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Bob Welch (musician)

Robert Lawrence Welch Jr. (August 31, 1945 – June 7, 2012) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter who was a member of Fleetwood Mac from 1971 to 1974. He had a successful solo career in the late 1970s. His singles included "Hot Love, Cold World", "Ebony Eyes", "Precious Love", "Hypnotized", and his signature song, "Sentimental Lady".

Early life
Welch was born in Hollywood, California, into a show business family. His father, Robert L. Welch Sr., was a producer and screenwriter at Paramount Pictures, producing films starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. Welch Sr. produced the 25th Annual Academy Awards TV special in 1953 and The Thin Man TV series from 1958 to 1959. Bob's mother, Templeton Fox, was a singer and actress who worked with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre in Chicago and appeared in TV and movies from 1962 to 1979.

Welch learned clarinet in his childhood, switching to guitar in his early teens. His interests were jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock music. He was accepted into Georgetown University, but instead moved to Paris, planning to attend the Sorbonne. Welch told People in a 1979 interview that, in Paris, "I mostly smoked hash with bearded guys five years older" and spent most of his time "sitting in the Deux Magots café". He returned to Southern California, where he briefly studied French at the University of California, Los Angeles but did not complete a degree.

In 1964, Welch joined the Los Angeles-based vocal group The Seven Souls as a guitarist. The Seven Souls lost a battle of the bands competition, the prize being a contract with Epic Records, to Sly and the Family Stone. The Seven Souls' 1967 single "I'm No Stranger" made no impact at the time of its release, despite subsequent issue in France and Italy. Its B-side, "I Still Love You", has since become a Northern Soul anthem, with original copies selling up to £400. The Seven Souls broke up in 1969.

Welch subsequently returned to Paris and started a trio, Head West, which was not a success. He later told People that his time in Paris (1969-1971) was "living on rice and beans and sleeping on the floor."

Fleetwood Mac
In 1971, Welch auditioned for Fleetwood Mac at Benifold, their retreat and communal home in England. The band had recently lost one of its front-line members, guitarist Jeremy Spencer, and were looking for a replacement. Judy Wong, a friend and part-time secretary for the band, recommended her high school friend Welch. The band had a few meetings with Welch and decided to hire him, despite not having previously played with him, after listening to some of his songs on tape. Welch was assigned rhythm guitar, backing up lead guitarist Danny Kirwan. Welch also moved in to Benifold, in Hampshire.

The band's first album to feature Christine McVie and Welch, Future Games, was recorded at Advision Studios in London and released in September 1971, with the title track written by Welch. Six months later, in 1972, the band released Bare Trees, which was mostly recorded at De Lane Lea Studios in Wembley, London, and featured Welch's "Sentimental Lady". This song was a big hit for Welch five years later when he re-recorded it for his solo album French Kiss. Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham also sang on and produced the remake.

Line-up changes
The band recorded their next two albums Penguin and Mystery to Me at Benifold using mobile equipment hired from The Rolling Stones. Throughout this period, Fleetwood Mac often changed band members around the core of Mick Fleetwood, the McVies and Welch. Kirwan was replaced as a vocalist by ex-Savoy Brown lead singer Dave Walker, and as a lead guitarist by Bob Weston. Both Walker and Weston played on Penguin. Released in January 1973, the album reached No. 49 on the Billboard Top 200 album chart in the United States. This album contained Welch's songs "Bright Fire", "Night Watch", and "Revelation".

Mystery to Me contained Welch's song "Hypnotized", which earned significant FM radio airplay in the United States. However, as a result of an aborted tour, Mystery to Me only reached No. 67 in the States.

'Fake Mac' and Relocation to LA
By late 1973, internal stresses caused by a shifting line-up, touring, the deterioration of the McVies' marriage and an affair between Weston and Fleetwood's wife, Jenny Boyd, were debilitating to the band. Weston was sacked and the band quit a tour of the US.

