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J. B. Lightfoot

Joseph Barber Lightfoot (13 April 1828 – 21 December 1889), known as J. B. Lightfoot, was an English theologian and Bishop of Durham.

Life
Lightfoot was born in Liverpool, where his father John Jackson Lightfoot was an accountant. His mother, Ann Matilda Barber, was from a family of Birmingham artists. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, under James Prince Lee. His contemporaries included Brooke Foss Westcott and Edward White Benson. In 1847, Lightfoot went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and read for his degree along with Westcott. He graduated senior classic and 30th wrangler, and was elected a fellow of his college. From 1854 to 1859 he edited the Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology. In 1857, he became tutor and his fame as a scholar grew. He was made Hulsean professor in 1861, and shortly afterwards chaplain to the Prince Consort and honorary chaplain in ordinary to Queen Victoria.

In 1866, he was Whitehall preacher, and in 1871 he became canon of St Paul's Cathedral. The Times wrote after his death that

"It was always patent that what he was chiefly concerned with was the substance and the life of Christian truth, and that his whole energies were employed in this inquiry because his whole heart was engaged in the truths and facts which were at stake."

In 1875, Lightfoot became Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity in succession to William Selwyn. In 1879, he was consecrated bishop of Durham in succession to Charles Baring; he was enthroned at Durham Cathedral on 15 May. He soon surrounded himself with a band of scholarly young men.

Lightfoot was never married. He died at Bournemouth and was succeeded in the episcopate by Westcott, his schoolfellow and lifelong friend. He served as President of the first day of the 1880 Co-operative Congress.

He is buried in Auckland Castle Chapel, with a memorial in Durham Cathedral close to the choir stalls.

Work
Lightfoot wrote commentaries on the Epistle to the Galatians (1865), Epistle to Philippians (1868) and Epistle to the Colossians (1875). In 1874, the anonymous publication of Supernatural Religion, a skeptical work by Walter Richard Cassels, attracted much attention. In a series of rebuttals published in the Contemporary Review, between December 1874 and May 1877, Lightfoot undertook the defense of the New Testament canon. The articles were published in collected form in 1889. About the same time he was engaged in contributions to William Smith's Dictionary of Christian Biography and Dictionary of the Bible, and he also joined the committee for revising the translation of the New Testament. The corpus of Lightfoot's writings include essays on biblical and historical subject matter, commentaries on Pauline epistles, and studies on the Apostolic Fathers. His sermons were posthumously published in four official volumes, and additionally in the Contemporary Pulpit Library series. At Durham he continued to work at his editions of the Apostolic Fathers, and in 1885 published an edition of the Epistles of Ignatius and Polycarp, collecting also materials for a second edition of Clement of Rome, which was published after his death (1st ed., 1869). He defended the authenticity of the Epistles of Ignatius.

Lightfoot had said that he was open to the idea of a diaconate that included women and in 1899 Emily Marshall wrote A Suggestion for our Times on this theme. Marshall said she was told by Lightfoot to give her idea of training women in his diocese, to take on this role, "a practical form". Lightfoot's death resulted in her idea being shut down. Marshall created a new religious order within the church based on Lightfoot's discussion of the Third Order of Saint Francis who had historically consisted of men and women who did not live in monasteries or wear cowls. Marshall however regretted that diaconate idea had been lost due to his death.

In 2014, it was announced that InterVarsity Press had agreed to publish about 1500 pages of previously unpublished biblical commentaries and essays by Lightfoot found in Durham Cathedral. The first of the three volume set covers the Acts of the Apostles, the second is a commentary on the Gospel of John and the third is on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians and the First Epistle of Peter.

Family
Lightfoot was the nephew of the artists Joseph Vincent Barber and Charles Vincent Barber and grandson of the artist and founding member of the Birmingham School of Art, Joseph Barber and great-grandson of the founder of Newcastle's first library, Joseph Barber whose tomb is in Newcastle Cathedral.

title: J. B. Lightfoot


text:
Library catalog

A library catalog (or library catalogue in British English) is a register of all bibliographic items found in a library or group of libraries, such as a network of libraries at several locations. A catalog for a group of libraries is also called a union catalog. A bibliographic item can be any information entity (e.g., books, computer files, graphics, realia, cartographic materials, etc.) that is considered library material (e.g., a single novel in an anthology), or a group of library materials (e.g., a trilogy), or linked from the catalog (e.g., a webpage) as far as it is relevant to the catalog and to the users (patrons) of the library.

The card catalog was a familiar sight to library users for generations, but it has been effectively replaced by the online public access catalog (OPAC). Some still refer to the online catalog as a "card catalog". Some libraries with OPAC access still have card catalogs on site, but these are now strictly a secondary resource and are seldom updated. Many libraries that retain their physical card catalog will post a sign advising the last year that the card catalog was updated. Some libraries have eliminated their card catalog in favor of the OPAC for the purpose of saving space for other use, such as additional shelving.

The largest international library catalog in the world is the WorldCat union catalog managed by the non-profit library cooperative OCLC. In January 2021, WorldCat had over half a billion catalog records and three billion library holdings.

Goal
Antonio Genesio Maria Panizzi in 1841 and Charles Ammi Cutter in 1876 undertook pioneering work in the definition of early cataloging rule sets formulated according to theoretical models. Cutter made an explicit statement regarding the objectives of a bibliographic system in his Rules for a Printed Dictionary Catalog. According to Cutter, those objectives were

1. to enable a person to find a book of which any of the following is known (Identifying objective):
 * the author
 * the title
 * the subject
 * the date of publication

2. to show what the library has (Collocating objective)
 * by a given author
 * on a given subject
 * in a given kind of literature

3. to assist in the choice of a book (Evaluating objective)
 * as to its edition (bibliographically)
 * as to its character (literary or topical)

These objectives can still be recognized in more modern definitions formulated throughout the 20th century.

Other influential pioneers in this area were Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan and Seymour Lubetzky.

Cutter's objectives were revised by Lubetzky and the Conference on Cataloging Principles (CCP) in Paris in 1960/1961, resulting in the Paris Principles (PP).

A more recent attempt to describe a library catalog's functions was made in 1998 with Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), which defines four user tasks: find, identify, select, and obtain.

A catalog helps to serve as an inventory or bookkeeping of the library's contents. If an item is not found in the catalog, the user may continue their search at another library.

Card
A catalog card is an individual entry in a library catalog containing bibliographic information, including the author's name, title, and location. Eventually the mechanization of the modern era brought the efficiencies of card catalogs. It was around 1780 that the first card catalog appeared in Vienna. It solved the problems of the structural catalogs in marble and clay from ancient times and the later codex—handwritten and bound—catalogs that were manifestly inflexible and presented high costs in editing to reflect a changing collection. The first cards may have been French playing cards, which in the 1700s were blank on one side.

In November 1789, during the dechristianization of France during the French Revolution, the process of collecting all books from religious houses was initiated. Using these books in a new system of public libraries included an inventory of all books. The backs of the playing cards contained the bibliographic information for each book and this inventory became known as the "French Cataloging Code of 1791".

English inventor Francis Ronalds began using a catalog of cards to manage his growing book collection around 1815, which has been denoted as the first practical use of the system. In the mid-1800s, Natale Battezzati, an Italian publisher, developed a card system for booksellers in which cards represented authors, titles and subjects. Very shortly afterward, Melvil Dewey and other American librarians began to champion the card catalog because of its great expandability. In some libraries books were cataloged based on the size of the book while other libraries organized based only on the author's name. This made finding a book difficult.

The first issue of Library Journal, the official publication of the American Library Association (ALA), made clear that the most pressing issues facing libraries were the lack of a standardized catalog and an agency to administer a centralized catalog. Responding to the standardization matter, the ALA formed a committee that quickly recommended the 2 x "Harvard College-size" cards as used at Harvard and the Boston Athenaeum. It also suggested that a larger card, approximately 3 x, would be preferable. By the end of the nineteenth century, the bigger card won out, mainly to the fact that the 3 x card was already the "postal size" used for postcards.

Melvil Dewey saw well beyond the importance of standardized cards and sought to outfit virtually all facets of library operations. To the end he established a Supplies Department as part of the ALA, later to become a stand-alone company renamed the Library Bureau. In one of its early distribution catalogs, the bureau pointed out that "no other business had been organized with the definite purpose of supplying libraries". With a focus on machine-cut index cards and the trays and cabinets to contain them, the Library Bureau became a veritable furniture store, selling tables, chairs, shelves and display cases, as well as date stamps, newspaper holders, hole punchers, paper weights, and virtually anything else a library could possibly need. With this one-stop shopping service, Dewey left an enduring mark on libraries across the country. Uniformity spread from library to library.

Dewey and others devised a system where books were organized by subject, then alphabetized based on the author's name. Each book was assigned a call number which identified the subject and location, with a decimal point dividing different sections of the call number. The call number on the card matched a number written on the spine of each book. In 1860, Ezra Abbot began designing a card catalog that was easily accessible and secure for keeping the cards in order; he managed this by placing the cards on edge between two wooden blocks. He published his findings in the annual report of the library for 1863 and they were adopted by many American libraries.

