboards, and displays. This allowed the meter more flexibility, as an EEPROM chip can be reconfigured more easily than corresponding mechanical components.

By the beginning of the 1990s, millions of parking meter units had been sold worldwide. Still, the market was already looking into new solutions, like the collective pay and display machines and new forms of payment that appeared along with electronic money and communication technologies.

Fully electrical

More modern parking meters are generically called multi-space meters (as opposed to single-space meters) and control multiple spaces per block (typically 8-12) or lots (unlimited). While with these meters, the parker may have to walk several car lengths to the meter, there are significant customer service, performance, and efficiency benefits. Multispace meters incorporate more customer-friendly features such as on-screen instructions and acceptance of credit cards for payment—no longer do drivers have to have pockets full of coins. While they may still be prone to coin jams and other types of vandalism, most of these meters are wireless and can report problems immediately to maintenance staff, who can then fix the meters so they are not out of service for very long.

With pay-by-space meters, the driver parks in a space, goes to the meter, enters the space number, and makes payment. The meter memorizes the time remaining, and enforcement personnel press the bay buttons to check for violations.

Other advances in parking meters include vehicle detection technology, which allows the pay-by-space meters to know when a car is parked in a space. This opens the door for benefits for parking managers, including providing way-finding (directing drivers to unoccupied spaces via the web or street signs), enabling remote violation detection, and gathering vital statistics about parking supply and demand. Some meters allow payment for additional time by phone and notify drivers when they are about to expire. Parking meters in Santa Monica use vehicle detectors to prevent drivers from "feeding the meter" indefinitely, and to delete remaining time when a car departs so the next car cannot take any time without paying. Meters in Madrid give discounted and free parking to drivers of hybrid and electric vehicles, respectively. Drivers can reserve meters spots in Los Angeles by cellphone.

Another advancement with parking meters is the new solar-powered meters that accept credit cards and still coins. Credit card enabled solar powered "smart" single-space meters were installed in Los Angeles in 2010, and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa stated "the city's Department of Transportation had projected the 10,000 Coin & Card parking meters installed over the last six months would generate 1-1.5 million in revenue each year". These parking meters replace the top of the meter, but use the existing pole, and use solar power, which can help with sending technicians a wireless signal when in need for repair. DDOT (the District of Columbia Department of Transportation) states that this new parking meter will provide: "better return on tax payer's investment, a variety of options, reduced maintenance, a variety of easy payment options, and increased reliability".

New digital meters now account for all of New York City's 62,000 single-space parking meters, which are more accurate and difficult to break into. New York City retired its last spring-loaded, single-space, mechanical parking meter at West 10th Street and Surf Avenue in Coney Island on December 20, 2006. "The world changes. Just as the [subway] token went, now the manual meter has gone," said Iris Weinshall, the city's transportation commissioner, at a small ceremony marking the occasion, the New York Times reported.

Security issues
Parking meters are exposed to the elements and vandals, so protection of the device and its cash contents is a priority. The meters are frequently targeted in areas where parking regulations and enforcement are widely perceived to be unfair and predatory.

Some cities have learned the hard way that these machines must be upgraded regularly, essentially playing an arms race with vandals. In Berkeley, California, the cut-off remains of meter poles were a common sight during the late 1990s, and parking was essentially free throughout the city until the city government installed digital parking meters with heavier poles in 2000 (which were eventually vandalized as well).

Legality in the United States
In a 1937 case in Oklahoma, H.E. Duncan contended that the ordinances impose a fee for the free use of the streets, which is a right of all citizens of the state granted by state law. The Courts ruled that free use of the streets is not an absolute right. Still, they agreed with an unpublished 1936 Florida court decision that said, "If it had been shown that the streets on which parking meters have been installed under this ordinance are not streets where the traffic is sufficiently heavy to require any parking regulations of this sort, or that the city was making inordinate and unjustified profits using the parking meters, and was resorting to their use not for regulatory purposes but for revenue only, there might have been a different judgment."

One of the first parking meter tickets resulted in the first court challenge to metered parking enforcement. Rev. C.H. North of Oklahoma City's Third Pentecostal Holiness Church had his citation dismissed when he claimed he had gone to a grocery store to get change for the meter.

The North Carolina Supreme Court judged that a city could not pledge on-street parking meter fee proceeds as security for bonds issued to build off-street parking decks. The court said, "Streets of a municipality are provided for public use. A city board has no valid authority to rent, lease, or let a parking space on the streets be rented by an individual motorist 'for a fee' or to charge a rate or toll. Much less may it lease or let the whole system of on-street parking meters for operation by a private corporation or individual."

A 2009 lawsuit filed by the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization claimed the City of Chicago's 2008 concession agreement for the operation of its parking meters to a private company violated state law. In November 2010, portions of the suit were thrown out by the Cook County Circuit Court, including the claim that the city was using public funds unlawfully to enforce parking regulations after the presiding judge decided that the city retained its ability to write tickets and enforce parking laws. However, the judge allowed other parts of the suit to stand, including an accusation that the city unlawfully conceded some of its policing power and its ability to set parking and traffic policy to the private company in the concession agreement. As of January 2011, the suit remained active, with the City of Chicago maintaining that the city retains all policing power, maintains responsibility for traffic management, and, through the concession agreement, retains control over rates.

Use in the United Kingdom
Parking meters were first used in Britain in 1958. They were used in most towns and cities although from c. 1980s they have mostly been replaced by Pay and display, pay on foot and Pay-by-phone parking.

Alternatives
In the US states of Texas, Maryland, California, Massachusetts, Utah, Virginia, and the whole of the European Union, holders of a disabled parking permit are exempt from parking meter fees on public streets. In some states, handicapped parking meters exist, which must be paid at the same rate as regular meters. However, one will also receive a violation ticket if a valid handicapped license plate or placard is not displayed on the vehicle.

Some cities have gone to a device called a Parkulator, where the users purchase a display device, usually for $5 or $10, then load it with as much time as they care to buy. They then activate the device when they park at a location, and place the display device on their dashboard so it is visible from the front windshield. The device counts down the time remaining on the device while it remains activated. When they return, the clock stops running, and the person does not overpay for unused time. In the UK, parking and paying with a credit or debit card through a dedicated telephone service is now possible. Civil Enforcement Officers that patrol the parking area are automatically informed through their handheld devices.