The band's manager, Clifford Davis, refused to cancel the remaining 26 dates of the tour, fearing that this would destroy his reputation with bookers and promoters. In a letter to the remaining Fleetwood Mac members, he said he "had not slaved for years to be brought down by the whims of irresponsible musicians". He claimed that he owned the Fleetwood Mac name, and informed them of his plan to make the band into a new "star-quality, headlining act"—in effect firing them, but offering them jobs in the new band. Welch and the other band members did not take this seriously and ignored Davis's offer. Davis then set up a US tour with a new group of musicians—without Fleetwood Mac's consent—who were to be billed as "The New Fleetwood Mac". None of the new musicians had ever played with any previous incarnation of the band. Davis announced that Welch and John McVie had quit Fleetwood Mac, and that Fleetwood and Christine McVie would be joining the 'new' band at a later date. The original members of Fleetwood Mac obtained an injunction preventing the "fake Mac" from touring under their name, while Davis obtained an injunction preventing the original band from touring. The lawsuits resulting from the ultimately aborted tour put Fleetwood Mac out of commission for almost a year.

During this limbo, Welch stayed in Los Angeles and connected with entertainment attorneys. Welch believed the band was being neglected by Warner Bros.—the parent of their label, Reprise Records—and convinced the band to move to Los Angeles.

Instead of getting another manager, Fleetwood Mac decided to manage themselves. After the courts ruled that the "Fleetwood Mac" name belonged to Fleetwood and John McVie, the two band members set up their own band management company, Seedy Management.

Heroes Are Hard to Find and departure from Fleetwood Mac
In 1974, Welch was the only guitar player in the band. Warner Bros. made a new deal with Fleetwood Mac, releasing the album Heroes Are Hard to Find on Reprise in September 1974. The album became the band's first to reach the Top 40 in the United States, peaking at No. 34 on the Billboard chart. The subsequent tour would be Welch's last with Fleetwood Mac.

Welch was suffering with personal and professional issues: his marriage was failing, and he felt he had exhausted his creativity with the band. Later, he explained that he felt estranged from John and Christine McVie, yet close to Fleetwood, with whom, he asserted, he was running the band in 1974. Welch resigned from Fleetwood Mac in December 1974 and was replaced by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.

Of the Fleetwood Mac albums on which Welch appeared, American album sales totaled 500,000 units shipped between 1971 and 2000 for Future Games; 1 million units of Bare Trees between 1972 and 1988; and 500,000 units of Mystery to Me between 1973 and 1976, when it was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Welch's relationship with his former band remained amicable in the years following his departure. During the height of their respective popularity in the late 1970s, Welch would frequently open for Fleetwood Mac and he would sit in as lead vocalist on "Hypnotized". Mick Fleetwood managed Welch's career into the 1980s.

Lawsuit
By the 1990s, Welch's once diplomatic relationship with Fleetwood Mac had become acrimonious. In 1994, Welch sued Fleetwood, the McVies, band attorney Michael Shapiro and Warner Bros. Records for breach of contract related to underpayment of royalties. Previously, in 1978, Welch and the band had signed a contract with Warner Bros. agreeing to an equal share of all royalties from their Fleetwood Mac albums. Welch alleged that the members later made new deals with Warner Bros. for higher royalty rates, and neither Fleetwood nor the McVies had informed Welch, thus cheating him out of equal royalties. The lawsuit was settled in 1996.

Hall of Fame controversy and reconciliation
When Fleetwood Mac was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, original band members Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer, Mick Fleetwood, and John McVie were named to the Hall, as were later additions Danny Kirwan, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, and Stevie Nicks. Welch, who anchored the band for several years and five albums, was not. Welch felt the recent legal battle with the band soured the committee to include him. "My era was the bridge era," Welch told the Cleveland newspaper the Plain Dealer in 1998. "It was a transition. But it was an important period in the history of the band. Mick Fleetwood dedicated a whole chapter of his biography to my era of the band and credited me with 'saving Fleetwood Mac'. Now they want to write me out of the history of the group. It hurts... Mick and I co-managed the group for years. I'm the one who brought the band to Los Angeles from England, which put them in the position of hooking up with Lindsey and Stevie. I saw the band through a whole period where they barely survived, literally."

In a 2003 online question-and-answer session on the Fleetwood Mac fan site The Penguin, Welch revised his opinion about the exclusion. He had recently visited Fleetwood Mac backstage after a show, and he reconnected with Mick Fleetwood. Welch no longer blamed the band for his exclusion. He instead blamed the Hall's committee and its industry insiders (such as Ahmet Ertegun and Jann Wenner), stating they did not like his style of music. He still maintained that the lawsuit was a factor, as it prevented him from contacting Mick Fleetwood, and they were still estranged at the time of the induction.