Work on the catalog began in 1862 and within the first year, 35,762 catalog cards had been created. Catalog cards were 2 x; the Harvard College size. One of the first acts of the newly formed American Library Association in 1908 was to set standards for the size of the cards used in American libraries, thus making their manufacture and the manufacture of cabinets, uniform. OCLC, major supplier of catalog cards, printed the last one in October 2015.

In a physical catalog, the information about each item is on a separate card, which is placed in order in the catalog drawer depending on the type of record. If it was a non-fiction record, Charles A. Cutter's classification system would help the patron find the book they wanted in a quick fashion. Cutter's classification system is as follows:

 * A: encyclopedias, periodicals, society publications
 * B–D: philosophy, psychology, religion
 * E–G: biography, history, geography, travels
 * H–K: social sciences, law
 * L–T: science, technology
 * X–Z: philology, book arts, bibliography

Types
Traditionally, there are the following types of catalog:
 * Author catalog: a formal catalog, sorted alphabetically according to the names of authors, editors, illustrators, etc.
 * Subject catalog: a catalog that sorted based on the Subject.
 * Title catalog: a formal catalog, sorted alphabetically according to the article of the entries.
 * Dictionary catalog: a catalog in which all entries (author, title, subject, series) are interfiled in a single alphabetical order. This was a widespread form of card catalog in North American libraries prior to the introduction of the computer-based catalog.
 * Keyword catalog: a subject catalog, sorted alphabetically according to some system of keywords.
 * Mixed alphabetic catalog forms: sometimes, one finds a mixed author / title, or an author / title / keyword catalog.
 * Systematic catalog: a subject catalog, sorted according to some systematic subdivision of subjects. Also called a Classified catalog.
 * Shelf list catalog: a formal catalog with entries sorted in the same order as bibliographic items are shelved. This catalog may also serve as the primary inventory for the library.

History
The earliest librarians created rules for how to record the details of the catalog. By 700 BCE the Assyrians followed the rules set down by the Babylonians. The seventh century BCE Babylonian Library of Ashurbanipal was led by the librarian Ibnissaru who prescribed a catalog of clay tablets by subject. Subject catalogs were the rule of the day, and author catalogs were unknown at that time. The frequent use of subject-only catalogs hints that there was a code of practice among early catalog librarians and that they followed some set of rules for subject assignment and the recording of the details of each item. These rules created efficiency through consistency—the catalog librarian knew how to record each item without reinventing the rules each time, and the reader knew what to expect with each visit. The task of recording the contents of libraries is more than an instinct or a compulsive tic exercised by librarians; it began as a way to broadcast to readers what is available among the stacks of materials. The tradition of open stacks of printed books is paradigmatic to modern American library users, but ancient libraries featured stacks of clay or prepaper scrolls that resisted browsing.

As librarian, Gottfried van Swieten introduced the world's first card catalog (1780) as the Prefect of the Imperial Library, Austria.

During the early modern period, libraries were organized through the direction of the librarian in charge. There was no universal method, so some books were organized by language or book material, for example, but most scholarly libraries had recognizable categories (like philosophy, saints, mathematics). The first library to list titles alphabetically under each subject was the Sorbonne library in Paris. Library catalogs originated as manuscript lists, arranged by format (folio, quarto, etc.) or in a rough alphabetical arrangement by author. Before printing, librarians had to enter new acquisitions into the margins of the catalog list until a new one was created. Because of the nature of creating texts at this time, most catalogs were not able to keep up with new acquisitions.

When the printing press became well-established, strict cataloging became necessary because of the influx of printed materials. Printed catalogs, sometimes called dictionary catalogs, began to be published in the early modern period and enabled scholars outside a library to gain an idea of its contents. Copies of these in the library itself would sometimes be interleaved with blank leaves on which additions could be recorded, or bound as guardbooks in which slips of paper were bound in for new entries. Slips could also be kept loose in cardboard or tin boxes, stored on shelves. The first card catalogs appeared in the late 19th century after the standardization of the 5 in. x 3 in. card for personal filing systems, enabling much more flexibility, and toward the end of the 20th century the online public access catalog was developed (see below). These gradually became more common as some libraries progressively abandoned such other catalog formats as paper slips (either loose or in sheaf catalog form), and guardbooks. The beginning of the Library of Congress's catalog card service in 1911 led to the use of these cards in the majority of American libraries. An equivalent scheme in the United Kingdom was operated by the British National Bibliography from 1956 and was subscribed to by many public and other libraries.

 * c. Seventh century BCE, the royal Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh had 30,000 clay tablets, in several languages, organized according to shape and separated by content. Assurbanipal sent scribes to transcribe works in other libraries within the kingdom.
 * c. Third century BCE, Pinakes by Callimachus at the Library of Alexandria was arguably the first library catalog.
 * 9th century: Libraries of Carolingian Schools and monasteries employ library catalog system to organize and loan out books.
 * c. 10th century: The Persian city of Shiraz's library had over 300 rooms and thorough catalogs to help locate texts these were kept in the storage chambers of the library and they covered every topic imaginable.
 * c. 1246: Library at Amiens Cathedral in France uses call numbers associated with the location of books.
 * c. 1542–1605: The Mughul emperor Akbar was a warrior, sportsman, and famous cataloger. He organized a catalog of the Imperial Library's 24,000 texts, and he did most of the classifying himself.
 * 1595: Nomenclator of Leiden University Library appears, the first printed catalog of an institutional library.
 * Renaissance Era: In Paris, France The Sorbonne Library was one of the first libraries to list titles alphabetically based on the subject they happened to fall under. This became a new organization method for catalogs.
 * Early 1600s: Sir Thomas Bodley divided cataloging into three different categories. History, poesy, and philosophy.
 * 1674: Thomas Hyde's catalog for the Bodleian Library.
 * 1791: The French Cataloging Code of 1791
 * 1815: Thomas Jefferson sells his personal library to the US government to establish the Library of Congress. He had organized his library by adapting Francis Bacon's organization of knowledge, specifically using Memory, Reason, and Imagination as his three areas, which were then broken down into 44 subdivisions.
 * 1874/1886: Breslauer Instructionen (English: Wroclaw instructions) by Karl Dziatzko
 * 1899: Preußische Instruktionen (PI) (English: Prussian instructions) for scientific libraries in German-speaking countries and beyond
 * 1932: DIN 1505
 * 1938: Berliner Anweisungen (BA) (English: Berlin instructions) for public libraries in Germany
 * 1961: Paris Principles (PP), internationally agreed upon principles for cataloging
 * 1967: Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR)
 * 1971: International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD)
 * 1976/1977: Regeln für die alphabetische Katalogisierung (RAK) (English: Rules for alphabetical cataloging) in Germany and Austria

More about the early history of library catalogs has been collected in 1956 by Strout.

Sorting

In a title catalog, one can distinguish two sort orders:
 * In the grammatical sort order (used mainly in older catalogs), the most important word of the title is the first sort term. The importance of a word is measured by grammatical rules; for example, the first noun may be defined to be the most important word.
 * In the mechanical sort order, the first word of the title is the first sort term. Most new catalogs use this scheme, but still include a trace of the grammatical sort order: they neglect an article (The, A, etc.) at the beginning of the title.

The grammatical sort order has the advantage that often, the most important word of the title is also a good keyword (question 3), and it is the word most users remember first when their memory is incomplete. To its disadvantage, many elaborate grammatical rules are needed, so many users may only search with help from a librarian.

In some catalogs, persons' names are standardized (i. e., the name of the person is always cataloged and sorted in a standard form) even if it appears differently in the library material. This standardization is achieved by a process called authority control. Simply put, authority control is defined as the establishment and maintenance of consistent forms of terms – such as names, subjects, and titles – to be used as headings in bibliographic records. An advantage of the authority control is that it is easier to answer question 2 (Which works of some author does the library have?). On the other hand, it may be more difficult to answer question 1 (Does the library have some specific material?) if the material spells the author in a peculiar variant. For the cataloger, it may incur too much work to check whether Smith, J. is Smith, John or Smith, Jack.

For some works, even the title can be standardized. The technical term for this is uniform title. For example, translations and re-editions are sometimes sorted under their original title. In many catalogs, parts of the Bible are sorted under the standard name of the book(s) they contain. The plays of William Shakespeare are another frequently cited example of the role played by a uniform title in the library catalog.

Many complications about alphabetic sorting of entries arise. Some examples:
 * Some languages know sorting conventions that differ from the language of the catalog. For example, some Dutch catalogs sort IJ as Y. Should an English catalog follow this suit? And should a Dutch catalog sort non-Dutch words the same way? There are also pseudo-ligatures which sometimes come at the beginning of a word, such as Œdipus. See also Collation and Locale (computer software).
 * Some titles contain numbers, for example 2001: A Space Odyssey. Should they be sorted as numbers, or spelled out as  T wo thousand and one? (Book-titles that begin with non-numeral-non-alphabetic glyphs such as #1 are similarly very difficult.  Books which have diacritics in the first letter are a similar but far-more-common problem; casefolding of the title is standard, but stripping the diacritics off can change the meaning of the words.)
 * de Balzac, Honoré or Balzac, Honoré de? Ortega y Gasset, José or Gasset, José Ortega y?  (In the first example, "de Balzac" is the legal and cultural last name; splitting it apart would be the equivalent of listing a book about tennis under "-enroe, John Mac-" for instance.  In the second example, culturally and legally the lastname is "Ortega y Gasset" which is sometimes shortened to simply "Ortega" as the masculine lastname; again, splitting is culturally incorrect by the standards of the culture of the author, but defies the normal understanding of what a 'last name' is—i.e. the final word in the ordered list of names that define a person—in cultures where multi-word-lastnames are rare.  See also authors such as Sun Tzu, where in the author's culture the surname is traditionally printed first, and thus the 'last name' in terms of order is in fact the person's first-name culturally.)