An in-vehicle parking meter is a handheld electronic device, the size of a pocket calculator, that drivers display in their car windows as a parking permit or as proof of parking payment. Implementation of IVPM began in the late 1980s in Arlington, VA, and is spreading to campuses and municipalities worldwide as a centralized method of parking management, revenue collection, and compliance enforcement. Another technology offers the possibility of reloading money (parking time) to the device via a secure Internet site.

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

title: Parking meter


text:
Craig Mundie

Craig James Mundie (born July 1, 1949) is an American businessperson. In 1982, he co-founded Alliant Computer Systems, becoming CEO. He was later Senior Advisor to the CEO at Microsoft, after being Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Officer from 2006 to 2012. He retired from Microsoft in 2014. During the Obama administration, he was a member of his President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

Biography
Craig James Mundie was born on July 1, 1949 in Cleveland, Ohio. Mundie holds a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering (1971) and a master's degree in Information Theory and Computer Science (1972) from Georgia Tech.

In 1970, Mundie began his career as an operating system developer for the Data General Nova computer at Systems Equipment Corporation. SEC was subsequently acquired by Data General Corporation, where Mundie later became director of its advanced development facility in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. In 1982, he co-founded Alliant Computer Systems, holding a variety of positions there before becoming CEO. Alliant filed for bankruptcy in 1992.

He started at Microsoft in the company's consumer platforms division in 1992, managing the production of Windows CE for hand-held and automotive systems and early console games. In 1997, while at Microsoft Mundie oversaw the acquisition of WebTV Networks. He has championed Microsoft Trustworthy Computing and digital rights management. Starting in 2006, when Bill Gates retired full-time from Microsoft, Mundie and Ray Ozzie split Gates' former duties at the company, with Mundie becoming Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Officer. In late 2012, he became Senior Advisor to the CEO, with plans to retire in 2014, at the age of 65.

In April, 2009, President Barack Obama named Mundie as a member of his President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Mundie attended all meetings of the Bilderberg Group between 2003 and 2019 (except in 2005). As of 2010 he was a member of the Steering Committee, which determines the invitation list and the agenda for the upcoming annual Bilderberg meetings.

title: Craig Mundie


text:
Talk:3D computer graphics

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Wiki Education assignment: Graphic Design History
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title: Talk:3D computer graphics


text:
Payphone

A payphone (alternative spelling: pay phone or pay telephone or public phone) is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or in high-traffic public areas. Prepayment is required by inserting coins or telephone tokens, swiping a credit or debit card, or using a telephone card.

The company that operates the payphone generally pays either rent or a revenue share to the owner of the property where the phone is installed.

Invented in the late 19th century, payphones became ubiquitous worldwide in the 20th, enough to contribute to the notion of universal access to basic communication services. The charge for a call may be a flat rate, or dependent on call duration. Following the explosive growth of mobile telephony, the use of payphones, and the number installed, has decreased greatly.

Australia
In 2021, Telstra made its public pay phones free (for national calls), for three main reasons:
 * in emergencies such as when bush fires damaged mobile phone towers, etc.
 * declining revenue started to make collection of coins unviably costly.
 * as a service for people without mobile phones.

Canada

Most payphones in Canada are owned and operated by large telecom providers such as Bell, Telus, and SaskTel. In the last 20 years, customer-owned coin-operated telephones (COCOT) have also appeared in the market, but their numbers are smaller due to the emergence of mobile phones.

The cost of most local payphone calls is 50 cents CAD, having increased from 25 cents since 2007. Payphones in Alberta were 35 cents for a time, but in most jurisdictions the price simply doubled. Newer phones allow users to use calling cards and credit cards. For coin-paid long distance, COCOTs are less expensive for short calls (typically $1 for three minutes) than incumbent providers (whose rates start near $5 for the first minute).

Dialing 0 for the operator and 911 calls are still free.

The Toronto Transit Commission deploys payphones on all subway platforms as a safety precaution; a blue "Crisis Link" button on 141 payphones connects directly with Distress Centres of Canada as a free suicide prevention measure.

As of 2013, there were about 70,000 payphones across the country.

In 2013, the CRTC issued a temporary moratorium on the removal of payphones in small communities.

In September 2015, the CRTC remarked that "32 percent of Canadians used a payphone at least once in the past year," and that they are used "as a last resort in times of inconvenience and emergency."

Germany
The payphone model 23, introduced at Deutsche Bundespost Telekom in 1992, is an electronic software-controlled payphone for analog connections. It is equipped with coin, (Münzspeicherwagen), and integrated test program setting. It has a remote maintenance – the independent reports of a background system by means of an integrated modem error (for example, defects in components, lack of listeners), operating states (for example, full coin box), or departures (for example standing open the cartridge mounting door, missing coin).

The Payphone 23 consists of two basic units, the equipment part including all the necessary for the operation modules (BG) and the secured below the growing payphone cassettes with the coin box.

Italy
In Italy, public payphones have been installed and maintained over the years by Telecom Italia (formerly SIP).

Many public telephones were removed in the early 2010s, but there are still several thousand in operation throughout Italy.

From 26 May 2023, following an AGCOM decision, TIM-Telecom Italia is no longer obliged to keep public telephones in service (but still has the option to do so). In hospitals, prisons, barracks and mountain refuges, the provision of public telephone services is in any case mandatory.

Japan

The majority of payphones on the street and in buildings in Japan are installed and maintained by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT).

Russia
In the Soviet period, different types of payphones were produced. There were also long-distance call payphones costing 15 kopeks, and also provided services of paid media such as listening to an anecdote, obtaining legal advice, or finding the address of the subscriber by phone number. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the monetary reform of 1991, this form of payment became irrelevant. Some payphones were altered to accept tokens, while others have been designed to use telephone cards. For example, in St Petersburg, payment for payphones can be made with metro tokens. In some regions, calls from public phones are free of charge.

