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Packard

Packard (formerly the Packard Motor Car Company) was an American luxury automobile company located in Detroit, Michigan. The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899, and the last Packards were built in South Bend, Indiana, in 1958.

One of the "Three Ps" – alongside Peerless Motor Company and Pierce-Arrow – the company was known for building high-quality luxury automobiles before World War II. Owning a Packard was considered prestigious, and surviving examples are often found in museums and automobile collections.

Packard vehicles featured innovations, including the modern steering wheel, air-conditioning in a passenger car, and one of the first production 12-cylinder engines, adapted from developing the Liberty L-12 engine used during World War I to power warplanes.

During World War II, Packard produced 55,523 units of the two-stage/two-speed supercharger equipped 1650 cuin Merlin V-12s engines under contract with Rolls-Royce. Packard also made the 2490 cuin versions of the Liberty L-12 V-12 engine. This updated engine powered United States Navy PT boats.

After the Second World War, Packard struggled to survive as an independent automaker against the domestic Big Three (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler). Packard merged with Studebaker in 1953 and formed the Studebaker-Packard Corporation. This merger was intended to be temporary while an eventual consolidation with American Motors Company (AMC) was planned. Disagreements among the firms' executives thwarted these plans, so Studebaker-Packard remained a separate company. The Packard brand was phased out in 1959 after two years of declining sales of the Studebaker-built 1957 and 1958 model year Packards.

1899–1905
Packard was founded by James Ward Packard, his brother William, and their partner, George Lewis Weiss, in Warren, Ohio, where 400 Packard automobiles were built at their factory on 408 Dana Street Northeast, from 1899 until 1903. A mechanical engineer, James Packard believed they could build a better horseless carriage than the Winton cars owned by Weiss, an important Winton stockholder, after Packard complained to Alexander Winton and offered suggestions for improvement, which were ignored. Winton replied to the suggestions by essentially telling Packard to "go build your own car". Packard's first car was built in Warren, Ohio, on November 6, 1899.

Henry Bourne Joy, a member of one of Detroit's oldest and wealthiest families, bought a Packard. Impressed by its reliability, he visited the Packards and soon enlisted a group of investors, including Truman Handy Newberry and Russell A. Alger Jr. On October 2, 1902, this group refinanced and renamed the New York and Ohio Automobile Company as the Packard Motor Car Company, with James Packard as president. Alger later served as vice president. Packard moved operations to Detroit soon after, and Joy became general manager (later chairman of the board). An original Packard, reputedly the first manufactured, was donated by a grateful James Packard to his alma mater, Lehigh University, and is preserved there in the Packard Laboratory. Another is on display at the Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio.

While the Black Motor Company's Black went as low as $375, Western Tool Works' Gale Model A roadster was $500, the high-volume Oldsmobile Runabout went for $650, and the Cole 30 and Cole Runabout were $1,500, Packard concentrated on cars with prices starting at $2,600. The marque developed a following among wealthy purchasers in the United States and abroad, competing with European marques like Rolls-Royce, Renault, Isotta Fraschini, and Mercedes-Benz.

The 3500000 sqft Packard plant on East Grand Boulevard in Detroit was located on over 40 acre of land. Designed by Albert Kahn Associates, it included an early use of reinforced concrete for an automotive factory when building #10 opened in 1906. Its craftsmen practised over 80 trades. The dilapidated plant stood until demolition commenced in September 2022, despite repeated fires. The factory is in close proximity to the current General Motors Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly, which was the former site of the Dodge Vehicle factory from 1910 until 1980. Architect Kahn also designed the Packard Proving Grounds in Shelby Township, Michigan.

1906–1930
From this beginning, through and beyond the 1930s, Packard-built vehicles were perceived as highly competitive among high-priced luxury American automobiles. The company was commonly referred to as being one of the "Three Ps" of American motordom royalty, along with Pierce-Arrow of Buffalo, New York, and Peerless of Cleveland, Ohio. For most of its history, Packard was guided by its president and General Manager James Alvan Macauley, who served as President of the National Automobile Manufacturers Association. Inducted into the Automobile Hall of Fame, Macauley made Packard the number one designer and producer of luxury automobiles in the United States. The marque was also competitive abroad, with markets in 61 countries. Gross income for the company was $21,889,000 in 1928 ($0 in dollars ). Macauley was also responsible for the iconic Packard slogan, "Ask the Man Who Owns One".

The Packard Six was initially introduced as a senior-level luxury platform for three years starting in 1913, then upgraded to the Packard Twin Six starting in 1916. The first appearance of the Packard "Goddess of Speed" hood ornament was in 1925 on the Packard Eight and soon adorned all models, while the Cormorant or Swan appeared in the 1930s. The Adonis hood ornament was briefly used in the late 1920s.

In the 1920s, Packard exported more cars than any other in its price class, and in 1930, sold almost twice as many abroad as any other marque priced over US$2,000. In 1931, 10 Packards were owned by the Imperial House of Japan. Between 1924 and 1930, Packard was also the top-selling luxury brand.

In addition to luxury cars, Packard built trucks. A Packard truck carrying a three-ton load drove from New York City to San Francisco between July 8 and August 24, 1912. In the same year, Packard had service depots in 104 cities.

The Packard Motor Corporation Building at Philadelphia, also designed by Albert Kahn, was built in 1910–1911. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

By 1931, Packards were also being produced in Canada.

1931–1936

Entering the 1930s, Packard attempted to beat the stock market crash and subsequent Great Depression by manufacturing ever more opulent and expensive cars than it had prior to October 1929, and began offering different platforms that focused on different price points allowing the company to offer more products and remain competitive. While the Eight five-seater sedan had been the company's top-seller for years, the Twin Six, designed by Chief engineer Jesse G. Vincent, was introduced for 1932, with prices starting at US$3,650; in 1933, it would be renamed the Packard Twelve, a name it retained for the remainder of its run (through 1939). Also in 1931, Packard pioneered a system it called Ride Control, which made the hydraulic shock absorbers adjustable from within the car. For one year only, 1932, Packard fielded an upper-medium-priced car, the Light Eight, at a base price of $1,750 ($0 in dollars ), or $735 ($0 in  dollars ) less than the Standard Eight.

Packard rivals Cadillac and Lincoln benefited from the huge support structure of GM and Ford. Packard could not match the two new automotive giants for resources. The 1920s had proven extremely profitable for the company and it had assets of approximately $20 million in 1932 ($0 in dollars ) while many luxury car manufacturers were almost broke. Peerless ceased production in 1932, converting the Cleveland manufacturing plant automobile production to brewing for Carling Black Label Beer. By 1938, Franklin, Marmon, Ruxton, Stearns-Knight, Stutz, Duesenberg, and Pierce-Arrow had all closed.

Packard had one advantage that some other luxury automakers did not: a single production line. By maintaining a single line and interchangeability between models, Packard was able to maintain low costs. Packard did not change models as often as other manufacturers. Rather than introducing new models annually, Packard began using its own "Series" formula for differentiating its model changeovers in 1923 borrowing a strategy from GM called planned obsolescence. The new model series did not debut on a strictly annual basis, with some series lasting nearly two years, and others lasting as brief as seven months. In the long run, Packard averaged approximately one new series per year. By 1930, Packard automobiles were considered part of its Seventh Series. By 1942, Packard was in its Twentieth Series. The "Thirteenth Series" was omitted due to the western superstition about the number 13.

To meet the challenge of the Depression, Packard started producing more affordable cars in the medium price range. This was a necessary step as the demand for hand-built luxury cars had diminished sharply and people who could afford such vehicles were reluctant to be seen in them when unemployment was over 20%. In 1935, the company introduced its first car under $1000, the 120. Sales more than tripled that year and doubled again in 1936. To produce the 120, Packard built a separate factory. By 1936, Packard's labor force was divided nearly evenly between the high-priced "Senior" lines (Twelve, Super Eight, and Eight) and the medium-priced "Junior" models, although more than 10 times more Juniors were produced than Seniors. This was because the 120 models were built using thoroughly modern mass production techniques, while the senior Packards used a great deal more hand labor and traditional craftsmanship. Although Packard almost certainly could not have survived the Depression without the highly successful Junior models, they did have the effect of diminishing the Senior models' exclusive image among those few who could still afford a luxury car. The 120 models were more modern in basic design than the Senior models. For example, the 1935 Packard 120 featured independent front suspension and hydraulic brakes, features that did not appear on the Senior Packards until 1937.

During this time, Packards were built in Windsor, Ontario by the Packard Motor Company of Canada to benefit from Imperial Preference as well as to build right-hand-drive cars for export. Production started in 1931, with the best year being 1937, with just over 2,500 cars built. Parts manufactured in Canada included tires, upholstery, radiator cores, headlamps, springs, and wheels, while the engines were locally assembled. Production ended in 1939, although the company maintained an office in Windsor for many years.

1937–1941
Packard was still the premier luxury automobile, even though the majority of cars being built were the Packard One-Twenty and Super Eight model ranges. Hoping to catch still more of the market, Packard issued the Packard 115C in 1937, powered by a Packard six-cylinder engine. The decision to introduce the "Packard Six", priced at around $1200 ($0 in dollars ),  was in time for the 1938 recession. This model also tagged Packards as something less exclusive than they had been in the public's mind and in the long run hurt Packard's reputation of building some of America's finest luxury cars. The Six, redesignated 110 in 1940–41, continued for three years after the war.

In 1939, Packard introduced Econo-Drive, a kind of overdrive, claimed able to reduce engine speed 27.8%; it could be engaged at any speed over 30 mph. The same year, the company introduced a fifth, transverse shock absorber and made column shift (known as Handishift) available on the 120 and Six.