Classification
In a subject catalog, one has to decide on which classification system to use. The cataloger will select appropriate subject headings for the bibliographic item and a unique classification number (sometimes known as a "call number") which is used not only for identification but also for the purposes of shelving, placing items with similar subjects near one another, which aids in browsing by library users, who are thus often able to take advantage of serendipity in their search process.

Online
Online cataloging, through such systems as the Dynix software developed in 1983 and used widely through the late 1990s, has greatly enhanced the usability of catalogs, thanks to the rise of MARC standards (an acronym for MAchine Readable Cataloging) in the 1960s.

Rules governing the creation of MARC catalog records include not only formal cataloging rules such as Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, second edition (AACR2), Resource Description and Access (RDA) but also rules specific to MARC, available from both the U.S. Library of Congress and from OCLC, which builds and maintains WorldCat.

MARC was originally used to automate the creation of physical catalog cards, but its use evolved into direct access to the MARC computer files during the search process.

OPACs have enhanced usability over traditional card formats because:
 * 1) The online catalog does not need to be sorted statically; the user can choose author, title, keyword, or systematic order dynamically.
 * 2) Most online catalogs allow searching for any word in a title or other field, increasing the ways to find a record.
 * 3) Many online catalogs allow links between several variants of an author's name.
 * 4) The elimination of paper cards has made the information more accessible to many people with disabilities, such as the visually impaired, wheelchair users, and those who suffer from mold allergies or other paper- or building-related problems.
 * 5) Physical storage space is considerably reduced.
 * 6) Updates are significantly more efficient.

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

title: Library catalog


text:
Thomas Hearne (antiquarian)

Thomas Hearne or Hearn (Latin: Thomas Hearnius, July 1678 – 10 June 1735) was an English diarist and prolific antiquary, particularly remembered for his published editions of many medieval English chronicles and other important historical texts.

Life
Hearne was born at Littlefield Green in the parish of White Waltham, Berkshire, the son of George Hearn, the parish clerk. Having received his early education from his father, he showed such taste for study that a wealthy neighbour, Francis Cherry of Shottesbrooke (c. 1665–1713), a celebrated nonjuror, interested himself in the boy, and sent him to the school at Bray "on purpose to learn the Latin tongue". Soon Cherry took him into his own house, and his education was continued at Bray until Easter 1696 when he matriculated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

At the university, he attracted the attention of Dr John Mill (1645–1707), the principal of St Edmund Hall, who employed him to compare manuscripts and in other ways. Having taken the degree of B.A. in 1699 he was made assistant keeper of the Bodleian Library, where he worked on the catalogue of books, and in 1712 he was appointed second keeper. In 1715 Hearne was elected Architypographus and Esquire Bedell in civil law in the university, but objection having been made to his holding this office together with that of second librarian, he resigned it in the same year.

A nonjuror himself, he refused to take the oaths of allegiance to King George I, and early in 1716 he was deprived of his librarianship, and "he was, in fact, locked out of the library". However, he continued to reside in Oxford, and occupied himself in editing the English chroniclers. Hearne refused several important academic positions, including the librarianship of the Bodleian and the Camden professorship of ancient history, rather than take the oaths. He died on 10 June 1735.

The readers of Hearne's works were devoted to them because of the depth of scholarship. He corresponded, for example, with Dr Henry Levett, an early English physician and medical doctor at Charterhouse, London. In November 1715, indicating the devotion of Hearne's readers, he reminded Dr Levett that "you formerly desired to be a subscriber for every Thing I published. I have accordingly put you down for one copy of Acts of the Ap. in Capitals".

Works
Hearne's most important work was done as editor of many of the English chronicles. Until the appearance of the Rolls Series, his editions were in some cases the only ones existent. Some have praised them for being well prepared and sourced.

Among the most important of a long list are:
 * Benedict of Peterborough's (Benedictus Abbas) De vita et gestis Henrici II. et Ricardi I. (1735)
 * John of Fordun's Scotichronicon (1722)
 * the monk of Evesham's Historia vitae et regni Ricardi II (1729)
 * Robert Mannyng's translation of Piers Langtoft's Chronicle (1725)
 * the work of Thomas Otterbourne and John Whethamstede as Duo rerum Anglicarum scriptores veteres (1732)
 * Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle (1724)
 * Thomae Sprotti Chronica (1719); Hearne's title is now thought to be misleading about this work, of the end of the 14th century, too late to be by Thomas Sprott the Benedictine chronicler (fl. 1292).
 * the Vita et gesta Henrici V, which he wrongly attributed to Thomas Elmham and which now goes under the designation Ps-Elmham (1727)
 * the Vita Henrici V of Tito Livio Frulovisi (1716)
 * Walter of Hemingburgh's Chronicon (1731)
 * William of Newburgh's Historia rerum Anglicarum (1719).

He also edited:
 * John Leland's Itinerary (1710–1712) and the same author's Collectanea (1715)
 * William Camden's Annales rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum regnante Elizabetha (1717)
 * Sir John Spelman's Life of Alfred (1709)
 * William Roper's Life of Sir Thomas More (1716).

He brought out editions of:
 * Livy (1708)
 * Pliny's Epistolae et panegyricus (1703)
 * Acts of the Apostles (1715).

Among his other compilations were:
 * Ductor historicus, a Short System of Universal History (1698, 1704, 1705, 1714, 1724)
 * A Collection of Curious Discourses by Eminent Antiquaries (1720)
 * Reliquiae Bodleianae (1703).

Hearne left his manuscripts to William Bedford, who sold them to Dr Richard Rawlinson, who in his turn bequeathed them to the Bodleian. Two volumes of extracts from his voluminous diary were published by Philip Bliss (Oxford, 1857), and afterwards an enlarged edition in three volumes appeared (London, 1869). A large part of his diary entitled Remarks and Collections, 1705–1714, edited by C. E. Doble and D. W. Rannie, has been published by the Oxford Historical Society (1885–1898). Bibliotheca Hearniana, excerpts from the catalogue of Hearne's library, was edited by Beriah Botfield (1848).

Hearne's work in publishing these old manuscripts was not appreciated by all: Alexander Pope dismisses them as unappealing and "monkish" in An Epistle to Burlington and satirises Hearne as the pedant Wormius in The Dunciad, dropping into mock-Old English to do so. This in turn led Hearne in his diary to insult Pope's lack of scholarship.

title: Thomas Hearne (antiquarian)


text:
Skåneland

Skåneland (Swedish and Danish) or Skånelandene (Danish) is a region on the southern Scandinavian peninsula. It includes the Swedish provinces of Blekinge, Halland, and Scania. The Danish island of Bornholm is traditionally also included. Skåneland has no official recognition or function and the term is not in common usage. Equivalent terms in English and Latin are "the Scanian Provinces" and "Terrae Scaniae" respectively. The term is mostly used in historical contexts and not in daily speech. In Danish, Skånelandene is used more often. The terms have no political implications as the region is not a political entity but a cultural region, without officially established administrative borders.

The provinces making up Skåneland (except Blekinge) were part of Denmark from at least the 9th century, sometimes referred to as the "Eastern Provinces"; since a 12th-century civil war, Denmark has been a kingdom with a single king. Blekinge was a part of Sweden until the early 13th century when it became part of Denmark (the Danish Census Book contains the first secure written evidence of Danish control). The provinces were part of the territory ceded to Sweden in 1658 under the Treaty of Roskilde, but after an uprising on Bornholm, that island was returned to Denmark in 1660, under the Treaty of Copenhagen. The last peace treaty between Sweden and Denmark in which Skåneland was a main issue was signed on 3 July 1720 in Stockholm.

Etymology
The name Skåneland was first recorded in print (in Swedish) in 1719. It is unclear what area is meant. Later (1751) Carl Linnaeus uses it, meaning the province of Scania. The modern use of the denomination as a short form for De skånska landskapen ("The Scanian provinces"), for the combined area of the provinces of Blekinge, Halland and Scania, was launched by the Swedish historian and Scandinavist Martin Weibull (1835-1902) in Samlingar till Skånes historia (Föreningen för Skånes Fornminnen och Historia''. published	1868-73 in six volumes) in order to illuminate the common Danish history of Scania, Blekinge, and Halland.

Weibull used the term as a combined term for the four provinces where the Scanian Law had its jurisdiction, as well as the area of the archdiocese of Lund until the Reformation in 1536, later the Danish Lutheran diocese of Lund. This form of Skåneland was then used in the regional historical periodical Historisk tidskrift för Skåneland, beginning in 1901, published by Martin's son, Lauritz Weibull.