Spain
Telephones were a monopoly of the national government in Spain. Payphones took a slug or ficha, a piece of metal with two troughs in it, making it hard to counterfeit. Payphones were typically found in bars, restaurants, and stores, never freestanding. Phones would accept some five fichas at a time (the exact number varied depending on phone model), showing through a plastic window the number remaining, and return unused ones to the customer.

An older and simpler system was to use a mechanical counter, the marcador de pasos, which automatically counted units of time called pasos. The duration of each paso depended on the distance of the call, and its cost could vary by time of day. At the conclusion of a call a human attendant would collect the appropriate payment. This system survived in small hotels at least until the 1970s. Spain also had locutorios ("speaking places"), where a person could make and pay an attendant for phone calls. Locutorios diminished in the 21st century, as the country moved to direct distance dialing and mobile phones.

United Kingdom
The telephone service in Britain was run by the General Post Office (GPO), a state monopoly, which had taken over the National Telephone Company in 1912. Coin-operated payphones in Britain in about 1950 cost 2d (2 old pence) for a local call of unlimited duration. This eventually increased, and by about 1960 calls were timed, costing 3d for 3 minutes. Long-distance calls, connected by an operator, cost more. Telephones had a coin slot and two buttons, marked A and B. One or more coins had to be inserted and the number dialled. If answered, the call was enabled by pressing button A; if not answered, button B returned the coins. Payphones later changed and the old A/B button design was dropped; prices changed over time.

The telephone system was privatised in 1984, operated by British Telecom, still a monopoly. Phone cards were introduced for paying for calls. Payphones were later deregulated, no longer a BT monopoly. The great majority of them are still operated by British Telecom (BT) but other companies provide services, mostly in urban areas. Hull, Manchester, London, Cardiff and Glasgow, at the turn of the 21st century, have a greater concentration of non-BT payphones, since BT has been removing many payphones which are unprofitable. The use of payphones declined greatly in Britain, as everywhere, with the explosive growth of mobile telephones.

BT allows local communities to adopt the iconic Red K6 Kiosks due to strong opposition to their removal from the communities that the kiosks reside in. This will mean the removal of the phone, leaving the empty kiosk in-situ.
 * Kiosk adoption

Another option BT has provided is the sponsored kiosk, that will retain the phone service, and retain the kiosk for an annual fee of around £300 excluding VAT, whether it is the Red K6 or the newer aluminium and glass kiosks that cannot be adopted. Payphone types
 * Sponsored kiosk

Due to disability discrimination law, specifically the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, in the past payphone providers were required to provide a certain number of textphone payphones as part of their network, as this was deemed a "reasonable adjustment" for deaf customers. These phones can also make voice calls, as well as send SMS and e-mail messages, and although this requirement is no longer in force due to minimal use of the textphone feature in these phones, many of these devices remain in service, generally in populated areas.

In addition, in the early 2000s BT installed a large number of 'Multiphones' that provided internet access, on top of voice, SMS, and e-mail functionality. These payphones provided these services through the use of a 2-channel ISDN2 connection, a QNX-based operating system, and a touchscreen interface to allow the user to browse websites and receive e-mail messages on a pay-per-minute basis. However, these devices have since been removed due to quickly becoming obsolete, often with the ordinary payphone previously installed in that location taking its place once again.

 * Cost

From 1 June 2010, BT payphones have a £0.60 minimum charge which is for the first 30 minutes of any direct-dialled national geographic call. Previously the minimum charge was £0.40 for the first 20 minutes of any direct-dialled national geographic call. Then before November 2006 the minimum charge was £0.30, before 2004 it was £0.20 and before 2000 it was £0.10. Credit/debit cards can also be used, and many BT payphones have card readers for this service; however, calls made using a card are charged at a significantly higher rate than calls made using cash.

BT Phonecards purchased from participating retailers were introduced in 1981, and could be used in most BT payphones to pay for calls. Cards originally used an optical system to register credit, changed to a chip-based system in the 1990s, and were withdrawn in 2003.

In the past, a BT Chargecard could be used from any UK landline to charge any telephone calls made to the cardholder's BT home telephone account, with no charge to the landline the card was being used from. These were most commonly used in payphones, and some BT payphones had dedicated readers for these cards. This service was discontinued in 2018. Other cards which are often used instead include supermarket international calling cards and many other telephone cards which can be bought from newsagents.

Although 0800 and 0808 numbers are free to the caller when dialled from most payphones, the owner of the number called must pay a 'Payphone Access Charge' (PAC) which has increased significantly in recent years, and is currently £0.79 per minute if their number is called from a payphone. This has led to many businesses, and even calling card providers, barring calls to their freephone numbers originating from payphones. Charity helplines are exempt from this charge if called from a BT payphone, however this exemption does not apply to calls made from payphones owned by other providers, and in these cases the charity must pay the PAC.

 * Cost examples (from BT coin-operated payphones)

There is a £0.40 connection charge, in addition to the "per minute" charges shown below, and a minimum charge of £0.60. Some payphones also offer SMS and e-mail service, both charged at £0.20 per message.

United States

"Dead-heads" may have influenced the development of the payphone, non-subscriber users who made a call at a place of business and did not pay for it. The Wisconsin Telephone Company in 1893, for example, attempted to put an end to this practice by implementing ten-cent coin slots so that users had to pay for the call. The idea behind this was to reduce the financial stress a smaller business may face from having dead-heads.

Payphones were preceded by pay stations, staffed by telephone company attendants who would collect rapid payment for calls placed. The Connecticut Telephone Co. reportedly had a payphone in their New Haven office beginning 1 June 1880; the fee was handed to an attendant. In 1889, a public telephone with a coin-pay mechanism was installed at the Hartford Bank in Hartford, Connecticut, by the Southern New England Telephone Co. It was a "post-pay" machine; coins were inserted at the end of a conversation. The coin mechanism was invented by William Gray; he was issued a series of patents for his devices, beginning with issued 23 June 1891 for a "Signal Device for Telephone Pay-Stations" which rang a bell for each coin inserted. He subsequently founded the Telephone Pay Station Co. in 1891. The "pre-pay" phone debuted in Chicago in 1898.

By 1902, there were 81,000 payphones in the United States. By 1905, the first outdoor payphones with booths were installed. By the end of 1925, 25,000 of these booths existed in New York City alone. In 1960, the Bell System installed its one millionth telephone booth. Booths, which were expensive, gradually faded away not much later.

