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Parthenopean Republic

The Parthenopean Republic (Repubblica Partenopea, République Parthénopéenne) or Neapolitan Republic (Repubblica Napoletana) was a short-lived, semi-autonomous republic located within the Kingdom of Naples and supported by the French First Republic. The republic emerged during the French Revolutionary Wars after King Ferdinand IV fled before advancing French troops. The republic existed from 21 January to 13 June 1799, collapsing when Ferdinand returned to restore monarchial authority and forcibly subdued republican activities.

Etymology
The Parthenopean Republic is named after Parthenope, an ancient Greek settlement now part of the city of Naples.

Origins of the Republic
On the outbreak of the French Revolution King Ferdinand IV of Naples and Queen Maria Carolina did not at first actively oppose reform; but after the fall of the French monarchy they became violently opposed to it, and in 1793, joined the first coalition against France, instituting severe persecutions against all who were remotely suspected of French sympathies. Republicanism, however, gained ground, especially among the aristocracy.

In 1796, peace with France was concluded, but in 1798, during Napoleon's absence in Egypt and after Nelson's victory at the Battle of the Nile, Maria Carolina induced Ferdinand to go to war with France once more. Nelson himself arrived at Naples in September 1798, where he was enthusiastically received. The Neapolitan army had 70,000 men hastily summoned under the command of the Austrian general Karl Mack. On 29 November, this army entered Rome, which had been evacuated by the French, wishing to restore Papal authority. However, after a sudden French counter-attack, his troops were forced to retreat and were eventually routed. A contemporary satirist said of the King's conquest of Rome: "He came, he saw, he fled".

The King hurried back to Naples. Although the lazzaroni (the lowest class of the people) were devoted to the Bourbon dynasty and ready to defend it, he embarked on Nelson's Vanguard and fled with his court to Palermo in a panic. Prince Francesco Pignatelli Strongoli took over the city and the fleet was burned.

The wildest confusion prevailed, and the lazzaroni massacred numbers of persons suspected of republican sympathies, while the nobility and the educated classes, finding themselves abandoned by their King, began to contemplate a republic under French auspices to avoid anarchy. On 12 January 1799, Pignatelli signed in Sparanise the surrender to the French general Jean Étienne Championnet. Pignatelli also fled to Palermo on 16 January 1799.

When the news of the surrender to the French reached Naples and the provinces, the lazzaroni rebelled. Though ill-armed and ill-disciplined, they resisted the enemy with desperate courage. In the meantime, the Jacobin and Republican parties of Naples surged, and civil war broke out. On 20 January 1799, the Republicans under General Championnet conquered the fortress of Castel Sant'Elmo, and the French entered the city the next day. The casualties were 8,000 Neapolitans and 1,000 French.

Republic
On 21 or 23 January 1799, the Parthenopean Republic was proclaimed. The name referred to an ancient Greek colony Parthenope on the site of the future city of Naples. The Republic had no real domestic constituency and existed solely due to the power of the French Army. The Republic's leaders were men of culture, high character and birth, such as Gennaro Serra, Prince of Cassano Irpino but they were doctrinaire and impractical, and they knew very little of the lower classes of their own country. The new government soon found itself in financial difficulties, owing to Championnet's demands for money (he was later relieved for graft); it failed to organise an army (and was therefore dependent on French protection) and met with little success in its attempts to "democratise" the provinces.

Meanwhile, the court at Palermo sent Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo, a wealthy and influential prelate, to Calabria to organize a counter-revolution. He succeeded beyond expectation with his "Christian army of the Holy Faith" (Esercito Cristiano della Santa Fede). A British squadron approached Naples and occupied the island of Procida, but after a few engagements with the Republican fleet commanded by Francesco Caracciolo, an ex-officer in the Bourbon navy, it was recalled to Palermo, as the Franco–Spanish fleet was expected.

Ruffo, supported by Russian and Turkish ships under the command of Admiral Ushakov, now marched on the capital, whence the French, except for a small force under Méjean, withdrew. The scattered Republican detachments were defeated, only Naples and Pescara holding out.

On 13 June 1799. Ruffo and his troops reached Naples, and after a desperate battle at the Ponte della Maddalena, entered the city. For weeks the Calabresi and lazzaroni continued to pillage and massacre, and Ruffo was unable, even if willing, to restrain them. However, the Royalists were not masters of the city, for the French in Castel Sant'Elmo and the Republicans in Castel Nuovo and Castel dell'Ovo still held out and bombarded the streets, while the Franco-Spanish fleet might arrive at any moment. Consequently, Ruffo was desperately anxious to come to terms with the Republicans for the evacuation of the castles, in spite of the Queen's orders to make no terms with the rebels. After some negotiation, the parties concluded an armistice and agreed on capitulation (onorevole capitolazione), whereby the castles were to be evacuated, the hostages liberated and the garrisons free to remain in Naples unmolested or to sail for Toulon. The capitulation was signed by Ruffo, and British, Russian and Turkish officers, as well as, for the Republicans, the French commander.

While the vessels were being prepared for the voyage to Toulon all the hostages in the castles were liberated save four; but on 24 June 1799, Nelson arrived with his fleet, and on hearing of the capitulation he refused to recognise it except insofar as it concerned the French.

Cardinal Ruffo indignantly declared that once the treaty was signed, not only by himself but by the Russian and Turkish commandants and by the British captain Edward Foote, it must be respected, and on Nelson's refusal, he said that he would not help him to capture the castles. On 26 June 1799, Nelson changed his attitude and authorised Sir William Hamilton, the British minister, to inform the cardinal that he (Nelson) would do nothing to break the armistice; while Captains Bell and Troubridge wrote that they had Nelson's authority to state that the latter would not oppose the embarcation of the Republicans. Although these expressions were equivocal, the Republicans were satisfied and embarked on the vessels prepared for them. However, on 28 June, Nelson received despatches from the court (in reply to his own), in consequence of which he had the vessels brought under the guns of his ships, and many of the Republicans were arrested. Caracciolo, who had been caught whilst attempting to escape from Naples, was tried by a court-martial of Royalist officers under Nelson's auspices on board the admiral's flagship, condemned to death and hanged at the yard arm. The last jacobin stronghold, Pescara, surrendered on June 30.

Aftermath
On 10 July 1799, King Ferdinand entered the Bay of Naples on a Neapolitan frigate, the Sirena. At four o'clock that afternoon, he went aboard the British Foudroyant, which was to be his headquarters for the next four weeks.

Of some 8,000 political prisoners, 99 were executed, including Prince Gennaro Serra, who was publicly beheaded, the intellectual Mario Pagano, who had written the republican constitution; the scientist, Domenico Cirillo; Luisa Sanfelice; Gabriele Manthoné, the minister of war under the republic; Massa, the defender of Castel dell'Ovo; Ettore Carafa, the defender of Pescara, who had been captured by treachery; and Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel, court-poet turned revolutionary and editor of il Monitore Napoletano, the newspaper of the republican government. More than 500 other people were imprisoned (222 for life), 288 were deported and 67 exiled. The subsequent censorship and oppression of all political movement was far more debilitating for Naples.

After these events were reported in Britain, Charles James Fox denounced Nelson in the House of Commons for the admiral's part in "the atrocities at the Bay of Naples".

title: Parthenopean Republic


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Athabasca

Athabasca (also Athabaska) is an anglicized version of the Cree name for Lake Athabasca in Canada, āthap-āsk-ā-w (pronounced ), meaning "grass or reeds here and there". Most places named Athabasca are found in Alberta, Canada.

Athabasca may also refer to:

Geographical features

 * Mount Athabasca (3491 m), a mountain in Jasper National Park, Canada
 * Athabasca Glacier, a glacier in Jasper National Park, Canada
 * Athabasca River, river in Alberta, Canada
 * Athabasca Falls, waterfalls on the Athabasca River
 * Peace-Athabasca Delta – of the Peace River, Athabasca River, near Lake Athabasca
 * Athabasca Oil Sands – oil-producing region in Alberta, Canada
 * Lake Athabasca, large lake in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada
 * Athabasca Pass, a mountain pass in Jasper National Park
 * Athabasca Valles, a feature on the surface of the planet Mars
 * Athabasca Sand Dunes Provincial Park, a unique geophysical land feature in the boreal shield ecosystem Saskatchewan, Canada
 * Athabasca Basin, a region in Northern Saskatchewan and Alberta, the source of the world's highest grade uranium deposits

Administrative features

 * Athabasca, Alberta, town in Canada, formerly (1880–1914) named Athabasca Landing
 * Athabasca County, a municipal district in Alberta, Canada
 * District of Athabasca, a former district of the North-West Territory
 * Athabaska (electoral district), a former federal electoral district (1925–1968) in Alberta
 * Athabasca (electoral district), a federal electoral district (since 1968) in Alberta
 * Athabasca (Alberta provincial electoral district), 1905–1986
 * Athabasca (Saskatchewan provincial electoral district)
 * Athabasca University, a distance learning university in Athabasca, Alberta, Canada

Other

 * Athabaskan languages, a language family indigenous to North America
 * Athabaska Herald, one of the officers of arms at the Canadian Heraldic Authority
 * Athabasca (novel), novel by Alistair MacLean
 * Athabasca, a character in Terry Brooks's Shannara series
 * SS Athabasca, a steamship launched in Scotland in 1883 and put into service on the Great Lakes, along with SS Alberta and SS Algoma
 * Any of three ships named HMCS Athabaskan
 * Athabasca, see Boats of the Mackenzie River watershed
 * Athabasca River, see Boats of the Mackenzie River watershed
 * Athabasca River, see Boats of the Mackenzie River watershed
 * MS Fort Athabasca, a Canadian-owned, British-registered merchant ship bombed 2 December 1943 during World War II
 * Athabascaite, a mineral
 * Athabaska Airways, earlier name of Transwest Air
 * Athabasca Valles, a channel on the planet Mars

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

title: Athabasca


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Hilario Zapata

Hilario Zapata (born August 19, 1958) is a Panamanian former professional boxer who competed from 1977 to 1993. He is a world champion in two weight classes, having held the WBC light flyweight title twice between 1980 and 1983 and the WBA flyweight title from 1985 to 1987.