Administration
An earlier administrative and political function of the area was to serve as a core area for one of the three provincial things that together elected the king of Denmark. The first Danish administrative sub-divisioning occurred as part of the centralization process, when the area became divided into administrative units called hundreds (herreder in Danish). The hundreds were possibly based on older, already existing units, but the establishment of the new form of hundreds was prompted by an increase in royal power during the High Middle Ages. These differed from the provincial thing areas in that they were not local communities joined under a governing assembly but top-down regional divisions established to ensure royal authority. These medieval Danish hundreds were used to implement military obligations and to expedite the collection of renders due to the king in the provinces. They were first established in Jutland, where they replaced previous administrative units called syssel. According to some scholars, they were introduced in Skåneland possibly as early as the 11th century.

In the 13th century, a new fiscal system was introduced and the hundreds were gradually included into larger administrative units called len, with a castle serving as the administrative center. This new administrative development was a result of the increased power of the aristocracy. In each len, a noble man was put in charge, with the title lensmand.

Each of the four provinces of Skåneland had representation in the Scanian Thing, which, along with the other two Things of the Danish state (Jutland and Zealand), elected the Danish king.

The four Scanian provinces were joined under the jurisdiction of the Scanian Law, dated 1200–1216, the oldest Nordic provincial law. In the chapter "Constitutional history" in Danish Medieval History, New Currents, the three provincial Things are described as being the legal authority that instituted changes suggested by the elected king. The suggestions for changes submitted by the king had to be approved by the three Things before being passed into law in the Danish state.

Status today
Skåneland is strictly a historic and cultural region. The name has long appeared as a term used in historical contexts in a variety of sources. The southern part of Sweden, including Skåneland, is considered to be included in Götaland, one of three historic "lands of Sweden". The "land" Götaland bears the same name used for the historic province Götaland (a province referred to as "Gothia" on the 17th-century maps); the inclusion of Skåneland (and Bohuslän) is described as historically inaccurate by the Swedish Nationalencyklopedin. as it is named after the Geats.

As in other cultural regions, regionalism in Scania sometimes has a base in regional nationalism and sometimes in a more general opposition against centralized state nationalism or expansionist nationalism. As noted about regionalism in Norway, Scandinavian regionalism is not necessarily separatist.

Modern usage
There are a number of minor organisations promoting the use of the term, mainly active online, e.g. Föreningen Skånelands Framtid or Skåneländsk Samling, the Skåneland Football Federation, and Stiftelsen Skåneländska Flaggans Dag.

The private foundation Stiftelsen Skånsk Framtid ("foundation for a Scanian future") was a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) from 1993 to 2011, representing Skåneland under the name of Scania.

Population and settlements
The earliest Danish historians, writing in the 12th and 13th century, believed that the Danish Kingdom had existed since king Dan, in a distant past. Eighth century sources mention the existence of Denmark as a kingdom. According to 9th century Frankish sources, by the early 9th century many of the chieftains in the south of Scandinavia acknowledged Danish kings as their overlords, though kingdom(s) were very loose confederations of lords until the last couple medieval centuries saw some increased centralization. The west and south coast of modern Sweden was so effectively part of the Danish realm that the said area (and not the today Denmark) was known as "Denmark" (literally the frontier of the Daner). Svend Estridsen (King of Denmark 1047 – ca. 1074), who may have been from Scania himself, is often referred to as the king who along with his dynasty established Scania as an integral part of Denmark. Blekinge was a part of Sweden until the early 13th century when it became part of Denmark (the Danish Census Book contains the first secure written evidence of Danish control).

From 1397 to 1658
When the Kalmar Union was formed in 1397, the union was administered from Copenhagen. By 1471 Sweden rebelled under Sture family leadership. In 1503, when Sten Sture the Elder died, eastern Sweden's independence from Denmark had been established.

In 1600 Denmark controlled virtually all land bordering on Skagerrak, Kattegat, and the Sound. The current Swedish provinces of Skåne, Blekinge and Halland were Danish and the province of Bohuslän was Norwegian. Skåneland became the site of harsh fighting, especially in the 16th, 17th and 18th century, as Denmark and Sweden confronted each other for control of the Baltic. Sweden intervened in the Danish civil war known as the Count's Feud (1534–1536), launching a highly destructive invasion of Skåneland as the ally of later king Christian III, who upon his coronation introduced Protestantism to the provinces. Subsequently, in the period between the breakup of the Kalmar Union and 1814, Denmark and Sweden fought in Skåneland in 11 separate wars and other border provinces: the Northern Seven Years' War (1563–70), Kalmar War (1611–1613), Torstenson War (1644–1645), Second Northern War (1657–1658 and 1659–1660), Scanian War (1674–1678), Great Northern War (1700 and 1709–1720), Theater War (1788), and the Napoleonic Wars (1808–1809 and 1814).
 * During the Northern Seven Years' War, attacks were launched on Sweden from Danish Halland in 1563, and Swedish counterattacks were launched against Danish provinces of Halland and Skåne in 1565 and 1569. In 1570 peace was finally agreed when the Swedish king withdrew the claims to Danish Skåne, Halland, Blekinge and Gotland, while the Danes withdrew their claims to Sweden as a whole.
 * During the Torstenson War, a theater of the Thirty Years' War, extensive combat took place in the Danish provinces of Skåne, Halland, and Blekinge. By the Second Treaty of Brömsebro (1645) Denmark ceded the Norwegian provinces of Jämtland and Härjedalen and agreed Sweden was to occupy the Danish province of Halland for 30 years as a guarantee of the treaty provisions.
 * During the Second Northern War (1655–1658), Danish attempts to recover control of Halland ended in a serious defeat administered by Sweden. As a result, in the Treaty of Roskilde (1658), which was largely confirmed by the Treaty of Copenhagen (1660), Denmark ceded the provinces of Skåne, Blekinge and Halland (i.e., Skåneland).

Vilhelm Moberg (1898–1973) in Min Svenska Historia II (Norstedts. 1971) provides a thoughtful discussion of the atrocities which were committed by both sides in the struggle over the border provinces, and identified them as the source of propaganda to inflame people passions to continue the struggle. These lopsided representations were incorporated into history text books on the respective sides. As an example, Moberg compares the history texts he grew up with in Sweden which represented the Swedish soldier as ever pure and honorable to a letter written by Gustavus Adolphus celebrating the 24 Scanian parishes he had helped level by fire, with the troops encouraged to rape and murder the population at will, behavior that may well have been mirrored equally on the Danish side. Skåneland was a rather unpleasant place to dwell for an extended period.

Assimilation with Sweden
Following the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658 – but in direct contradiction of its terms – the Swedish government in 1683 demanded that the leading social groups of Skåneland accept Swedish customs and laws. Swedish became the only language permitted in Church liturgy and in schools, religious literature in Danish was banned, and all appointed politicians and priests were required to be Swedish. However the last Danish bishop, Peder Winstrup (1605–1679) remained in charge of the Diocese of Lund until his death in 1679. To promote further Swedish assimilation, the University of Lund was inaugurated in 1666; the inhabitants of Scania were not allowed to enroll in Copenhagen University until the 19th century.

The population initially opposed the Swedish reforms, as can be ascertained from church records and court transcripts. The Swedes did encounter civil revolts in many areas, including the Göinge district, in dense forest regions of northern Scania. The Swedish authorities resorted to extreme measures against the 17th-century rebels who were described as snapphanar, a term used for raiding enemy soldiers or bandits. The punishments included the use of impalement breaking on the wheel, as well as the nailing of bodies to church doors. In that way, it could take four to five days before the victim died.

The transformation of age-old customs, commerce and administration to the Swedish model could not be effected quickly or easily. In the first fifty years of the transition, the treatment of the population was quite harsh. Denmark made several attempts to recapture the territories, the last in 1710, but ultimately conceded the territories as lost.

Before 1658, one of the provinces of Skåneland, Scania proper, had consisted of four counties: the counties of Malmøhus, Landskrone, Helsingborg and Christianstad. When Skåneland was annexed by Sweden, one of the counties of Scania, Kristianstad County, was merged with Blekinge to form one of a total of three Blekinge counties.

Bornholm rebellion
In 1658, shortly after the Swedish Lieutenant Colonel Johan Printzensköld (ca. 1615 – 8 December 1658) was sent to Bornholm to start the assimilation process, the population of Bornholm rebelled. Led by Jens Pedersen Kofoed	(1628-1691) and Poul Anker (1629-1697) the rebellion formed in the town of Hasle, north of the largest city, Rønne. Before the rebel army reached the Swedish headquarters in Rønne, Printzenskiold was shot by Willum Clausen in the street of Sølvgade, in central Rønne. The Swedish fled the island as a result of the confusion and fear amongst the conscripts; Jens Kofoed installed an intermediate rule and sent a message to King Frederick III of Denmark that Bornholm had liberated itself, and wished to return to Danish rule. This was confirmed in the 1660 peace settlement between Denmark and Sweden.

Klågerup riots in 1811
The last Swedish assault on the civilian population occurred as late as 15 June 1811, when Swedish military killed "around 30" and wounded "around 60" peasants in Klågerup. The Swedish army units also arrested 395 people of which 2 were beheaded at Stortorget square in Malmö at 4 November 1811.