In the late 1920s, the cost of a payphone call in the United States was two cents. In the 1930s, calls were five cents; the cost of a typical local call had risen to 10 cents by the 1960s, 15 cents during the 1970s, then 25 cents in the 1980s. By the early 21st century, the price of a local call was usually fifty cents. The rise of mobile phones led to the near extinction of payphones by the early 21st century. New York City, which once had 30,000, removed its last public payphone in 2022.

The Bell System payphone took nickels (5¢), dimes (10¢), and quarters (25¢); a strip of metal along the top had holes the size of each coin. This made possible a mechanism causing each coin to make a different series of sounds as it fell into the cash box; thus an operator listening could tell how much had been inserted. The US slang term "" means to inform the authorities about another person, originally by placing a toll call from a pay phone. It can also refer to the placing of a phone call for social purposes. The term has risen in popularity in the US since the 1980s, and is still in use since 2000, despite the price increase of pay phones and the rise of mobile phones.

Payphone calls generally cost 5¢ into the 1950s and 10¢ until the mid-1980s. Rates standardized at 25¢ during the mid-1980s to early 1990s. The Bell System was required to apply for increases through state public service commissions. Therefore, the actual increases took effect at different times in different locations. The small town of Beggs, Oklahoma attracted national attention in the late 1970s when public payphones offering calls for only five cents had been essentially phased out across the country, but Beggs still had one. As of 2020, Beggs still has a nickel payphone, maintained in front of the Beggs Telephone Company office.

After the breakup of the Bell System in 1984, it was not long before independent stores selling telephones opened up. After that, privately owned payphones hit the market. Sources differ as to whether the peak number of payphones in the United States was 2.6 million in 1995 or 2.2 million in 2000. Since then the number of payphones in the United States has declined. In July 2009, AT&T officially stopped supporting the Public Payphone service. Over 139,000 locations were sold in 2009. At the end of 2012, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reported the number of payphones at 243,487 generating $362 million – falling to $286 million by 2015. The major carriers, AT&T and Verizon, exited the business, leaving the market to independent payphone companies. In 2018, it was estimated 100,000 payphones remained in the U.S., with roughly a fifth of them located in New York. Four years later, NYC removed its last public one, though some private pay phones remained on public property, and four full-length booths still stood in the Upper West Side in May 2022.

Deregulation in the United States has allowed payphone service to be provided by several companies. Such telephones are called "customer-owned coin-operated telephones" (COCOT), and are mostly kept in as good condition as a payphone owned by the local telephone company. COCOT contracts are usually more generous to the landlord than telecom ones, hence telecom payphones on private premises have been more often replaced than street phones. One common implementation is operated by vending machine companies and contains a hard-wired list of non-toll telephone exchanges to which it will complete calls.

In the United States, a payphone operator collects an FCC-mandated fee of 49.4¢ from the owner of a toll-free number for each call successfully placed to that number from the payphone. Consequently many toll-free numbers reject calls from payphones; calling cards, which require the caller to dial through a toll-free number, will often pass this surcharge back to the caller, either as a separate itemized charge, a 50¢ to 90¢ increase in the price of the call, or (in the case of many prepaid calling cards) the deduction of an extra number of minutes from the balance of the prepaid card.

title: Payphone


text:
American Movie

American Movie is a 1999 American documentary film directed by Chris Smith, produced by Smith and Sarah Price, and edited by Jun Diaz and Barry Poltermann.

American Movie received generally positive reviews, and won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. It has since been considered a cult film.

Background
Filmed between September 1995 and August 1997, American Movie documents the making of Coven, an independent short horror film directed by Wisconsin-based filmmaker Mark Borchardt. Produced for the purpose of raising capital for Northwestern, a feature film Borchardt intends to make, Coven suffers from numerous setbacks, including poor financing, a lack of planning, Borchardt's burgeoning alcoholism, and the ineptitude of the friends and family he enlists as his production team. The documentary follows Borchardt's filmmaking process from script to screen, and is interspersed with footage from both of Borchardt's developing projects.

Synopsis
In 1996 in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, Mark Borchardt dreams of being a filmmaker. Currently however, he delivers papers for a living, is deeply indebted, still lives with his parents, is a borderline alcoholic, and is estranged from his ex-girlfriend, who is threatening to move out of state with their three children. He acknowledges his various failures, but aspires to one day make more of his life.

Hoping to jump-start his amateur filmmaking career, Mark restarts production on Northwestern, a feature-length film he has been planning for most of his adult life. Initially, the project attracts some interest from the group of amateur actors with whom Mark has produced some radio plays, but by the fourth production meeting almost no one shows up and Mark is forced to acknowledge that he currently lacks the resources to move Northwestern past the pre-production phase.

To drum up the attention and financial resources needed to film Northwestern, Mark decides to finally complete Coven (which Borchardt mispronounces with a long 'o'), a horror short that he began shooting on 16 mm film in 1994, but ultimately abandoned. He receives financing from his Uncle Bill, a wise, but increasingly senile, eighty-two-year-old retiree who lives in a dilapidated trailer despite having $280,000 in his bank account. Bill hesitantly agrees to invest in Coven, with the goal of selling three thousand VHS copies of the movie, which Mark says will raise enough capital to finance Northwestern.

Mark restarts production on Coven, but suffers numerous mishaps. Although he is hard-working and knowledgeable about film making, he is also poor at planning ahead and inarticulate as a director. Additionally, he builds his production crew out of friends and neighbors, many of whom are incompetent at the tasks to which he assigns them. Particular attention is given to his best friend, guitarist Mike Schank, an amiable recovering alcoholic and drug addict with reduced affect who is one of the most reliable members of the crew (and also recorded the music for the soundtrack of the documentary). In their adolescence, Mark and Mike bonded over their shared love of vodka, but Mike is now sober and has joined Alcoholics Anonymous, though he has become a compulsive gambler, buying scratch-off lottery tickets from the gas station, sometimes accompanied by his AA sponsor, who then drives them both to Gamblers' Anonymous meetings; Mike reasons that, while you sometimes win and sometimes lose the lottery, you always lose with drugs and alcohol.