A new body shape was introduced for the 1941 model year, the Packard Clipper. It was available only as a four-door model on the 127 in wheelbase of the 160, but powered by 125 hp version of straight-8 engine used the 120.

1942–1945
In 1942, the Packard Motor Car Company converted to 100% war production. During World War II, Packard again built airplane engines, licensing the Merlin engine from Rolls-Royce as the V-1650, which powered the P-51 Mustang fighter, ironically known as the "Cadillac of the Skies" by GIs in WWII. Packard also built 1350-, 1400-, and 1500-hp V-12 marine engines for American PT boats (each boat used three) and some of Britain's patrol boats. Packard ranked 18th among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts.

By the end of the war in Europe, Packard Motor Car Company had produced over 55,000 combat engines. Sales in 1944 were $455,118,600. By May 6, 1945, Packard had a backlog on war orders of $568,000,000.

1946–1956

By the end of World War II, Packard was in excellent financial condition with assets of around $33 million, but several management mistakes became more apparent with time. Like other US automobile companies, Packard resumed civilian car production in late 1945, labeling them as 1946 models by modestly updating their 1942 models. As only tooling for the Clipper was at hand, the Senior-series cars were not rescheduled. One version of the story is that the Senior dies were left outdoors to rust and were not usable. Another tale is that Roosevelt gave Stalin the dies for the Senior series, but the ZiS-110 state limousines were a separate design.

The Clipper became outdated as the new envelope bodies started appearing, led by Studebaker and Kaiser-Frazer. Although Packard was in good financial condition as the war ended, they had not sold enough cars to pay the cost of tooling for the 1941 design. While most automakers were able to introduce new vehicles for 1948 and 1949, Packard could not until 1951. The company updated cars by adding new sheet metal to the existing body (which added 200 lb of curb weight). Six-cylinder cars were discontinued for the U.S. market, and a convertible was added. These new designs hid their relationship with the Clipper. Even that name was dropped for a while.

The design chosen was a "bathtub" type, commonly called ponton. While this was considered futuristic during the war and the concept was taken further with the 1949 Nash, and survived for decades in the Saab 92–96 in Europe, the 1948–1950 Packard styling was polarizing. To some, it was sleek and blended classic with modern. Others nicknamed it the "pregnant elephant". Test driver for Modern Mechanix, Tom McCahill, referred to the newly designed Packard as "a goat" and "a dowager in a Queen Mary hat" in the January 1948 issue. Packard sold 2,000 vehicles in 1948 and a total of 116,000 of the 1949 models. In the early post-WWII years, the demand for new cars was extremely high, and nearly any vehicle would sell. Attempting to maintain strong sales beyond this point would prove more problematic.

Cadillac's new 1948 cars had sleek, aircraft-inspired styling that immediately made Packard's "bathtub" styling seem old-fashioned. Cadillac also debuted a brand-new OHV V8 engine in 1949 whereas Packard's lack of a modern engine became an increasing liability.

Packard outsold Cadillac until circa 1950; most sales were the midrange volume models. During this time, Cadillac was among the earliest US makers to offer an automatic transmission (the Hydramatic in 1941). Packard caught up with the Ultramatic, offered on top models in 1949 and all models from 1950 onward, but its perceived market reputation now had it as a competitor to Buick.

Designed and built by Packard, the Ultramatic featured a lockup torque converter with two speeds. Early Ultramatics normally operated only in "high", with "low" having to be selected manually. Beginning in late 1954, it could be set to operate only in "high" or to start in "low" and automatically shift into "high". "High" was intended for normal driving and "Low" was mainly for navigating hills.

The Ultramatic made Packard the only American automotive manufacturer other than GM to develop an automatic transmission completely in-house. Ford had chosen to outsource their design to Borg-Warner (Ford had attempted to purchase Ultramatics from Packard to install in Lincolns, but bought Hydramatics until Lincoln developed its own automatic transmission a few years later). Ultramatic did not compare to GM's Hydramatic for smoothness of shifting, acceleration, or reliability. The resources spent on Ultramatic deprived Packard of the opportunity to develop a modern V8 engine. Also, when a new body style was added in addition to standard sedans, coupes, and convertibles, Packard introduced a station wagon instead of a two-door hardtop in response to Cadillac's Coupe DeVille. The Station Sedan, a wagon-like body that was mostly steel, with a good deal of decorative wood in the back. A total of 3,864 were sold over its three years of production. The Packards of the late 1940s and early 1950s were built with traditional craftsmanship and the best materials, but the combination of the lower-priced Packards leading sales and impacting the prestige of their higher-end models and some questionable marketing decisions, Packard's crown as "king" of the luxury car market was at risk. In 1950, sales dropped to 42,000 cars for the model year. When Packard's president George T. Christopher set the course for an evolutionary styling approach with a facelift for 1951, others wanted a radical new design. Christopher resigned and Packard treasurer Hugh Ferry became president and demanded a new direction. Ferry, who had spent his career at Packard in the accounting department, did not want the job and quickly made it clear that he was serving on a temporary basis until a permanent company president could be found.

The 1951 Packards were redesigned. Designer John Reinhart introduced a high-waisted, more squared-off profile fitting the contemporary styling trends — very different from the traditional flowing design of the postwar era. New styling features included a one-piece windshield, a wrap-around rear window, small tailfins on the long-wheelbase models, a full-width grille (replacing the traditional Packard upright design), and blunt "guideline fenders" with the hood and front fenders at the same height. The 122 in wheelbase was used on the 200-series standard and Deluxe two- and four-doors, 250-series Mayfair two-door hardtops (Packard's first), and convertibles. The higher-end 300 and Patrician 400 models were built on a 127 in wheelbase. The 200-series models were low-end models and now included a business coupe. The new appearance had similarities to Oldsmobiles, which were more moderately priced and sold in greater numbers.

The 250, 300, and 400/Patricians were Packard's flagship models and comprised the majority of the production for that year. The Patrician was now the premium Packard, replacing the Custom Eight line. Original plans were to equip it with a 356 CID engine, but the company decided that sales would not be sufficient to justify producing the larger, more expensive engine, and so the de-bored 327 CID (previously the middle engine) was used. While the smaller engine offered nearly equal performance in the new Packards to that of the 356, the move was seen by some as further denigrating Packard's image as a luxury car.

Since 1951 offered little new from other manufacturers, Packard's redesigned lineup sold nearly 101,000 cars. The 1951 Packards were a mixture of the modern (automatic transmissions) and old (using flathead inline eights when OHV V8 engines were becoming the norm). No domestic car lines had OHV V8s in 1948, but by 1955, every car line offered a version. The Packard inline eight, despite being an older design that lacked the power of Cadillac's engines, produced no vibration. When combined with an Ultramatic transmission, the drivetrain made for a quiet and smooth experience on the road. Packard could not keep up with the horsepower race, which was increasingly moving to high compression, short-stroke engines capable of sustained driving at speeds above 55 mph.

Packard's image was increasingly seen as dowdy and old-fashioned, unappealing to younger customers. Surveys found that nearly 75% of Packard customers had owned previous Packards and few new buyers were attracted to the make. Compounding this problem was the company's geriatric leadership. The Packard board of directors by the early 1950s had an average age of 67. In 1948, Alvin Macauley, born during the Grant Administration, had stepped down as chairman. Hugh Ferry decided to hire an outsider as president. He recruited James Nance from appliance manufacturer Hotpoint. At 52, Nance was more than a decade younger than the youngest Packard executive.

One reason for the aged leadership of Packard was the company's lack of a pension plan for executives (rank-and-file workers had a pension plan per their UAW contract). As a result, Packard executives were reluctant to retire with no source of income other than a Social Security payment, thus blocking younger men from coming to power in the company. One of James Nance's first actions as president was creating a pension plan to induce Packard executives to retire. Nance worked to snag Korean War military contracts and turn around Packard's badly diluted image. He declared that Packard would cease producing mid-priced cars and build only luxury models to compete with Cadillac. As part of this strategy, Nance unveiled a low-production (only 750 made) model for 1953, the Caribbean convertible. Competing directly with the other specialty convertibles marketed that year, (Buick Skylark, Oldsmobile 98 Fiesta, Cadillac Eldorado, and Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe), it was equally well-received and outsold its competition. Nevertheless, overall sales declined in 1953. While the limited edition luxury models such as the Caribbean convertible and the Patrician 400 Sedan, and the Derham custom formal sedan brought back some prestige from past Packards, the "high pocket" styling introduced two model years prior was no longer drawing buyers for Packer's volume models. Furthermore, Packard's build quality also began slipping during this period as employee morale decreased.

While American independent manufacturers like Packard did well during the early postwar period, supply had caught up with demand and by the early 1950s they were increasingly challenged as the domestic "Big Three"—General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler—battled intensely for sales in the economy, medium-priced, and luxury markets. Those independents that remained in business in the early 1950s, merged. In 1953, Kaiser merged with Willys to become Kaiser-Willys. Nash and Hudson became American Motors Corporation (AMC). The strategy for these mergers included cutting costs and strengthening their sales organizations to meet the intense competition from the Big Three.

In 1953–54, Ford and GM waged a brutal sales war, cutting prices and forcing cars on dealers. While this had little effect on either company, it damaged independent automakers. Nash's president George W. Mason thus proposed that the four major independents (Nash, Hudson, Packard, and Studebaker) merge into one firm American Motors Corporation (AMC). Mason held informal discussions with Nance to outline his strategic vision, and an agreement was reached for AMC to buy Packard's Ultramatic transmissions and V8 engines. They were used in 1955 Hudsons and Nashes.

