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Horace Mann

Horace Mann (May 4, 1796 – August 2, 1859) was an American educational reformer, slavery abolitionist and Whig politician known for his commitment to promoting public education, he is thus also known as The Father of American Education. In 1848, after public service as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, Mann was elected to the United States House of Representatives (1848–1853). From September 1852 to his death in 1859, he served as President of Antioch College.

Arguing that universal public education was the best way to turn unruly American children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens, Mann won widespread approval from modernizers, especially in the Whig Party, for building public schools. Most U.S. states adopted a version of the system Mann established in Massachusetts, especially the program for normal schools to train professional teachers. Educational historians credit Horace Mann, along with Henry Barnard and Catharine Beecher, as one of the major advocates of the Common School Movement.

Early years, family and education
Horace Mann was born in Franklin, Massachusetts. His father was a farmer without much money. Mann was the great-grandson of Samuel Man.

From age ten to age twenty, he had no more than six weeks' schooling during any year, but he made use of the Franklin Public Library, the first public library in America. He enrolled at Brown University when he was twenty years old and graduated in three years as valedictorian (1819). The theme of his oration was "The Progressive Character of the Human Race." He learned Greek and Latin from Samuel Barrett, who later became a famous Unitarian minister.

Legal career
Mann studied law for a short time in Wrentham, Massachusetts and was a tutor of Latin and Greek (1820–1822) and a librarian (1821–1823) at Brown. During 1822, he also studied at Litchfield Law School and, in 1823, was admitted to the bar in Dedham, Massachusetts.

Mann defended James Allen in a robbery trial by placing a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury by pointing out that the victim had previously identified someone else as the man who robbed him. The strategy worked, and there was a hung jury.

Massachusetts legislature
Mann was elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1827, and in that role was active in the interests of education, public charities, and laws for the suppression of alcoholic drinks and lotteries. He established an asylum in Worcester, and in 1833 was chairman of its board of trustees. Mann continued to be returned to the legislature as a representative from Dedham until his removal to Boston in 1833. While in the legislature, he was a member and part of the time chairman of the committee for the revision of the state statutes, and a large number of salutary provisions were incorporated into the code at his suggestion. After their enactment, he was appointed one of the editors of the work and prepared its marginal notes and its references to judicial decisions. He was elected to the Massachusetts State Senate from Boston in 1835 and was its president in 1836–1837. As a member of the Senate, he spent time as the majority leader, and aimed his focus at infrastructure, funding the construction of railroads and canals.

Personal life
In 1830, Mann married Charlotte Messer, the daughter of former Brown University president Asa Messer. She died two years later on August 1, 1832; he never fully recovered from the intense grief and shock that accompanied her death.

In 1843, he married Mary Tyler Peabody. Afterward, the couple accompanied Samuel Gridley Howe and Julia Ward Howe on a dual honeymoon to Europe. They subsequently purchased a home in West Newton, Massachusetts, at the corner of Chestnut and Highland Streets. Horace and Mary had three sons: Horace Mann Jr., George Combe Mann, and Benjamin Pickman Mann.

Education reform
It was not until he was appointed Secretary in 1837 of the newly created Massachusetts Board of Education that he began the work which was to make him one of America's most influential educational reformers. Upon starting his duties, he withdrew from all other professional or business engagements as well as politics.

As Secretary of Education, Mann held teachers' conventions, delivered numerous lectures and addresses, carried on an extensive correspondence, and introduced numerous reforms. Mann persuaded his fellow modernizers, especially those in the Whig Party, to legislate tax-supported elementary public education in their states and to feminize the teaching force. To justify the new taxes Mann assured businessmen that more education in the work force made for a richer and more profitable economy.

Most northern states adopted one version or another of the system he established in Massachusetts, especially the program for "normal schools" to train professional teachers.

Mann traveled to every School in the state so he could physically examine each school ground. He planned and inaugurated the Massachusetts normal school system in Lexington (which shortly thereafter moved to Framingham), Barre (which shortly thereafter moved to Westfield) and Bridgewater, and began preparing a series of annual reports, which had a wide circulation and were considered as being "among the best expositions, if, indeed, they are not the very best ones, of the practical benefits of a common school education both to the individual and to the state". By his advocacy of the disuse of corporal punishment in school discipline, he was involved in a controversy with some of the Boston teachers that resulted in the adoption of his views.

In 1838, he founded and edited The Common School Journal. In this journal, Mann targeted the public school and its problems. His six main principles were:

 * 1) the public should no longer remain ignorant;
 * 2) that such education should be paid for, controlled, and sustained by an interested public;
 * 3) that this education will be best provided in schools that embrace children from a variety of backgrounds;
 * 4) that this education must be non-sectarian;
 * 5) that this education must be taught using the tenets of a free society; and
 * 6) that education should be provided by well-trained, professional teachers.

Under the auspices of the board, but at his own expense, he went to Europe in 1843 to visit schools, especially in Prussia, and his seventh annual report, published after his return, embodied the results of his tour. Many editions of this report were printed, not only in Massachusetts but in other states, in some cases by private individuals and in others by legislatures; several editions were issued in England.

Mann hoped that by bringing all children of all classes together, they could have a common learning experience. This would also allow the less fortunate to advance in the social scale and education would "equalize the conditions of men." Moreover, it was viewed also as a road to social advancement by the early labor movement and as a goal of having common schools. Mann also suggested that having schools would help those students who did not have appropriate discipline in the home. Building a person's character was just as important as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Instilling values such as obedience to authority, promptness in attendance, and organizing the time according to bell ringing helped students prepare for future employment.

Mann faced some resistance from parents who did not want to give up the moral education to teachers and bureaucrats. The normal schools trained mostly women, giving them new career opportunities as teachers. Mann believed that women were better suited for teaching, regardless of their status as a mother, and used his position to push for a feminization of the profession.

The practical result of Mann's work was a revolution in the approach used in the common school system of Massachusetts, which in turn influenced the direction of other states. In carrying out his work, Mann met with bitter opposition by some Boston schoolmasters who strongly disapproved of his innovative pedagogical ideas, and by various religious sectarians, who contended against the exclusion of all sectarian instruction from the schools.

Secular nature
As the Old Deluder Satan Act and other 17th-century Massachusetts School Laws attest, early education in Massachusetts had a clear religious intent. However, by the time of Mann's leadership in education, various developments (including a vibrant populist Protestant faith and increased religious diversity) fostered a secular school system with a religiously passive stance.

While Mann affirmed that "our Public Schools are not Theological Seminaries" and that they were "debarred by law from inculcating the peculiar and distinctive doctrines of any one religious denomination amongst us ... or all that is essential to religion or salvation," he assured those who objected to this secular nature that "our system earnestly inculcates all Christian morals; it founds its morals based on religion; it welcomes the religion of the Bible; and, in receiving the Bible, it allows it to do what it is allowed to do in no other system—to speak for itself. But here it stops, not because it claims to have compassed all truth; but because it disclaims to act as an umpire between hostile religious opinions."

Mann stated that this position resulted in a near-universal use of the Bible in the schools of Massachusetts and that this served as an argument against the assertion by some that Christianity was excluded from his schools, or that they were anti-Christian. A devotee of the pseudoscience of phrenology, Mann believed education could eliminate or reduce human failings and compensate for any biological flaws.

Mann also once stated that "it may not be easy theoretically, to draw the line between those views of religious truth and of Christian faith which is common to all, and may, therefore, with propriety be inculcated in schools, and those which, being peculiar to individual sects, are therefore by law excluded; still it is believed that no practical difficulty occurs in the conduct of our schools in this regard."

Rather than sanctioning a particular church as was often the norm in many states, the Legislature proscribed books "calculated to favor the tenets of any particular set of Christians."