As the work on Coven moves forward, Mark faces the skepticism of his family and his own burgeoning alcoholism, though he does eventually wrap principal photography. At Thanksgiving dinner and, later, a family party to watch Super Bowl XXXI, he gets drunk and becomes alternately agitated, cheery, and despondent. At one point, he wistfully watches footage he shot for Northwestern back in 1990 and contemplates whether or not he is a failure.

After an extended post-production process during which Mark, and sometimes Mike and Mark's children, occasionally sleep in an editing room at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Mark finally finishes work on Coven minutes before its premiere at a local theater in Milwaukee in summer of 1997. The screening sells out, and Mark's family and friends are happy that the project has finally been completed.

In the final scene, Mark goes to visit Uncle Bill and discusses the prospect of future fame and wealth and realizing the American Dream. Bill's response is a combination of rambling, cryptic, and poetic, but he seems to be advising Mark to focus on spiritual matters and bringing happiness into other people's lives. The closing text reveals that Bill died on September 13, 1997, and left Mark $50,000 in his will for the completion of Northwestern.

Reception and legacy
On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 94% based on 49 reviews, with a weighted average of 8.28/10; the site's consensus reads: "Well worth watching for film buffs and anyone who believes in following your dreams, American Movie is a warm, funny, and engrossing ode to creative passion". Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that the film conveys Borchardt's passion "Insightfully and stirringly, not to mention hilariously", and that "For anyone wondering where the spirit of maverick independent filmmaking has its source, you need look no further". Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four possible stars, calling it "a very funny, sometimes very sad documentary".

Amy Goodman of IndieWire called the film "An inspiration for filmmakers everywhere", and Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote that it "is sure to draw lots of laughs". Glenn Lovell of Variety called the film an "ambitious, wildly funny chronicle" and a "madcap tribute to a beer-guzzling Midwestern filmmaker".

Awards
The film was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. In 2004, it was named by The New York Times as one of the "1,000 Greatest Movies Ever Made", and the International Documentary Association named it as one of the top 20 documentaries of all time.

Home media
The film was released on VHS on January 16, 2001. It was released on DVD by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on May 23, 2000, as a "Special Edition", which includes a commentary by Chris Smith, Sarah Price, Mark Borchardt, and Mike Schank, as well as the short film Coven and 22 deleted scenes.

title: American Movie


text:
Diamond dust

Diamond dust is a ground-level cloud composed of tiny ice crystals. This meteorological phenomenon is also referred to simply as ice crystals and is reported in the METAR code as IC. Diamond dust generally forms under otherwise clear or nearly clear skies, so it is sometimes referred to as clear-sky precipitation. Diamond dust is most commonly observed in Antarctica and the Arctic, but can occur anywhere with a temperature well below freezing. In the polar regions of Earth, diamond dust may persist for several days without interruption.

Characteristics
Diamond dust is similar to fog in that it is a cloud based at the surface; however, it differs from fog in two main ways. Generally fog refers to a cloud composed of liquid water (the term ice fog usually refers to a fog that formed as liquid water and then froze, and frequently seems to occur in valleys with airborne pollution such as Fairbanks, Alaska, while diamond dust forms directly as ice). Also, fog is a dense-enough cloud to significantly reduce visibility, while diamond dust is usually very thin and may not have any effect on visibility (there are far fewer crystals in a volume of air than there are droplets in the same volume with fog). However, diamond dust can often reduce the visibility, in some cases to under 600 m.

The depth of the diamond dust layer can vary substantially from as little as 20 to 30 m to 300 m. Because diamond dust does not always reduce visibility it is often first noticed by the brief flashes caused when the tiny crystals, tumbling through the air, reflect sunlight to the eye. This glittering effect gives the phenomenon its name since it looks like many tiny diamonds are flashing in the air.

Formation
These ice crystals usually form when a temperature inversion is present at the surface and the warmer air above the ground mixes with the colder air near the surface. Since warmer air frequently contains more water vapor than colder air, this mixing will usually also transport water vapor into the air near the surface, causing the relative humidity of the near-surface air to increase. If the relative humidity increase near the surface is large enough then ice crystals may form.

To form diamond dust the temperature must be below the freezing point of water, 0 C, or the ice cannot form or would melt. However, diamond dust is not often observed at temperatures near 0 C. At temperatures between 0 C and about -39 C increasing the relative humidity can cause either fog or diamond dust. This is because very small droplets of water can remain liquid well below the freezing point, a state known as supercooled water. In areas with a lot of small particles in the air, from human pollution or natural sources like dust, the water droplets are likely to be able to freeze at a temperature around -10 C, but in very clean areas, where there are no particles (ice nuclei) to help the droplets freeze, they can remain liquid to -39 C, at which point even very tiny, pure water droplets will freeze. In the interior of Antarctica diamond dust is fairly common at temperatures below about -25 C.

Artificial diamond dust can form from snow machines which blow ice crystals into the air. These are found at ski resorts. Diamond dust may also be observed immediately downwind from manufacturing facilities or chilled water plants that produce steam.

Optical properties
Diamond dust is often associated with halos, such as sun dogs, light pillars, etc. Like the ice crystals in cirrus or cirrostratus clouds, diamond dust crystals form directly as simple hexagonal ice crystals — as opposed to freezing drops — and generally form slowly. This combination results in crystals with well defined shapes - usually either hexagonal plates or columns - which, like a prism, can reflect and/or refract light in specific directions.

Climatology
While diamond dust can be seen in any area of the world that has cold winters, it is most frequent in the interior of Antarctica, where it is common year-round. Schwerdtfeger (1970) shows that diamond dust was observed on average 316 days a year at Plateau Station in Antarctica, and Radok and Lile (1977) estimate that over 70% of the precipitation that fell at Plateau Station in 1967 fell in the form of diamond dust. Once melted, the total precipitation for the year was only 25 mm.