Professional career
Zapata began his professional boxing career in 1977, beating Victor Lopez by a knockout in the second round. He had 2 wins in '77.

He had a fast ascent to the top, starting in 1978. By his fifth bout, on July 1, he was meeting former world Flyweight champion Juan Guzmán in Panama City, beating Guzman by a decision in ten. His next fight, against Yong-Hwang Kim, in South Korea, was his first fight abroad; he gave himself a twentieth birthday present by beating Kim by a 10-round decision on August 19. Then, he met former world Flyweight champion Alfonso Lopez, for the vacant Latin American Jr. Flyweight belt. Zapata suffered his first loss in the fight against Lopez, when he was beaten by a decision in 12.

He started 1979 with a fight against Ramon Perez in Puerto Rico, winning by a knockout in nine. He had three more wins in 1979, including one over the two time world Flyweight champion Freddie Castillo, and by the end of that year he was ranked number one in the world among Jr. Flyweight challengers by the WBC.

Zapata went to Japan in March 1980, and on the 24th day of that month he beat defending world champion Shigeo Nakajima to become world Jr. Flyweight champion. He defended his title against Chi-Bok Kim, winning a 15-round unanimous decision in South Korea, against Hector Rey Melendez in Venezuela, winning also by a 15-round decision, against Nakajima in a Tokyo rematch, winning by knockout in 11, and against Reynaldo Becerra in Venezuela. He closed out 1980 win a 15-round decision win over Becerra.

In 1981, he and future world Flyweight champion Joey Olivo fought what was the only Jr. Flyweight title bout ever broadcast on American national TV live until Michael Carbajal came along nine years later. Zapata beat Olivo by a knockout in round 13 to retain his belt, and then, he went to San Francisco to retain the crown once again, with a 15-round decision over Rudy Crawford. On August 15, and back home in Panama City, he beat Mexican German Torres by a decision in 15 to retain his belt, and then he faced former world Jr. Flyweight champion Netrnoi Sor Vorasingh, retaining the belt by a knockout in 10.

In his next fight, on February 6, 1982, Zapata lost the world title by knockout in two at the hands of Amado Panterita Ursua, but Ursua in turn would lose it to Tadashi Tomori. On July 20, Zapata regained the world title by beating Tomori on a 15-round decision in Japan. Then, he beat future world champion and Zapata-conqueror Jung-Koo Chang by a decision in 15 in Chonju, and he closed out the year with a rematch against Tomori in Tokyo, knocking Tomori out in eight rounds.

On March 26, 1983, Zapata and Chang met again in South Korea, and this time, Chang became world champion by knocking Zapata out in the third round. Then, on November 9 at Las Vegas, on the Marvin Hagler vs. Roberto Durán's undercard's week, Zapata was beaten by a knockout in 10 by Harold Petty.

His career seemingly over, he quickly recovered from those back to back losses and began winning again, but this time as a Flyweight. By the end of 1984, he was ranked number one by the WBA among Flyweights, and on December 8 of that year, he challenged world Flyweight champion Santos Laciar of Argentina at Buenos Aires' legendary Luna Park. Zapata lost a 15-round decision that night, but in 1986, after Laciar had vacated the crown, the WBA gave him a second chance, and he beat Alonzo Gonzalez to win the WBA world Flyweight championship. He then beat Javier Lucas to retain the belt. He retained the title also against Shuichi Hozumi, Dodie Penalosa, Alberto Castro and Claudemir Calvalho, all by decision, before losing it to Fidel Bassa of Colombia, also by a decision.

In 1993, he tried to become a world champion once again, but was knocked out in the first round by the WBC world Jr. Bantamweight champion Sung-Kil Moon. A win against Moon would have made Zapata a member of the exclusive group of world boxing champions in three different weight categories or more.

It can also be added that Zapata's first pair of boxing gloves, when he was 12, came as a present from Duran himself.

Panamanian newspaper El Panama America declared on one of their editorials that Zapata, according to their opinion, should be inducted to the International Boxing Hall Of Fame soon. Zapata eventually was voted into the Hall of Fame, in December 2015, and was inducted during June 2016.

Zapata had a record of 43 wins and 10 losses, with 1 draw, and 14 wins by knockout.

title: Hilario Zapata


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Columbia Pictures

Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., commonly known as Columbia Pictures or simply Columbia, is an American film production and distribution company that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Entertainment's Sony Pictures, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the multinational conglomerate Sony Group Corporation.

On June 19, 1918, brothers Jack and Harry Cohn and their business partner Joe Brandt founded the studio as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn (CBC) Film Sales Corporation. It adopted the Columbia Pictures name on January 10, 1924 (operating as Columbia Pictures Corporation until December 23, 1968) went public two years later and eventually began to use the image of Columbia, the female personification of the United States, as its logo.

In its early years, Columbia was a minor player in Hollywood, but began to grow in the late 1920s, spurred by a successful association with director Frank Capra. With Capra and others such as the most successful two reel comedy series, The Three Stooges, Columbia became one of the primary homes of the screwball comedy. In the 1930s, Columbia's major contract stars were Jean Arthur and Cary Grant. In the 1940s, Rita Hayworth became the studio's premier star and propelled their fortunes into the late 1950s. Rosalind Russell, Glenn Ford and William Holden also became major stars at the studio.

It is one of the leading film studios in the world, and was one of the so-called "Little Three" among the eight major film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. Today, it has become the world's third largest major film studio.

The company was also primarily responsible for distributing Disney's Silly Symphony film series as well as the Mickey Mouse cartoon series from 1929 to 1932. The studio is presently headquartered at the Irving Thalberg Building on the former Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (currently known as the Sony Pictures Studios) lot in Culver City, California since 1990.

Columbia Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA), under Sony Pictures Entertainment, and is currently one of six live-action labels of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, the others being TriStar Pictures, Affirm Films, Screen Gems, Sony Pictures Classics, and Stage 6 Films. Columbia's most commercially successful franchises include Spider-Man, Jumanji, Bad Boys, Men in Black, The Karate Kid, Robert Langdon, and Ghostbusters, and the studio's highest-grossing film worldwide is Spider-Man: No Way Home with box office of $1.92 billion.

Early years as CBC
The studio was founded on June 19, 1918, as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn (CBC) Film Sales by brothers Jack and Harry Cohn and Jack's best friend Joe Brandt, and released its first feature film More to Be Pitied Than Scorned on August 20, 1922. The film, with a budget of $20,000, was a success, bringing in $130,000 in revenue for the company. Brandt was president of CBC Film Sales, handling sales, marketing and distribution from New York along with Jack Cohn, while Harry Cohn ran production in Hollywood. The studio's early productions were low-budget short subjects: Screen Snapshots, the Hallroom Boys (the vaudeville duo of Edward Flanagan and Neely Edwards), and the Charlie Chaplin-imitator Billy West. The start-up CBC leased space in a Poverty Row studio on Hollywood's famously low-rent Gower Street. Among Hollywood's elite, the studio's small-time reputation led some to joke that "CBC" stood for "Corned Beef and Cabbage".

Reorganization and new name
CBC was reorganized as Columbia Pictures Corporation by brothers Harry and Jack Cohn and best friend Joe Brandt on January 10, 1924. Harry Cohn became president in 1932 and remained head of production as well, thus concentrating enormous power in his hands. He would run Columbia for a total of 34 years, one of the longest tenures of any studio chief (Warner Bros.' Jack L. Warner was head of production or CEO longer but did not become CEO until 1956). Even in an industry rife with nepotism, Columbia was particularly notorious for having a number of Harry and Jack's relatives in high positions. Humorist Robert Benchley called it the Pine Tree Studio, "because it has so many Cohns". Brandt eventually tired of dealing with the Cohn brothers, and in 1932 sold his one-third stake to Jack and Harry Cohn, who took over from him as president.

Columbia's product line consisted mostly of moderately budgeted features and short subjects including comedies, sports films, various serials, and cartoons. Columbia gradually moved into the production of higher-budget fare, eventually joining the second tier of Hollywood studios along with United Artists and Universal. Like United Artists and Universal, Columbia was a horizontally integrated company. It controlled production and distribution; it did not own any theaters.

Helping Columbia's climb was the arrival of an ambitious director, Frank Capra. Between 1927 and 1939, Capra constantly pushed Cohn for better material and bigger budgets. A string of hits he directed in the early and mid 1930s solidified Columbia's status as a major studio. In particular, It Happened One Night, which nearly swept the 1934 Oscars, put Columbia on the map. Until then, Columbia's business had depended on theater owners willing to take its films, since it did not have a theater network of its own. Other Capra-directed hits followed, including the original version of Lost Horizon (1937), with Ronald Colman, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), which made James Stewart a major star. In 1933, Columbia hired Robert Kalloch to be its chief fashion and women's costume designer. He was the first contract costume designer hired by the studio, and he established the studio's wardrobe department. Kalloch's employment, in turn, convinced leading actresses that Columbia Pictures intended to invest in their careers. In 1938, the addition of B. B. Kahane as vice president would produce Charles Vidor's Those High Grey Walls (1939), and The Lady in Question (1940), the first joint film of Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford. Kahane would later become the President of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1959, until his death a year later.

Columbia could not afford to keep a huge roster of contract stars, so Jack Cohn usually borrowed them from other studios. At Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the industry's most prestigious studio, Columbia was nicknamed "Siberia", as Louis B. Mayer would use the loan-out to Columbia as a way to punish his less-obedient signings. In the 1930s, Columbia signed Jean Arthur to a long-term contract, and after The Whole Town's Talking (1935), Arthur became a major comedy star. Ann Sothern's career was launched when Columbia signed her to a contract in 1936. Cary Grant signed a contract in 1937 and soon after it was altered to a non-exclusive contract shared with RKO.