Rock trio and solo career
In 1975, Welch formed the short-lived hard rock power trio Paris with ex-Jethro Tull bassist Glenn Cornick and former Nazz drummer Thom Mooney. With a guitar-driven aesthetic compared by retrospective critics to Led Zeppelin, Paris released two commercially unsuccessful albums: Paris and Big Towne, 2061. Hunt Sales later replaced Mooney until the group disbanded.

In a 1979 interview with People, Welch said that the two Paris albums were "ill-conceived." The band's overhead and ensuing lack of commercial success drained Welch's finances, leaving him with only $8,000 in savings (equivalent to ~$35,000 in 2024) after its dissolution.

In September 1977, Welch released his first solo album, French Kiss, a mainstream pop collection featuring contributions from Fleetwood, Buckingham and Christine McVie. The album was certified platinum by the RIAA, peaking at No. 12 on the Billboard chart in 1978. It yielded three hit singles: a revamped version of "Sentimental Lady" produced by Buckingham and McVie (#8), "Ebony Eyes" (#14; featuring Juice Newton on backing vocals) and "Hot Love, Cold World" (#31).

Welch followed up French Kiss with two albums in 1979. In February, Three Hearts, an album that replicated the rock/disco fusion of French Kiss, peaked at No. 20 (earning a RIAA gold certification) and spawned the hit "Precious Love" (#19), while the follow-up single "Church" (#73) also charted as his final U.S. Top 100 hit. His second effort that year, November's The Other One, contained his first solo recordings without any Fleetwood Mac members. Although the album reached No. 105 on the charts, none of its singles charted. Notable songs include "Rebel Rouser" and "Don't Let Me Fall". From 1980 to 1981, he hosted Hollywood Heartbeat, an early music video program. His subsequent solo albums into the early 1980s (Man Overboard, Bob Welch, and Eye Contact) were not successful; released approximately two years after "Church," Bob Welch only charted at No. 201.

In 1999, Welch released an experimental jazz/loop-based album, Bob Welch Looks at Bop. He followed this up in 2003 with His Fleetwood Mac Years and Beyond, which contained re-recordings of songs he originally performed with Fleetwood Mac, as well as some solo hits. In 2006, he released His Fleetwood Mac Years and Beyond 2, which mixed a half-dozen new compositions, along with a similar number of his Mac/solo remakes. He released more CDs with Fuel Records in 2008, 2010, and 2011.

Welch appeared as an avatar named BobWelch Magic in 2008, performing solo acoustic favorites and hits live for 30 minutes, in a show with Von Johin (musician/publisher Mike Lawson) and Cypress Rosewood (musician Tony Gerber) in the virtual world of Second Life, streaming live into the Gibson Island virtual stage from Lawson's studio.

Recovery and second marriage
Following the release of Eye Contact (which failed to chart), Welch took to partying with Guns N' Roses, who were rehearsing in his garage. He became addicted to cocaine and heroin, and was hospitalized for detox in spring of 1985. Welch reflected on that era as "being a very bad boy, very decadent, very cynical, VERY stoned. It was not a good time."

The day he was released from detox, he was introduced to Wendy Armistead by Taryn Power (Tyrone Power's daughter) and Tony Sales at The Central (now The Viper Room). Welch and Armistead were married in December 1985 and moved to Phoenix, Arizona, to maintain Welch's sobriety. Welch abstained from all illegal drugs for the rest of his life.

While in Phoenix, they formed a short-lived group called Avenue M. The group went on tour and recorded one song for a greatest hits compilation. Welch and Armistead later moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and remained married until his death.

Death and legacy
Three months before his death, Welch underwent spinal surgery. The procedure was unsuccessful. He was still in considerable pain, despite taking the medication pregabalin (Lyrica) for six weeks.

On June 7, 2012, around 6:00 a.m., Welch died by suicide, shooting himself in his Nashville home where his wife Wendy — for whom he left a nine-page suicide note and love letter — discovered his body. He was 66 years old.

Wendy died on November 28, 2016, from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and heart disease, also aged 66. Bob and Wendy Welch are buried beside each other in Memphis, Tennessee.

An exhibit chronicling Bob Welch's career opened at The Musicians Hall of Fame at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee on August 27, 2018. Despite the lawsuit over a decade earlier, Fleetwood wrote a tribute for the exhibit. Bob and Wendy Welch's estate has endowed a scholarship to support Belmont School of Music students.