Reading instruction
Like many nineteenth century reformers, Horace Mann believed that "children would find it far more interesting and pleasurable to memorize words and read short sentences and stories without having to bother to learn the names of the letters". According to Diane Ravitch, he condemned the alphabet method, claiming that it was "repulsive and soul-deadening to children". He described the letters of the alphabet as "skeleton-shaped, bloodless, ghostly apparitions". To him, teaching the alphabet was entirely illogical: "When we wish to give a child the idea of a new animal, we do not present successively the different parts of it,—an eye, an ear, the nose, the mouth, the body, or a leg: but we present a whole animal, as one object".

Mann believed that "children's earliest books should teach whole words, skipping the alphabet and the sounds of the letters", though he may have been confused between "the alphabet method of learning letters through words and a word method, now called the look-and-say method, or learning to read through saying the word as a whole".

Mann's endorsement of "word method" for reading instruction made a lasting impression on other reformers of the period, and "by 1890 the alphabet method had virtually died out". Francis Parker and John Dewey used the "word method" as one of the features of the "Progressive" system of education. As Nancy Millichap notes, "Despite the enthusiasm of educators for their new methods of teaching, the illiteracy rate remained high. Among American soldiers enlisted in World War I, 24.9 percent proved unable to read or write, and during World War II approximately the same percentage of British servicemen [who were taught using the same method] were found to be similarly handicapped. In 1940, one-third of high school students were incapable of mastering reading and writing well enough to profit from textbook instruction, and one half of the adult population in the United States was functionally illiterate".

The backlash against "word method" culminated in a 1955 book Why Johnny Can't Read by Rudolf Flesch, in which he condemned this method for "treating children as if they were dogs" and recommended returning to teaching phonics. Nevertheless, the "ill-informed, ineffective reading instruction" remains the norm in American colleges of education and, accordingly, in American elementary schools.

Emulation of the Prussian system
Upon becoming the secretary of education of Massachusetts in 1837, Mann worked to create a statewide system of professional teachers, based on the Prussian model of "common schools." Prussia was attempting to develop a system of education by which all students were entitled to the same content in their public classes. Mann initially focused on elementary education and on training teachers. The common-school movement quickly gained strength across the North. Connecticut adopted a similar system in 1849, and Massachusetts passed a compulsory attendance law in 1852. Mann's crusading style attracted wide middle-class support. Historian Ellwood P. Cubberley asserts:

"No one did more than he to establish in the minds of the American people the conception that education should be universal, non-sectarian, free, and that its aims should be social efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of sectarian ends."

An important technique which Mann had learned in Prussia and introduced in Massachusetts in 1848 was to place students in grades by age. They were assigned by age to different grades and progressed through them, regardless of differences of aptitude. In addition, he used the lecture method common in European universities, which required students to receive professional instruction rather than teach one another. Previously, schools had often had groups of students who ranged in age from 6 to 14 years. With the introduction of age grading, multi-aged classrooms all but disappeared. Some students progressed with their grade and completed all courses the secondary school had to offer. These were "graduated," and were awarded a certificate of completion. This was increasingly done at a ceremony imitating college graduation rituals.

Arguing that universal public education was the best way to turn the nation's unruly children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens, Mann won widespread approval for building public schools from modernizers, especially among fellow Whigs. Most states adopted one version or another of the system he established in Massachusetts, especially the program for "normal schools" to train professional teachers. This quickly developed into a widespread form of school which later became known as the factory model school.

A Whig in Congress
In the spring of 1848 he was elected to the United States Congress as a Whig to fill the vacancy caused by the death of John Quincy Adams. His first speech in that role was in advocacy of its right and duty to exclude slavery from the territories, and in a letter, in December of that year, he said: "I think the country is to experience serious times. Interference with slavery will excite civil commotion in the South. But it is best to interfere. Now is the time to see whether the Union is a rope of sand or a band of steel." Again he said: "I really think if we insist upon passing the Wilmot proviso for the territories that the south—a part of them—will rebel; but I would pass it, rebellion or not. I consider no evil so great as the extension of slavery."

During the first session, he volunteered as counsel for Drayton and Sayres, who were indicted for stealing 76 slaves in the District of Columbia, and at the trial was engaged for 21 successive days in their defense. In 1850, he was engaged in a controversy with Daniel Webster concerning the extension of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law, calling Webster's support for the Compromise of 1850 a "vile catastrophe", and comparing him to "Lucifer descending from Heaven". Mann was defeated by a single vote at the ensuing nominating convention by Webster's supporters; but, on appealing to the people as an independent anti-slavery candidate, he was re-elected, serving from April 1848 until March 1853.

Abolitionism
Mann was a staunch opponent of slavery as a member of Congress; in a written address to an 1852 "Convention of the Colored Freemen of Ohio" he stated: "[t]hat slavery is to continue always, it would be the grossest atheism to affirm. A belief in the existence of a just Governor of the Universe, includes a belief in the final and utter abolition of slavery.'" In the same address he opposed plans to forcibly deport freedmen from the United States to other nations: "'The idea of forcibly expelling the American born negro from the place of his birth and residence, and driving him out of the country against his will, is as abhorrent to my notions of justice and equality, as it can be to those of anyone. The next most cruel thing to kidnapping a race of men, forcing them from their home and dooming them to slavery in a foreign land, would be the seizure of the descendants of that race, and driving them from the new home they had acquired. So great a crime as this second expatriation would be, could hardly be conceived unless by a mind that had prepared itself for it by participating in the commission of the first.'" Mann considered there to be three legitimate methods by which the Africans in captivity in the US could emancipate themselves, including, as a last resort, that "'such as our revolutionary fathers adopted against Great Britain [...] not only with the justification but with the approval of the civilized world. For this there are two conditions: a sufficient degree of oppression to authorize an appeal to force, and a chance, on the part of the oppressed, of bettering their condition. The measure of the first condition is already full - heaped up - running over. The second condition will be fulfilled, either when the slaves believe they can obtain their freedom by force, or when they are so elevated and enlarged in their moral conceptions as to appreciate that glorious supplication of Patrick Henry, 'Give me liberty or give me death!''" Mann's preferred method for the self-emancipation of the slaves was that free blacks should voluntarily form all-black communities of their own - either in Jamaica or in another Caribbean nation - or perhaps in the American West - in which men like Frederick Douglass, Henry Bibb and Henry Box Brown "instead of making speeches might be making laws. Instead of commanding the types of a newspaper press [...] might be commanding armies and navies" and could more effectively organize the liberation of their enslaved brethren in the U.S. from these strongholds.

Leadership of Antioch College and last years
In September 1852, he was nominated for governor of Massachusetts by the Free Soil Party, and the same day was chosen president of the newly established Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio. Failing in the election for governor, he accepted the presidency of the college, which he continued until his death. There he taught economics, philosophy, and theology; he was popular with students and with lay audiences across the Midwest who attended his lectures promoting public schools. Mann also employed the first female faculty member to be paid on an equal basis with her male colleagues, Rebecca Pennell, his niece. His commencement message to the class of 1859 was to "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity".

Antioch College was founded by the Christian Connexion, which later withdrew its financial support causing the college to struggle for many years with meager financial resources due to sectarian infighting. Mann himself was charged with nonadherence to sectarianism because, previously a Congregationalist by upbringing, he joined the Unitarian Church.

Mann was also drawn to Antioch because it was a coeducational institution, among the first in the country to teach men and women in the same classes, Mann and his wife had conflicts with female students, however, who came to Yellow Springs in search of greater equality. The young women chafed at restrictions on their behavior, and wanted to meet with men in literary societies, which Mann and his wife opposed.

He collapsed shortly after the 1859 commencement and died that summer of typhoid fever. Antioch historian Robert Straker wrote that Mann had been "crucified by crusading sectarians." Ralph Waldo Emerson lamented "what seems the fatal waste of labor and life at Antioch." Mann's wife, who wrote in anguish that "the blood of martyrdom waters the spot," later disinterred his body from Yellow Springs. He is buried in the North Burial Ground in Providence, Rhode Island, next to his first wife.

Legacy
Historians treat Mann as one of the most important leaders of education reform in the antebellum period.

Commemoration
Many places around the world are named after Mann. Among them are more than 50 public schools in the United States. Horace Mann's statue stands in front of the Massachusetts State House along with that of Daniel Webster.