Many theaters relied on westerns to attract big weekend audiences, and Columbia always recognized this market. Its first cowboy star was Buck Jones, who signed with Columbia in 1930 for a fraction of his former big-studio salary. Over the next two decades Columbia released scores of outdoor adventures with Jones, Tim McCoy, Ken Maynard, Jack Luden, Bob Allen (Robert (Tex) Allen), Russell Hayden, Tex Ritter, Ken Curtis, and Gene Autry. Columbia's most popular cowboy was Charles Starrett, who signed with Columbia in 1935 and starred in 131 western features over 17 years.

Short subjects
At Harry Cohn's insistence, the studio signed the Three Stooges in 1934. Rejected by MGM (which kept straight-man Ted Healy but let the Stooges go), the Stooges made 190 shorts for Columbia between 1934 and 1957. Columbia's short-subject department employed many famous comedians, including Buster Keaton, Charley Chase, Harry Langdon, Andy Clyde, and Hugh Herbert. Almost 400 of Columbia's 529 two-reel comedies were released to television between 1958 and 1961; to date, all of the Stooges, Keaton, Charley Chase, Shemp Howard, Joe Besser, and Joe DeRita subjects have been released to home video.

Columbia incorporated animation into its studio in 1929, distributing Krazy Kat cartoons, taking over from Paramount. The following year, Columbia took over distribution of the Mickey Mouse series from Celebrity Productions until 1932. In 1933, The Mintz studio was re-established under the Screen Gems brand; Columbia's leading cartoon series were Krazy Kat, Scrappy, The Fox and the Crow, and (very briefly) Li'l Abner. Screen Gems was the last major cartoon studio to produce black-and-white cartoons, producing them until 1946. That same year, Screen Gems shut down but had completed enough cartoons for the studio to release until 1949. In 1948, Columbia agreed to release animated shorts from United Productions of America; these new shorts were more sophisticated than Columbia's older cartoons, and many won critical praise and industry awards. In 1957, two years before the UPA deal was terminated, Columbia distributed the Hanna-Barbera cartoons, including Loopy De Loop from 1959 to 1965, which was Columbia's final theatrical cartoon series. In 1967, the Hanna-Barbera deal expired and was not renewed.

According to Bob Thomas' book King Cohn, studio chief Harry Cohn always placed a high priority on serials. Beginning in 1937, Columbia entered the lucrative serial market and kept making these weekly episodic adventures until 1956, after other studios had discontinued them. The most famous Columbia serials are based on comic-strip or radio characters: Mandrake the Magician (1939), The Shadow (1940), Terry and the Pirates (1940), Captain Midnight (1942), The Phantom (1943), Batman (1943), and the especially successful Superman (1948), among many others.

Columbia also produced musical shorts, sports reels (usually narrated by sportscaster Bill Stern), and travelogues. Its "Screen Snapshots" series, showing behind-the-scenes footage of Hollywood stars, was a Columbia perennial that the studio had been releasing since the silent-movie days; producer-director Ralph Staub kept this series going through 1958.

1940s
In the 1940s, propelled in part by the surge in audiences for their films during World War II, the studio also benefited from the popularity of its biggest star, Rita Hayworth. Columbia maintained a long list of contractees well into the 1950s; Glenn Ford, Penny Singleton, William Holden, Judy Holliday, The Three Stooges, Ann Miller, Evelyn Keyes, Ann Doran, Jack Lemmon, Cleo Moore, Barbara Hale, Adele Jergens, Larry Parks, Arthur Lake, Lucille Ball, Kerwin Mathews and Kim Novak. Harry Cohn monitored the budgets of his films, and the studio got the maximum use out of costly sets, costumes, and props by reusing them in other films. Many of Columbia's low-budget "B" pictures and short subjects have an expensive look, thanks to Columbia's efficient recycling policy. Cohn was reluctant to spend lavish sums on even his most important pictures, and it was not until 1943 that he agreed to use three-strip Technicolor in a live-action feature. Columbia was the last major studio to employ the expensive color process. Columbia's first Technicolor feature was the western The Desperadoes, starring Randolph Scott and Glenn Ford. Cohn quickly used Technicolor again for Cover Girl, a Hayworth vehicle that instantly was a smash hit, released in 1944, and for the fanciful biography of Frédéric Chopin, A Song to Remember, with Cornel Wilde, released in 1945. Another biopic, 1946's The Jolson Story with Larry Parks and Evelyn Keyes, was started in black-and-white, but when Cohn saw how well the project was proceeding, he scrapped the footage and insisted on filming in Technicolor.

In 1948, the United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. anti-trust decision forced Hollywood motion picture companies to divest themselves of the theater chains that they owned. Since Columbia did not own any theaters, it was now on equal terms with the largest studios. The studio soon replaced RKO on the list of the "Big Five" studios.

Screen Gems
In 1946, Columbia dropped the Screen Gems brand from its cartoon line, but retained the Screen Gems name for various ancillary activities, including a 16 mm film-rental agency and a TV-commercial production company. On November 8, 1948, Columbia adopted the Screen Gems name for its television production subsidiary when the studio acquired Pioneer Telefilms, a television commercial company founded by Jack Cohn's son, Ralph. Pioneer had been founded in 1947, and was later reorganized as Screen Gems. The studio opened its doors for business in New York on April 15, 1949. By 1951, Screen Gems became a full-fledged television studio and became a major producer of sitcoms for TV, beginning with Father Knows Best and followed by The Donna Reed Show, The Partridge Family, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and The Monkees.

On July 1, 1956, studio veteran Irving Briskin stepped down as manager of Columbia Pictures and formed his own production company Briskin Productions, Inc. to release series through Screen Gems and supervise all of its productions. On December 10, Screen Gems expanded into television syndication by acquiring Hygo Television Films (a.k.a. "Serials Inc.") and its affiliated company United Television Films, Inc. Hygo Television Films was founded in 1951 by Jerome Hyams, who also acquired United Television Films in 1955 that was founded by Archie Mayers.

In 1957, two years before its parent company Columbia dropped UPA, Screen Gems entered a distribution deal with Hanna-Barbera Productions, which produced classic TV cartoon shows such as The Flintstones, Ruff and Reddy, The Huckleberry Hound Show, Yogi Bear, Jonny Quest, The Jetsons and others. Screen Gems were distributed until 1967 when Hanna-Barbera was sold to Taft Broadcasting. In 1960, the cartoon studio became a publicly traded company under the name Screen Gems, Inc., when Columbia spun off an 18% stake.

1950s
By 1950, Columbia had discontinued most of its popular series films (Boston Blackie, Blondie, The Lone Wolf, The Crime Doctor, Rusty, etc.) Only Jungle Jim, launched by producer Sam Katzman in 1949, kept going through 1955. Katzman contributed greatly to Columbia's success by producing dozens of topical feature films, including crime dramas, science-fiction stories, and rock'n'roll musicals. Columbia kept making serials until 1956 and two-reel comedies until 1957, after other studios had abandoned these mediums.

As the larger studios declined in the 1950s, Columbia's position improved. This was largely because it did not suffer from the massive loss of income that the other major studios suffered from the loss of their theaters (well over 90 percent, in some cases). Columbia continued to produce 40-plus pictures a year, offering productions that often broke ground and kept audiences coming to theaters. Some of its significant films from this era include the studio's adaptation of the controversial James Jones novel From Here to Eternity (1953), On the Waterfront (1954), and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) with William Holden and Alec Guinness, all of which won the Best Picture Oscar. Another significant film of the studio was the free adaptation of George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1956).

Columbia also released the productions of the English studio Warwick Films (by producers Irving Allen and Albert R. Broccoli), as well as many films by producer Carl Foreman, who resided in England. Columbia distributed some films made by Hammer, which was also based in England.

In December 1956, Jack Cohn, co-founder and executive vice-president, died. In 1958, Columbia established its own record label, Colpix Records, initially run by Jonie Taps, who headed Columbia's music department, and later Paul Wexler and Lester Sill. Colpix was active until 1966 when Columbia entered into a joint agreement with RCA Victor and discontinued Colpix in favor of its new label, Colgems Records.

1960s: After Harry Cohn's death
Shortly after closing their short subjects department, Columbia president Harry Cohn died of a heart attack in February 1958. His nephew Ralph Cohn died in 1959, ending almost four decades of family management.

The new management was headed by Abe Schneider, who had joined the company as an office boy out of high school and become a director in 1929, rising through the financial side of the business. In 1963, Columbia acquired music publisher Aldon Music. By the late 1960s, Columbia had an ambiguous identity, offering old-fashioned fare such as A Man for All Seasons and Oliver! along with the more contemporary Easy Rider and The Monkees. After turning down releasing Albert R. Broccoli's Eon Productions James Bond films, Columbia hired Broccoli's former partner Irving Allen to produce the Matt Helm series with Dean Martin. Columbia also produced a James Bond spoof, Casino Royale (1967), in conjunction with Charles K. Feldman, which held the adaptation rights for that novel.

By 1966, the studio was suffering from box-office failures, and takeover rumors began surfacing. Columbia was surviving solely on the profits made from Screen Gems, whose holdings also included radio and television stations. On December 23, 1968, Screen Gems merged with Columbia Pictures Corporation and became part of the newly formed Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. for $24.5 million. Schneider was chairman of the holding company and Leo Jaffe president. Following the merger, in March 1969, CPI purchased Bell Records for $3.5 million (mainly in CPI stock), retaining Larry Uttal as label president.

1970s
Nearly bankrupt by the early 1970s, the studio was saved via a radical overhaul: the Gower Street Studios (now called "Sunset Gower Studios") were sold and a new management team was brought in. In 1972, Columbia and Warner Bros. formed a partnership called The Burbank Studios, in which both companies shared the Warner studio lot in Burbank.

In 1971, Columbia Pictures established sheet music publisher Columbia Pictures Publications, with vice president and general manager Frank J. Hackinson, who later became the president.