It did not help that Chrysler and Ford waged a campaign of "stealing" Packard dealerships during the early 1950s. Consequently, Packard's dealer network became smaller and more scattered which made it even more difficult to sell Packard vehicles.

Although Korean War defense contracts brought in badly-needed revenue, the war ended in 1953 and the new Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson began cutting defense contracts from all automotive manufacturers other than GM, where he had been president.

Packard's last major development was the Torsion-Level suspension by Bill Allison, dubbed Torsion Level Ride. The front and rear suspensions on each side of the car side are interconnected by a long torsion bar. This design reduced pitching while allowing for low spring rates, which imbued Packards with a ride that was soft yet controlled. Additionally, this suspension featured an electro-mechanical compensator or "levilizer" that kept the car level regardless of passenger or trunk loading.

Studebaker-Packard Corporation
As of October 1, 1954, Packard Motor Car Company bought the failing Studebaker Corporation to form America's fourth-largest automobile company, but without full knowledge of their circumstances or consideration of the financial implications. Studebaker-Packard's Nance refused to consider merging with AMC unless he could take the top command position (Mason and Nance were former competitors as heads of the Kelvinator and Hotpoint appliance companies, respectively), but Mason's grand vision of a Big Four American auto industry ended on October 8, 1954, with his sudden death from acute pancreatitis and pneumonia.

A week after the death of Mason, the new president of AMC, George W. Romney, announced "there are no mergers under way either directly or indirectly". Romney continued with Mason's commitment to buy components from SPC. Although Mason and Nance had previously agreed that SPC would purchase parts from AMC, it did not do so. Packard's engines and transmissions were comparatively expensive, so AMC began development of its own V8 engine, and replaced the outsourced unit by mid-1956. Although Nash and Hudson merged, the four-way merger Mason had hoped for, which would have joined Nash, Hudson, Studebaker, and Packard, did not materialize. The S-P marriage (really a Packard buyout) proved to be a crippling mistake. Although Packard was in fair financial condition, Studebaker was not, struggling with high overhead and production costs and needing the impossible figure of 250,000 cars annually to break even. Due diligence was placed behind "merger fever", and the deal was rushed. It became clear after the merger that Studebaker's deteriorating financial situation put Packard's survival at risk.

Nance had hoped for a total redesign in 1954, but the necessary time and money were lacking. Packard that year (total production 89,796) comprised the bread-and-butter Clipper line (the 250 series was dropped), Mayfair hardtop coupes and convertibles, and a new entry-level long-wheelbase sedan named Cavalier. Among the Clippers was a novelty pillared coupe, the Sportster, styled to resemble a hardtop.

With time and money lacking, 1954 styling was unchanged except for modified headlights and taillights, essentially trim items. A new hardtop named Pacific was added to the flagship Patrician series and all higher-end Packards featured a bored-out 359 CID engine. Air conditioning became available for the first time since 1942 although Packard introduced air conditioning in the 1930s. Clippers (which comprised over 80% of production) became available in a hardtop model, Super Panama, but sales fell to 31,000 cars.

The new model Nance hoped for was delayed until 1955, partially because of Packard's merger with Studebaker. Packard stylist Dick Teague was called upon by Nance to design the 1955 line, and to Teague's credit, the 1955 Packard was well received. Not only was the body completely updated and modernized, but the suspension was new, with torsion bars front and rear, along with an electric control that kept the car level regardless of load or road conditions. Along with the new design was Packard's new overhead-valve V8, displacing 352 cid, replacing the straight-eight that had been used for decades. Packard offered a variety of power, comfort, and convenience features, such as power steering and brakes as well as electric window lifts. Air conditioning was available on all car makes by the mid-1950s, but it was installed on only a handful of cars in 1955 and 1956 despite Packard's status as a luxury car. Model year sales only climbed back to 55,000 units in 1955, including Clipper, in what was a strong year across the industry.

As the 1955 models went into production, an old problem flared up. Back in 1941, Packard had outsourced its bodies to Briggs Manufacturing Company. Briggs founder Walter Briggs had died in early 1952 and his family decided to sell the company to pay estate taxes. Chrysler promptly purchased Briggs and notified Packard that they would cease supplying bodies after Packard's contract with Briggs expired at the end of 1953. Packard was forced to move body production to an undersized plant on Connor Avenue in Detroit. The facility proved too small and caused endless tie-ups and quality problems. Bad quality control hurt the company's image and caused sales to plummet for 1956, though the problems had largely been resolved by that point. Additionally, a "brain drain" of talent away from Packard was underway, most notably John Z. DeLorean.

For 1956, the Clipper became a separate make, with Clipper Custom and Deluxe models available. Now the Packard-Clipper business model was a mirror to Lincoln-Mercury. "Senior" Packards were built in four body styles, each with a unique model name. Patrician was used for the four-door top-of-the-line sedans, Four Hundred for the hardtop coupes, and the Caribbean for the convertible and vinyl-roof two-door hardtop. In the spring of 1956, the Executive was introduced. In a four-door sedan and a two-door hardtop, the Executive was aimed at the buyer who wanted a luxury car but could not justify Packard's pricing. It was an intermediate model using the Packard name and the Senior models' front end, but using the Clipper platform and rear fenders. This was to some confusion and went against what James Nance had been attempting for several years to accomplish, the separation of the Clipper line from Packard. As late as the cars' introduction to the market was, there was reasoning for in 1957 this car was to be continued. It then became a baseline Packard on the all-new 1957 Senior shell. Clippers would share bodies with Studebaker from 1957.

The new 1955 Packard design did not affect Cadillac's continuing to lead the luxury market segment, followed by Lincoln, Packard, and Imperial. Reliability problems with the automatic transmission and all electrical accessories further eroded the public's opinion of Packard. Sales were good for 1955 compared to the previous year as this was a record year for the automobile industry. Packard's sales fell for 1956 due to the fit and finish of the 1955 models as well as mechanical issues relating to the new engineering features. These defects cost Packard millions in recalls and tarnished its image.

For 1956, Teague kept the basic 1955 design and added more styling touches to the body such as then−fashionable three-toning. Headlamps hooded in a more radical style in the front fenders and a slight shuffling of chrome distinguished the 1956 models. "Electronic Push-button Ultramatic", which located transmission push buttons on a stalk on the steering column, proved troublesome, adding to the car's negative reputation, possibly soon to become an orphan. Model series remained the same, but the V8 was now enlarged to 374 cid for the Senior series, the largest in the industry. In the top-of-the-line Caribbean, that engine produced 310 hp. Clippers continued to use the 352 engine. There were plans for an all−new 1957 line of Senior Packards based on the show car Predictor. Clippers and Studebakers would also share many inner and outer body panels. (A private presentation of this 1957 new-car program was made to Wall Street's investment bankers at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York in January 1956.) These models were in many ways far advanced from what would be produced by any other automaker at the time, save Chrysler, which soon felt public wrath for its poor quality issues after rushing its all−new 1957 lines into production. Nance was dismissed and moved to Ford as the head of the new Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln division. Although Nance tried everything, the company failed to secure funding for retooling, forcing Packard to share Studebaker platforms and body designs. With no funding to retool for the advanced new models envisioned, Studebaker-Packard's fate was sealed. The large Packard was effectively dead in an executive decision to kill "the car we could not afford to lose". The last fully Packard-designed vehicle, a Patrician four-door sedan, rolled off the Conner Avenue assembly line on June 25, 1956.

1957–1958

In 1957, no more Packards were built in Detroit and the Clipper disappeared as a separate brand name. Instead, a Studebaker President–based car bearing the Packard Clipper nameplate appeared on the market, but sales were slow. Available in just two body styles, Town Sedan (four-door sedan) and Country Sedan (four-door station wagon), they were powered by Studebaker's 289 cid V8 with a McCulloch supercharger, delivering the same 275 hp as the 1956 Clipper Custom, although at higher revolutions. Borrowing design cues from the 1956 Clipper (visual in the grille and dash), with wheel covers, tail lamps, and dials from 1956 along with the Packard cormorant hood mascot and trunk chrome trim from 1955 senior Packards, front bumpers, and Dagmars from the 1956 model, the 1957 Packard Clipper was much more than a badge-engineered Studebaker—but also far from a Patrician. Had the company been able to invest more money to finish the transformation and position the car under a senior line of "true Packards", it might have been a successful Clipper. Standing alone the cars sold in limited numbers; a number of Packard dealers dropped their franchises while customers stayed away, despite huge price discounts, fearful of buying a car that could soon be an orphan. Additionally, there was internal competition from Studebaker-Packard dealers that also carried the Mercedes-Benz brand, to which SP had the USA rights, with the market flooded by inexpensive cars, minor automakers struggled to sell vehicles at loss leader prices to keep up with Ford and GM. There was a general decline in demand for large cars heralded an industry switch to compact cars such as the Studebaker Lark.

The marque suffered further loss of exclusivity and consumers perceived a reduction in quality. Competitors and media critics described the new models as "Packardbakers". The 1958 models were launched with no series name, simply as "Packard". New body styles were introduced, and a two-door hardtop joined the four-door sedan. A new premier model appeared with a sporting profile: the Packard Hawk was based on the Studebaker Golden Hawk and featured a new nose and a fake spare wheel molded in the trunk lid reminiscent of the concurrent Imperial. The 1958 Packards were among the first in the industry to be "facelifted" with plastic parts. The housing for the new dual headlights and the complete fins were fiberglass parts grafted on Studebaker bodies. Very little chrome was on the lower front clip. Designer Duncan McRae managed to include the 1956 Clipper tail lights for one last time which also included the "Packard Cusps" in the front hood. Added to the front of all but the Hawk were jet nacelles for quad headlights, in a desperate attempt to keep up with late-1950s styling cues. All Packards were equipped with 14 in road wheels to lower the profile. The public reaction was predictable and sales were 2,622 vehicles for the 1958 model year, even being outsold by Checker Motors Corp. The Studebaker factory was older than Packard's Detroit plant, with higher production requirements, which added to dipping sales. A new compact car on which the company staked its survival, the Lark, was a year away, and it also failed to sell in sufficient numbers to keep the marque afloat. Several makes were discontinued around this time: Packard, Edsel, Hudson, Nash, DeSoto, and Kaiser. Not since the 1930s had so many makes disappeared, and it would not be until the automotive industry crisis of 2008–10 that so many makes would be dropped at the same time again. The last Packard by Studebaker Packard Corporation rolled off the assembly line on July 16, 1958.