Swedish administration
Sweden appointed a Governor General, who in addition to having the highest authority of the government, also was the highest military officer. The first to hold the post of Governor General was Gustaf Otto Stenbock, between 1658 and 1664. His residence was in the largest city, Malmö.

The office of Governor General was abandoned in 1669, deemed unnecessary. However, when the Scanian War erupted in 1675, the office was reinstated, and Fabian von Fersen (1626–1677) held the office between 1675 and 1677, when he died in the defence of Malmö. He was replaced by Rutger von Ascheberg (1621–1693) in 1680 who held it to his death in 1693. It was during Ascheberg's time in office that the stricter policy of Swedification was initiated, as a reaction to the threats of war and possible Danish liberation.

Following the death of Ascheberg, the Governor Generalship was dismantled into a separate county governor for each of the Swedish provinces Blekinge, Halland and Scania. However, a Governor Generalship was reinstated in the province of Scania during the Napoleonic War, when Johan Christopher Toll (1743–1817) became the last Governor-General in the region, a post he held 1801–09.

Recent history
The complete history of Skåneland was not taught for a long time in schools in Skåneland, especially during periods with the immediate threat of revolt. Instead a Swedish-centric history was taught, and the Scanian history before 1658, for instance concerning the list of monarchs, was disregarded as a component of Danish history. In reaction, a movement began in the late 20th century to revive awareness of the history and culture of Skåneland. The renewed focus resulted in the publication of several books about Scanian history.

title: Skåneland


text:
Benedict of Peterborough

Benedict, sometimes known as Benedictus Abbas (Latin for "Benedict the Abbot"; died 29 September 1193), was abbot of Peterborough. His name was formerly erroneously associated with the Gesta Henrici Regis Secundi and Gesta Regis Ricardi, English 12th-century chronicles, which are now attributed to Roger of Howden.

Life
Benedict first makes his appearance in 1174, as the chancellor of Archbishop Richard, the successor of Thomas Becket in the primacy. In 1175, Benedict became prior of Holy Trinity, Canterbury; in 1177, he received from Henry II the abbacy of Peterborough, which he held until his death. As abbot he distinguished himself by his activity in building, in administering the finances of his house and in collecting a library. He is described in the Chronicon Petroburgense as "blessed both in name and deed".

Works
Benedict belonged to the circle of Becket's admirers, and wrote two works dealing with the martyrdom and the miracles of his hero. Fragments of the former work have come down to us in the compilation known as the Quadrilogus, which is printed in the fourth volume of James Craigie Robertson's Materials for the Histories of Thomas Becket ("Rolls" series); the miracles are extant in their entirety, and are printed in the second volume of the same collection.

Benedict was formerly credited with the authorship of the Gesta on the ground that his name appears in the title of the oldest manuscript. There is, however, conclusive evidence that Benedict merely caused this work to be transcribed for the Peterborough library. It is only through the force of custom that the work is still occasionally cited under his name. In the 20th century, D. M. Stenton formulated the theory, developed further by David Corner, and now generally accepted, that the true author of the Gesta was in fact Roger of Howden. On his return from the Third Crusade, he drew upon them in composing his larger Chronica, revising them and adding supplementary material.

In the 19th century, the question of authorship had been discussed by T. D. Hardy, William Stubbs and Felix Liebermann. Stubbs conjecturally identified the first part of the Gesta (1170–1177) with the Liber Tricolumnis, a register of contemporary events kept by Richard Fitz Neal, the treasurer of Henry II and author of the Dialogus de Scaccario; the latter part (1177–1192) was ascribed by Stubbs to Roger of Howden. His theory concerning the Liber Tricolumnis, was rejected by Liebermann and other editors of the Dialogus (A. Hughes, C. G. Crump and C. Johnson, Oxford, 1902).

title: Benedict of Peterborough


text:
Götaland

Götaland (also  Gothia, Gothland, Gothenland or Gautland) is one of three lands of Sweden and comprises ten provinces. Geographically it is located in the south of Sweden, bounded to the north by Svealand, with the deep woods of Tiveden, Tylöskog and Kolmården marking the border.

Götaland once consisted of petty kingdoms, and their inhabitants were called Gautar in Old Norse. However, the term mainly referred to the population of modern Västergötland. It is agreed that these were the same as the Geats, the people of the hero Beowulf in England's national epic, Beowulf.

The modern state of Sweden started forming when some provinces of Götaland gradually became more and more politically intertwined with those of Svealand. This process can be traced back to at least the 11th century, and would continue for several hundred years. Other parts of modern Götaland were at that time either Danish or Norwegian. The province of Småland, with the historically important city Kalmar on its coast, was sparsely populated and the status of the Baltic island Gotland varied during the Middle Ages. Bohuslän became Swedish first during the 17th century after being lost from Norway, around the same time as Denmark lost Scania, Halland and Blekinge to Sweden.

Etymology
The earliest possible mentions of the götar is by the 2nd-century geographer Ptolemy, who mentions the Goutai (Γούται in Greek). Later, the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf (8th–11th century) is partly set among the Gēatas. Norwegian and Icelandic sources sometimes use Gautar only for the people of Västergötland, but sometimes as a common ethnic term for the people of both Västergötland and Östergötland. Västergötland appears in medieval Icelandic and Norwegian sources as Gautland (Götland), a form which is not etymologically identical to Götaland.

The name Götaland replaced the old Götland in the 15th century, and it was probably to distinguish the wider region it denoted from the traditional heartland in Västergötland. The name Götaland probably originally referred only to Västergötland and Östergötland, but was later extended to adjoining districts. The name Götaland is possibly a plural construction and means the "lands of the Geats", where Göta- is the genitive plural of the ethnonym Göt (Geat). The interpretation that the neuter noun -land is a plural and not a singular noun is indicated by Bo Jonsson Grip's will in 1384, where he stated that he donated property in Swerige (Sweden, i.e. Svealand), Österlandom (Finland) and in Göthalandom to monasteries. Here Götaland appears in the plural form of the dative case.

For the etymology of the element Geat/Gaut/Göt and Goth, see Geat.

History
Västergötland and Östergötland, once rival kingdoms themselves, constitute Götaland proper. The Geatish kings, however, belong to the domain of Norse mythology. Both Västergötland and Östergötland have large agricultural areas. It was along the coasts and at the agricultural areas as people settled down, villages and towns grew up and the population grew fastest. The large river Göta Älv drains the third largest lake in Europe, Lake Vänern. At its mouth (where Gothenburg emerged during the earlier part of the 17th century) the population in Västergötland had rights to reach the Kattegat sea. Otherwise the Göta Älv estuary was the border between the Kingdoms of Norway and Denmark.

Geatland is the land in which the medieval hero of the poem Beowulf is said to have lived.

It was only late in the Middle Ages that Götaland began to be perceived as a part of Sweden. In Old Norse and in Old English sources, Gautland/Geatland is still treated as a separate country from Sweden. In Sögubrot af Nokkrum for instance, Kolmården between Svealand and Östergötland is described as the border between Sweden and Ostrogothia (...Kolmerkr, er skilr Svíþjóð ok Eystra-Gautland...), and in Hervarar saga, King Ingold I rides to Sweden through Östergötland: ''Ingi konungr fór með hirð sína ok sveit nokkura ok hafði lítinn her. Hann reið austr um Smáland ok í eystra Gautland ok svá í Svíþjóð''. In 1384 Bo Jonsson (Grip) stated in his will that the kingdom consisted of Swerige (Sweden, i.e. Svealand), Österland (i.e. Finland) and Göthaland (i.e. Götaland, as of the 1384 borders).

The small countries to the south – Finnveden, Kind, Möre, Njudung, Tjust, Tveta, Värend, and Ydre – were merged into the province of Småland (literally: [the] "small lands"). Off the coast of Småland was the island of Öland, which became a separate province. Dal to the north west became the province of Dalsland.

Småland, Öland and Dalsland were already seen as lands belonging to Götaland during the Scandinavian Middle Ages (12th–15th century).

Småland was full of deep coniferous forest, especially in the south, and of lesser importance to Götaland compared to the agricultural areas in Västergötland and Östergötland. But on its Baltic Sea coast lay the important town of Kalmar. In 1397, the Kalmar Union was proclaimed at Kalmar Castle, a personal union of the three countries of Sweden, Denmark and Norway under one King – or initially one Queen, as Queen Margaret I became the first sovereign of this, the largest ever of Scandinavian states.

In the Treaty of Roskilde (1658), the kingdom of Denmark-Norway ceded the Danish provinces of Blekinge, Halland, Scania, and Norwegian province of Bohuslän to Sweden. These provinces are since then counted as parts of Götaland.

The island of Gotland shifted allegiance between the Swedes and the Danes several times. Although the island may be perceived to have closer links to Svealand, it is counted as part of Götaland.

Värmland originally belonged to the Göta Court of Appeal, but the province changed to become part of the Court of Appeal for Svealand for a period of time in the early 19th century.