At Antioch College, a monument carries his quote, which has been recently adopted as the college motto: "Be Ashamed to Die Until You Have Won Some Victory for Humanity."

The University of Northern Colorado named the gates to their campus in his dedication, a gift of the Class of 1910.

The Springfield, Illinois-based Illinois Education Association Mutual Insurance Company, was renamed in honor of Mann in 1950 as the Horace Mann Educators Corporation.

Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, has a building named Horace Mann School. It currently houses the Student Welcoming Center.

In Massachusetts, public charter schools that are authorized by local school districts are known as Horace Mann charters.

Brown University Graduate School awards an annual Horace Mann Medal to one of its alumni.

Schools

 * Horace Mann Academy, Chicago, Illinois
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Anaheim, California
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Bakersfield, California
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Bayonne, New Jersey
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Beverly Hills, California
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Binghamton, New York
 * Horace Mann Elementary School (closed), Canton, Ohio
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Cherry Hill, New Jersey
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Dayton, Ohio
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Duncan, Oklahoma
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Fargo, North Dakota
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Glendale, California
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Hominy, Oklahoma
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Huntington, Indiana
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Indiana, Pennsylvania
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Iowa City, Iowa
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Lakewood, Ohio
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Melrose, Massachusetts
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Newton, Massachusetts
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, North Bergen, New Jersey
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Oakland, California
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Oak Park, Illinois
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Ogden, Utah
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Ottumwa, Iowa
 * Horace Mann Elementary School (closed), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Rapid City, South Dakota
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Redmond, Washington
 * Horace Mann Elementary (now Lincoln K-8) School, Rochester, Minnesota
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Saint Paul, Minnesota
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, San Jose, California
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Sedalia, Missouri
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Sioux Falls, South Dakota
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Springfield, Ohio
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, St Joseph, Missouri
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Washington, D.C.
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, West Allis, Wisconsin
 * Horace Mann Elementary School, Woodward, Oklahoma
 * Horace Mann Lab School, Northwest Missouri State University, Maryville, Missouri
 * Horace Mann Middle School, Abilene, Texas
 * Horace Mann Middle School, Amarillo, Texas
 * Horace Mann Junior School, Baytown, Texas
 * Horace Mann Middle School, Brandon, Florida
 * Horace Mann Middle School, Charleston, West Virginia
 * Horace Mann Middle School, Colorado Springs, Colorado
 * Horace Mann Middle School, El Portal, Florida
 * Horace Mann Middle School, Franklin, Massachusetts
 * Horace Mann Middle School, Neenah, Wisconsin
 * Horace Mann Middle School, North Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin
 * Horace Mann Middle School, San Diego, California Horace Mann Hall, Pittsburg State University, Pittsburg, Kansas.jpg
 * Horace Mann Middle School, Sheboygan, Wisconsin
 * Horace Mann Middle School, Wausau, Wisconsin
 * Horace Mann High School, North Fond du Lac, Wisconsin
 * Horace Mann School, Bronx, New York
 * Horace Mann School, Amesbury, Massachusetts
 * Horace Mann School, Seattle, Washington
 * Horace Mann School, Salem, Massachusetts
 * Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Allston, Massachusetts
 * Mann Arts and Science Magnet Middle School, Little Rock, Arkansas
 * Mann Elementary School, Long Beach, California
 * Mann Elementary School, St. Louis, Missouri
 * Mann Elementary School, Tacoma, Washington
 * P.S. 90 - Horace Mann, Queens, New York
 * Trevista at Horace Mann Elementary School, Denver, CO
 * Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8, San Francisco, California

College and university buildings

 * Horace Mann Auditorium, Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts
 * Horace Mann Building, East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma
 * Horace Mann Building, Pittsburg State University, Pittsburg, Kansas
 * Horace Mann Center, Westfield State University in Westfield, Massachusetts
 * Horace Mann Hall, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City
 * Horace Mann Hall, Framingham State University, Framingham, Massachusetts
 * Horace Mann Hall, Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island
 * Horace Mann House, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

Works

 * A Few Thoughts for a Young Man (Boston, 1850)
 * Slavery: Letters and Speeches (1851)
 * Powers and Duties of Woman (1853)
 * Sermons (1861)
 * Life and Complete Works of Horace Mann (2 vols., Cambridge, 1869)
 * Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1869)
 * The Case for Public Schools
 * Mann, Horace. The Life and Works of Horace Mann, with an introduction by his second wife, Mary Peabody Mann.

title: Horace Mann


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Talk:Cellophane

Cling film
Most "cling film" (i.e. plastic food wrap) I've ever seen has said it's made of PVC, not cellulose...? Tjwood 18:23, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * You are right (although there are non-PVC versions, which are still not made of cellulose). I changed the article. --Heron 21:04, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I heard there is currently only one supplier of cellophane in the entire world. Does anyone know if that is true? And if it is, would it be relevant enough for the article? Qaddosh 12:02, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Punctuation
With one noticeable exception, every punctuation mark in this article is either a comma or an exclamation point. --67.171.78.104 00:00, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Invention
On the British Cellophane page it states that "The process for manufacturing cellulose film from viscose was discovered by three English chemists, Charles Frederick Cross, Edward John Bevan and Clayton Beadle in 1898."

On this page it states "Cellophane was invented in 1908 by Jacques E. Brandenberger, a Swiss textiles engineer."

Seems to need a bit of clarification.

lol
From the page: "It is also used in the making of bendy rulers, although it is not common."

Strange line to end the article —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.200.106.168 (talk) 22:42, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

 * Seriously, I was all like, wuuuut? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.122.63.142 (talk) 20:02, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

First paragraph says "...low permeability to...water..." whilst the second-to-last paragraph implies a high permeability to "moisture". Oh-kay... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.151.32.239 (talk) 01:35, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
 * According to the article, it has a relatively low permeability to liquid water, but not water vapors (moisture). Materialscientist (talk) 01:42, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Genericised Trademark in the UK
I disagree with this statement: "The word cellophane has become genericized in the US ... However, in the UK and in many other countries it is still a registered trademark and the property of Innovia Films Ltd."

The implication here is that "Cellophane" is not a generic term in the UK, when it most definitely is. It may still be a registered trademark, but it is widely used to refer to any type of film wrapping, which I thought was the very definition of a genericized trademark. The reference cited is 27 years old. 86.132.58.253 (talk) 11:58, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Hope you don't mind my joining this topic, because my observation of some 35 years' experience is that "cellophane" has not become genericised [sic] in the other sense as implied further down in the same section. Some merchandisers don't know the difference - an issue more to do with "dumbing down" than with genericisation [!] in my view - but the example shown (ref 7) is of a polypropylene converter trying to claim properties he's not entitled to with a cutely misleading term implying cellophane, but even he is not saying polypropylene is cellophane. The totally generic "plastic" (film, wrap, and the like) is even less pertinent to the issue of cellophane's loss of identity: for those uninformed folks using "plastic" seems to have no specific meaning at all. Not to sharpen the point too much, reference 7 should be removed and the attending comment taken out as irrelevant to the topic heading as well as being free advertising for the converter.William Hoffman (talk) 02:18, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Image
Are you sure that the printed bag is cellophane? It's much more likely to be PET film.