Concept Packards

During the 1950s, a number of "dream cars" were built by Packard in an attempt to keep the marque alive in the imaginations of the American car-buying public. Included in this category are the 1952 Pan American that led to the production Caribbean and the Panther (also known as Daytona), based on a 1954 platform. Shortly after the introduction of the Caribbean, Packard showed a prototype hardtop called the Balboa. It featured a reverse-slanted rear window that could be lowered for ventilation, a feature introduced in a production car by Mercury in 1957 and still in production in 1966.

The Request was based on the 1955 Four Hundred hardtop, but featured a classic upright Packard fluted grille reminiscent of the prewar models. In addition, the 1957 engineering mule "Black Bess" was built to test new features for a future car. This car had a resemblance to the 1958 Edsel. It featured Packard's return to a vertical grill. This grill was very narrow with the familiar ox-yoke shape that was characteristic for Packard, and with front fenders with dual headlights resembling Chrysler products from that era. The engineering mule Black Bess was destroyed by the company shortly after the Packard plant was shuttered. Of the 10 Requests built, only four were sold off the showroom floor.

Dick Teague also designed the last Packard show car, the Predictor. This hardtop coupe's design followed the lines of the planned 1957 cars. It had many unusual features, among them a roof section that opened either by opening a door or activating a switch, well ahead of later T-tops. The car had seats that rotated out, allowing the passenger easy access, a feature later used on some Chrysler and GM products. The Predictor also had the opera windows, or portholes, found on concurrent Thunderbirds. Other novel ideas were overhead switches—these were in the production Avanti—and a dash design that followed the hood profile, centering dials in the center console area. This feature has only recently been used on production cars. The Predictor survives and is on display at the Studebaker National Museum section of the Center for History in South Bend, Indiana.

Astral
One unusual prototype, the Studebaker-Packard Astral, was made in 1957 and first unveiled at the South Bend Art Centre on January 12, 1958, and then at the March 1958 Geneva Motor Show. It had a single gyroscopic balanced wheel and the publicity data suggested it could be nuclear powered or have what the designers described as an ionic engine. No working prototype was ever made, nor was it likely that one was ever intended.

The Astral was designed by Edward E. Herrmann, Studebaker-Packard's director of interior design, as a project to give his team experience in working with glass-reinforced plastic. It was shown at Studebaker dealerships before being put into storage. Rediscovered 30 years later, the car was restored and put on display by the Studebaker museum.

The end
Studebaker-Packard retired the Packard marque in 1959. In 1962, "Packard" was dropped off the corporation's name at a time when it was introducing the all-new Avanti. The Packard name had been considered for the Avanti, but a less anachronistic image was being sought for the new model. Thus the Packard name ceased to exist in the American auto industry.

In the late 1950s, Studebaker-Packard was approached by enthusiasts to rebadge the French car maker Facel Vega's Excellence four-door hardtop as a Packard for sale in North America, using stock Packard V8s and identifying trim including red hexagonal wheel covers, cormorant hood ornament, and classic vertical ox-yoke grille. The proposition was rejected when Daimler-Benz threatened to pull out of its 1957 marketing and distribution agreement, which would have cost Studebaker-Packard more in revenue than they could have made from the badge-engineered Packard. Daimler-Benz had little of its own dealer network at the time and used this agreement to enter and become more established in the American market through SPC's dealer network, and felt this car was a threat to their models.

Aborted revival
In the late 1990s, Roy Gullickson revived the Packard nameplate by buying the naming rights and logo and developing a Packard Twelve for the 1999 model year. His goal was an annual production of 2,000 cars, but a lack of investment funds stalled that plan indefinitely. The only prototype Twelve made was sold at an auto auction in Plymouth, MI, in July 2014 for $143,000.

Automobile
Packard's engineering staff designed and built excellent, reliable engines. Packard offered a 12-cylinder engine—the "Twin Six"—as well as a low-compression straight-eight, but never a 16-cylinder engine. After WWII, Packard continued with their successful straight-eight-cylinder flathead engines. While as fast as the new GM and Chrysler OHV V8s, they were perceived as obsolete by buyers. By waiting until 1955, Packard was almost the last U.S. automaker to introduce a high-compression V8 engine. The design was physically large and entirely conventional, copying many of the first-generation Cadillac, Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and Studebaker Kettering features. It was produced in 320 cuin and 352 cuin displacements. The Caribbean version had two four-barrel carburetors and produced 275 hp. For 1956, a 374 cuin version was used in the Senior cars and the Caribbean two four-barrels produced 305 hp.

Other Packard engines
Packard also made large aeronautical and marine engines. Chief engineer Jesse G. Vincent developed a V12 airplane engine called the "Liberty engine" that was used widely in Entente air corps during World War I. After the war the Liberty was adapted for marine use, becoming a multiple world record setter under inventor and boating pioneer Gar Wood from the late 1910s through the 1930s.

In the interbellum, Packard built one of the world's first diesel aviation engines, the 225-hp DR-980 radial. It powered the Stinson SM-8D, among others. It also powered a Bellanca CH-300 on a record endurance flight of over 84 hours, a mark that stood for more than 50 years. Other Packard-powered airplanes set several records during the 1920s.

During WWII, Packard license-built Rolls-Royce Merlin engines under the Packard V-1650 designation, used with great success in the famed P-51 Mustang fighter. A marine version of the successor to the V12 Liberty was adapted in three versions – M3-2500, M4-2500, and M5-2500 – to power the war's iconic PT boats.

After WWII, Packard produced a new line of flathead design six (model 1M-245) and eight (model 1M-356) cylinder marine engines based on the automobile versions and the experience gained from the war production. Of the 1M-245 type engines, only 1,865 were produced between Spring 1947 and January 1951, with only a handful of survivors. Of the 1M-356 type engines, approximately 1,525 were produced between 1947 and 1950. Even more rare is the experimental "R" type racing versions (1M-245 "R"), of which only 10 were produced with currently only one known survivor, a 1M-245 R six-cylinder engine powering today a 1936 Gar Wood Speedster.

Packard also developed two turbine aircraft engines for the US Air Force, the XJ41 and XJ49. This was one reason for the Curtiss-Wright take-over in 1956, Packard wanted to sell their own jet.

Packard automobile models

 * Packard single-cylinder models:
 * Packard Model A (1899–1900)
 * Packard Model B (1900)
 * Packard Model C (1901)
 * Packard Model E (1901)
 * Packard Model F (1901–1903)
 * Packard Model M (1904)
 * Packard twin-cylinder model:
 * Packard Model G (1902)
 * Packard four-cylinder models:
 * Packard Model K (1903)
 * Packard Model K Gray Wolf (1903)
 * Packard Model L (1904)
 * Packard Model N (1905)
 * Packard Model 24 (Series S) (1906)
 * Packard Model 18 (Series NA-NC) (1905–1907)
 * Packard Model 30 (Series U) (1907–1912)
 * Packard six-cylinder models:
 * Packard Dominant Six (1912–1915)
 * Packard Single Six (1921–1924)
 * Packard Six (1925–1929)
 * Packard One-Ten
 * Packard 115 (1937)
 * Packard Six (1937–1949)
 * Packard Eight
 * Packard Single Eight & Eight (1924-)
 * Packard Custom Eight
 * Packard Light Eight
 * Packard One-Twenty (1935–1942)
 * Packard 160
 * Packard 180
 * Packard Super Eight
 * Packard V-12:
 * Packard Twin Six (1916–1923)
 * Packard 905 (1916–1923)
 * Packard Twin Six (1932)
 * Packard Twelve (1932–1939)
 * Postwar Packards (including Clipper)
 * Packard 400, see Packard Four Hundred
 * Packard Caribbean
 * Packard Cavalier
 * Packard Clipper
 * Packard Clipper Constellation
 * Packard 200
 * Packard 250, see Packard 200
 * Packard 300
 * Packard Executive
 * Packard Four Hundred
 * Packard Hawk (1958)
 * Packard Mayfair
 * Packard Pacific
 * Packard Patrician (including Patrician 400)
 * Packard Station Sedan (1949–1950)
 * Packard Super Panama
 * 1957 and 1958 Packards

Packard show cars

 * Packard Phantom (1944; also called Brown Bomber and Macauley's Folly)
 * Packard Pan-American (1951; also called Macauley Speedster after Packard design executive Edward Macauley)
 * Packard Pan-American (1952) and Panther-Daytona
 * Packard Balboa (1953)
 * Packard Panther (1954–1955)
 * Packard Request (1955)
 * Packard Predictor (1956)
 * Packard Black Bess (1957; not an official name, it was a driveable design proposal)

Packard tradenames

 * Ultramatic, Packard's self-developed automatic transmission (1949–1953; Gear-Start Ultramatic 1954, Twin Ultramatic 1955–1956)
 * Thunderbolt, a line of Packard Straight Eights after WW2
 * Finger Tip Shift, similar to the Chris-O-Matic shift, a servo and remote control to shift the marine engine transmissions (1947-1951)
 * Torsion Level Ride, Packard's torsion bar suspension with integrated levelizer (1955–1956)
 * Easamatic, Packard's name for the Bendix TreadleVac power brakes available after 1952
 * Electromatic, Packard's name for its electrically controlled, vacuum-operated automatic clutch
 * Twin Traction, Packard's optional limited-slip rear axle; the first on a production car worldwide (1956–1958)
 * Touch Button, Packard's electric panel to control 1956 Twin Ultramatic

Advertisements
The Packard advertising song on television had the words: Ride ride ride ride ride along in your Packard, in your Packard. In a Packard you've got the world on a string. In a Packard car you feel like a king. Ride ride ride ride ride along in your Packard, what fun! And ask the man, just ask the man the lucky man who owns one!