Provinces and counties
Today, Götaland has no administrative function and is thus an unofficial entity, but it is generally considered to be one of three Swedish lands or parts. It is made up of ten provinces, based loosely on the area originally under the jurisdiction of the Göta Court of Appeals (established in 1634), to which the Scanian lands, Gotland and Bohuslän were added in 1658–79: • Blekinges vapen.svg Blekinge

• Bohusläns vapen.svg Bohuslän

• Dalslands vapen.svg Dalsland

• Gotlands vapen.svg Gotland

• Hallands vapen.svg Halland

• Skåne landskapsvapen.svg Skåne

• Smålands vapen.svg Småland

• Västergötlands vapen.svg Västergötland

• Ölands vapen.svg Öland

• Östergötland vapen .svg Östergötland

Administratively, Sweden is not divided into provinces but into counties (see Län). Although Götaland is defined in terms of the historical provinces and not the counties, it roughly comprises the modern counties of Blekinge, Gotland, Halland, Jönköping, Kalmar, Kronoberg, Östergötland, Scania and Västra Götaland.

Geography
Deep forests are found in the Småland province, there is plenty of farmland in Skåne, and a little bit of both in Västergötland and Östergötland. Coasts are usually relatively flat and consist of archipelagoes as well as sandy beaches. The two largest islands of Sweden are included in Götaland. The two largest lakes of Sweden are also situated mainly in Götaland. The total area is 87,712 km2 with about 4.4 million inhabitants including the second and third largest urban areas of Sweden.

title: Götaland


text:
Timeline of nuclear fusion

This timeline of nuclear fusion is an incomplete chronological summary of significant events in the study and use of nuclear fusion.

1920s

 * 1920
 * Based on F.W. Aston's measurements of the masses of low-mass elements and Einstein's discovery that E=mc2, Arthur Eddington proposes that large amounts of energy released by fusing small nuclei together provides the energy source that powers the stars.
 * Henry Norris Russell notes that the relationship in the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram suggests a hot core rather than burning throughout the star. Eddington uses this to calculate that the core would have to be about 40 million Kelvin. This was a matter of some debate at the time, because the value is much higher than what observations suggest, which is about one-third to one-half that value.
 * 1928
 * George Gamow introduces the mathematical basis for quantum tunnelling.
 * 1929
 * Atkinson and Houtermans provide the first calculations of the rate of nuclear fusion in stars. Based on Gamow's tunnelling, they show fusion can occur at lower energies than previously believed. When used with Eddington's calculations of the required fusion rates in stars, their calculations demonstrate this would occur at the lower temperatures that Eddington had calculated.

1930s

 * 1932
 * Ernest Rutherford's Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University begins nuclear experiments with a particle accelerator built by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton.
 * In April, Walton produces the first man-made fission by using protons from the accelerator to split lithium into alpha particles.
 * Using an updated version of the equipment firing deuterium rather than hydrogen, Mark Oliphant discovered helium-3 and tritium, and that heavy hydrogen nuclei could be made to react with each other. This is the first direct demonstration of fusion in the lab.
 * 1938
 * Kantrowitz and Jacobs of the NACA Langley Research Center built a toroidal magnetic bottle and heat the plasma with a 150 W radio source. Hoping to heat the plasma to millions of degrees, the system fails and they are forced to abandon their Diffusion Inhibitor. This is the first attempt to make a working fusion reactor.
 * 1939
 * Peter Thonemann develops a detailed plan for a pinch device, but is told to do other work for his thesis.
 * Hans Bethe provides detailed calculations of the proton–proton chain reaction that powers stars. This work results in a Nobel Prize for Physics.

1940s

 * 1946
 * George Paget Thomson of Imperial College, London designs the toroidal solenoid, a simple fusion device. With Moses Blackman, he further develops the concept and files for a patent. This becomes the first fusion device to receive a patent. Repeated attempts to get development funding fail.
 * 1947
 * A meeting at Harwell on the topic of fusion raises new concerns with the concept. On his return to London, Thomson gets graduate students James L. Tuck and Alan Alfred Ware to build a prototype device out of old radar parts.
 * Peter Thonemann comes up with a similar idea, but uses a different method of heating the fuel. This seems much more practical and finally gains the mild interest of the UK nuclear establishment. Not aware of who he is talking to, Thonemann describes the concept to Thomson, who adopts the same concept.
 * Herbert Skinner begins to write a lengthy report on the entire fusion concept, pointing out several areas of little or no knowledge.
 * 1948
 * The Ministry of Supply (MoS) asks Thomson about the status of his patent filing, and he describes the problems he has getting funding. The MoS forces Harwell to provide some money, and Thomson releases his rights to the patent. It is granted late that year.
 * Skinner publishes his report, calling for some experimental effort to explore the areas of concern. Along with the MoS's calls for funding of Thomson, this event marks the beginning of formal fusion research in the UK.

1950s

 * 1950
 * In January, Klaus Fuchs admits to passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. Almost all nuclear research in the UK, including the fledgling fusion program, is immediately classified. Thomson, until this time working at Imperial University, is moved to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment.
 * The tokamak, a type of magnetic confinement fusion device, was proposed by Soviet scientists Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm.
 * 1951
 * Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) develop the Teller-Ulam design for the thermonuclear weapon, allowing for the development of multi-megaton weapons.
 * A press release from Argentina claims that their Huemul Project had produced controlled nuclear fusion. This prompted a wave of responses in other countries, especially the U.S.
 * Lyman Spitzer dismisses the Argentinian claims, but while thinking about it comes up with the stellarator concept. Funding is arranged under Project Matterhorn and develops into the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
 * Tuck introduces the British pinch work to LANL. He develops the Perhapsatron under the codename Project Sherwood. The project name is a play on his name via Friar Tuck.
 * Richard F. Post presents his magnetic mirror concept and also receives initial funding, eventually moving to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).
 * In the UK, repeated requests for more funding that had previously been turned down are suddenly approved. Within a short time, three separate efforts are started, one at Harwell and two at Atomic Weapons Establishment (Aldermaston). Early planning for a much larger machine at Harwell begins.
 * Using the Huemul release as leverage, Soviet researchers find their funding proposals rapidly approved. Work on linear pinch machines begins that year.
 * 1952
 * Ivy Mike shot of Operation Ivy, the first detonation of a thermonuclear weapon, yields 10.4 megatons of TNT out of a fusion fuel of liquid deuterium.
 * Cousins and Ware build a larger toroidal pinch device in England and demonstrated that the plasma in pinch devices is inherently unstable.
 * 1953
 * The Soviet RDS-6S test, code named "Joe 4", demonstrated a fission/fusion/fission ("Layercake") design for a nuclear weapon.
 * Linear pinch devices in the US and USSR report detections of neutrons, an indication of fusion reactions. Both are later explained as coming from instabilities in the fuel, and are non-fusion in nature.
 * 1954
 * Early planning for the large ZETA device at Harwell begins. The name is a take-off on small experimental fission reactors which often had "zero energy" in their name, ZEEP being an example.
 * Edward Teller gives a now-famous speech on plasma stability in magnetic bottles at the Princeton Gun Club. His work suggests that most magnetic bottles are inherently unstable, outlining what is today known as the interchange instability.
 * 1955
 * At the first Atoms for Peace meeting in Geneva, Homi J. Bhabha predicts that fusion will be in commercial use within two decades. This prompts a number of countries to begin fusion research; Japan, France and Sweden all start programs this year or the next.
 * 1956
 * Experimental research of tokamak systems started at Kurchatov Institute, Moscow by a group of Soviet scientists led by Lev Artsimovich.
 * Construction of ZETA begins at Harwell.
 * Igor Kurchatov gives a talk at Harwell on pinch devices, revealing for the first time that the USSR is also working on fusion. He details the problems they are seeing, mirroring those in the US and UK.
 * In August, a number of articles on plasma physics appear in various Soviet journals.
 * In the wake of the Kurchatov's speech, the US and UK begin to consider releasing their own data. Eventually, they settle on a release prior to the 2nd Atoms for Peace conference in Geneva in 1958.
 * 1957
 * In the US, at LANL, Scylla I begins operation using the θ-pinch design.
 * ZETA is completed in the summer, it will be the largest fusion machine for a decade.
 * In August, initial results on ZETA appear to suggest the machine has successfully reached basic fusion temperatures. UK researchers start pressing for public release, while the US demurs.
 * Scientists at the AEI Research laboratory in Harwell reported that the Sceptre III plasma column remained stable for 300 to 400 microseconds, a dramatic improvement on previous efforts. Working backward, the team calculated that the plasma had an electrical resistivity around 100 times that of copper, and was able to carry 200 kA of current for 500 microseconds in total.
 * 1958
 * In January, the US and UK release large amounts of data, with the ZETA team claiming fusion. Other researchers, notably Artsimovich and Spitzer, are sceptical.
 * In May, a series of new tests demonstrate the measurements on ZETA were erroneous, and the claims of fusion have to be retracted.
 * American, British and Soviet scientists began to share previously classified controlled fusion research as part of the Atoms for Peace conference in Geneva in September. It is the largest international scientific meeting to date. It becomes clear that basic pinch concepts are not successful and that no device has yet created fusion at any level.
 * Scylla demonstrates the first controlled thermonuclear fusion in any laboratory, although confirmation came too late to be announced at Geneva. This θ-pinch approach will ultimately be abandoned as calculations show it cannot scale up to produce a reactor.