In 1973, Allen & Co took a financial stake in Columbia Pictures Industries and Alan Hirschfield was appointed CEO, succeeding Leo Jaffe who became chairman. Stanley Schneider, son of Abe Schneider (who became honorary chairman before leaving the board in 1975) was replaced as head of the Columbia Pictures studio by David Begelman, who reported to Hirschfield. Some years later Begelman was involved in a check-forging scandal that badly hurt the studio's image. On May 6, 1974, Columbia retired the Screen Gems name from television, renaming its television division to the name of Columbia Pictures Television. The name was suggested by David Gerber, who was then president of Columbia's television division. The same year, Columbia Pictures acquired Rastar Pictures, which included Rastar Productions, Rastar Features, and Rastar Television. Ray Stark then founded Rastar Films, the reincarnation of Rastar Pictures, which was acquired by Columbia Pictures in February 1980.

Columbia Pictures also reorganized its music and record divisions. Clive Davis was hired as a record and music consultant by Columbia Pictures in 1974 and later became temporary president of Bell Records. Davis's real goal was to revitalize Columbia Pictures' music division. With a $10 million investment by CPI, and a reorganization of the various Columbia Pictures legacy labels (Colpix, Colgems, and Bell), Davis introduced Columbia Pictures' new record division, Arista Records, in November 1974, with Davis himself owning 20% of the new venture. Columbia maintained control of the label until 1979, when it was sold to Ariola Records. In addition, Columbia sold its music publishing business (Columbia-Screen Gems) to EMI in August 1976 for $15 million. Both would later be reunited with Columbia Pictures under Sony ownership.

In December 1976, Columbia Pictures acquired the arcade game company D. Gottlieb & Co. for $50 million.

In 1978, Begelman was suspended for having embezzled money from Columbia. Hirschfield was forced out for his refusal to reinstate him. Begelman later resigned and was replaced by Daniel Melnick in June 1978. Fay Vincent was hired to replace Hirschfield.

Frank Price became president of production in 1978. In March 1979, he would become president of Columbia Pictures, succeeding Melnick. During Price's tenure he was responsible for turning out 9 of the top 10 grossing films in Columbia's history.

In the fall of 1978, Kirk Kerkorian, a Vegas casino mogul who also controlled Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, acquired a 5.5% stake in Columbia Pictures. He then announced on November 20, that he intended to launch a tender offer to acquire another 20% for the studio. On December 14, a standstill agreement was reached with Columbia by promising not to go beyond 25% or seeking control for at least three years.

On January 15, 1979, the United States Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit against Kerkorian to block him from holding a stake in Columbia while controlling MGM. On February 19, 1979, Columbia Pictures Television acquired TOY Productions; the production company founded by Bud Yorkin and writers Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein in 1976. In May, Kerkorian acquired an additional 214,000 shares in Columbia, raising his stake to 25%. On August 2, the trial began; on August 14, the court ruled in favor for Kerkorian. In 1979, Columbia agreed with Time-Life Video to release 20 titles on videocassette.

1980s: Coca-Cola, Tri-Star, and other acquisitions and ventures
On September 30, 1980, Kerkorian sued Columbia for ignoring shareholders' interest and violating an agreement with him. Columbia later accused him on October 2, of scheming with Nelson Bunker Hunt to gain control of Columbia. In 1981, Kerkorian sold his 25% stake in Columbia back to CPI. Columbia Pictures later acquired 81% of The Walter Reade Organization, which owned 11 theaters; it purchased the remaining 19% in 1985.

Around this time, the studio put Steven Spielberg's proposed follow up to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Night Skies, into turnaround. The project eventually became the highest-grossing film of the time, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Columbia received a share of the profits for its involvement in the development.

On May 17, 1982, Columbia Pictures acquired Spelling-Goldberg Productions for over $40 million. With a healthier balance-sheet (due in large part to box office hits like Kramer vs. Kramer, Stir Crazy, The Blue Lagoon, and Stripes) Columbia was bought by beverage company The Coca-Cola Company on June 22, 1982, for $750 million. Studio head Frank Price mixed big hits like Tootsie, Gandhi, The Karate Kid, The Big Chill, and Ghostbusters with many costly flops. To share the increasing cost of film production, Coke brought in two outside investors whose earlier efforts in Hollywood had come to nothing. In 1982, Columbia, Time Inc.'s HBO and CBS announced, as a joint venture, "Nova Pictures"; this enterprise was to be renamed Tri-Star Pictures. In 1983, Price left Columbia Pictures after a dispute with Coca-Cola and went back to Universal. He was replaced by Guy McElwaine.

In the early 1980s, Columbia and Tri-Star Pictures set up a film partnership with Delphi Film Associates and acquired an interest in various film releases. In 1984, Delphi Film Associates III acquired an interest in the Tri-Star and Columbia film slate of 1984, which would make a $60 million offering in the financing of film production. Also that year, Columbia Pictures had bought out the rights to Hardbodies, which was once premiered on The Playboy Channel.

Columbia Pictures expanded its music publishing operations in the 1980s, acquiring Big 3 Publishing (the former sheet music operations of Robbins, Feist, and Miller) from MGM/UA Communications Co. in 1983, Belwin-Mills Publishing from Simon & Schuster in 1985, and Al Gallico Music in 1987.

On June 18, 1985, Columbia's parent acquired Norman Lear and Jerry Perenchio's Embassy Communications, Inc. (including Embassy Pictures, Embassy Television, Tandem Productions, and Embassy Home Entertainment), mostly for its library of television series such as All in the Family and The Jeffersons, for $485 million. On November 16, 1985, CBS dropped out of the Tri-Star venture.

Many changes occurred in 1986. Expanding its television franchise, on May 5, Columbia also bought Merv Griffin Enterprises for $250 million. The company was notable for: Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!, Dance Fever, and The Merv Griffin Show. Months later on August 28, the Columbia Pictures Television Group acquired Danny Arnold's Danny Arnold Productions, Inc.. The deal included Arnold's rights to the sitcom Barney Miller (Four D Productions) among other produced series such as Fish (The Mimus Corporation), A.E.S. Hudson Street (Triseme Corporation), and Joe Bash (Tetagram Ltd.). Arnold had dropped the federal and state lawsuits against the television studio which were accusing them of antitrust violations, fraud, and breach of fiduciary duty.

Coca-Cola sold the Embassy Pictures division to Dino de Laurentiis, who later folded Embassy Pictures into Dino de Laurentiis Productions, Inc. The company was renamed to De Laurentiis Entertainment Group. Coca-Cola also sold Embassy Home Entertainment to Nelson Entertainment. Coca-Cola, however, retained the Embassy Pictures name, logo, and trademark. HBO was the last partner to drop out of the Tri-Star venture and sold its shares to Columbia Tri-Star later expanded into the television business with its new Tri-Star Television division.

The same year, Columbia recruited British producer David Puttnam to head the studio. Puttnam attempted to defy Hollywood filmmaking by making smaller films instead of big tentpole pictures. His criticism of American film production, in addition to the fact that the films he greenlit were mostly flops, left Coke and Hollywood concerned.

Puttnam then discontinued multi-picture pacts with various filmmakers, including Norman Jewison, which was permitted to expire before all of the promised product could be delivered. Under Puttnam's control, he set up a $270 million package of in-house pictures and acquisitions, and the average lineup of 25 features was expected to be $10.78 million, about $4 million less of the cost at Columbia before Puttnam came on board, and a number of low-cost acquisitions such as Spike Lee's $5 million picture School Daze.

On October 22, 1986, Greg Coote was appointed by Columbia Pictures as key executive of the studio, to complement David Puttman's pledge on Columbia Pictures to fix its sights over its international market. On December 17, 1986, the company acquired a 30% share in Roadshow, Coote & Carroll, a company Greg Coote headed, and decided that they would pick up films and miniseries to put an effort to add it up to Columbia's shares, and listed dozens of theatrical and television films and dozens of miniseries throughout the addition of the Columbia slate.

On June 26, 1987, Coca-Cola sold The Walter Reade Organization to Cineplex Odeon Corporation. On October 14, 1987, Coca-Cola's entertainment division invested in $30 million in Castle Rock Entertainment with five Hollywood executives. Coke's entertainment business division owned 40% in Castle Rock, while the execs owned 60%.

Columbia Pictures Entertainment era (1987–1989)
The volatile film business made Coke shareholders nervous, and following the critical and box-office failure of Ishtar, Coke spun off its entertainment holdings on December 21, 1987, and sold it to Tri-Star Pictures for $3.1 billion. Tri-Star Pictures, Inc. was renamed as Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc. (CPE), with Coke owning 80% of the company. Both studios continued to produce and distribute films under their separate names.

Puttnam was ousted from the position after only one year. Puttnam was succeeded by Dawn Steel. Other small-scale, "boutique" entities were created: Nelson Entertainment, a joint venture with British and Canadian partners, Triumph Films, jointly owned with French studio Gaumont, and which is now a low-budget label, and Castle Rock Entertainment.

On January 2, 1988, Columbia/Embassy Television and Tri-Star Television were formed into the new Columbia Pictures Television and Embassy Communications was renamed as ELP Communications. In early 1988, CPE set up a new subsidiary, Triumph Releasing Corporation, which handled administrative services related to distribution of Columbia and Tri-Star's films for the North American market, while Triumph was responsible for the sales, marketing and distribution of Columbia and Tri-Star films under the direction of each individual studio internationally, with Patrick N. Williamson serving as head of Triumph.

On January 16, 1988, CPE's stock fell slightly in the market on its first day trading in the New York Stock Exchange. Coke spun off 34.1 million of its Columbia shares to its shareholders by reducing its stake in CPE from 80% to 49%. On April 13, 1988, CPE spun off Tri-Star Pictures, Inc. as a reformed company of the Tri-Star studio. In April 1988, CPE sold its music publishing operations to the British company Filmtrax. (Filmtrax was acquired by Thorn EMI in 1990.) In June 1988, CPE announced the sale of Columbia Pictures Publications (consisting of the print music operations) to the investment firm Boston Ventures and was renamed CPP/Belwin. CPP/Belwin was acquired by Warner Chappell Music of Warner Bros. in 1994.