Legacy
The electrical connectors developed by Packard were used extensively by General Motors in its automobiles. The first series of connectors was the Packard 56, followed by the Weather Pack, and finally, the Metri Pack, which are still in use.

The National Packard Museum located in Warren, Ohio is the official museum of both the original Packard Motor Car Company and The Packard Electric Company. Its purpose is to preserve the Packard legacy and recognize Packard's influence in transportation and industrial history through interaction with the community and outreach programs.

America's Packard Museum holds a collection of Packard cars on display.

Packard Proving Grounds located in Shelby Township, MI are the remnants of the former proving Grounds owned by The Packard Motor Car Foundation. The mission of the Packard Proving Grounds Historic Site is to preserve the legacy of the Packard Motor Car Company through the restoration and preservation of the Packard Proving Grounds.

The Fort Lauderdale Antique Car Museum  was closed after the COVID-19 pandemic and its entire collection of Packard cars and memorabilia was purchased by a local businessman. The collection was auctioned off in 2021.

Crushing around 50 vintage Packards occurred in 1977 in southern California and was dubbed by the Special-Interest auto magazine as "Crushathon". The cars were the property of a Packard collector and auctioned after his death. Due to different disagreements in the terms of the auction between SoCal Packard fan clubs, roughly half of the cars auctioned off did not meet the listed price leading to the cars being ultimately destroyed, despite their purportedly good mechanical and rust-free condition.

title: Packard


text:
Human Remains (film)

Human Remains is a 1998 Danish-American documentary short film written and directed by filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt.

Summary
It reveals every intimate and mundane detail about the personal lives of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco and Mao Zedong  while illustrating the banality of evil.

Production
Even though it is only a 30-minute film, it took Jay Rosenblatt 3 years to complete it with eight months of research.

Accolades
The film has won over 27 awards including a Sundance Jury Award.

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

title: Human Remains (film)


text:
Equational prover

EQP (Equational prover) is an automated theorem proving program for equational logic, developed by the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of the Argonne National Laboratory. It was one of the provers used for solving a longstanding problem posed by Herbert Robbins, namely, whether all Robbins algebras are Boolean algebras.

title: Equational prover


text: User:Marvinfreeman

title: User:Marvinfreeman


text:
René Lévesque

René Lévesque (August 24, 1922 – November 1, 1987) was a Canadian politician and journalist who served as the 23rd premier of Quebec from 1976 to 1985. He was the first Québécois political leader since Confederation to seek, through a referendum, a mandate to negotiate the political independence of Quebec. Starting his career as a reporter, and radio and television host, he later became known for his eminent role in Quebec's nationalization of hydro-electric companies and as an ardent defender of Quebec sovereignty. He was the founder of the Parti Québécois, and before that, a Liberal minister in the Lesage government from 1960 to 1966.

Early life
Lévesque was born in the Hôtel Dieu Hospital in Campbellton, New Brunswick, on August 24, 1922. He was raised in New Carlisle, Quebec, on the Gaspé Peninsula, by his parents, Diane (née Dionne) and Dominic Lévesque, a lawyer. He had three siblings, André, Fernand and Alice. His father died when Lévesque was 14 years old.

Journalist
Lévesque attended the Séminaire de Gaspé and the Saint-Charles-Garnier College in Quebec City, both of which were run by the Jesuits. He studied for a law degree at Université Laval in Quebec City, but left the university in 1943 without having completed the degree. One of his classmates at Laval later recounted that Lévesque had been smoking in class, and refused to apologize to the professor, Louis-Philippe Pigeon, who refused to allow him back to class. Lévesque left, saying he really only wanted to write, not practise law. He worked as an announcer and news writer at the radio station CHNC in New Carlisle, as a substitute announcer for CHRC during 1941 and 1942, and then at CBV in Quebec City.

During 1944–1945, he served as a liaison officer and war correspondent for the U.S. Army in Europe. He reported from London while it was under regular bombardment by the Luftwaffe, and advanced with the Allied troops as they pushed back the German army through France and Germany. Throughout the war, he made regular journalistic reports on the airwaves and in print. He was with the first unit of Americans to reach Dachau concentration camp.

In 1947, he married Louise L'Heureux, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. Lévesque worked as a reporter for the CBC's French language section in the international service. He again served as a war correspondent for the CBC in the Korean War in 1952. After that, he was offered a career in journalism in the United States, but decided to stay in Canada.

From 1956 to 1959, Lévesque became famous in Quebec for hosting a weekly television news program on Radio-Canada called Point de Mire.

Lévesque covered international events and major labour struggles between workers and corporations that dogged the Union Nationale government of Premier Maurice Duplessis culminating with a great strike in 1957 at the Gaspé Copper Mine in Murdochville. The Murdochville strike was a milestone for organized labour in Quebec as it resulted in changes to the province's labour laws.

While working for the public television network, he became personally involved in the broadcasters' strike that lasted 68 tumultuous days beginning in late 1958. Lévesque was arrested during a demonstration in 1959, along with union leader Jean Marchand and 24 other demonstrators.

Libéral cabinet minister
In 1960, Lévesque entered politics as a star candidate and was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Quebec in the 1960 election as a Liberal Party member in the riding of Montréal-Laurier. In the government of Jean Lesage, he served as minister of hydroelectric resources and public works from 1960 to 1961, and minister of natural resources from 1961 to 1965. While in office, he played a pivotal role in the nationalization of hydroelectric companies, greatly expanding Hydro-Québec, one of the reforms that was part of the Quiet Revolution.

From 1965 to 1966, he served as minister of family and welfare. Lévesque, with his friend Eric Kierans, the Quebec minister of health, was heavily involved in negotiations with the Government of Canada to fund both Quebec and federal mandates for social programs.

In a surprise, the Liberals lost the 1966 election to the Union Nationale but Lévesque retained his own seat of Laurier. Believing that the Canadian federation was doomed to fail, Lévesque began to openly champion separation from Canada as part of the Liberal platform at the upcoming party conference. Kierans, who had been elected party president, led the movement against the motion, with future premier Robert Bourassa attempting to mediate the dispute before siding with Kierans. The resolution was handily defeated, and Lévesque walked out with his followers.

Founding of the Parti Québécois
After leaving the Liberal Party, he founded the Mouvement Souveraineté-Association (MSA). In contrast to more militant nationalist movements, such as Pierre Bourgault's Rassemblement pour l'Indépendance Nationale (RIN), the party eschewed direct action and protest and attempted instead to appeal to the broader electorate, whom Lévesque called "normal people". The main contention in the first party conference was the proposed policy toward Quebec's Anglophone minority; Lévesque faced down heavy opposition to his insistence that English schools and language rights be protected.

The election of hardline federalist Pierre Elliott Trudeau as Prime Minister, and the politically damaging riot instigated by the RIN when he appeared at the St. Jean Baptiste Day parade of 1968, led to the sovereignty movement coming together. The MSA merged with another party in the Quebec sovereignty movement, the Ralliement National of Gilles Grégoire, to create the Parti Québécois (PQ) in 1968. At Lévesque's insistence, RIN members were permitted to join but not accepted as a group.

The Parti Québécois gained 25 per cent of the vote in the 1970 election, running on a platform of declaring independence if government was formed. The PQ only won six seats, and Lévesque continued to run the party from Montreal by communicating with the caucus in Quebec City.

The 1973 election saw a large Liberal victory, and created major tensions within the party, especially after Lévesque was unable to gain a seat. A quarrel with House Leader Robert Burns almost ended Lévesque's leadership shortly thereafter.

Premier of Quebec (1976–1985)
Lévesque and his party won a landslide victory at the 1976 election, with Lévesque finally re-entering the Assembly as the member for Taillon in downtown Longueuil. His party assumed power with 41.1 per cent of the popular vote and 71 seats out of 110, and even managed to unseat Bourassa in his own riding. Lévesque became premier of Quebec ten days later. The night of Lévesque's acceptance speech included one of his most famous quotations: "I never thought that I could be so proud to be Québécois."

French language
His government's signature achievement was the Quebec Charter of the French Language (introduced in the legislature and still colloquially known as Bill 101), whose stated goal was to make French "the normal and everyday language of work, instruction, communication, commerce and business". In its first enactment, it reserved access to English-language public schools to children whose parents had attended English school in Quebec. All other children were required to attend French schools in order to encourage immigrants to integrate themselves into the majority francophone culture (Lévesque was more moderate on language than some of the PQ, including the language minister, Camille Laurin. He would have resigned as leader rather than eliminate English-language public schools, as some party members proposed). Bill 101 also made it illegal for businesses to put up exterior commercial signs in a language other than French at a time when English dominated as a commercial and business language in Quebec.

Quebec nationalism
Lévesque was disappointed with the cold response by the American economic elite to his first speech in New York City as Premier of Quebec, in which he compared Quebec's march towards sovereignty to the American Revolution. His first speech in France was, however, more successful, leading him to a better appreciation of the French intelligentsia and of French culture.