Weather reporting and interference
Diamond dust may sometimes cause a problem for automated airport weather stations. The ceilometer and visibility sensor do not always correctly interpret the falling diamond dust and report the visibility and ceiling as zero (overcast skies). However, a human observer would correctly notice clear skies and unrestricted visibility. The METAR identifier for diamond dust within international hourly weather reports is IC.

title: Diamond dust


text:
Feeling

According to the APA Dictionary of Psychology, a feeling is "a self-contained phenomenal experience"; and feelings are "subjective, evaluative, and independent of the sensations, thoughts, or images evoking them". The term feeling is closely related to, but not the same as, emotion. Feeling may for instance refer to the conscious subjective experience of emotions. The study of subjective experiences is called phenomenology. Psychotherapy generally involves a therapist helping a client understand, articulate, and learn to effectively regulate the client's own feelings, and ultimately to take responsibility for the client's experience of the world. Feelings are sometimes held to be characteristic of embodied consciousness.

The English noun feelings may generally refer to any degree of subjectivity in perception or sensation. However, feelings often refer to an individual sense of well-being (perhaps of wholeness, safety or being loved). Feelings have a semantic field extending from the individual and spiritual to the social and political. The word feeling may refer to any of a number of psychological characteristics of experience, or even to reflect the entire inner life of the individual (see Mood.) As self-contained phenomenal experiences, evoked by sensations and perceptions, feelings can strongly influence the character of a person's subjective reality. Feelings can sometimes harbor bias or otherwise distort veridical perception, in particular through projection, wishful thinking, among many other such effects.

Feeling may also describe the senses, such as the physical sensation of touch.

History
The modern conception of affect developed in the 19th century with Wilhelm Wundt. The word comes from the German Gefühl, meaning "feeling."

A number of experiments have been conducted in the study of social and psychological affective preferences (i.e., what people like or dislike). Specific research has been done on preferences, attitudes, impression formation, and decision-making. This research contrasts findings with recognition memory (old-new judgments), allowing researchers to demonstrate reliable distinctions between the two. Affect-based judgments and cognitive processes have been examined with noted differences indicated, and some argue affect and cognition are under the control of separate and partially independent systems that can influence each other in a variety of ways (Zajonc, 1980). Both affect and cognition may constitute independent sources of effects within systems of information processing. Others suggest emotion is a result of an anticipated, experienced, or imagined outcome of an adaptational transaction between organism and environment, therefore cognitive appraisal processes are keys to the development and expression of an emotion (Lazarus, 1982).

Difference between feeling and emotion
The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio distinguishes between emotions and feelings: Emotions are mental images (i.e. representing either internal or external states of reality) and the bodily changes accompanying them, whereas feelings are the perception of bodily changes. In other words, emotions contain a subjective element and a 3rd person observable element, whereas feelings are subjective and private. In general usage, the terms emotion and feelings are used as synonyms or interchangeable, but actually, they are not. The feeling is a conscious experience created after the physical sensation or emotional experience, whereas emotions are felt through emotional experience. They are manifested in the unconscious mind and can be associated with thoughts, desires, and actions.

Emotion regulation
There are two main types of emotion work: evocation and suppression. Evocation is used to obtain or bring up a certain feeling and suppression is used to put away or hide certain unwanted feelings. Emotion work is done by an individual, others upon them, or them upon others. Emotion work is done to achieve a certain feeling that one believes one should feel.

Three more specific types of emotion work are cognitive, bodily, and expressive. Cognitive changes images, bodily changes physical aspects, and expressive changes gestures. A person who is sad uses expressive emotion work to lift their spirits by trying to smile. A person who is stressed may use bodily emotion work by, for example, trying to breathe slower in order to lower stress levels.

Emotion work allows individuals to change their feelings so that the emotions suit the current situation (or are deemed appropriate). Since individuals want to fit in and be seen as normal, they are constantly working on their feelings in order to fit the situations they are in.

Social class
Class differences influence and varies how a parent raises their child. Middle-class parents tend to raise their child through the use of feelings and lower-class parents tend to raise their children through behavior control. Middle-class parents and lower-class parents raise their children to be like them feeling and behavioral wise. Middle-class children get reprimanded for feeling the wrong way and lower-class children are punished for behaving badly.

Lionel Trilling, an author and literary critic, described the technique that the middle- and the lower-class parents use. Under-working and overworking their children's feelings causes them to seek approval of their feelings in the future. When children of lower-class and of working-class families join the workforce, they are less prepared for emotional management than middle-class children. However, the working-class and the middle-class tend to complain of over-management or micromanagement of feelings that distract them from actual work.

Sensations
Sensation occurs when sense organs collect various stimuli (such as a sound or smell) for transduction, meaning transformation into a form that can be understood by the nervous system.

Gut

A gut feeling, or gut reaction, is a visceral emotional reaction to something. It may be negative, such as a feeling of uneasiness, or positive, such as a feeling of trust. Gut feelings are generally regarded as not modulated by conscious thought, but sometimes as a feature of intuition rather than rationality. The idea that emotions are experienced in the gut has a long historical legacy, and many nineteenth-century doctors considered the origins of mental illness to derive from the intestines.

The phrase "gut feeling" may also be used as a shorthand term for an individual's "common sense" perception of what is considered "the right thing to do", such as helping an injured passerby, avoiding dark alleys and generally acting in accordance with instinctive feelings about a given situation. It can also refer to simple common knowledge phrases which are true no matter when said, such as "Fire is hot", or to ideas that an individual intuitively regards as true (see "truthiness" for examples).

Heart
The heart has a collection of ganglia that is called the "intrinsic cardiac nervous system". The feelings of affiliation, love, attachment, anger, hurt are usually associated with the heart, especially the feeling of love.

Needs
A need is something required to sustain a healthy life (e.g. air, water, food). A (need) deficiency causes a clear adverse outcome: a dysfunction or death. Abraham H. Maslow, pointed out that satisfying (i.e., gratification of) a need, is just as important as deprivation (i.e., motivation to satisfy), for it releases the focus of the satisfied need, to other emergent needs

Motivation
Motivation is what explains why people or animals initiate, continue or terminate a certain behavior at a particular time. Motivational states are commonly understood as forces acting within the agent that create a disposition to engage in goal-directed behavior. It is often held that different mental states compete with each other and that only the strongest state determines behavior.

Valence
Valence tells organisms (e.g., humans) how well or how bad an organism is doing (in relation to the environment), for meeting the organism's needs.