Pop culture
Bob Welch is mentioned throughout episode one of season eighteen of Family Guy called "Yacht Rocky." The main character, Peter Griffin, finds out that Bob Welch has passed away and takes a moment to lie down and stare at the ceiling while listening to "Sentimental Lady." This repeats several times in the episode as different characters lament about Bob's passing.

title: Bob Welch (musician)


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Harvey Fletcher

Harvey Fletcher (September 11, 1884 – July 23, 1981) was an American physicist. Known as the "father of stereophonic sound", he is credited with the invention of the 2-A audiometer and an early electronic hearing aid. He was an investigator into the nature of speech and hearing, and made contributions in acoustics, electrical engineering, speech, medicine, music, atomic physics, sound pictures, and education. Following his death, he was credited with collaborating with his doctoral advisor, Robert Millikan, on the Nobel-prize winning oil drop experiment which first determined the charge of the electron.

Early years
Fletcher was born in Provo, Utah. He graduated from Brigham Young High School in 1904. He enrolled at Brigham Young University (BYU), graduating in 1907 with a bachelor's degree. He married Lorena Chipman. They were the parents of seven children. Harvey Fletcher was the father of James C. Fletcher, former president of the University of Utah and NASA Administrator and of Harvey J. Fletcher, a BYU math professor.

Graduate work
In 1911, Fletcher was the first physics student to earn a PhD summa cum laude from the University of Chicago. His dissertation research was on methods to determine the charge of an electron. This included the oil drop experiment commonly attributed to his advisor and collaborator, Robert Andrews Millikan. Millikan took sole credit, in return for Fletcher claiming full authorship on a related result for his dissertation. Fletcher's contributions were detail-oriented but still contributed to the successful experiment, in which he incorporated, among other things, experience with projection lanterns. Millikan went on to win the 1923 Nobel Prize for Physics, in part for this work, and Fletcher kept the agreement a secret until his death.

After completing his doctorate, he returned to BYU, where he became the head of the physics department. He served in this capacity from 1911 until 1916. Fletcher left BYU to work at Western Electric, establishing himself as a researcher. He co-founded the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) in 1931. He joined the Bell Telephone Laboratories' Engineering Staff Research Department where he found great interest in the physics of sound (acoustical science). He worked there from 1933 to 1949, when he became a professor of electrical engineering at Columbia University from 1949 to 1952. He returned to BYU in 1952 to be the director of research. He served in that role as well as being the first dean of the new college of physics and engineering sciences until 1958.

Notable contributions
Fletcher's contributions to speech perception are among his best-known work. He showed that speech features are usually spread over a wide frequency range, and developed the articulation index to approximately quantify the quality of a speech channel. He also developed the concepts of equal-loudness contours (commonly known as Fletcher–Munson curves), loudness scaling and summation, and the critical band.

At Bell Labs, he oversaw research in electrical sound recording, including the first successful stereophonic recordings, the first live stereo sound transmission, and the production of the first vinyl recording. All of this was done with the help of the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, between 1931 and 1932. Some of his other accomplishments include the production of the first functional hearing aid, the 2-A audiometer, and the artificial larynx. At Bell Labs, he worked with and was reportedly a tremendous influence on Harold Burris-Meyer, who developed advances in psychoacoustics.

Much of his research is considered to be authoritative, and his books, Speech and Hearing and Speech and Hearing in Communication, are notable treatises on the subject. A video of Fletcher was made in 1963.

Honors
Fletcher was elected an honorary fellow of the Acoustical Society of America in 1949, the second person to receive this honor after Thomas Edison, 20 years earlier. He was president of the American Society for Hard of Hearing, an honorary member of the American Otological Society and an honorary member of the Audio Engineering Society. In 1924 he was awarded the Louis E. Levy Medal by the Franklin Institute for physical measurements of audition. He was president of the American Physical Society. He was the first president of Acoustical Society of America (1929–31). In 1937 he was elected vice-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was also a member of the National Hearing Division Committee of Medical Sciences. He was given the Progress Medal Award by the American Academy of Motion Pictures, in Hollywood. For eight years he acted as National Councilor for the Ohio State University Research Foundation.

In 2010, Fletcher was honored by BYU as the founding dean of its College of Engineering (now the Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering).

On April 23, 2016, Fletcher was awarded a posthumous technical Grammy Award for his research and inventions related to stereophonic sound.

Personal life
Fletcher was a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He died on July 23, 1981, after a stroke.