On May 20, 1980, the PQ held, as promised before the elections, the 1980 Quebec referendum on its sovereignty-association plan. The result of the vote was 40 per cent in favour and 60 per cent opposed (with 86 per cent turnout). Lévesque conceded defeat in the referendum by announcing that, as he had understood the verdict, he had been told "until next time".

Lévesque led the PQ to victory in the 1981 election, increasing the party's majority in the National Assembly and increasing its share of the popular vote from 41 to 49 per cent.

A major focus of his second mandate was the patriation of the Canadian constitution. Lévesque was criticized by some in Quebec who said he had been tricked by Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and the English-Canadian provincial premiers. To this day, no Quebec premier of any political side has endorsed the 1982 constitutional amendment.

Other policies and events
On February 6, 1977, Lévesque accidentally killed Edgar Trottier, a homeless man who had been lying on the road, while driving his car. Trottier had in the past repeatedly used the maneuver to secure a hospital bed for the night. Police officers at the scene did not administer the breathalyzer test to Lévesque, because they did not suspect that he was impaired. Lévesque was later fined $25 for failing to wear his glasses while driving a car on the night in question. The incident gained further notoriety when it was revealed that the female companion in the vehicle was not his wife, but his longtime secretary, Corinne Côté. Lévesque's marriage ended in divorce soon thereafter (the couple had already been estranged for some time), and in April 1979, he married Côté.

Lévesque's government completed the nationalization of hydroelectricity through Hydro-Québec. He also created the Quebec Charter of the French Language, the political party financing law, and the Parti Québécois itself. His government was the first in Canada to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the province's Charte des droits de la personne in 1977. He also continued the work of the Lesage government in improving social services, in which social needs were taken care of by the state, instead of the Catholic Church (as in the Duplessis era) or the individual. Lévesque is still regarded by many as a symbol of democracy and tolerance.

The PQ government's response to the recession of the early 1980s by cutting the provincial budget to reduce growing deficits that resulted from the recession angered labour union members, a core part of the constituency of the PQ and the sovereignty movement.

Lévesque's Act to govern the financing of political parties banned corporate donations and limited individual contributions to political parties to $3,000. This key legislation was meant to prevent wealthy citizens and organizations from having a disproportionate influence on the electoral process. A Referendum Act was passed to allow for a province-wide vote on issues presented in a referendum, giving a "yes" and "no" side equal funding and legal footing.

Resignation
Lévesque had argued that the party should not make sovereignty the object of the 1985 election and instead opt for the "Beau risque" strategy of seeking an understanding with the federal government of Brian Mulroney, which angered the strongest supporters of sovereignty within the party. He said the issue in the upcoming election would not be sovereignty. Instead, he expressed hope, "that we can finally find government leaders in Ottawa who will discuss Québec's demands seriously and work with us for the greater good of Québecers". His new stance weakened his position within the party. Some senior members resigned; there were by-election defeats. Lévesque resigned as leader of the Parti Québécois on June 20, 1985, and as premier of Québec on October 3, 1985.

Retirement and death
Lévesque, a constant smoker, was hosting a dinner party in his Nuns' Island (Montreal) apartment on the evening of November 1, 1987, when he experienced chest pains; he died of a heart attack that night at Montreal General Hospital. A brief resurgence of separatist sentiment followed. Over 100,000 viewed his body lying in state in Montreal and Quebec City, over 10,000 went to his funeral in the latter city, and hundreds wept daily at his grave for months.

Lévesque was made a grand officer of the French Legion of Honour. He was posthumously made a grand officer of the National Order of Quebec in 2008.

Legacy

His state funeral and funeral procession were reportedly attended by 100,000 Québécois. During the carrying out of his coffin from the church, the crowd spontaneously began to applaud and sing Quebec's unofficial national anthem "Gens du pays", replacing the first verse with Mon cher René (My dear René), as is the custom when this song is adapted to celebrate someone's birthday. Two major boulevards now bear his name, one in Montreal and one in Quebec City. In Montreal, the Édifice Hydro-Québec and the Maison Radio-Canada are both located on René Lévesque Boulevard, fittingly as Lévesque once worked for Hydro-Québec and the CBC, respectively. On June 22, 2010, Hydro-Québec and the government of Quebec commemorated Lévesque's role in Quebec's Quiet Revolution and his tenure as premier by renaming the 1244-megawatt Manic-3 generating station in his honour.

On June 3, 1999, a monument in his honour was unveiled on boulevard René-Lévesque outside the Parliament Building in Quebec City. The statue is popular with tourists, who snuggle up to it, to have their pictures taken "avec René" (with René), despite repeated attempts by officials to keep people from touching the monument or getting too close to it. The statue had been the source of an improvised, comical and affectionately touching tribute to Lévesque. The fingers of his extended right hand are slightly parted, just enough so that tourists and the faithful could insert a cigarette, giving the statue an unusually realistic appearance.

This practice is less often seen now, however, as the statue was moved to New Carlisle and replaced by a similar, but bigger one. This change resulted from considerable controversy. Some believed that the life-sized statue was not appropriate for conveying his importance in the history of Quebec. Others noted that a trademark of Lévesque was his relatively small stature.

Lévesque today remains an important figure of the Quebec nationalist movement, and is considered sovereigntism's spiritual father. After his death, even people in disagreement with some of those convictions now generally recognize his importance to the history of Quebec. Many in Quebec regard him as the father of the modern Quebec nation. According to a study made in 2006 by Le Journal de Montréal and Léger Marketing, Lévesque was considered by far, according to Québécois, the best premier to run the province over the last 50 years.

Lévesque was notably portrayed in 1994 in the television series René Lévesque. In 2006, an additional television miniseries, René Lévesque, was aired on the CBC. He was also portrayed in an episode of Kevin Spencer, a Canadian cartoon show. In it, his ghost attempted a camaraderie with Kevin because of their similarities in political beliefs, as well as the fact that the title character, like René's ghost, claims to smoke "five packs a day".

A song by Les Cowboys Fringants named "Lettre à Lévesque" on the album La Grand-Messe was dedicated to him. They also mention the street bearing his name in the song "La Manifestation".

He was the co-subject, along with Pierre Trudeau, of the Donald Brittain-directed documentary miniseries The Champions.

Personality
Lévesque was a man capable of great tact and charm, but who could also be abrupt and choleric when defending beliefs, ideals, or morals essential to him, or when lack of respect was perceived, for example, when he was famously snubbed by François Mitterrand at their first meeting. He was also a proud Gaspésien (hailing from the Gaspé Peninsula), and had hints of the local accent.

Considered a major defender of the Québécois, Lévesque was, before the 1960s, more interested in international affairs than Quebec matters. The popular image of Lévesque was his ever-present cigarette and his small physical stature, as well as his comb over that earned him the nickname of Ti-Poil, literally, "Lil' Hair", but more accurately translated as "Baldy". Lévesque was a passionate and emotional public speaker. Those close to Lévesque have described him as having difficulty expressing his emotions in private, saying that he was more comfortable in front of a crowd of thousands than with one person.

While many Quebec intellectuals are inspired by French philosophy and high culture, Lévesque favoured the United States. Speaking fluent English, he was a faithful reader of The New York Times, and took his vacations in New England every year. He also stated that, if there had to be one role model for him, it would be US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. While in London during the Second World War, his admiration for Britons grew when he witnessed their courage in the face of the German bombardments.

Works

 * My Québec, 1979, Methuen, 191 pages, ISBN 0-458-93980-3
 * Quotations from René Lévesque, 1977, Éditions Héritage, 105 pages ISBN 0-7773-3942-0
 * An Option for Quebec, 1968, McClelland and Stewart, 128 pages
 * "For an Independent Quebec", in Foreign Affairs, July 1976)
 * Option Québec (1968)
 * La passion du Québec (1978)
 * Oui (1980)
 * Attendez que je me rappelle (1986) (although the title is literally translated as Wait While I Remember, the title of the English-language version was Memoirs.)

title: René Lévesque


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Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. Dwight Garner argued in 2018 that she was perhaps "the most purely gifted poet of the 20th century". She was also a painter, and her poetry is noted for its careful attention to detail; Ernest Hilbert wrote “Bishop’s poetics is one distinguished by tranquil observation, craft-like accuracy, care for the small things of the world, a miniaturist’s discretion and attention."

Early life
Bishop, an only child, was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, to William Thomas and Gertrude May (Bulmer) Bishop. After her father, a successful builder, died when she was eight months old, Bishop's mother became mentally ill and was institutionalized in 1916. (Bishop would later write about the time of her mother's struggles in her short story "In the Village".) Effectively orphaned during early childhood, she lived with her maternal grandparents on a farm in Great Village, Nova Scotia, a period she referred to in her writing. Bishop's mother remained in an asylum until her death in 1934, and the two were never reunited.

Later in childhood, Bishop's paternal family gained custody. She was removed from the care of her grandparents and moved in with her father's wealthier family in Worcester, Massachusetts. However, Bishop was unhappy there, and her separation from her maternal grandparents made her lonely.

While she was living in Worcester, she developed chronic asthma, from which she suffered for the rest of her life. Her time in Worcester is briefly chronicled in her poem "In the Waiting Room". In 1918, her grandparents, realizing that Bishop was unhappy living with them, sent her to live with her mother's eldest sister, Maude Bulmer Shepherdson, and her husband George.