1960s

 * 1960
 * After considering the concept for some time, John Nuckolls publishes the concept of inertial confinement fusion. The laser, introduced the same year, appears to be a suitable "driver".
 * 1961
 * The Soviet Union test the Tsar Bomba (50 megatons), the most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever.
 * 1964
 * Plasma temperatures of approximately 40 million degrees Celsius and a few billion deuteron-deuteron fusion reactions per discharge were achieved at LANL with the Scylla IV device.
 * 1965
 * At an international meeting at the UK's new fusion research centre in Culham, the Soviets release early results showing greatly improved performance in toroidal pinch machines. The announcement is met by scepticism, especially by the UK team who's ZETA was largely identical. Spitzer, chairing the meeting, essentially dismisses it out of hand.
 * At the same meeting, odd results from the ZETA machine are published. It will be years before the significance of these results are realized.
 * By the end of the meeting, it is clear that most fusion efforts have stalled. All of the major designs, including the stellarator, pinch machines and magnetic mirrors are all losing plasma at rates that are simply too high to be useful in a reactor setting. Less-known designs like the levitron and astron are faring no better.
 * The 12-beam "4 pi laser" using ruby as the lasing medium is developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) includes a gas-filled target chamber of about 20 centimeters in diameter.
 * 1967
 * Demonstration of Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor appeared to generate neutrons in a nuclear reaction.
 * Hans Bethe wins the 1967 Nobel Prize in physics for his publication on how fusion powers the stars in work of 1939.
 * 1968
 * Robert L. Hirsch is hired by Amasa Bishop of the Atomic Energy Commission as staff physicist. Hirsch would eventually end up running the fusion program during the 1970s.
 * Further results from the T-3 tokamak, similar to the toroidal pinch machine mentioned in 1965, claims temperatures to be over an order of magnitude higher than any other device. The Western scientists remain highly sceptical.
 * The Soviets invite a UK team from ZETA to perform independent measurements on T-3.
 * 1969
 * The UK team, nicknamed "The Culham Five", confirm the Soviet results early in the year. They publish their results in October's edition of Nature. This leads to a "veritable stampede" of tokamak construction around the world.
 * After learning of the Culham Five's results in August, a furious debate breaks out in the US establishment over whether or not to build a tokamak. After initially pooh-poohing the concept, the Princeton group eventually decides to convert their stellarator to a tokamak.

1970s

 * 1970
 * Princeton's conversion of the Model C stellarator to the Symmetrical Tokamak is completed, and tests match and then best the Soviet results. With an apparent solution to the magnetic bottle problem in-hand, plans begin for a larger machine to test the scaling and various methods to heat the plasma.
 * Kapchinskii and Teplyakov introduce a particle accelerator for heavy ions that appear suitable as an ICF driver in place of lasers.
 * 1972
 * The first neodymium-doped glass (Nd:glass) laser for ICF research, the "Long Path laser" is completed at LLNL and is capable of delivering ~50 joules to a fusion target.
 * 1973
 * Design work on JET, the Joint European Torus, begins.
 * 1974
 * J.B. Taylor re-visited ZETA results of 1958 and explained that the quiet-period was in fact very interesting. This led to the development of reversed field pinch, now generalised as "self-organising plasmas", an ongoing line of research.
 * KMS Fusion, a private-sector company, builds an ICF reactor using laser drivers. Despite limited resources and numerous business problems, KMS successfully compresses fuel in December 1973, and on 1 May 1974 successfully demonstrates the world's first laser-induced fusion. Neutron-sensitive nuclear emulsion detectors, developed by Nobel Prize winner Robert Hofstadter, were used to provide evidence of this discovery.
 * Beams using mature high-energy accelerator technology are hailed as the elusive "brand-X" driver capable of producing fusion implosions for commercial power. The Livingston Curve, which illustrates the improvement in power of particle accelerators over time, is modified to show the energy needed for fusion to occur. Experiments commence on the single beam LLNL Cyclops laser, testing new optical designs for future ICF lasers.
 * 1975
 * The Princeton Large Torus (PLT), the follow-on to the Symmetrical Tokamak, begins operation. It soon surpasses the best Soviet machines and sets several temperature records that are above what is needed for a commercial reactor. PLT continues to set records until it is decommissioned.
 * 1976
 * Workshop, called by the US-ERDA (now DoE) at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, CA for an ad-hoc two-week summer study. Fifty senior scientists from the major US ICF programs and accelerator laboratories participated, with program heads and Nobel laureates also attending. In the closing address, Dr. C. Martin Stickley, then Director of US-ERDA's Office of Inertial Fusion, announced the conclusion was "no showstoppers" on the road to fusion energy.
 * The two beam Argus laser is completed at LLNL and experiments involving more advanced laser-target interactions commence.
 * Based on the continued success of the PLT, the DOE selects a larger Princeton design for further development. Initially designed simply to test a commercial-sized tokamak, the DOE team instead gives them the explicit goal of running on a deuterium-tritium fuel as opposed to test fuels like hydrogen or deuterium. The project is given the name Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR).
 * 1977
 * The 20 beam Shiva laser at LLNL is completed, capable of delivering 10.2 kilojoules of infrared energy on target. At a price of $25 million and a size approaching that of a football field, the Shiva laser is the first of the "megalasers" at LLNL and brings the field of ICF research fully within the realm of "big science".
 * The JET project is given the go-ahead by the EC, choosing the UK's center at Culham as its site.
 * 1978
 * As PLT continues to set new records, Princeton is given additional funding to adapt TFTR with the explicit goal of reaching breakeven.
 * 1979
 * LANL successfully demonstrates the radio frequency quadrupole accelerator (RFQ).
 * ANL and Hughes Research Laboratories demonstrate required ion source brightness with xenon beam at 1.5MeV.
 * The Foster Panel report to US-DoE's Energy Research and advisory board on ICF concludes that heavy ion fusion (HIF) is the "conservative approach" to ICF. Listing HIF's advantages in his report, John Foster remarked: "...now that is kind of exciting." After DoE Office of Inertial Fusion completed review of programs, Director Gregory Canavan decides to accelerate the HIF effort.

1980s

 * 1982
 * HIBALL study by German and US institutions, Garching uses the high repetition rate of the RF accelerator driver to serve four reactor chambers and first-wall protection using liquid lithium inside the chamber cavity.
 * Tore Supra construction starts at Cadarache, France. Its superconducting magnets will permit it to generate a strong permanent toroidal magnetic field.
 * high-confinement mode (H-mode) discovered in tokamaks.
 * 1983
 * JET, the largest operational magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment is completed on time and on budget. First plasmas achieved.
 * The NOVETTE laser at LLNL comes on line and is used as a test bed for the next generation of ICF lasers, specifically the NOVA laser.
 * 1984
 * The huge 10 beam NOVA laser at LLNL is completed and switches on in December. NOVA would ultimately produce a maximum of 120 kilojoules of infrared laser light during a nanosecond pulse in a 1989 experiment.
 * 1985
 * National Academy of Sciences reviewed military ICF programs, noting HIF's major advantages clearly but averring that HIF was "supported primarily by other [than military] programs". The review of ICF by the National Academy of Sciences marked the trend with the observation: "The energy crisis is dormant for the time being." Energy becomes the sole purpose of heavy ion fusion.
 * The Japanese tokamak, JT-60 completed. First plasmas achieved.
 * 1988
 * The T-15, Soviet tokamak with superconducting helium-cooled coils completed.
 * The Conceptual Design Activity for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the successor to T-15, TFTR, JET and JT-60, begins. Participants include EURATOM, Japan, the Soviet Union and United States. It ended in 1990.
 * The first plasma produced at Tore Supra in April.
 * 1989
 * On March 23, two Utah electrochemists, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, announced that they had achieved cold fusion: fusion reactions which could occur at room temperatures. However, they made their announcements before any peer review of their work was performed, and no subsequent experiments by other researchers revealed any evidence of fusion.