On February 2, 1989, Columbia Pictures Television formed a joint-venture with Norman Lear's Act III Communications called Act III Television (now Act III Productions) to produce television series instead of managing.

Sony era (1989–present)
On September 28, 1989, the Columbia Pictures empire was sold to the electronics giant Sony, one of several Japanese firms then buying American properties, for the amount of $3.4 billion. The sale netted Coca-Cola a profit from its investment in the studio. Sony then hired two producers, Peter Guber and Jon Peters, to serve as coheads of production when Sony also acquired the Guber-Peters Entertainment Company (the former game show production company, Barris Industries) for $200 million on September 29, 1989. Guber and Peters had just signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros. in 1989, having been with the company since 1983. Warner Bros., then a subsidiary of Warner Communications, sued Sony for $1 billion. Sony completed CPE's acquisition on November 8, and the Guber-Peters acquisition was completed on the following day.

On December 1, 1989, Guber and Peters hired a longtime lawyer of GPEC, Alan J. Levine, to the post of president and COO of Columbia's newly formed company Filmed Entertainment Group (FEG). FEG consisted of Columbia Pictures, Tri-Star Pictures, Triumph Releasing, Columbia Pictures Television, Columbia Pictures Television Distribution, Merv Griffin Enterprises, RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video (internationally known as RCA/Columbia Pictures International Video), Guber-Peters Entertainment Company, and ancillary and distribution companies.

1990s
In 1990, Sony ended up paying hundreds of millions of dollars, gave up a half-interest in its Columbia House Records Club mail-order business, and bought from Time Warner the former Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio lot in Culver City, which Warner Communications had acquired in its takeover of Lorimar-Telepictures in 1989, thus ending the Burbank Studios partnership. Initially renamed Columbia Studios, Sony spent $100 million to refurbish the rechristened Sony Pictures Studios lot. Guber and Peters set out to prove they were worth this fortune, but though there were to be some successes, there were also many costly flops. The same year, Frank Price was made the chairman of Columbia Pictures. His company Price Entertainment, Inc., which he founded in 1987, was merged with Columbia in March 1991. Price left Columbia on October 4, 1991, and was replaced by Warner Bros. executive Mark Canton and reactivated Price Entertainment as Price Entertainment Company with a nonexclusive deal with SPE. Peters was fired by his partner Guber in 1991, but Guber later resigned in 1994 to form Mandalay Entertainment the following year. The entire operation was reorganized and renamed Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) on August 7, 1991, and at the same time, TriStar (which had officially lost its hyphen) relaunched its television division in October. In December 1991, SPE created Sony Pictures Classics for arthouse fare and was headed by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard, and Marcie Bloom, who previously operated United Artists Classics and Orion Classics. Publicly humiliated, Sony suffered an enormous loss on its investment in Columbia, taking a $2.7 billion write-off in 1994. John Calley took over as SPE president in November 1996, installing Amy Pascal as Columbia Pictures president and Chris Lee as president of production at TriStar. By the next spring, the studios were clearly rebounding, setting a record pace at the box office. On December 7, 1992, Sony Pictures acquired the Barry & Enright game show library.

On February 21, 1994, Columbia Pictures Television and TriStar Television merged to form Columbia TriStar Television (CTT), including the rights to Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! after CTT folded Merv Griffin Enterprises in June. That same year, the company also purchased Stewart Television, known for producing game shows such as Pyramid and Chain Reaction, among others. On July 21, 1995, Sony Pictures teamed up with Jim Henson Productions and created the joint venture Jim Henson Pictures.

In the 1990s, Columbia announced plans for a rival James Bond franchise since they owned the rights to Casino Royale and were planning to make a third version of Thunderball with Kevin McClory. MGM and Danjaq, LLC, owners of the franchise, sued Sony Pictures in 1997, with the legal dispute ending two years later in an out-of-court settlement. Sony traded the Casino Royale rights for $10 million, as well as the Spider-Man filming rights. The superhero became Columbia's most successful franchise: The first movie came out in 2002, and as of 2021, there have been seven follow-up movies with US grosses in excess of $2.5 billion. Between the releases of the first and second sequels in 2004 and 2007, Sony led a consortium that purchased MGM, giving it distribution rights to the James Bond franchise.

In 1997, Columbia Pictures ranked as the highest-grossing movie studio in the United States, with a gross of $1.256 billion. In 1998, Columbia and TriStar merged to form the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group (a.k.a. Columbia TriStar Pictures), though both studios still produce and distribute under their own names. Pascal retained her position as president of the newly united Columbia Pictures, while Lee became the combined studio's head of production. On December 8, 1998, Sony Pictures Entertainment relaunched the Screen Gems brand as a horror and independent film distribution company after shutting down Triumph Films. In 1999, TriStar Television was folded into CTT. Two years later, CPT was folded into CTT as well.

2000s
In the 2000s, Sony broadened its release schedule by backing Revolution Studios, the production/distribution company headed by Joe Roth. On October 25, 2001, CTT and Columbia TriStar Television Distribution (CTTD) merged to form Columbia TriStar Domestic Television. On September 16, 2002, Columbia TriStar Domestic Television was renamed Sony Pictures Television. Also in 2002, Columbia broke the record for biggest domestic theatrical gross, with a tally of $1.575 billion, coincidentally breaking its own record of $1.256 billion, set in 1997. The 2002 gross was primarily raised by such blockbusters as Spider-Man, Men in Black II, and XXX.

The studio was also the most lucrative of 2004, with over $1.338 billion in the domestic box office with films such as Spider-Man 2, 50 First Dates, and The Grudge, and in 2006. Columbia's box office successes of 2006 included such blockbusters as The Da Vinci Code, The Pursuit of Happyness, Monster House, Casino Royale, and Open Season. The studio not only finished the year in first place, but also reached an all-time record high sum of $1.711 billion, which was an all-time yearly record for any studio. It was surpassed by Warner Bros. in 2009.

2010s
On October 29, 2010, Matt Tolmach, the copresident of Columbia Pictures, stepped down to produce The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel. Doug Belgrad, the other copresident of Columbia, was promoted to sole president of the studio. Belgrad and Tolmach had been copresidents of the studio since 2008 and had been working together as a team since 2003. The same day, Hanna Minghella was named president of production of Columbia.

On November 18, 2012, Sony Pictures announced it has passed the profit line of $4 billion worldwide with the success of Columbia's releases Skyfall, The Amazing Spider-Man, 21 Jump Street, Men in Black 3, and Hotel Transylvania and Screen Gems' releases Underworld: Awakening, The Vow, and Resident Evil: Retribution.

On July 16, 2014, Doug Belgrad was named president of the Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group. He exited the post in June 2016. On June 2, Sanford Panitch, who had been the head of international local language production at the studio, was named president of Columbia Pictures.

2020s
In April 2021, Sony signed a deal with Netflix, Inc. and The Walt Disney Company that allows Sony's titles from 2022 to 2026 to stream on Netflix, Hulu and Disney+. Netflix signed for exclusive "pay 1 window" streaming rights, which is typically an 18-month window following its theatrical release, and Disney signed for "pay 2 window" rights for the films, which would be streamed on Disney+ and Hulu as well as broadcast on Disney's linear television networks. On December 17, 2021, Columbia released Spider-Man: No Way Home. The movie grossed over $1 billion in the box office, being the first film since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to gross a billion. The film became Sony Pictures' highest-grossing release.

On January 10, 2024, Sony Pictures celebrated the centennial anniversary of the founding of Columbia Pictures with a new motion logo; the centennial print logo was previously revealed on November 14, 2023. The motion logo made its theatrical debut in the 2024 re-release of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

Logo
The Columbia Pictures logo, featuring the Torch Lady, a woman carrying a torch and wearing a drape (representing Columbia, a personification of the United States), has gone through five major changes. It has often been compared to the Statue of Liberty, which was an inspiration to the Columbia Pictures logo.

History
Originally in 1924, Columbia Pictures used a logo featuring a female Roman soldier holding a shield in her left hand and a stick of wheat in her right hand, which was based on actress Doris Doscher (known as the model for the statue on the Pulitzer Fountain) as the Standing Liberty quarter used from 1916 to 1930, though the studio's version was given longer hair. The logo changed in 1928 with a new woman wearing a draped flag and torch. The woman wore a headdress, the stola and carried the palla of ancient Rome, and above her were the words "A Columbia Production" ("A Columbia Picture" or "Columbia Pictures Corporation") written in an arch. The illustration was based upon the actress Evelyn Venable, known for providing the voice of the Blue Fairy in Walt Disney's Pinocchio. An earlier version of the 1928 logo (used during the silent film era) with the slogan, "Gems of the Screen"; itself a takeoff on the song "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean", later inspired the renaming of the Charles Mintz Studio into Screen Gems.

In 1936, the logo was changed into the well known classic look: the Torch Lady now stood on a pedestal, wore no headdress, and the text "Columbia" appeared in chiseled letters behind her. Pittsburgh native Jane Chester Bartholomew, whom Harry Cohn discovered working as an extra at Columbia, portrayed the Torch Lady in the logo. There were several variations to the logo over the years—significantly, a color version was done in 1943 for The Desperadoes. Two years earlier, the flag became just a drape with no markings. The latter change came after a federal law was passed making it illegal to wear an American flag as clothing. In the 1950s, the woman's robe was redrawn and shaded with a plunging neckline and an exposed slipper-clad foot. A new form of animation was used on the logo as well, with a torch that radiates light instead of flickers. From 1955 to 1963, Columbia used the woman from the 1936 logo under the Screen Gems banner, officially billing itself as a part of "the Hollywood studios of Columbia Pictures", as spoken in announcements at the end of some Screen Gems series. 1976's Taxi Driver was one of the last films released before the "Torch Lady" was revamped, although the 1936 logo would be later used in several Columbia releases, generally to match the year a given film is set in.