The Bishops paid Maude to house and educate their granddaughter. The Shepherdsons lived in a tenement in an impoverished Revere, Massachusetts, neighborhood populated mostly by Irish and Italian immigrants. The family later moved to better circumstances in Cliftondale, Massachusetts. It was Bishop's aunt who introduced her to the works of Victorian writers, including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, Robert Browning, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Bishop was very ill as a child and, as a result, received very little formal schooling until she attended Saugus High School for her freshman year. She was accepted to the Walnut Hill School in Natick, Massachusetts, for her sophomore year but was behind on her vaccinations and not allowed to attend. Instead she spent the year at the Shore Country Day School in Beverly, Massachusetts. Bishop then boarded at the Walnut Hill School, where she studied music. At Shore Country Day, her first poems were published in a student magazine by her friend Frani Blough.

Bishop entered Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in the autumn of 1929, planning to study music in order to become a composer. She gave up music because of her terror of performing, and switched her major to English, taking courses in 16th- and 17th-century literature. Bishop published her work in her senior year in The Magazine, a California publication.

In 1933, she co-founded Con Spirito, a rebel literary magazine at Vassar, with writer Mary McCarthy, Margaret Miller, and the sisters Eunice and Eleanor Clark. Bishop graduated from Vassar with a bachelor's degree in 1934.

Influences
Bishop was greatly influenced by the poet Marianne Moore, to whom she was introduced by a librarian at Vassar in 1934. Moore took a keen interest in Bishop's work and, at one point, Moore dissuaded Bishop from attending Cornell Medical School, where Bishop had briefly enrolled after moving to New York City following her Vassar graduation. Regarding Moore's influence on Bishop's writing, Bishop's friend and Vassar peer, the writer Mary McCarthy stated, "Certainly between Bishop and Marianne Moore there are resemblances: the sort of close microscopic inspection of certain parts of experience. [However,] I think there is something a bit too demure about Marianne Moore, and there's nothing demure about Elizabeth Bishop." Moore helped Bishop first publish some of her poems in an anthology called Trial Balances in which established poets introduced the work of unknown, younger poets.

It was four years before Bishop addressed "Dear Miss Moore" as "Dear Marianne" and only then at the elder poet's invitation. The friendship between the two women, memorialized by an extensive correspondence, endured until Moore's death in 1972. Bishop's "At the Fishhouses" (1955) contains allusions on several levels to Moore's 1924 poem "A Grave".

She was introduced to Robert Lowell by Randall Jarrell in 1947, and they became great friends, mostly through their written correspondence, until Lowell's death in 1977. After his death, she wrote, "our friendship, [which was] often kept alive through years of separation only by letters, remained constant and affectionate, and I shall always be deeply grateful for it." They also influenced each other's poetry. Lowell cited Bishop's influence on his poem "Skunk Hour" which he said, "[was] modeled on Miss Bishop's 'The Armadillo'." Also, his poem "The Scream" is "derived from ... Bishop's story 'In the Village'." "North Haven", one of the last of her poems published during her lifetime, was written in memory of Lowell in 1978.

Travels
Bishop had an independent income from early adulthood, as a result of an inheritance from her deceased father, that did not run out until near the end of her life. This income allowed her to travel widely, though cheaply, without worrying about employment, and to live in many cities and countries, which are described in her poems. She wrote frequently about her love of travel in poems like "Questions of Travel" and "Over 2000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance". She lived in France for several years in the mid-1930s with a friend from Vassar, Louise Crane, who was a paper-manufacturing heiress.

In 1938, the two of them purchased a house at 624 White Street in Key West, Florida. While living there Bishop made the acquaintance of Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway, who had divorced Ernest Hemingway in 1940.

She later lived in an apartment at 611 Frances Street.

From 1949 to 1950, she was the Consultant in Poetry for the Library of Congress, and lived at Bertha Looker's Boardinghouse, 1312 30th Street Northwest, Washington, D.C., in Georgetown.

Upon receiving a substantial ($2,500) traveling fellowship from Bryn Mawr College in 1951, Bishop set off to circumnavigate South America. Arriving in Santos, Brazil, in November of that year, Bishop expected to stay two weeks but stayed 15 years. She lived in Petrópolis with architect Lota (Maria Carlota) de Macedo Soares, who was descended from a prominent and notable political family. Although Bishop was not forthcoming about details of her romance with Soares, much of their relationship was documented in Bishop's extensive correspondence with Samuel Ashley Brown. In its later years the relationship deteriorated, becoming volatile and tempestuous, marked by bouts of depression, tantrums and alcoholism. The relationship is depicted in the 2013 film Reaching for the Moon.

During her time in Brazil, Bishop became increasingly interested in the literature of the country. She was influenced by Brazilian poets, including João Cabral de Melo Neto and Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and translated their work into English. Regarding Andrade, she said, "I didn't know him at all. He's supposed to be very shy. I'm supposed to be very shy. We've met once—on the sidewalk at night. We had just come out of the same restaurant, and he kissed my hand politely when we were introduced." After Soares took her own life in 1967, Bishop spent more time in the United States.

Publication history and awards
For a major American poet, Bishop published very sparingly. Her first book, North & South, was first published in 1946 and won the Houghton Mifflin Prize for poetry. This book included important poems like "The Man-Moth" (which describes a dark and lonely fictional creature inspired by what Bishop noted was "[a] newspaper misprint for 'mammoth'") and "The Fish" (in which Bishop describes a caught fish in exacting detail). But she did not publish a follow-up until nine years later. That volume, titled Poems: North & South—A Cold Spring, first published in 1955, included her first book, plus the 18 new poems that constituted the new "Cold Spring" section. Bishop won the Pulitzer Prize for this book in 1956.

Then there was another long wait before her next volume, Questions of Travel, in 1965. This book showed the influence that living in Brazil had had on Bishop's writing. It included poems in the book's first section that were explicitly about life in Brazil including "Arrival at Santos", "Manuelzinho", and "The Riverman". But in the second section of the volume Bishop also included pieces set in other locations like "In the Village" and "First Death in Nova Scotia", which take place in her native country. Questions of Travel was her first book to include one of her short stories (the aforementioned "In the Village").

Bishop's next major publication was The Complete Poems (1969), which included eight new poems and won a National Book Award. The last new book of poems to appear in her lifetime, Geography III (1977) included frequently anthologized poems like "In the Waiting Room" and "One Art". This book led to Bishop's being the first American and the first woman to be awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Bishop's The Complete Poems, 1927–1979 was published posthumously in 1983. Other posthumous publications included The Collected Prose (1984; a compilation of her essays and short stories) and Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke-box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments (2006), whose publication aroused some controversy. Meghan O'Rourke notes in an article from Slate magazine, "It's no wonder ... that the recent publication of Bishop's hitherto uncollected poems, drafts, and fragments ... encountered fierce resistance, and some debate about the value of making this work available to the public. In an outraged piece for The New Republic, Helen Vendler labeled the drafts 'maimed and stunted' and rebuked Farrar, Straus and Giroux for choosing to publish the volume."

Literary style and identity
Where some of her notable contemporaries like Robert Lowell and John Berryman made the intimate details of their personal lives an important part of their poetry, Bishop avoided this practice altogether. In contrast to this confessional style involving large amounts of self-exposure, Bishop's style of writing, though it did include a small amount of material from her personal life, was known for its highly detailed, objective, and distant point of view, and for its reticence on the kinds of personal subject matter that the work of her contemporaries involved. She used discretion when writing about details and people from her life. "In the Village", a piece about her childhood and her mentally unstable mother, is written as a third-person narrative; the reader would only know of the story's autobiographical origins by knowing about Bishop's childhood.

Bishop did not see herself as a "lesbian poet" or as a "female poet". Because she refused to have her work published in all-female poetry anthologies, other female poets involved with the women's movement thought she was hostile towards the movement. For instance, a student at Harvard who was close to Bishop in the 60s, Kathleen Spivack, wrote in her memoir, "I think Bishop internalized the misogyny of the time. How could she not? ... Bishop had a very ambivalent relation to being a woman plus poet—plus lesbian—in the Boston/Cambridge/Harvard nexus ... Extremely vulnerable, sensitive, she hid much of her private life. She wanted nothing to do with anything that seemed to involve the women's movement. She internalized many of the male attitudes of the day toward women, who were supposed to be attractive, appealing to men, and not ask for equal pay or a job with benefits." However, this was not necessarily how Bishop viewed herself. In an interview with The Paris Review from 1978, she said that, despite her insistence on being excluded from female poetry anthologies, she still considered herself to be "a strong feminist" but that she only wanted to be judged based on the quality of her writing and not on her gender or sexual orientation.

Although generally supportive of the "confessional" style of her friend, Robert Lowell, she drew the line at his highly controversial book The Dolphin (1973), in which he used and altered private letters from his ex-wife, Elizabeth Hardwick (whom he divorced after 23 years of marriage), as material for his poems. In a letter to Lowell, dated March 21, 1972, Bishop strongly urged him against publishing the book: "One can use one's life as material [for poems]—one does anyway—but these letters—aren't you violating a trust? IF you were given permission—IF you hadn't changed them... etc. But art just isn't worth that much."

"In the Waiting Room"
Bishop's "In the Waiting Room", written in 1976, addressed the chase for identity and individuality within a diverse society as a seven-year-old girl living in Worcester, Massachusetts, during World War I.

"First Death in Nova Scotia"
Bishop's poem "First Death in Nova Scotia", first published in 1965, describes her first encounter with death when her cousin Arthur died. In this poem, her experience of that event is through a child's point of view. The poem highlights that although young and naive the child has some instinctive awareness of the severe impact of death. She combines reality and imagination, a technique also used in her poem "Sestina".