82.33.164.165 (talk) 11:39, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Second that. The products in question are modern German Xmas bakery goods and the chance of these being cellophane-wrapped is zero. I should know, I live in Germany and have eaten these things regularly for 13 years. How about a nice image of a cellophane-wrapped cigar? Nrubdarb (talk) 16:00, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Is cellophane a plastic?
Is cellophane a plastic? The article should clarify this point. How can an ordinary person test a piece to see if it is really cellophane, instead of some other ordinary clear plastic? Real cellophane seems to have very poor resistance to tearing; the article should discuss this aspect. -96.237.4.73 (talk) 15:16, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

biodegradable
The article claims:
 * "cellophane itself is 100% biodegradable"

What is the source/proof of this? Under what conditions does it biodegrade? How long does it take? -96.237.4.73 (talk) 15:24, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps a reference might be useful, but the anonymous user sounds doubtful in a way I infer to mean there is reasonable doubt. Cellophane is reconstituted cellulose and will degrade like plant leaves based simply on its nature and the known (bio)chemistry of cellulose. The decomposition will yield CO2 and water.William Hoffman (talk) 02:24, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

 * It is fair to assume that cellophane will degrade somewhat harmlessly under some conditions, if you wait long enough. But I don't think that is enough to claim "100% biodegradable". I'm inclined to think that claim requires that it degrades sufficiently under fairly ordinary composting conditions, in a reasonable amount of time. What is most at issue is whether it degrades under typical home compost pile conditions, and how long it takes. -71.174.176.121 (talk) 21:08, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Scotch Tape
The article implies that cellophane is the current base material of Scotch Tape. This may have been true far in the past, but it seems very dubious that it would be true in modern times. The Scotch Tape article does not seem to agree with this article. -96.237.4.73 (talk) 15:27, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Poor tear resistance

 * www.collectingcandy.com/wordpress/?p=1228
 * "The other major issue with cellophane is wear-and-tear over time and damage from initial opening.
 * More than any other wrapper type, cello wrappers seem to only open through a destructive series of tears.  It’s tough to open a cello wrapper without causing it to rip, and once that rip starts, it can’t be stopped.
 * When you find an older cello package – it’s not unusual to find all manner of deformations and destruction."

The article should say much more about the physical characteristics. Cellophane is not stretchy and is quite fragile compared to modern plastic films. In particular, it has very poor resistance to tear propagation. -96.233.19.113 (talk) 19:48, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

News
http://cjonline.com/news/business/2016-05-18/japanese-firm-invest-30-million-tecumseh-cellophane-plant-last-plant-its# • Sbmeirow  •  Talk  • 12:09, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Environmental Impacts
An environmentally friendly alternative to the viscose process exists and it is used to produce Lyocell (rayon). Any consensus on if it can be used to produce cellophane as well? Frisbii (talk) 17:11, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Statement in lede re: "some countries" generic vs. trademarked
I just altered a sentence that read "in some countries X, but in some countries Y" because it semi-implies there is a third possibility, Z. Now it reads like -- generic in some countries and trademarked in others.

But is more precise to just say it is a trademarked term in some countries but generic "in the rest of the world" or "everywhere else" or maybe better still "every other place where the term is used"? Arbalest Mike (talk) 02:46, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

The history of cellophane on wikipedia is not accurate. Cellophane was developed at Brown Company laboratories in Berlin NH. Brown Company patented cellophane and sold the patent to dupont. This was considered a big mistake for brown co selling the patent to dupont because cellophane became very profitable for dupont. Brown Co was stollen from the Brown family by a bank in Boston during the great depression and the history of this company disappeared even though this company was the biggest paper company in the world in its time. The company held 800 patents in total developed in 2 laboratories in Berlin NH. Brown Co was owned by 3 brothers who controlled 18 million acres in quebec ,Maine, New Hampshire and Florida. The brothers held title to 3,750,000 acres in quebec, 650,000 acres in new england and 78,000 acres in florida. The 3 brothers were Herbert Brown, Orton Brown,and WR brown. Herbert was my great grandfather. I knew very close to nothing about my dads family in Berlin NH prior to a visit by my uncle Eric to Taos NM in 1999.

Seth Brown — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sethbrow (talk • contribs) 15:28, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

The history of cellophane on wikipedia is not accurate. Cellophane was developed at Brown Company laboratories in Berlin NH. Brown Company patented cellophane and sold the patent to dupont. This was considered a big mistake for brown co selling the patent to dupont because cellophane became very profitable for dupont. Brown Co was stollen from the Brown family by a bank in Boston during the great depression and the history of this company disappeared even though this company was the biggest paper company in the world in its time.

Seth Brown — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sethbrow (talk • contribs) 15:34, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Permiability
The article starts with " Its low permeability to air, oils, greases, bacteria, and water makes it useful for food packaging." But later on it says "Cellophane is the most popular material for manufacturing cigar packaging; its permeability to moisture makes cellophane the perfect product for this application as cigars must be allowed to "breathe" while in storage." I think the first statement is the correct one. See - "Cellophane is a transparent film made from cellulose that has low permeability to oxygen, moisture, oil, grease, and bacteria." from https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/cellophane - Or maybe it depends on the type of cellophane - "Initial versions of cellophane were waterproof, but not moisture-proof. So, while it was effective for wrapping products like candy and cigarettes, it wasn’t effective for packaging fresh food. In 1927, DuPont developed moisture-proof cellophane" - from https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2017/06/26/how-cellophane-changed-the-way-we-shop-for-food/ twfowler (talk) 00:03, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

yeah wtf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.127.206.63 (talk) 18:15, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

 * This is because it has low permeability, not zero permeability. It is low enough for food wrapping purposes, but has enough permeability for cigar breathability purposes. — al-Shimoni  (talk) 17:04, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Moldable?
There is no mention of whether cellophane can be injection moulded, or blow moulded, I'm guessing not, it would be useful for the article to mention this, and if it can't be moulded to state why this is the case.

Further assistance required.
I am a newbie at this, so I'd like for someone with moderate experience to take a look at the "Branding" section. At the end of the section, it says. I'm don't want to outright delete it, but it's obvious that it shouldn't be there. I'm suspecting that it is a link to a citation that was incorrectly entered in the source code. Like I said, I'm not sure how to fix this, so some help would be appreciate. It is of upmost importance to me that we fix the "cellophane" Wikipedia page! (Not really) MatthewMcFly (talk) 02:57, 13 May 2021 (UTC)MatthewMcFly

Branding section
I've removed the following sentence from the Branding section (added on 5 November 2022 by ):

"Transparent sticky tape was marketed by Texcel Cellophane Tape, a New Jersey industrial tape corporation from early 1940s."

This may belong in the history section (it's hard to tell how significant they were without a source), but the sentence doesn't make any specific claim about the Cellophane brand.

I've also replaced the (only) reference in the section, as it was a dead link. Aoeuidhtns (talk) 18:53, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

"Regenerated"
What is the meaning of this term in the context it is used in the lead? It either needs in situ explanation, or a link to somewhere it is explained. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:26, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Cellophane


text:
STS-107

STS-107 was the 113th flight of the Space Shuttle program, and the 28th and final flight of Space Shuttle Columbia. The mission ended on February 1, 2003, with the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster which killed all seven crew members and destroyed the space shuttle. It was the 88th post-Challenger disaster mission.

The flight launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 16, 2003. It spent 15 days, 22 hours, 20 minutes, 32 seconds in orbit. The crew conducted a multitude of international scientific experiments. The disaster occurred during reentry while the orbiter was over Texas.

Immediately after the disaster, NASA convened the Columbia Accident Investigation Board to determine the cause of the disintegration. The source of the failure was determined to have been caused by a piece of foam that broke off during launch and damaged the thermal protection system (reinforced carbon-carbon panels and thermal protection tiles) on the leading edge of the orbiter's left wing. During re-entry the damaged wing slowly overheated and came apart, eventually leading to loss of control and disintegration of the vehicle. The cockpit window frame is now exhibited in a memorial inside the Space Shuttle Atlantis Pavilion at the Kennedy Space Center.

The damage to the thermal protection system on the wing was similar to that of Atlantis which had also sustained damage in 1988 during STS-27, the second mission after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. However, the damage on STS-27 occurred at a spot that had more robust metal (a thin steel plate near the landing gear), and that mission survived the re-entry.

Mission highlights
STS-107 carried the SPACEHAB Research Double Module (RDM) on its inaugural flight, the Freestar experiment (mounted on a Hitchhiker Program rack), and the Extended Duration Orbiter pallet. SPACEHAB was first flown on STS-57.

On the day of the experiment, a video taken to study atmospheric dust may have detected a new atmospheric phenomenon, dubbed a "TIGER" (Transient Ionospheric Glow Emission in Red).