From 1976 to 1993, Columbia Pictures used two logos. The first, from 1976 to 1981 (or until 1982 for international territories) used just a sunburst representing the beams from the torch, although the woman appears briefly in the opening logo. The score accompanying the first logo was composed by Suzanne Ciani. The studio hired visual effects pioneer Robert Abel to animate the first logo. The image was created with over fifty light exposures that included streak and special filter passes. The woman returned in 1981, but in a much smoother form described as resembling a Coke bottle. The 1981 version was also used for Triumph Films, with the woman under the Arc de Triomphe in the logo. During the studio's run with the Coca-Cola Company from 1982 to 1989, a golden version of the Torch Lady was used for the Columbia Pictures Television logo until it was replaced with the 1981 version after Coca-Cola sold Columbia to Sony. The slogans for the 1976 and 1981 logos were "Let us entertain you" and "Movies That Matter", respectively.

In 1992, the longest-running, and perhaps best known, iteration of the logo was created; the television division was the first to use it. Films began to use the new logo the year after, when Scott Mednick and the Mednick Group were hired by Peter Guber to create logos for all the entertainment properties then owned by Sony Pictures. Mednick hired New Orleans artist Michael Deas, to digitally repaint the logo and return the woman to her "classic" look. An urban legend is that actress Annette Bening was the model for the current logo. Bening's face was later superimposed onto the Torch Lady in the opening intro of What Planet Are You From? (2000) as an inside joke. Michael Deas hired Jennifer Joseph, a 28-year-old graphics artist for The Times-Picayune, as a model for the logo. Due to time constraints, she agreed to help out on her lunch break. It was the first and only time she ever modeled. Joseph had recently discovered she was pregnant at the time. Deas also hired The Times-Picayune photographer Kathy Anderson to photograph the reference photography. The animation was created by Synthespian Studios in 1993 by Jeff Kleiser and Diana Walczak, who used 2D elements from the painting and converted it to 3D. The studio being part of Sony would not be referenced on-screen until 1996. VHS promos featured the current logo and the older logos with the number 75 behind the Torch Lady, commemorating the studio's 75th anniversary in 1999 with the slogan, "Lighting Up Screens Around The World". The current logo was also used for Screen Gems Network and Columbia Showcase Theatre, both now defunct programming blocks that featured syndicated airings of Sony Pictures-owned shows and films, respectively. In 2012, the current logo was displayed as a painting at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. Deas gave an interview to WWL-TV: "I never thought it would make it to the silver screen and I never thought it would still be up 20 years later, and I certainly never thought it would be in a museum, so it's kind of gratifying." On November 14, 2023, Sony unveiled a special centennial logo ahead the studios’ 100th anniversary, consisting of the current Torch Lady within a stylized “100” and later posted an animation that showcases the older logos in the same vein as the Spider-Verse films on January 10, 2024, the 100th anniversary of the founding of Columbia Pictures.

Highest-grossing films
‡ Includes theatrical reissue(s).

title: Columbia Pictures


text:
Binary phase

In materials chemistry, a binary phase or binary compound is a chemical compound containing two different elements. Some binary phase compounds are molecular, e.g. carbon tetrachloride (CCl4). More typically binary phase refers to extended solids. Famous examples zinc sulfide, which contains zinc and sulfur, and tungsten carbide, which contains tungsten and carbon.

Phases with higher degrees of complexity feature more elements, e.g. three elements in ternary phases, four elements in quaternary phases. These phases exhibit a higher degree of complexity due to the interaction of these elements at different conditions.

title: Binary phase


text:
Rhin

The Rhin is a 133.3 km long river in Brandenburg, Germany, right tributary to the river Havel. It flows through the city Neuruppin and several lakes. A few kilometres downstream from Rhinow it flows into the Havel, about 20 km upstream from where the Havel meets the Elbe.

title: Rhin


text:
Chelation

Chelation is a type of bonding of ions and the molecules to metal ions. It involves the formation or presence of two or more separate coordinate bonds between a polydentate (multiple bonded) ligand and a single central metal atom. These ligands are called chelants, chelators, chelating agents, or sequestering agents. They are usually organic compounds, but this is not a necessity.

The word chelation is derived from Greek χηλή, chēlē, meaning "claw"; the ligands lie around the central atom like the claws of a crab. The term chelate was first applied in 1920 by Sir Gilbert T. Morgan and H. D. K. Drew, who stated: "The adjective chelate, derived from the great claw or chele (Greek) of the crab or other crustaceans, is suggested for the caliperlike groups which function as two associating units and fasten to the central atom so as to produce heterocyclic rings."

Chelation is useful in applications such as providing nutritional supplements, in chelation therapy to remove toxic metals from the body, as contrast agents in MRI scanning, in manufacturing using homogeneous catalysts, in chemical water treatment to assist in the removal of metals, and in fertilizers.

Chelate effect

The chelate effect is the greater affinity of chelating ligands for a metal ion than that of similar nonchelating (monodentate) ligands for the same metal.

The thermodynamic principles underpinning the chelate effect are illustrated by the contrasting affinities of copper(II) for ethylenediamine (en) vs. methylamine.

In ($$) the ethylenediamine forms a chelate complex with the copper ion. Chelation results in the formation of a five-membered CuC2N2 ring. In ($$) the bidentate ligand is replaced by two monodentate methylamine ligands of approximately the same donor power, indicating that the Cu–N bonds are approximately the same in the two reactions.

The thermodynamic approach to describing the chelate effect considers the equilibrium constant for the reaction: the larger the equilibrium constant, the higher the concentration of the complex.

Electrical charges have been omitted for simplicity of notation. The square brackets indicate concentration, and the subscripts to the stability constants, β, indicate the stoichiometry of the complex. When the analytical concentration of methylamine is twice that of ethylenediamine and the concentration of copper is the same in both reactions, the concentration [Cu(en)] is much higher than the concentration [Cu(MeNH2)2] because β11 ≫ β12.

An equilibrium constant, K, is related to the standard Gibbs free energy, $$ by
 * $$\Delta G^\ominus = - RT \ln K = \Delta H^\ominus - T \Delta S^\ominus$$

where R is the gas constant and T is the temperature in kelvins. $$ is the standard enthalpy change of the reaction and $$ is the standard entropy change.

Since the enthalpy should be approximately the same for the two reactions, the difference between the two stability constants is due to the effects of entropy. In equation ($$) there are two particles on the left and one on the right, whereas in equation ($\Delta G^\ominus$) there are three particles on the left and one on the right. This difference means that less entropy of disorder is lost when the chelate complex is formed with bidentate ligand than when the complex with monodentate ligands is formed. This is one of the factors contributing to the entropy difference. Other factors include solvation changes and ring formation. Some experimental data to illustrate the effect are shown in the following table.

These data confirm that the enthalpy changes are approximately equal for the two reactions and that the main reason for the greater stability of the chelate complex is the entropy term, which is much less unfavorable. In general it is difficult to account precisely for thermodynamic values in terms of changes in solution at the molecular level, but it is clear that the chelate effect is predominantly an effect of entropy.

Other explanations, including that of Schwarzenbach, are discussed in Greenwood and Earnshaw (loc.cit).

In nature
Numerous biomolecules exhibit the ability to dissolve certain metal cations. Thus, proteins, polysaccharides, and polynucleic acids are excellent polydentate ligands for many metal ions. Organic compounds such as the amino acids glutamic acid and histidine, organic diacids such as malate, and polypeptides such as phytochelatin are also typical chelators. In addition to these adventitious chelators, several biomolecules are specifically produced to bind certain metals (see next section).

Virtually all metalloenzymes feature metals that are chelated, usually to peptides or cofactors and prosthetic groups. Such chelating agents include the porphyrin rings in hemoglobin and chlorophyll. Many microbial species produce water-soluble pigments that serve as chelating agents, termed siderophores. For example, species of Pseudomonas are known to secrete pyochelin and pyoverdine that bind iron. Enterobactin, produced by E. coli, is the strongest chelating agent known. The marine mussels use metal chelation esp. Fe3+ chelation with the Dopa residues in mussel foot protein-1 to improve the strength of the threads that they use to secure themselves to surfaces.

In earth science, chemical weathering is attributed to organic chelating agents (e.g., peptides and sugars) that extract metal ions from minerals and rocks. Most metal complexes in the environment and in nature are bound in some form of chelate ring (e.g., with a humic acid or a protein). Thus, metal chelates are relevant to the mobilization of metals in the soil, the uptake and the accumulation of metals into plants and microorganisms. Selective chelation of heavy metals is relevant to bioremediation (e.g., removal of 137Cs from radioactive waste).

Animal feed additives
Synthetic chelates such as ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) proved too stable and not nutritionally viable. If the mineral was taken from the EDTA ligand, the ligand could not be used by the body and would be expelled. During the expulsion process the EDTA ligand randomly chelated and stripped other minerals from the body. According to the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), a metal–amino acid chelate is defined as the product resulting from the reaction of metal ions from a soluble metal salt with amino acids, with a mole ratio in the range of 1–3 (preferably 2) moles of amino acids for one mole of metal. The average weight of the hydrolyzed amino acids must be approximately 150 and the resulting molecular weight of the chelate must not exceed 800 Da. Since the early development of these compounds, much more research has been conducted, and has been applied to human nutrition products in a similar manner to the animal nutrition experiments that pioneered the technology. Ferrous bis-glycinate is an example of one of these compounds that has been developed for human nutrition.

Dental use
Dentin adhesives were first designed and produced in the 1950s based on a co-monomer chelate with calcium on the surface of the tooth and generated very weak water-resistant chemical bonding (2–3 MPa).

Chelation therapy
Chelation therapy is an antidote for poisoning by mercury, arsenic, and lead. Chelating agents convert these metal ions into a chemically and biochemically inert form that can be excreted. Chelation using calcium disodium EDTA has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for serious cases of lead poisoning. It is not approved for treating "heavy metal toxicity". Although beneficial in cases of serious lead poisoning, use of disodium EDTA (edetate disodium) instead of calcium disodium EDTA has resulted in fatalities due to hypocalcemia. Disodium EDTA is not approved by the FDA for any use, and all FDA-approved chelation therapy products require a prescription.