Feelings of certainty
The way that we see other people express their emotions or feelings determines how we respond. The way an individual responds to a situation is based on feeling rules. If an individual is uninformed about a situation the way they respond would be in a completely different demeanor than if they were informed about a situation. For example, if a tragic event had occurred and they had knowledge of it, their response would be sympathetic to that situation. If they had no knowledge of the situation, then their response may be indifference. A lack of knowledge or information about an event can shape the way an individual sees things and the way they respond.

Timothy D. Wilson, a psychology professor, tested this theory of the feeling of uncertainty along with his colleague Yoav Bar-Anan, a social psychologist. Wilson and Bar-Anan found that the more uncertain or unclear an individual is about a situation, the more invested they are. Since an individual does not know the background or the ending of a story they are constantly replaying an event in their mind which is causing them to have mixed feelings of happiness, sadness, excitement, and et cetera. If there is any difference between feelings and emotions, the feeling of uncertainty is less sure than the emotion of ambivalence: the former is precarious, the latter is not yet acted upon or decided upon.

The neurologist Robert Burton, writes in his book On Being Certain, that feelings of certainty may stem from involuntary mental sensations, much like emotions or perceptual recognition (another example might be the tip of the tongue phenomenon).

Individuals in society want to know every detail about something in hopes to maximize the feeling for that moment, but Wilson found that feeling uncertain can lead to something being more enjoyable because it has a sense of mystery. In fact, the feeling of not knowing can lead them to constantly think and feel about what could have been.

Feelings about feelings

Individuals in society predict that something will give them a certain desired outcome or feeling. Indulging in what one might have thought would've made them happy or excited might only cause a temporary thrill, or it might result in the opposite of what was expected and wanted. Events and experiences are done and relived to satisfy one's feelings.

Details and information about the past is used to make decisions, as past experiences of feelings tend to influence current decision-making, how people will feel in the future, and if they want to feel that way again. Gilbert and Wilson conducted a study to show how pleased a person would feel if they purchased flowers for themselves for no specific reason (birthday, anniversary, or promotion etc.) and how long they thought that feeling would last. People who had no experience of purchasing flowers for themselves and those who had experienced buying flowers for themselves were tested. Results showed that those who had purchased flowers in the past for themselves felt happier and that feeling lasted longer for them than for a person who had never experienced purchasing flowers for themselves.

Arlie Russell Hochschild, a sociologist, depicted two accounts of emotion. The organismic emotion is the outburst of emotions and feelings. In organismic emotion, emotions/feelings are instantly expressed. Social and other factors do not influence how the emotion is perceived, so these factors have no control on how or if the emotion is suppressed or expressed.

In interactive emotion, emotions and feelings are controlled. The individual is constantly considering how to react or what to suppress. In interactive emotion, unlike in organismic emotion, the individual is aware of their decision on how they feel and how they show it.

Erving Goffman, a sociologist and writer, compared how actors withheld their emotions to the everyday individual. Like actors, individuals can control how emotions are expressed, but they cannot control their inner emotions or feelings. Inner feelings can only be suppressed in order to achieve the expression one wants people to see on the outside. Goffman explains that emotions and emotional experience are an ongoing thing that an individual is consciously and actively working through. Individuals want to conform to society with their inner and outer feelings.

Anger, happiness, joy, stress, and excitement are some of the feelings that can be experienced in life. In response to these emotions, our bodies react as well. For example, nervousness can lead to the sensation of having "knots in the stomach" or "butterflies in the stomach".

Self-harm
Negative feelings can lead to harm. When an individual is dealing with an overwhelming amount of stress and problems in their lives, there is the possibility that they might consider self-harm. When one is in a good state of feeling, they never want it to end; conversely, when someone is in a bad state of mind, they want that feeling to disappear. Inflicting harm or pain to oneself is sometimes the answer for many individuals because they want something to keep their mind off the real problem. These individuals cut, stab, and starve themselves in an effort to feel something other than what they currently feel, as they believe the pain to be not as bad as their actual problem. Distraction is not the only reason why many individuals choose to inflict self-harm. Some people inflict self-harm to punish themselves for feeling a certain way. Other psychological factors could be low self-esteem, the need to be perfect, social anxiety, and so much more.

title: Feeling


text:
Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa

The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, known in Islamic history as the Battle of Al-Uqab (معركة العقاب), took place on 16 July 1212 and was an important turning point in the Reconquista and the medieval history of Spain. The Christian forces of King Alfonso VIII of Castile, were joined by the armies of his rivals, Sancho VII of Navarre and Peter II of Aragon, in battle against the Almohad Muslim rulers of the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. The caliph al-Nasir (Miramamolín in the Spanish chronicles) led the Almohad army, made up of people from all over the Almohad Caliphate.

Background
In 1195, the Almohads defeated Alfonso VIII of Castile in the Battle of Alarcos. After this victory, they took several important cities: Trujillo, Plasencia, Talavera, Cuenca, Guadalajara, Madrid, and Uclés. Then, in 1211, Muhammad al-Nasir crossed the Strait of Gibraltar with a powerful army, invaded Christian territory, and captured Salvatierra Castle, the stronghold of the knights of the Order of Calatrava. The threat to the Hispanic Christian kingdoms was so great that Pope Innocent III called Christian knights to a crusade.

Previous movements
There were some disagreements among the members of the Christian coalition; notably, French and other European knights did not agree with Alfonso's merciful treatment of Jews and Muslims who had been defeated in the conquest of Malagón and Calatrava la Vieja. Previously, they had caused problems in Toledo (where the different armies of the Crusade gathered), with assaults and murders in the Jewish Quarter.

Battle
Alfonso crossed the mountain range that defended the Almohad camp, sneaking through the Despeñaperros Pass, led by Martín Alhaja, a local shepherd who knew the area. On 16 July 1212, the Christian coalition caught the encamped Moorish army by surprise, and Alhaja was granted the hereditary title Cabeza de Vaca for his assistance to Alfonso VIII.

The battle was fought at relatively close range, so that neither the Almohads nor the Spaniards could use archers in the melee-dominated fight. Spanish knights became locked in close-quarter combat, in which they were superior to the Almohads.