On board Columbia was a copy of a drawing by Petr Ginz, the editor-in-chief of the magazine Vedem, who depicted what he imagined the Earth looked like from the Moon when he was a 14-year-old prisoner in the Terezín concentration camp. The copy was in the possession of Ilan Ramon and was lost in the disintegration. Ramon also traveled with a dollar bill received from the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

An Australian experiment, created by students from Glen Waverley Secondary College, was designed to test the reaction of zero gravity on the web formation of the Australian garden orb weaver spider.

Major experiments
Examples of some of the experiments and investigations on the mission.

In SPACEHAB RDM:
 * 9 commercial payloads with 21 investigations,
 * 4 payloads for the European Space Agency with 14 investigations
 * 1 payload for ISS Risk Mitigation
 * 18 payloads NASA's Office of Biological and Physical Research (OBPR) with 23 investigations

In the payload bay attached to RDM:
 * Combined Two-Phase Loop Experiment (COM2PLEX),
 * Miniature Satellite Threat Reporting System (MSTRS)
 * Star Navigation (STARNAV)

FREESTAR
 * Critical Viscosity of Xenon-2 (CVX-2)
 * Space Experiment Module (SEM-14)
 * Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment (MEIDEX)
 * Low Power Transceiver (LPT)
 * Solar Constant Experiment-3 (SOLCON-3)
 * Shuttle Ozone Limb Sounding Experiment (SOLSE-2)

Additional payloads
 * Shuttle Ionospheric Modification with Pulsed Local Exhaust Experiment (SIMPLEX)
 * Ram Burn Observation (RAMBO).

Because much of the data was transmitted during the mission, there was still large return on the mission objectives even though Columbia was lost on re-entry. NASA estimated that 30% of the total science data was saved and collected through telemetry back to ground stations. Around 5-10% more data was saved and collected through recovering samples and hard drives intact on the ground after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, increasing the total data of saved experiments despite the disaster from 30% to 35-40%.

About five or six Columbia payloads encompassing many experiments were successfully recovered in the debris field. Scientists and engineers were able to recover 99% of the data for one of the six FREESTAR experiments, Critical Viscosity of Xenon-2 (CVX-2), that flew unpressurized in the payload bay during the mission after recovering the viscometer and hard drive damaged but fully intact in the debris field in Texas. NASA recovered a commercial payload, Commercial Instrumentation Technology Associates (ITA) Biomedical Experiments-2 (CIBX-2), and ITA was able to increase the total data saved from STS-107 from 0% to 50% for this payload. This experiment studied treatments for cancer, and the micro-encapsulation experiment part of the payload was completely recovered, increasing from 0% data to 90% data after recovering the samples fully intact for this experiment. In this same payload were numerous crystal-forming experiments by hundreds of elementary and middle school students from all across the United States. Miraculously most of their experiments were found intact in CIBX-2, increasing from 0% data to 100% fully recovered data. The BRIC-14 (moss growth experiment) and BRIC-60 (Caenorhabditis elegans roundworm experiment) samples were found intact in the debris field within a 12 mi radius in east Texas. 80-87% of these live organisms survived the catastrophe. The moss and roundworms experiments' original primary mission was not nominal due to the lack of having the samples immediately after landing in their original state (they were discovered many months after the crash), but these samples helped the scientific community greatly in the field of astrobiology and helped form new theories about microorganisms surviving a long trip in outer space while traveling on meteorites or asteroids.

Re-entry
"KSC landing was planned for Feb. 1 after a 16-day mission, but Columbia and crew were lost during re-entry over East Texas at about 9 a.m. EST, 16 minutes prior to the scheduled touchdown at KSC."

- NASA

Columbia began re-entry as planned, but the heat shield was compromised due to initial damage sustained during the initial ascent. The heat of re-entry was free to spread into the damaged portion of the orbiter, ultimately causing its disintegration and the loss of all hands.

The accident triggered a 7-month investigation and a search for debris, and over 85,000 pieces were collected throughout the initial investigation. This amounted to roughly 38 percent of the orbiter vehicle.

Insignia
The mission insignia itself is the only patch of the shuttle program that is entirely shaped in the orbiter's outline. The central element of the patch is the microgravity symbol, μg, flowing into the rays of the astronaut symbol.

The mission inclination is portrayed by the 39-degree angle of the astronaut symbol to the Earth's horizon. The sunrise is representative of the numerous experiments that are the dawn of a new era for continued microgravity research on the International Space Station and beyond. The breadth of science and the exploration of space is illustrated by the Earth and stars. The constellation Columba (the dove) was chosen to symbolize peace on Earth and the Space Shuttle Columbia. The seven stars also represent the mission crew members and honor the original astronauts who paved the way to make research in space possible. Six stars have five points, the seventh has six points like a Star of David, symbolizing the Israeli Space Agency's contributions to the mission.

An Israeli flag is adjacent to the name of Payload Specialist Ramon, who was the first Israeli in space. The crew insignia or 'patch' design was initiated by crew members Dr. Laurel Clark and Dr. Kalpana Chawla. First-time crew member Clark provided most of the design concepts as Chawla led the design of her maiden voyage STS-87 insignia. Clark also pointed out that the dove in the Columba constellation was mythologically connected to the explorers the Argonauts who released the dove.

Wake-up calls
Throughout the shuttle program, sleeping astronauts were often awakened each morning by songs and short pieces of music chosen by their families, friends, and Mission Control, a tradition dating back to the Gemini and Apollo programs. While the crew of STS-107 worked shifts in "red" and "blue" teams to work around the clock, on this mission each shift was still awoken with a "wake-up call"; the only other two-shift shuttle mission to do so was STS-99.

title: STS-107


text:
Ilan Ramon

Ilan Ramon (אילן רמון;, born Ilan Wolfferman (אילן וולפרמן); June 20, 1954 – February 1, 2003) was an Israeli fighter pilot and later the first Israeli astronaut. He served as a Space Shuttle payload specialist on STS-107, the fatal mission of Columbia, in which he and the six other crew members were killed when the spacecraft disintegrated during re-entry. At 48, Ramon was the oldest member of the crew. He is the only foreign recipient of the United States Congressional Space Medal of Honor, which was awarded posthumously.

Biography
Born in Ramat Gan, Israel, to Tonya (1929–2003) and Eliezer Wolfferman (1923–2006), a family of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, Ramon grew up in Beersheba. His father was from Germany, and his family fled Nazi persecution in 1935. His mother and grandmother were from Poland, and were Holocaust survivors, having been in Auschwitz. They emigrated to Israel in 1949. Ramon's first name, Ilan, means "tree" in Hebrew. Ramon Hebraizied his surname from Wolfferman to Ramon, a more "Israeli (Sabra)" name, when he joined the Israeli Air Force (IAF). This was customary and expected of IAF pilots, as well as among IDF senior officers at the time.

Ramon graduated from high school in 1972. In 1987, he graduated with a B.Sc. degree in electronics and computer engineering from Tel Aviv University.

Air Force career
Ramon was a Colonel (Aluf Mishne) and a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, with thousands of hours of flying experience. He began the fighter pilot's course at the Israeli Air Force Flight Academy in 1972, but was forced to suspend his studies after breaking his hand. Ramon served in an electronic warfare unit in the Sinai during the Yom Kippur War, and afterwards, returned to the flight academy. He graduated from the fighter pilots' course in 1974. From 1974 to 1976, Ramon participated in A-4 Skyhawk Basic Training and Operations. From 1976 to 1980, he participated in training and operations for the Mirage IIIC. In 1980, as one of the IAF's establishment team of the first F-16 Squadron in Israel, Ramon attended the F-16 Training Course at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. From 1981 to 1983, he served as the Deputy Squadron Commander B, F-16 Squadron.

In 1981, Ramon was the youngest pilot taking part in Operation Opera, Israel's strike against Iraq's unfinished Osiraq nuclear reactor. The facility was destroyed, killing ten Iraqi soldiers and one French researcher. Ramon also participated in the 1982 Lebanon War.