"Sestina"
Bishop's poem "Sestina", published in 1956 in The New Yorker, depicts a real-life experience. After her father's death when she was a baby and following her mother's nervous breakdown when she was five, Bishop's poem notes her experience after she has gone to live with relatives. The poem is about her living with the knowledge that she would not see her mother again. Bishop writes, "Time to plant tears, says the almanac. / The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove / and the child draws another inscrutable house." The style of her poem, the sestina, is a poetry style created by Arnaut Daniel in the 12th century, focused on the emphases of ending words in each line, giving the poem a sense of form and pattern. Bishop is widely known for her skill in the sestina format.

Later life
Bishop lectured in higher education for a number of years starting in the 1970s when her inheritance began to run out. For a short time she taught at the University of Washington, before teaching at Harvard University for seven years. She spent several summers near the end of her life on the island of North Haven, Maine. She taught at New York University, before finishing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She commented, "I don't think I believe in writing courses at all, it's true, children sometimes write wonderful things, paint wonderful pictures, but I think they should be discouraged."

In 1971 Bishop began a relationship with Alice Methfessel, who became her literary executor. Never a prolific writer, Bishop noted that she would begin many projects and leave them unfinished. Two years after publishing her last book, Geography III (1977), she died of a cerebral aneurysm in her apartment at Lewis Wharf, Boston, and is buried in Hope Cemetery (Worcester, Massachusetts). Her requested epitaph, the last two lines from her poem "The Bight" — "All the untidy activity continues, / awful but cheerful" — was added, along with her inscription, to the family monument in 1997, on the occasion of the Elizabeth Bishop Conference and Poetry Festival in Worcester.

After her death, the Elizabeth Bishop House, an artists' retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia, was dedicated to her memory. Vassar College Library acquired her literary and personal papers in 1981. Her personal correspondence and manuscripts appear in numerous other literary collections in American research libraries.

In popular culture
Reaching for the Moon (2013) is a Brazilian movie about Bishop's life when she was living in Brazil with Lota de Macedo Soares. The Portuguese title of the film is Flores Raras.

Author Michael Sledge published the novel The More I Owe You, about Bishop and Soares, in 2010.

Bishop's friendship with Robert Lowell was the subject of the play Dear Elizabeth, by Sarah Ruhl, which was first performed at the Yale Repertory Theater in 2012. The play was adapted from the two poets' letters which were collected in the book Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell.

In the television show Breaking Bad, episode 2.13, "ABQ", Jane's father enters her bedroom where there is a photograph of Elizabeth Bishop on the wall. Earlier, the father had told the police that Jane's mother's maiden name was Bishop.

Awards and honors

 * 1945: Houghton Mifflin Poetry Prize Fellowship
 * 1947: Guggenheim Fellowship
 * 1949: Appointed Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress
 * 1950: American Academy of Arts and Letters Award
 * 1951: Lucy Martin Donelly Fellowship (awarded by Bryn Mawr College)
 * 1953: Shelley Memorial Award
 * 1954: Elected to lifetime membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters
 * 1956: Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
 * 1960: Chapelbrook Foundation Award
 * 1964: Academy of American Poets Fellowship
 * 1968: Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
 * 1968: Ingram Merrill Foundation Grant
 * 1969: The Order of Rio Branco (awarded by the Brazilian government)
 * 1970: National Book Award for Poetry
 * 1974: Harriet Monroe Poetry Award
 * 1976: Books Abroad/Neustadt International Prize
 * 1976: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters
 * 1977: National Book Critics Circle Award
 * 1978: Guggenheim Fellowship
 * 2010: Elected to inaugural class of the New York Writers Hall of Fame

Works

 * Poetry collections
 * North & South (Houghton Mifflin, 1946)
 * Poems: North & South. A Cold Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1955) —winner of the Pulitzer Prize
 * A Cold Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1956)
 * Questions of Travel (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1965)
 * The Complete Poems (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969) —winner of the National Book Award
 * Geography III (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1976)
 * The Complete Poems: 1927–1979 (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1983)
 * Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments by Elizabeth Bishop ed. Alice Quinn (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006)
 * Poems, Prose and Letters by Elizabeth Bishop, ed. Robert Giroux (Library of America, 2008) ISBN 9781598530179
 * Poems (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011)

 * Other works
 * The Diary of Helena Morley by Alice Brant, translated and with an introduction by Elizabeth Bishop, (Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, 1957)
 * The Ballad of the Burglar of Babylon (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1968)
 * An Anthology of Twentieth Century Brazilian Poetry, edited by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil, (Wesleyan University Press (1972)
 * The Collected Prose (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1984)
 * One Art: Letters, selected and edited by Robert Giroux (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994)
 * Exchanging Hats: Elizabeth Bishop Paintings, edited and with an introduction by William Benton (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1996)
 * Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, ed. Thomas Travisano, Saskia Hamilton (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008)
 * Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop, George Monteiro Ed. (University Press of Mississippi 1996)

Archives

 * Elizabeth Bishop papers at Special Collections, Vassar College Libraries
 * John Malcolm Brinnin papers at Special Collections, University of Delaware Library
 * Marianne Moore collection at The Rosenbach, Philadelphia
 * Robert Lowell papers at Houghton Library, Harvard
 * Robert Lowell papers at Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin

Other links

 * Profile at the National Book Foundation Poetry Blog
 * Profile at the Poetry Archive with poems written and audio
 * Profile and poems at Poets.org
 * Profile and poems at the Poetry Foundation
 * From the Archive: Discovering Elizabeth Bishop (online exhibition) at Vassar College Libraries
 * Profile and poems at the Poetry Foundation
 * From the Archive: Discovering Elizabeth Bishop (online exhibition) at Vassar College Libraries

title: Elizabeth Bishop


text:
Talk:Jelly roll

Move to swiss roll?
I need advice from some Americans. Having been off cakes for over a year because of a temporary gluten intolerance (now overcome) and a strict nutritionist who doesn't allow sugar or refined wheat flour, I finally made a swiss roll a few days ago. It turned out so well that I then thought of contributing to the swiss roll article, finding out if it had a photo, and if not, making another swiss roll and uploading the photo. I looked at swiss roll, and found that it was a redirect to jelly roll, which seems (I hadn't known this) to have some kind of sexual meaning. In fact, most of the article was devoted to the sexual meaning, and only three lines to the cake.

I really think that a picture of my beautiful swiss roll would be out of place in the article as it now stands, and I'd like to start an article on swiss roll, with a photo and some background information, leaving out all the sexual stuff. But the article gives me the impression that "jelly roll" is what a swiss roll is always or nearly always called in the US. I've actually never heard of jelly roll (with either meaning), but I know that Wikipedia discourages changes from British English to American or from American English to British, unless there's a very good reason. Generally, we should stick to whichever one was in the article first. I'm not comfortable with "jelly", anyway, as a swiss roll can be filled with lots of different things. The one I recently made had lemon curd in it.

Although the cake meaning comes before the sexual meaning in the article, the balance suggests that the sexual meaning is the main one. In my experience, when a non-sexual word has an alternative meaning that is sexual, people stop using it in the original meaning. Very few people use the word "gay" to mean anything other than homosexual, now. They use "lively", "cheerful", etc. And when I was a little girl, I always used a rubber at school, to rub out any mistakes I had made with my pencil. The word "rubber" is not used for a contraceptive device in Ireland, but Irish people who have lived in America for a while come back to Ireland and ask to borrow an eraser, because they don't seem comfortable calling it a rubber. If jelly roll really does have a common sexual meaning, I would expect that more and more Americans would start calling the cake a "swiss roll".

Anyway, I came to this article, because I wanted to write something about a cake! I'd like suggestions as to whether or not it would be justifiable to shorten the sexual content and move the article to "swiss roll", or whether I should start a new article on swiss roll, leave all the sexual stuff in the jelly roll article, and mention that the term is also used for swiss roll (which would be wiki-linked).

Ideas, please? AnnH ♫ 11:22, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

 * I think the best bet is to make a separate article on the confection. In the US, we have a "Swiss roll," which is the same thing, but with Twinkies-like frosting in the layers and never jam/jelly.  In general, the term "Swiss roll" is devoted solely to this treat (marketed by Little Debbie).  I think making that a separate article is a good idea.  Break the redirect.  Also, I think that a jelly roll in the US is a pretty rare thing to make but always has jam/jelly in it.  On the other hand, "Jelly roll" is such an uncommon meaning that the sexual slang has almost precluded people making the treat, and the sexual slang has some justification, as it was important for the evolution of ragtime music (Jelly Roll Morton).
 * So, a single line at the top of the new Swiss roll article saying, "In the United States, some forms of Swiss roll are known as a Jelly roll" ought to do it. Geogre 12:23, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

 * I don't think it would be bad to have an article that talked about both the dessert and the sexual meaning, but if Swiss rolls are a broader category than jelly rolls, it might be good to have the main food discussion there and have references going both ways. It would still be good to have a picture of an actual jelly roll on the jelly roll page, though. Nareek 14:27, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

 * I think is a jelly roll.  However, no doubt because of the obsene associations, the company is pretty careful not to use the term.  Geogre 15:59, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

 * This is Hormel's illustration, and it's very nice, although I'm sure it's not free.  Geogre 16:05, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I've started the swiss roll article, and have obviously cancelled the redirect. I've moved the cake-related information from the jelly roll article, and have added to the top: For information about the term "jelly roll", please see Jelly roll. I've also inserted: "A jam swiss roll is sometimes known as a jam roll, or, in the United States, a jelly roll."

Thanks for suggestions. AnnH ♫ 15:58, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Primary topic
I suggest making the Swiss roll the primary topic of this DAB, pls comment: Widefox (talk) 11:49, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Jelly Roll (singer) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 19:48, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Jelly roll