Contrast agents
Chelate complexes of gadolinium are often used as contrast agents in MRI scans, although iron particle and manganese chelate complexes have also been explored. Bifunctional chelate complexes of zirconium, gallium, fluorine, copper, yttrium, bromine, or iodine are often used for conjugation to monoclonal antibodies for use in antibody-based PET imaging. These chelate complexes often employ the usage of hexadentate ligands such as desferrioxamine B (DFO), according to Meijs et al., and the gadolinium complexes often employ the usage of octadentate ligands such as DTPA, according to Desreux et al. Auranofin, a chelate complex of gold, is used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, and penicillamine, which forms chelate complexes of copper, is used in the treatment of Wilson's disease and cystinuria, as well as refractory rheumatoid arthritis.

Nutritional advantages and issues
Chelation in the intestinal tract is a cause of numerous interactions between drugs and metal ions (also known as "minerals" in nutrition). As examples, antibiotic drugs of the tetracycline and quinolone families are chelators of Fe2+, Ca2+, and Mg2+ ions.

EDTA, which binds to calcium, is used to alleviate the hypercalcemia that often results from band keratopathy. The calcium may then be removed from the cornea, allowing for some increase in clarity of vision for the patient.

Homogeneous catalysts are often chelated complexes. A representative example is the use of BINAP (a bidentate phosphine) in Noyori asymmetric hydrogenation and asymmetric isomerization. The latter has the practical use of manufacture of synthetic (–)-menthol.

Cleaning and water softening
A chelating agent is the main component of some rust removal formulations. Citric acid is used to soften water in soaps and laundry detergents. A common synthetic chelator is EDTA. Phosphonates are also well-known chelating agents. Chelators are used in water treatment programs and specifically in steam engineering. Although the treatment is often referred to as "softening," chelation has little effect on the water's mineral content, other than to make it soluble and lower the water's pH level.

Fertilizers
Metal chelate compounds are common components of fertilizers to provide micronutrients. These micronutrients (manganese, iron, zinc, copper) are required for the health of the plants. Most fertilizers contain phosphate salts that, in the absence of chelating agents, typically convert these metal ions into insoluble solids that are of no nutritional value to the plants. EDTA is the typical chelating agent that keeps these metal ions in a soluble form.

Economic situation
Because of their wide needs, the overall chelating agents growth was 4 % annually during 2009-2014 and the trend is likely to increase. Aminopolycarboxylic acids chelators are the most widely consumed chelating agents; however, the percentage of the greener alternative chelators in this category continues to grow. The consumption of traditional aminopolycarboxylates chelators, in particular the EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) and NTA (nitrilotriacetic acid), is declining (–6% annually), because of the persisting concerns over their toxicity and negative environmental impact. In 2013, these greener alternative chelants represented approximately 15% of the total aminopolycarboxylic acids demand. This is expected to rise to around 21% by 2018, replacing and aminophosphonic acids used in cleaning applications. Examples of some Greener alternative chelating agents include ethylenediamine disuccinic acid (EDDS), polyaspartic acid (PASA), methylglycinediacetic acid (MGDA), glutamic diacetic acid (L-GLDA), citrate, gluconic acid, amino acids, plant extracts etc.

Reversal
Dechelation (or de-chelation) is a reverse process of the chelation in which the chelating agent is recovered by acidifying solution with a mineral acid to form a precipitate.

title: Chelation


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Ceefax

Ceefax (, punning on "see facts") was the world's first teletext information service and a forerunner to the current BBC Red Button service. Ceefax was started by the BBC in 1974 and ended, after 38 years of broadcasting, at 23:32:19 BST (11:32 PM BST) on 23 October 2012, in line with the digital switchover being completed in Northern Ireland.

To receive a desired page of text on a teletext-capable receiver, the user would enter a three-digit page number on the device. Once the page number was entered, the selected page would display on the user's screen upon its actual transmission, which would have required a wait of several seconds. There were many pages to choose from and they could be displayed either on a black background or superimposed over the broadcast programme picture. This latter feature made it technically possible for the first time for British broadcasters to transmit subtitles which could be turned on or off by the viewer, rather than as part of the broadcast image.

Early electro-mechanical system
During the late 1960s, engineers Geoff Larkby and Barry Pyatt, at the Designs Department (Television Group) of the BBC, worked on an experimental analogue text transmission system. Its object was to transmit a printable page of text during the nocturnal "close-down" period of normal television transmission. Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, then Director General of the BBC, was interested in making farming and stock-market prices available as hard copy via the dormant TV transmitters. The remit received by BBC Designs Department was "the equivalent of one page of The Times newspaper to be transmitted during shut-down".

Their system employed a modified, Alexander Muirhead designed, rotating drum, facsimile transmitter, and Larkby & Pyatt's own, unique, design of hard-copy printer. This printer used pressure-sensitive "till-roll" paper passing over a drum with a raised helix of steel wire.

The drum was synchronised with the transmission drum by means of the "Start of Page", and "Start of Line" information inherent in the Muirhead system. Printing was effected by a hardened steel blade driven by, initially, a loudspeaker-type moving coil, then by a printed-circuit coil, and finally by a special ceramic piezo element manufactured by Brush-Clevite. The combination of rotating helix and oscillating moving blade, with the till-roll paper moving linearly between them, enabled a raster to be drawn on the paper.

Fully-electronic version
The idea was later taken up again, this time in digital and on-screen form, under the new name of CEEFAX, and the new system was announced in October 1972, and following test transmissions in 1972–74, the Ceefax system went live on 23 September 1974 with thirty pages of information. Created in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s by the Philips Lead Designer for VDUs John Adams, his design was given to the BBC so they could start transmission. The BBC were working on ways of providing televisual subtitles for deaf people, it was the first teletext system in the world. James Redmond, the BBC's Director of Engineering at the time, was a particular enthusiast. Other broadcasters soon took up the idea, including the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), who had developed the incompatible ORACLE teletext system, at around the same time. Before the Internet and the World Wide Web became popular, Ceefax pages were often the first location to report a breaking story or headline.

After technical negotiations, the two broadcasters settled in 1974 on a single standard, different from both Ceefax and ORACLE, which ultimately developed into World System Teletext (1976), and which remained in use for analogue broadcasts until 2012. The display format of 24 rows by 40 columns of characters was also adopted for the Prestel system.

The technology became the standard European teletext system and replaced other standards, including the Antiope system formerly used in France.

Graham Clayton was its news executive and began working for Ceefax in 1978. In an interview with The Straits Times, he said that viewers got instant results for the recent snooker championships through its computers, rather than Oracle which had its reporter reading the scores through the telephone.

In 1983, Ceefax started to broadcast computer programs, known as telesoftware, for the BBC Micro (a home computer available in the United Kingdom). The telesoftware broadcasts stopped in 1989. A similar idea was the French C Plus Direct satellite channel which used different, higher speed technology to broadcast PC software.

The basic technology of Ceefax remained compatible with the 1976 unified rollout; system elaborations in later years were made such that earlier receivers were still able to do a basic decode of pages, but would simply ignore enhanced information rather than showing corrupted data.

Closure
Until 2012, the BBC's Ceefax service was still providing information on topics covering News, Sport, Weather, TV Listings and Businesses. The pages were kept up to date until the UK digital switchover was completed on Tuesday 23 October 2012.

In 2002, the BBC stopped broadcasting Ceefax on the digital satellite Sky Digital service, but later brought back a limited service, including a TV schedule for BBC One and BBC Two; and subtitles.

The BBC has tried to reuse the old Ceefax page numbers where possible on the Freeview and digital satellite BBC Red Button Ceefax-replacement services.

It was announced that Ceefax would not be replaced when the analogue signal was switched off in October 2012. The BBC Red Button service was seen as an alternative to Ceefax and since 2007 the number of regions with a Ceefax supported analogue signal had declined as digital switchover progressed across the UK. As of the end of 2011, three-quarters of the UK TV regions had completed or were in the process of being switched over.

Ceefax was the last remaining text service available via analogue TV transmissions in the UK, as ITV and Channel 4's Teletext service closed in December 2009. Channel 5's "Five Text" ancillary service closed in 2011. A limited analogue teletext service through ITV and Channel 4 was still available through terrestrial until the digital switchover was completed on 23 October 2012.

At 23:32:19 BST on 23 October 2012, Ceefax was switched off after 38 years of providing news, weather and sport information when the Olympic Games champion Dame Mary Peters turned off the last analogue TV signal in Northern Ireland. A series of graphics on Ceefax's front page marked its 38 years on the BBC. BBC News' website also has memories of Ceefax.

In a tongue-in-cheek article on the 2017 general election, The Guardian gave political satirist Lord Buckethead a "Best Policy" award for the latter's manifesto pledge to bring back Ceefax.

BBC Red Button service
The analogue switch-off in the UK saw the closure of Ceefax in October 2012. Its replacement, BBC Red Button, is available on most digital services including Freeview, Virgin Media, Sky and Freesat. BBC Red Button is accessed by pressing the red button or the text button on any BBC channel. As well as being able to display plain text, BBC Red Button offers richer graphics than Ceefax and a number of interactive video streams. Pages can be navigated to by scrolling with the remote or entering the correct page number; most of the page numbers previously used on Ceefax are the same on BBC Red Button, such as sports being on page number 301 with football on 302 and football results on 316. The new BBC Red Button Service is used as much as Ceefax and is especially popular among football fans.

In September 2019, the BBC announced that the Red Button service would be discontinued in 2020, which would've ended 45 years of text content delivery via TV broadcast in Britain.

However, on 29 January 2020, one day before the scheduled date of shutdown, the BBC suspended its decision, pending a review into it, after there were protests concerning certain demographics of people – for example, the elderly – with regards to what impact the removal of the service would have on them.

The BBC Red Button service is currently seen on all BBC TV and BBC Radio Channels.

Technology
The Ceefax/ORACLE standard was internationalised in the 1980s as World System Teletext, which was adopted into the international standard CCIR 653 (now ITU-R BT.653) of 1986 as CCIR Teletext System B. As with other teletext systems, text and simple graphics are transmitted in-band with the picture signal, and decoded by controller circuitry.