"'They attacked, fighting against one another, hand-to-hand, with lances, swords, and battle-axes; there was no room for archers. The Christians pressed on.' – (The Latin Chronicle of The Kings of Castile)"

Some of the Spanish knights, namely the Order of Santiago, eventually broke the Almohad line of defense decisively as they inflicted heavy casualties on the Almohads and established a breakthrough with gaps appearing in the enemy lines. This led to a possible spearhead. King Sancho VII then led his mounted knights through the gaps, exploiting them, and charged at the Caliph's tent.

The Caliph had surrounded his tent with a bodyguard of black slave-warriors. Though it was once claimed that these men were chained together to prevent flight, it is considered more likely that this results from a mistranslation of the word "serried", meaning a densely packed formation. The Navarrese force led by their king Sancho VII broke through this bodyguard. The Caliph escaped, but the Moors were routed, leaving heavy casualties on the battlefield. The victorious Christians seized several prizes of war; Muhammad al-Nasir's tent and standard were delivered to Pope Innocent III.

Christian losses were far fewer, only about 2,000 men (though not so few as legend had it). The losses were particularly notable among the Orders: those killed included Pedro Gómez de Acevedo (bannerman of the Order of Calatrava), Alvaro Fernández de Valladares (comendator of the Order of Santiago), Pedro Arias (master of the Order of Santiago, died of wounds on 3 August), and Gomes Ramires (Portuguese master of the Knights Templar and simultaneously master of Leon, Castile, and Portugal); Ruy Díaz (master of the Order of Calatrava) was so grievously wounded that he had to resign his command.

Muhammad al-Nasir died in Marrakech shortly afterwards.

Aftermath
The crushing defeat of the Almohads significantly hastened their decline both in the Iberian Peninsula and in the Maghreb a decade later. That gave further impulse to the Christian Reconquest and sharply reduced the already declining power of the Moors in Iberia. Shortly after the battle, the Castilians took Baeza and then Úbeda, major fortified cities near the battlefield and gateways to invade Andalusia. According to a letter from Alfonso VIII of Castile to Pope Innocent III, Baeza was evacuated and its people moved to Úbeda; Alfonso laid siege, killing 60,000 Muslims and enslaving many more. According to the Latin Chronicle of Kings of Castile the number given is almost 100,000 Saracens, including children and women, who were captured.

Thereafter, Alfonso VIII's grandson Ferdinand III of Castile took Córdoba in 1236, Jaén in 1246, and Seville in 1248; then he took Arcos, Medina-Sidonia, Jerez, and Cádiz. In 1252, Ferdinand was preparing his fleet and army for invasion of the Almohad lands in Africa, but he died in Seville on 30 May 1252, during an outbreak of plague in southern Hispania; only his death prevented the Castilians from taking the war to the Almohad on the Mediterranean coast. James I of Aragon conquered the Balearic Islands (from 1228 over the following four years) and Valencia (the city capitulated on 28 September 1238).

By 1252 the Almohad empire was almost finished, at the mercy of another emerging Berber power. In 1269 a new association of Berber tribes, the Marinids, took control of Morocco. Later, the Marinids tried to recover the former Almohad territories in Iberia, but they were definitively defeated by Alfonso XI of Castile and Afonso IV of Portugal in the Battle of Río Salado, the last major military encounter between large Christian and Muslim armies in Hispania. So, the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa seems to have been a true turning point in the history of the region, including the western Mediterranean sea.

Moorish Granada
In 1292 Sancho IV took Tarifa, key to the control of the Strait of Gibraltar. Granada, Almería, and Málaga were the only major Muslim cities remaining in the Iberian peninsula. These three cities were the core of the Emirate of Granada, ruled by the Nasrid dynasty. Granada was a vassal state of Castile, until finally taken by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492.

In fiction
Harry Harrison's 1972 alternate history/science fiction novel Tunnel Through the Deeps depicts a history where the Moors won at Las Navas de Tolosa and retained part of Spain into the 20th century. S.J.A Turney describes the battle in his historic novel The Crescent and the Cross.

title: Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa


text:
Talk:Konstantinos Kanaris

Comments
Psara is not an Ionian island: The Ionian islands are the group of Greek islands between Greece and Italy (Kerkyra, Kefalonia, Ithaki, etc.). Psara is in the Aegean Sea and the island of Hios lies between it and the coast of Asia Minor, which was called Ionia. Kanaris was also called "Bourlotieris", which essentially means "dynamiter", in honor of his exploits with fireships.

I doubt the veracity of the exact number 2000 in The Ottoman casualties consisted of 2000 men, both naval officers and common sailors...' - 2000 is an exccedingly high number of people even for a large ship of the line (1000 is more likely). If nobody has better data, I'd suggest to add allegedly before consisted. --Stephan Schulz 17:14, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Could have been several adjacent ships affected. I don't know in this case, but explosions of this type are pretty serious for all in the vicinity. Stan 23:06, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * I checked some other sources. It looks like the ship had some 2200 greek prisoners on board. Maybe total causalties were 2000. Given the uncertainty, maybe we should change the original phrase to "...The explosion killed most of the crew and a large number of prisoners kept on board..." or something similar.--Stephan Schulz 23:48, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Final paragraph about various ships named after Kanaris
I tried to clean up that paragraph, but it was difficult. It was a huge run-on sentence that didn't make any sense. I tried to get references so that I could clarify it, but it was very difficult. If anyone wants to take a stab at making it clearer, please do so. OrangeMarlin 17:18, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Citations needed
I believe there are some citations needed for at least the following two things:

1)The claim that Filiki Eteria (The Friendly Society) was founded by Freemasons

2)The part about Wilhelm Canaris (not being related to Canaris). Katsaplias for ever 09:33, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Portrait
The color portrait at the top resembles the one in black and white at the bottom. I would suggest deleting the one on the bottom. Student7 (talk) 15:02, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The last one is NOT painting, it IS photograph. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.140.42.130 (talk) 18:18, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Dates
Are the dates in this article in the Julian or Gregorian calendar? Drutt (talk) 19:39, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

External links modified
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title: Talk:Konstantinos Kanaris