After attending the Tel Aviv University, Ramon served as Deputy Squadron Commander A, 119 Squadron, flying the F-4 Phantom (1988–1990). In 1990, he attended the Squadron Commanders Course and between 1990 and 1992, commanded 117 Squadron, flying the F-16. From 1992 to 1994, Ramon was head of the Aircraft Branch in the Operations Requirement Department. In 1994, he was promoted to the rank of colonel and assigned as head of the Department of Operational Requirement for Weapon Development and Acquisition. Ramon stayed at this post until 1998.

Ramon accumulated over 3,000 flight hours on the A-4, Mirage IIIC, and F-4, and over 1,000 flight hours on the F-16.

NASA on-ground trainings
In 1997, Ramon was selected as a Payload Specialist. He was designated to train as prime for a space shuttle mission with a payload that included a multispectral camera for recording desert aerosol (dust). In July 1998, Ramon reported for training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where he trained until 2003. Ramon flew aboard STS-107, logging 15 days, 22 hours and 20 minutes in space.

Space flight: STS-107, Space Shuttle Columbia
STS-107 Columbia (January 16 – February 1, 2003), a 16-day flight, was a dedicated science and research mission. Working 24 hours a day, in two alternating shifts, the crew successfully conducted approximately 80 experiments.

Personally nonreligious, Ramon performed traditional observance while in orbit: "I feel I am representing all Jews and all Israelis." He was the first astronaut to request kosher food and marked the Sabbath.

The STS-107 mission ended abruptly when Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed and its crew died during re-entry, 16 minutes before the scheduled landing.

Ramon, whose mother and grandmother were survivors of Auschwitz, was asked by S. Isaac Mekel, director of development at the American Society for Yad Vashem, to take an item from Yad Vashem aboard STS-107. Ramon carried with him a pencil sketch, Moon Landscape, drawn by 16-year-old Petr Ginz, who was murdered in Auschwitz. Ramon also took with him a microfiche copy of the Torah given to him by Israeli president Moshe Katsav and a miniature Torah scroll (from the Holocaust) that was given to him by Prof. Yehoyachin Yosef, a Bergen Belsen survivor. Ramon asked the 1939 Club, a Holocaust survivor organization in Los Angeles, for a symbol of the Holocaust to take into outer space with him. A barbed wire mezuzah by the San Francisco artist Aimee Golant was selected. Ramon also took with him a dollar of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. Ramon and the rest of the Columbia crew died over East Texas in the Southern United States during entry into Earth's atmosphere, 16 minutes before scheduled landing.

Diary
Among the recovered 40% from the contents of the Columbia Space Shuttle that crashed outside Palestine, Texas, were 37 pages of Ramon's diary, which NASA returned to his wife. His widow, Rona, shared an excerpt with the Israeli public in a display at Jerusalem's Israel Museum. Rona Ramon brought it to Israel Museum forensic experts. Only two pages were displayed, one containing Ramon's notes, and the other is a copy of the Kiddush prayer. Curator Yigal Zalmona said the diary was partially restored in one year, and needed four more, for police scientists to decipher 80% of the text. Zalmona stated: "The diary survived extreme heat in the explosion, extreme atmospheric cold, and then was attacked by microorganisms and insects. It's almost a miracle that it survived — it's incredible. There is 'no rational explanation' for how it was recovered when most of the shuttle was not." Ramon wrote on the last day of the journal: "Today was the first day that I felt that I am truly living in space. I have become a man who lives and works in space."

Inscribed in black ink and pencil, it covered the first six days of the 16-day mission.

Family
Ramon was survived by his wife, Rona, and their four children: Assaf, Tal, Yiftah, and Noa, who were in Florida at the time of the accident.

Assaf Ramon
Ramon's eldest son, Assaf (February 10, 1988 – September 13, 2009), died at age 21 during a routine training flight while piloting his F-16A, three months after graduating from the IAF flight school Hatzerim Airbase as the top cadet in his class. Assaf lost consciousness during a spell of vertigo, as a result of the high speed and G-force conditions to which he was subjected. This led to the plane crash and Assaf's subsequent death. He was considered an excellent pilot. A lieutenant of the Israeli Air Force, he was posthumously promoted to the rank of captain.

Rona Ramon
Ramon's widow, Rona Ramon, served in the Israel Defense Forces as a paramedic and later earned a BA at the Wingate Institute. After Assaf's death, she returned to university and graduated with a master's degree in holistic health at Lesley University, Massachusetts. She also lectured about dealing with grief and finding coping mechanisms. Rona served as founding CEO of the nonprofit Ramon Foundation for youth academic excellence and social leadership through science and technology. She died of pancreatic cancer on December 17, 2018. She was posthoumosly awarded the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement.

Tal Ramon
On November 10, 2013, the American Society for Yad Vashem held a special event with the participation of Ramon's son, Tal, who performed a song he wrote in memory of his father. Tal Ramon performed his debut album, Dmut, at the club Zappa Tel Aviv in 2016.

Awards and honors

 * Military decorations:
 * Yom Kippur War campaign ribbon (1973)
 * 1982 Lebanon War campaign ribbon (1982)
 * F-16 1,000 Flight Hours (1992).
 * Posthumously awarded:
 * IDF Chief of Staff Medal of Appreciation
 * Congressional Space Medal of Honor (Ramon is the only non-U.S. citizen recipient to date)
 * NASA Space Flight Medal

In Israel

 * Ramon Airport, named in honor of Ilan and Assaf Ramon
 * The international Ilan Ramon Conference, hosted by the Israel Space Agency
 * Ilan Ramon Youth Physics Center, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba
 * Ramon Control Tower, Ben-Gurion Airport
 * Ilan Ramon Elementary School, Be'er Ya'akov
 * Ilan Ramon Elementary School, Jerusalem
 * Ilan Ramon Junior High School, Kfar Saba
 * Ilan Ramon Elementary School, Netanya
 * Ramon Elementary School, Modi'in
 * Ramon High School, Hod Hasharon
 * Ilan Ramon Junior High, Kokhav Ya'ir
 * Ilan Ramon Emergency Center, Kaplan Hospital, Rehovot
 * Ramon Park, Givat Shmuel
 * Ilan Ramon Park, space-themed playground, Beersheba

In Canada

 * Ilan Ramon Boulevard, Vaughan, Ontario, Canada
 * Ilan Ramon Crescent, Côte-Saint-Luc (Montreal), Quebec, Canada

In the United States

 * Ramon Hall, in the Columbia Village apartments, Florida Institute of Technology
 * Ilan Ramon AZA #380, Boulder, Colorado
 * Ilan Ramon BBYO #5378, Oviedo, Florida
 * Ramon AZA #195 (named after Ilan and Assaf Ramon), Sunnyvale, California
 * Ilan Ramon Day School, Agoura, California

In space

 * Asteroid 51828 Ilanramon
 * Ramon Hill, Columbia Hills on Mars
 * Ramon Crater, within the Apollo basin, on the far side of the Moon

title: Ilan Ramon


text:
Arado Ar 80

The Arado Ar 80 was a pre-World War II fighter aircraft, designed by Arado Flugzeugwerke to compete for the Luftwaffe's first major fighter contract. The Ar 80 was uninspiring in terms of performance and also suffered a number of failures. The contest was eventually won by the Messerschmitt Bf 109, and the Ar 80 prototypes ended their days as test aircraft.

Design and development
With the Nazi rise to power in February 1933, a plan was put into place to dramatically expand the Luftwaffe. The new and highly-political Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM) demanded that the large industrial firms cooperate, keeping construction as secret as possible. Arado Flugzeugwerke, under the direction of Erich Serno and Felix Wagenführ, largely stopped being a designer of aircraft and increasingly became a production facility for other companies.