Pages and content
Pages were retrieved using a three-digit number. From the 1996 relaunch onwards, the main sections were organised as follows:

 * 100s – News
 * 200s – Business News
 * 300s – Sport
 * 400s – Weather and Travel (including 480 - Golf and 490 - Tennis)
 * 500s – Entertainment (including 555 – National Lottery results and 570 – Newsround)
 * 600s – TV and Radio Listings (including 660 - Horse Racing)
 * 888 – Subtitles

Pages from Ceefax
Pages from Ceefax was a selection of content from the Ceefax service and normally only shown in the absence of any other programming. It consisted of selected Ceefax pages which were transmitted as an ordinary TV picture which was viewable on any receiver. Audio accompaniment consisted of stock music or sometimes a discontinuous tone.

The limited set of rolling pages shown on Pages from Ceefax had been accessible at any time of day on teletext-equipped televisions on page 198 (BBC1) and 298 (BBC2), moving to page 196 in November 1992 and to page 152 in November 1996.

Content
Initially the in-vision broadcasts featured a variety of different topics - news, sport, weather and BBC TV listings. Other topics would be included from time to time, such as financial news, travel news, a recipe and information about the BBC. In late 1989 the Ceefax service was relaunched as a news-focused service and the in-vision sequence became a news only service plus a weather forecast. A headline page for business, sport and travel reappeared in 1992.

In-vision history
In-vision Ceefax was first shown in March 1980, originally in 30-minute slots and by mid-1983 it was a common filler during daytime downtime. Transmissions were originally billed on-air as Ceefax in Vision but daytime transmissions were not listed in the Radio Times until 7 January 1984, under the title of Pages from Ceefax.

On 28 February 1983, BBC1 started to air a selection of Ceefax pages every weekday morning at 6.00am called Ceefax AM which would lead into the start of Breakfast Time at 6.30am. It is first mentioned in the Radio Times on 21 March.

From May 1983, BBC1 began to transmit Ceefax pages during their daytime downtime periods. This situation continued until Friday 24 October 1986, three days before BBC1 launched a full daytime schedule, resulting in the only Ceefax transmission on BBC1 being the weekday 6.00am Ceefax AM broadcast.

From the late 1980s onwards, Pages from Ceefax was increasingly marginalised by the BBC's move towards a near-continuous service, although BBC2 only gradually expanded its broadcasting hours when schools programming was not being shown. By the start of the 1990s, Ceefax broadcasts were shown once a day, and for periods of around 15-30 minutes. They were shown before the first programme of the day. When the BBC launched The Learning Zone in 1995, Ceefax was shown during overnight downtime on BBC Two for the first time, although latterly BBC News filled many of the late-night/early morning gaps in the schedules.

The last nationwide Pages from Ceefax broadcast on BBC1 was on 9 November 1997. However, occasional Ceefax broadcasts continued to be shown on BBC One Scotland, BBC One Wales and BBC One Northern Ireland as a filler between the end of an opt-out and rejoining the national network. On BBC Two, Pages from Ceefax continued to be broadcast until less than two days before the Ceefax service was closed down, with the final transmission being in the early hours of Monday 22 October 2012 which featured special continuity announcements and a specially created end caption featuring various Ceefax graphics from over the years. The music chosen for the final minutes was "BART" by Ruby, which had been frequently used for Pages from Ceefax and for other continuity. Since then, overnight downtime has been filled with a rolling loop of previews of forthcoming BBC Two programmes.

Similar services on other channels
Channel 4 showed pages from Oracle from 1983 until 1989 and 4-Tel On View from 1983 until 1997, and in the late 1980s and early 1990s, some ITV companies broadcast Jobfinder, which consisted of Teletext pages showing job vacancies and related information. ITV Nightscreen also used Teletext pages in its first few years on air. In its early days, Sky One showed in-vision pages from the Skytext service during its overnight downtime.

Teefax
Teefax is a revamped version of Ceefax for the Raspberry Pi computer introduced in August 2016 by Peter Kwan. To view Teefax, enthusiasts connect a Raspberry Pi running appropriate software to the signal input of a Teletext-capable TV. Kwan said: "It's like the modern-day equivalent of restoring steam engines. It's completely useless but it keeps us occupied." The service has 12 pages of up-to-date news and Kwan hopes to create an online archive of old teletext pages from Britain, Germany and France.

title: Ceefax


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Caramilk

Caramilk is a brand name used for two distinct chocolate bar products made by Cadbury. Both were introduced in 1968. The Canadian version of Caramilk is a milk chocolate bar filled with caramel. In Australia (also available in New Zealand, the UK and Ireland) the Caramilk brand is used for a caramelised white chocolate bar.

Similar chocolate bars to the Canadian version of Caramilk are marketed as Cadbury Caramello in the United States, as Cadbury Dairy Milk Caramello in Australia and New Zealand, and as Cadbury Dairy Milk Caramel in the UK.

Variations
Variations available, some of them limited editions, include Caramilk made with dark chocolate, maple flavoured, chocolate flavoured, or cappuccino. A thicker version called Caramilk Thick has also been introduced.

Production
Canadian Caramilk bars are produced at one location, the company's Gladstone Chocolate Factory in Toronto.

Ingredients
Caramilk bars contain unsweetened chocolate and cocoa butter but are labelled as candy since only solid chocolate bars may be labelled as chocolate bars in Canada.

Advertising campaigns
One of the advertising campaigns for Caramilk bars revolved around the question of how the centre of the confection was put into the chocolate flavoured exterior. This theme led to the production of over fifteen separate television advertisements since the candy was introduced, making the series one of the most productive advertising efforts in Canadian history. The "Caramilk Secret" ad campaign was conceived by Gary Prouk when he was at Doyle Dane Bernbach. When Prouk left DDB to join Scali McCabe Sloves, the Cadbury account went with him. One notable advertisement involved two cone head aliens who were complimenting each other on successfully concealing the secret from humans, and also creating some of earth's other long-standing works of wonder (e.g. the pyramids).

Another ad, featuring Leonardo da Vinci drawing the Mona Lisa as she eats a Caramilk, has won a Clio award.

Cadbury Dairy Milk Caramel
In the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, a bar similar in premise (caramel-filled chocolate) but differing slightly in taste, shape, ingredients and packaging is sold as Cadbury Dairy Milk Caramel.

Cadbury Dairy Milk Caramello (Australia and New Zealand)
In Australia and New Zealand, a caramel-filled milk chocolate covered bar similar to the Canadian and United Kingdom product is sold as the Caramello variant of the Cadbury Dairy Milk line of blocks.

Cadbury Caramello (United States)
In the United States, a similar bar (which has been produced under license by The Hershey Company since 1988) is sold under the brand Cadbury's Caramello. It gained popularity in the 1980s when advertising to children with the slogan, "I was right in the middle of a Caramello when I found gold."

Australia, New Zealand, UK and Ireland
Australian Caramilk bars were introduced in 1968 and discontinued in 1994. The product was reintroduced in New Zealand as a limited edition of one million bars in 2017. The product was then reintroduced in Australia as a limited edition in 2018, 2019 and 2020. In 2021, the product was launched in the UK, and Ireland.

Variations
Variations available in Australia include a limited-edition Dairy Milk Caramilk Top Deck (a milk chocolate bar topped with Caramilk), Caramilk Marble (marbled milk chocolate and Caramilk with a hazelnut praline filling) and Caramilk flavoured Philadelphia cream cheese.

In 2020, Cadbury launched Caramilk Hokey Pokey in New Zealand; this consists of Caramilk with honeycomb toffee pieces.

title: Caramilk


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Mainstream hardcore

Mainstream hardcore, mainstyle or nu style gabber is a subgenre of hardcore techno. The essence of mainstream hardcore sound is a distorted bass drum sound, overdriven to the point where it becomes clipped into a distorted square wave and makes a recognizably melodic tone.

Often the Roland Alpha Juno or the kick from a Roland TR-909 was used to create this sound. Mainstream hardcore tracks typically include samples and synthesized melodies with the typical tempo ranging from 165 to 180 bpm. Violence, drugs and profanity are common themes in mainstream hardcore, perceptible through its samples and lyrics, often screamed, pitch shifted, or distorted.

History
The mainstream hardcore sound derives from early hardcore (still called gabber at the time). In the late 1990s, early hardcore became less popular than Hardstyle. After surviving underground for a number of years, in 2002 Gabber regained some popularity in the Netherlands, although the sound is more mature, darker, and industrial. Some producers started embracing a slower style characterized by a deeper, harder bass drum that typically had a longer envelope than was possible in the traditional, faster style. In this aspect, this new form of gabber obviously cannot be considered less powerful than its precursor. This newer sound was referred to as "New Style" or "Mainstream" and as the tempo got slower and slower it began to become similar to Chicago hard house. Many hardcore enthusiasts hated Chicago hard house and the club scene it typified, and frequently DJs would be booed by one group of fans and cheered for by another at the same party, depending on the tempo and style of music they were playing. This is similar to the rivalry and mutual dislike that surfaced earlier between fans of "regular" hardcore and happy hardcore. Eventually the two styles met in the middle, and most gabber today is produced in a range of 160-180 bpm. This style is typically a bit slower than the Rotterdam style of the mid-1990s.

Style
Mainstream hardcore is characterized by its bass drum sound. Essentially, it comes from taking a normal synthesized bass drum and over-driving it heavily. The approximately sinusoidal sample starts to clip into a square wave with a falling pitch. This results in a number of effects: the frequency spectrum spreads out, thus achieving a louder, more aggressive sound. It also changes the amplitude envelope of the sound by increasing the sustain. Due to the distortion, the drum also develops a melodic tone. It is not uncommon for the bass drum pattern to change pitch throughout the song to follow the bass line. Many tracks rely on a clean, detuned supersaw lead, similar to uplifting trance and can therefore sound "happy".

Notable record labels

 * Enzyme Records
 * ID&T
 * Masters of Hardcore
 * Rotterdam Records

title: Mainstream hardcore