1990s

 * 1990
 * Decision to construct the National Ignition Facility "beamlet" laser at LLNL is made.
 * 1991
 * The START Tokamak fusion experiment begins in Culham. The experiment would eventually achieve a record beta (plasma pressure compared to magnetic field pressure) of 40% using a neutral beam injector. It was the first design that adapted the conventional toroidal fusion experiments into a tighter spherical design.
 * The JT-60 tokamak was upgraded to JT-60U in March.
 * 1992
 * The Engineering Design Activity for the ITER starts with participants EURATOM, Japan, Russia and United States. It ended in 2001.
 * The United States and the former republics of the Soviet Union cease nuclear weapons testing.
 * 1993
 * The TFTR tokamak at Princeton (PPPL) experiments with a 50% deuterium, 50% tritium mix, eventually producing as much as 10 megawatts of power from a controlled fusion reaction.
 * 1994
 * NIF Beamlet laser is completed and begins experiments validating the expected performance of NIF.
 * The USA declassifies information about indirectly driven (hohlraum) target design.
 * Comprehensive European-based study of HIF driver begins, centered at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) and involving 14 laboratories, including USA and Russia. The Heavy Ion Driven Inertial Fusion (HIDIF) study will be completed in 1997.
 * 1996
 * A record is reached at Tore Supra: a plasma duration of two minutes with a current of almost 1 million amperes driven non-inductively by 2.3 MW of lower hybrid frequency waves (i.e. 280 MJ of injected and extracted energy). This result was possible due to the actively cooled plasma-facing components installed in the machine.
 * The JT-60U tokamak achieves extrapolated breakeven at Q$DT$$eq$ = 1.05.
 * 1997
 * The JET tokamak in the UK produces 16 MW of fusion power - this remains the world record for fusion power until 2022 when JET sets an even higher record. Four megawatts of alpha particle self-heating was achieved.
 * LLNL study compared projected costs of power from ICF and other fusion approaches to the projected future costs of existing energy sources.
 * Groundbreaking ceremony held for the National Ignition Facility (NIF).
 * 1998
 * The JT-60 tokamak in Japan produced a high performance reversed shear plasma with the equivalent fusion amplification factor $$Q_{eq}$$ of 1.25 - the current world record of Q, fusion energy gain factor.
 * Results of European-based study of heavy ion driven fusion power system (HIDIF, GSI-98-06) incorporates telescoping beams of multiple isotopic species. This technique multiplies the 6-D phase space usable for the design of HIF drivers.
 * 1999
 * The United States withdraws from the ITER project.
 * The START experiment is succeeded by MAST.

2000s

 * 2001
 * Building construction for the immense 192-beam 500-terawatt NIF project is completed and construction of laser beam-lines and target bay diagnostics commences, expecting to take its first full system shot in 2010.
 * Negotiations on the Joint Implementation of ITER begin between Canada, countries represented by the European Union, Japan and Russia.
 * 2002
 * Claims and counter-claims are published regarding bubble fusion, in which a table-top apparatus was reported as producing small-scale fusion in a liquid undergoing acoustic cavitation. Like cold fusion (see 1989), it is later dismissed.
 * European Union proposes Cadarache in France and Vandellos in Spain as candidate sites for ITER while Japan proposes Rokkasho.
 * 2003
 * The United States rejoins the ITER project with China and Republic of Korea also joining. Canada withdraws.
 * Cadarache in France is selected as the European Candidate Site for ITER.
 * Sandia National Laboratories begins fusion experiments in the Z machine.
 * 2004
 * The United States drops its own ITER-scale tokamak project, FIRE, recognising an inability to match EU progress.
 * 2005
 * Following final negotiations between the EU and Japan, ITER chooses Cadarache over Rokkasho for the site of the reactor. In concession, Japan is able to host the related materials research facility and granted rights to fill 20% of the project's research posts while providing 10% of the funding.
 * The NIF fires its first bundle of eight beams achieving the highest ever energy laser pulse of 152.8 kJ (infrared).
 * 2006
 * China's EAST test reactor is completed, the first tokamak experiment to use superconducting magnets to generate both the toroidal and poloidal fields.
 * 2009
 * Construction of the NIF reported as complete.
 * Ricardo Betti, the third Under Secretary, responsible for Nuclear Energy, testifies before Congress: "IFE [ICF for energy production] has no home".

2010s

 * 2010
 * HIF-2010 Symposium in Darmstadt, Germany. Robert J Burke presented on Single Pass (Heavy Ion Fusion) HIF and Charles Helsley made a presentation on the commercialization of HIF within the decade.
 * 2011
 * May 23–26, Workshop for Accelerators for Heavy Ion Fusion at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, presentation by Robert J. Burke on "Single Pass Heavy Ion Fusion". The Accelerator Working Group publishes recommendations supporting moving RF accelerator driven HIF toward commercialization.
 * 2012
 * Stephen Slutz & Roger Vesey of Sandia National Labs publish a paper in Physical Review Letters presenting a computer simulation of the MagLIF concept showing it can produce high gain. According to the simulation, a 70 Mega Amp Z-pinch facility in combination with a Laser may be able to produce a spectacular energy return of 1000 times the expended energy. A 60 MA facility would produce a 100x yield.
 * JET announces a major breakthrough in controlling instabilities in a fusion plasma. One step closer to controlling nuclear fusion
 * In August Robert J. Burke presents updates to the SPRFD HIF process and Charles Helsley presents the Economics of SPRFD at the 19th International HIF Symposium at Berkeley, California. Industry was there in support of ion generation for SPRFD. The Fusion Power Corporation SPRFD patent is granted in Russia.
 * 2013
 * China's EAST tokamak test reactor achieves a record confinement time of 30 seconds for plasma in the high-confinement mode (H-mode), thanks to improvements in heat dispersal from tokamak walls. This is an improvement of an order of magnitude with respect to state-of-the-art reactors.
 * Construction of JT-60SA begins in January.
 * 2014
 * US Scientists at NIF successfully generate more energy from fusion reactions than the energy absorbed by the nuclear fuel.
 * Phoenix Nuclear Labs announces the sale of a high-yield neutron generator that could sustain 5×1011 deuterium fusion reactions per second over a 24-hour period.
 * On 9 October 2014, fusion research bodies from European Union member states and Switzerland signed an agreement to cement European collaboration on fusion research and EUROfusion, the European Consortium for the Development of Fusion Energy, was born.
 * 2015
 * Germany conducts the first plasma discharge in Wendelstein 7-X, a large-scale stellarator capable of steady-state plasma confinement under fusion conditions.
 * In January the polywell is presented at Microsoft Research.
 * In August, MIT announces the ARC fusion reactor, a compact tokamak using rare-earth barium-copper oxide (REBCO) superconducting tapes to produce high-magnetic field coils that it claims produce comparable magnetic field strength in a smaller configuration than other designs.
 * 2016
 * The Wendelstein 7-X produces the device's first hydrogen plasma.
 * 2017
 * China's EAST tokamak test reactor achieves a stable 101.2-second steady-state high confinement plasma, setting a world record in long-pulse H-mode operation on the night of July 3.
 * Helion Energy's fifth-generation plasma machine goes into operation, seeking to achieve plasma density of 20 Tesla and fusion temperatures.
 * UK company Tokamak Energy's ST40 fusion reactor generates first plasma.
 * TAE Technologies announces that the Norman reactor had achieved plasma.
 * 2018
 * Energy corporation Eni announces a $50 million investment in start-up Commonwealth Fusion Systems, to commercialize ARC technology via the SPARC test reactor in collaboration with MIT.
 * MIT scientists formulate a theoretical means to remove the excess heat from compact nuclear fusion reactors via larger and longer divertors.
 * General Fusion begins developing a 70% scale demo system to be completed around 2023.
 * TAE Technologies announces its reactor has reached a high temperature of nearly 20 million°C.
 * The Fusion Industry Association founded as an initiative in 2018, is the unified voice of the fusion industry, working to transform the energy system with commercially viable fusion power.
 * 2019
 * The United Kingdom announces a planned £200-million (US$248-million) investment to produce a design for the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) fusion facility around 2040.

2020s

 * 2020
 * Assembly of ITER, which has been under construction for years, commences.
 * The Chinese experimental nuclear fusion reactor HL-2M is turned on for the first time, achieving its first plasma discharge.
 * 2021
 * [Record] China's EAST tokamak sets a new world record for superheated plasma, sustaining a temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds and a peak of 160 million degrees Celsius for 20 seconds.
 * [Record] The National Ignition Facility achieves generating 70% of the input energy, necessary to sustain fusion, from inertial confinement fusion energy, an 8x improvement over previous experiments in spring 2021 and a 25x increase over the yields achieved in 2018.
 * The first Fusion Industry Association report was published - "The global fusion industry in 2021"
 * [Record] China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), a nuclear fusion reactor research facility, sustained plasma at 70 million degrees Celsius for as long as 1,056 seconds (17 minutes, 36 seconds), achieving the new world record for sustained high temperatures (fusion energy however requires i.a. temperatures over 150 million °C).
 * 2022
 * [Record] The Joint European Torus in Oxford, UK, reports 59 megajoules produced with nuclear fusion over five seconds (11 megawatts of power), more than double the previous record of 1997.
 * [Record] United States researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California has recorded the first case of ignition on August 8, 2021. Producing an energy yield of 0.72, of laser beam input to fusion output.
 * [Record] Building on the achievement in August 2022, American researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California recorded the first ever net energy production with nuclear fusion, producing more fusion energy than laser beam put in. Laser efficiency was in the order of 1%.
 * 2023
 * [Record] On February 15, 2023, Wendelstein 7-X reached a new milestone: Power plasma with gigajoule energy turnover generated for eight minutes.
 * JT-60SA achieves first plasma in October, making it the largest operational superconducting tokamak in the world.
 * 2024
 * The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) achieved the new record of 102-sec-long operation (Integrated RMP control for ELM-less H-mode with a notable advancement on the favorable control the error field, Tungsten divertor) with the achieved duration of 48 seconds at the high-temperature of about 100 million degrees Celsius in February 2024, after the last record of 45-sec-long operation (ELM-less H-mode (FIRE mode ), Carbon-based divertor, 2022). See and  (21 March 2024).

title: Timeline of nuclear fusion