However, the company had just completed the Ar 65 biplane fighter. Several orders were placed for the Ar 65, and a follow-on Ar 68 model. This made Arado one of the few companies with actual fighter design experience, and they were considered for future developments

In 1933, the Technisches Amt, the technical department of the RLM, concluded a series of research projects into the future of air combat. One of these was Rüstungsflugzeug IV for an all-metal monoplane single-seat fighter aircraft, replacing the Ar 64 and Heinkel He 51 biplanes then in service. The plane needed to have a top speed of 400 km/h (250 mph) at 6,000 m (19,590 ft) which it could maintain for 20 minutes, while staying in the air for a total of 90 minutes. It was to be powered by the new Junkers Jumo 210 engine. It also needed to be armed with at least three machine guns with 1,000 rounds each, or one 20 mm cannon with 200 rounds. The plane needed to keep wing loading below 100 kg/m2, which is a way of defining its ability to turn and climb. The priorities for the plane were level speed, rate of climb, and maneuverability, in that order. Hermann Göring sent out a letter in October 1933 asking for a "high speed courier aircraft" in order to start the work, and in May 1934, the actual R-IV request was sent out and made official. In addition to Heinkel and Arado, Focke-Wulf, and Bayerische Flugzeugwerke competed. They had to deliver three prototypes for head-to-head testing in late 1934.

Although Blume was officially the director of design at Arado, it was Rethel who did most of the early work on the design. Rethel was well aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the monocoque technique, but the company had never built such a design and was thus at a distinct disadvantage in relation to Heinkel who had used it on their He 70 Blitz design from 1932.

However he felt that he could not only design a successful monocoque aircraft, but in fact make one that was both lighter and easier to build than the techniques being used at other companies. His solution was to use two sets of skinning plates formed in long strips running front to back along the plane.

The first set of plates was formed roughly into the shape of a C, which a small flange at the open ends of the C where they could be easily riveted to the hoop bulkheads. Using this system he was able to eliminate one more piece of internal structure, the stringers that would normally run between the bulkheads. He used a second set of sheets that were flat, so they could easily bend front-to-back. They were cut into teardrop shapes, which exactly fit into the gaps between the main stringers. Not only did this system allow for the "perfect" aerodynamic shape, but in theory it was also lighter and easier to build. The system looked so hopeful that other parts of the aircraft's design were allowed to be heavier and less risky as the weight savings in the fuselage should compensate.

The rest of the plane was conventional. The forward fuselage and inner wings were formed up from steel tubing with removable aluminium sheeting over it, the outer wings were aluminium formers and skinned with aluminium on top and fabric on the bottom. Like the Heinkel designs, the wing included a reverse-gull bend to shorten the landing gear legs, but unlike the Heinkel it was almost straight on the leading and trailing edges instead of the more complex elliptical planform favoured by the Günter brothers.

In order to avoid cutting the outer wing formers with outward retracting gear, Rether decided to have the landing gear retract directly to the rear. To lie flat, the wheel would have to be rotated through 90° as it retracted, with its mainwheel resting atop the lower end of the strut as with the contemporary American Curtiss P-36 Hawk fighter design. To do this, Rethel placed the main oleo strut inside a larger tube that was mounted to the pivot point on the lower leading edge of the box-spar. As the gear retracted a small arm would pull on a lever mounted to the oleo, turning the leg inside the larger tube.

Prototypes and testing
The design, now known as the Ar 80, was completed without the aid of Rethel; he left the company in 1934 to join BFW leaving Blume in charge of the project.

The plane was designed to mount the Jumo 210 engine, driving a wooden two-blade fixed-pitch propeller. However, this engine was not going to be ready until the contest was supposed to be over, so all of the contestants looked for other engines to fill the hole. In this case Arado proved to have the advantage, as they had already purchased a 391 kW (525 hp) Rolls-Royce Kestrel VI engine for use on their Ar 67 design. The engine had less than optimal supercharging which led to poor performance for the Ar 67.

The V1 prototype first took to the air in the spring of 1935, one of the first of the planes in the contest to do so. However, one of the company test pilots lost control at low altitude only weeks later, and V1 was written off.

The landing gear had already proven to be a real problem in these few short weeks. It continued to stick half-closed when retracted, although luckily it returned to the down position for landing. Repeated attempts to find the problem were fruitless, when they put the plane on blocks in the hangar it would always work flawlessly. Eventually, it was found that the air pressure on the front of the strut in flight made the oleo jam in its tube so it couldn't rotate.

Another problem discovered during construction of the V1 was that Rethel's monocoque technique in fact turned out to be much heavier than expected. Some of this was a problem in the actual design; since the sheets ran the length of the plane, they had to be as thick as the thickest point on the entire plane. More traditional designs could use lighter or heavier gauges in various places. The main problem, however, was that the design required considerably more rivets than expected, and as a result the plane was overweight.

V2 was rushed to completion but the Jumo was still unavailable. In order to give the contestants some sort of realistic engine, the RLM had traded Rolls-Royce an He 70 for four 518 kW (695 hp) Kestrel V engines. Although the V was the same basic engine as the VI, it had much better supercharging and was in fact the most powerful inline engine of the day. The various companies competed heavily for access to these engines for their prototypes. Perhaps some idea of the future outcome can be seen in the fact that BFW received two, Arado and Heinkel one each, and Focke-Wulf none at all.

V2 was completed with the Kestrel by autumn of 1937, and started company testing. Once again, the gear proved to be a problem. Blume immediately blamed all of the problems on Rethel, after noting that he was always skeptical of the design. He decided that the performance problems of having fixed gear would be offset by its lighter weight, and the Ar 80 then reverted to using a well-spatted and faired set of gear similar to those used on their various biplane designs. Several months were lost in the conversion.

The use of the fixed gear didn't save as much weight as expected and the plane was still 16% over the design weight at 1,630 kg (3,590 lb) empty. Fully loaded the plane was 2,100 kg (4,630 lb) even without armament, which made it underpowered even with the Kestrel V. Drag was also higher than expected. Thus, the plane proved to have very disappointing performance, reaching only 410 km/h (255 mph).

In early 1936, the Jumo engines finally arrived. The 210 had even less takeoff power than the Kestrel, but its altitude performance was comparable. Speed did increase with this engine at higher altitudes, but low-level speed and climb performance both dropped. Arado argued that the fitting of a constant speed propeller would boost both, with the speed climbing to 425 km/h (264 mph), but this was not attempted before the plane was sent off to the contest.

Although the Ar 80 had been one of the first planes to fly, the continued problems with the gear and engine supply meant it was one of the last to arrive for the head-to-head fly-off. It was delivered to Travemünde on 8 February 1936, and later moved to meet the rest of the planes at Rechlin-Lärz Airfield in March. It was clear all along that the plane had no chance against the Heinkel and BFW designs, a fact that Arado was made officially aware of after only one month.

By this point, V3 was already finished. In order to try to save weight, the design had removed the gull-wing and replaced it with a "flat" one, requiring slightly longer gear legs. It also mounted the Jumo 210C with the constant-speed propeller, which boosted speed to 410 km/h (255 mph). By this time, the RLM had already given up on the design, so the plane was not sent for testing and instead hangared at the Arado plant.

In 1937, the V3 was resurrected as a flying testbed for several experiments. It was fitted with a second seat behind the pilot for an observer, and also added an enclosed canopy. The plane was first used for testing a 20 mm cannon firing through the spinner, making it the first German cannon-armed fighter. This system, called the "motorkanone" - an armament format pioneered with the 37 mm cannon-armed French SPAD S.XII in World War I - would become a standard feature of most German inline engined fighter designs during the war.

In 1938, the V3 was rebuilt once again, this time to test a new Fowler Flap design Arado was intending to use on their Ar 198 and Ar 240. Testing showed that the flap was so effective that the lift distribution along the wing changed radically, so a further modification was added to "droop" the ailerons along with the flaps. Testing continued for some time in this form, resulting in the "Arado traveling aileron" and "Arado landing flap".

title: Arado Ar 80


text:
Kalpana Chawla

Kalpana Chawla (17 March 1962 – 1 February 2003) was an Indian-born American astronaut and aerospace engineer who was the first woman of Indian origin to fly to space. She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator aboard STS-87. Chawla's second flight was in 2003 on STS-107, the final flight of Columbia. She was one of the seven crew members who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster when the spacecraft disintegrated during its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere on 1 February 2003.

Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, and several streets, universities, and institutions are named in her honor.

Early life and education
Kalpana Chawla was born on 17 March 1962 in a Punjabi Hindu family in Karnal, Haryana. The youngest of four children, she was born into a conservative society, but Chawla broke several traditions to become the first Indian-born female astronaut. She completed her schooling from Tagore Baal Niketan Senior Secondary School, Karnal. Growing up, Chawla went to local flying clubs and watched planes with her father. After graduating with a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College, India, Chawla moved to the United States in 1982. In 1984, she graduated with a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington, and went on to earn a second Master's in 1986 and a PhD in aerospace engineering in 1988 from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Career
In 1988, Chawla joined NASA's Ames Research Center, where she initially conducted computational fluid dynamics research on vertical and/or short take-off and landing (V/STOL) concepts. Much of Chawla's research is included in technical journals and conference papers. In 1993, she joined Overset Methods, Inc. as vice president and Research Scientist specializing in simulation of moving multiple body problems. Chawla held a Certified Flight Instructor rating for airplanes, gliders and Commercial Pilot licenses for single and multi-engine airplanes, seaplanes and gliders. After she became a naturalized U.S. citizen in April 1991, Chawla applied for the NASA Astronaut Corps. She joined the corps in March 1995 and was selected for her first flight in 1997.

First space mission of Kalpana Chawla
Chawla's first space mission began on 19 November 1997, as part of the six-astronaut crew that flew the Space Shuttle Columbia flight STS-87. Chawla was the first Indian woman to go in space. She spoke the following words while traveling in the weightlessness of space: "You are just your intelligence." Chawla had traveled 10.67 million km, as many as 252 times around the Earth. On her first mission, Chawla travelled 10.4/6.5 million miles in 252 orbits of the Earth, logging more than 376 hours (15 days and 16 hours) in space. During STS-87, she was responsible for deploying the Spartan Satellite which malfunctioned, necessitating a spacewalk by Winston Scott and Takao Doi to capture the satellite. A five-month NASA investigation exonerated Chawla by identifying errors in software interfaces and the defined procedures of the flight crew and ground control. After the completion of STS-87 post-flight activities, Chawla was assigned to technical positions in the astronaut office to work on the space station.

Second space mission and death
In 2000, Chawla was selected for her second flight as part of the crew of STS-107. This mission was repeatedly delayed due to scheduling conflicts and technical problems such as the July 2002 discovery of cracks in the shuttle engine flow liners. On 16 January 2003, Chawla finally returned to space aboard Space Shuttle Columbia on the ill-fated STS-107 mission. The crew performed nearly 80 experiments studying Earth and space science, advanced technology development, and astronaut health and safety.

During the launch of STS-107, Columbia's 28th mission, a piece of foam insulation broke off from the Space Shuttle external tank and struck the port wing of the orbiter. Previous shuttle launches had seen minor damage from foam shedding, but some engineers suspected that the damage to Columbia was more serious. NASA managers limited the investigation, reasoning that the crew could not have fixed the problem if it had been confirmed.

When Columbia re-entered the atmosphere of Earth on 1 February 2003, the damage allowed hot atmospheric gases to penetrate and destroy the internal wing structure, which caused the spacecraft to become unstable and break apart over Texas. Chawla died along with the other six crew members. After the disaster, Space Shuttle flight operations were suspended for more than two years, similar to the aftermath of the Challenger disaster. Construction of the International Space Station (ISS) was put on hold; the station relied entirely on the Russian Roscosmos State Corporation for resupply for 29 months until Shuttle flights resumed with STS-114 and 45 months for crew rotation.

Chawla's remains were identified along with those of the rest of the crew members and were cremated and scattered at Zion National Park in Utah in accordance with her wishes.

Honours and recognition

 * The fourteenth contracted Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft mission delivering supplies to the ISS was named the S.S. Kalpana Chawla after her.
 * Asteroid 51826 Kalpana Chawla, one of seven named after the Columbia's crew
 * The lunar crater Chawla is named after Kalpana Chawla.
 * On 5 February 2003, the Prime Minister of India at the time, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, announced that a meteorological series of satellites, MetSat, was to be renamed "Kalpana 1". The first satellite of the series, "MetSat-1", launched by India on 12 September 2002, was renamed "Kalpana-1".
 * 74th Street in the "Little India" of Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City, New York, United States, has been renamed "Kalpana Chawla Way" in her honor.
 * In honor of her, a street was named Kalpana Chawla Street in Rayon Nagar in Sirumugai, a village in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India.
 * The Kalpana Chawla Award was instituted by the Government of Karnataka in 2004 to recognize young women scientists.
 * NASA has dedicated a supercomputer to Chawla.
 * One of Florida Institute of Technology's student apartment complexes, Columbia Village Suites, has halls named after each of the astronauts, including Chawla.
 * The NASA Mars Exploration Rover mission has named seven peaks in a chain of hills, named the Columbia Hills, after each of the seven astronauts lost in the Columbia shuttle disaster. One of them is Chawla Hill, named after Chawla.
 * Steve Morse from the band Deep Purple created the song "Contact Lost" in memory of the Columbia tragedy. Chawla knew Morse and took the band's Machine Head, featuring the song "Space Truckin'" with her on the mission. Morse's tribute song can be found on the album Bananas.
 * Novelist Peter David named a shuttlecraft, the Chawla, after the astronaut in his 2007 Star Trek novel, Star Trek: The Next Generation: Before Dishonor.
 * The Kalpana Chawla ISU Scholarship fund was founded by alumni of the International Space University (ISU) in 2010 to support Indian women's participation in international space education programs.
 * The Kalpana Chawla Memorial Scholarship program was instituted by the Indian Students Association (ISA) at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) in 2005 for meritorious graduate students.
 * The Kalpana Chawla Outstanding Recent Alumni Award at the University of Colorado, given since 1983, was renamed after Chawla.
 * The University of Texas at Arlington, where Chawla obtained a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering in 1984, opened a dormitory named Kalpana Chawla Hall in 2004. Kalpana Chawla Hall Univ Texas Arlington.JPG]] In addition, the university dedicated the Kalpana Chawla Memorial on 3 May 2010, in Nedderman Hall, one of the primary buildings in the College of Engineering.
 * The girls' hostel (what a university dormitory is called in India) at Punjab Engineering College is named after Chawla. In addition, an award of INR twenty-five thousand, a medal, and a certificate is instituted for the best student in the Aeronautical Engineering department.
 * The Government of Haryana established the Kalpana Chawla Planetarium in Jyotisar, Kurukshetra.
 * The Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, named the Kalpana Chawla Space Technology Cell in her honor.
 * Delhi Technological University named a girls' hostel block after Chawla.
 * A military housing development at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, has been named Columbia Colony and includes a street named Chawla Way.
 * A hostel block in Pondicherry University has been named after Chawla.
 * Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College (KCGMC) is a Medical college located in Karnal, Haryana, India named after Chawla. Kalpana was born in Karnal.
 * The National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra named a girls' hostel after Chawla.
 * The National Institute of Technology, Bhopal named a girls' hostel Kalpana Chawla Bhawan.
 * On 1 April 2022, a satellite named after Chawla (ÑuSat 24 or "Kalpana", COSPAR 2022-033X) was launched into space as part of the Satellogic Aleph-1 constellation.

Personal life
On 2 December 1983, at the age of 21, Chawla married Jean-Pierre Harrison. After the Columbia disaster, Harrison was approached by to filmmakers to make a movie on Chawla's life, but he refused because Harrison prefers to keep their life private.

In popular culture
Mega Icons (2018–2020), an Indian documentary television series on National Geographic about prominent Indian personalities, dedicated an episode to Chawla's achievements. In the 2023 movie "A Million Miles Away" about Mexican farmworker turned astronaut Jose Hernandez, Kalpana Chawla is played by actress Sarayu Blue.

title: Kalpana Chawla