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

title: Harvey Fletcher


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Oberhausen

Oberhausen is a city on the river Emscher in the Ruhr Area, Germany, located between Duisburg and Essen (c.  13 km). The city hosts the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and its Gasometer Oberhausen is an anchor point of the European Route of Industrial Heritage.

History
Oberhausen was named for its 1847 railway station which had taken its name from the Oberhausen Castle. The new borough was formed in 1862 following inflow of people for the local coal mines and steel mills. Awarded town rights in 1874, Oberhausen absorbed several neighbouring boroughs including Alstaden, parts of Styrum and Dümpten in 1910. Oberhausen became a city in 1901, and they incorporated the towns of Sterkrade and Osterfeld in 1929. The Ruhrchemie AG synthetic oil plant ("Oberhausen-Holten" or "Sterkrade/Holten") was a bombing target of the oil campaign of World War II, and the US forces reached the plant by 4 April 1945.

In 1973, Thyssen AG employed 14,000 people in Oberhausen in the steel industry, but ten years later the number had fallen to 6,000.

In 1954 the city began hosting the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and the 1982 Deutscher Filmpreis was awarded to a group that wrote the Oberhausen Manifesto.

Demographics
Population development since 1862:

The age breakdown of the population (2013) is:

There were 12.5% non-Germans living in Oberhausen, as of 2014.

The unemployment rate is 10.4% (Jul 2020).

Migrant communities in Oberhausen as of 31 December 2017:

Mayor
The current Mayor of Oberhausen is Daniel Schranz of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), elected in 2015 and re-elected in 2020. The most recent mayoral election was held on 13 September 2020, with a runoff held on 27 September, and the results were as follows:

! rowspan=2 colspan=2| Candidate ! rowspan=2| Party ! colspan=2| First round ! colspan=2| Second round ! Votes ! % ! Votes ! % ! colspan=3| Valid votes ! 66,313 ! 98.7 ! 45,837 ! 99.2 ! colspan=3| Invalid votes ! 859 ! 1.3 ! 368 ! 0.8 ! colspan=3| Total ! 67,172 ! 100.0 ! 46,205 ! 100.0 ! colspan=3| Electorate/voter turnout ! 159,510 ! 42.1 ! 159,458 ! 29.0
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Daniel Schranz
 * align=left| Christian Democratic Union
 * 30,150
 * 45.5
 * 28,456
 * 62.1
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Thorsten Berg
 * align=left| Social Democratic Party
 * 19,699
 * 29.7
 * 17,381
 * 37.9
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Norbert Emil Axt
 * align=left| Alliance 90/The Greens
 * 7,002
 * 10.6
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Wolfgang Kempkes
 * align=left| Alternative for Germany
 * 4,521
 * 6.8
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Jens Carstensen
 * align=left| The Left
 * 3,095
 * 4.7
 * align=left| Urban Mülhausen
 * align=left| Open for Citizens
 * 1,378
 * 2.1
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Claudia Wädlich
 * align=left| The Violets
 * 468
 * 0.7
 * 1,378
 * 2.1
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Claudia Wädlich
 * align=left| The Violets
 * 468
 * 0.7
 * 0.7
 * colspan=7| Source: State Returning Officer
 * }
 * }

City council
The Oberhausen city council governs the city alongside the Mayor. The most recent city council election was held on 13 September 2020, and the results were as follows:

! colspan=2| Party ! Votes ! % ! +/- ! Seats ! +/- ! colspan=2| Valid votes ! 65,536 ! 98.1 ! ! ! ! colspan=2| Invalid votes ! 1,290 ! 1.9 ! ! ! ! colspan=2| Total ! 66,826 ! 100.0 ! ! 58 ! 2 ! colspan=2| Electorate/voter turnout ! 159,510 ! 41.9 ! 0.9 ! !
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Christian Democratic Union (CDU)
 * 21,471
 * 32.8
 * 0.2
 * 19
 * 1
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Social Democratic Party (SPD)
 * 20,754
 * 31.7
 * 7.2
 * 19
 * 4
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Alliance 90/The Greens (Grüne)
 * 9,450
 * 14.4
 * 5.9
 * 8
 * 3
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Alternative for Germany (AfD)
 * 4,995
 * 7.6
 * New
 * 4
 * New
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| The Left (Die Linke)
 * 3,367
 * 5.1
 * 2.8
 * 3
 * 2
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Free Democratic Party (FDP)
 * 1,988
 * 3.0
 * 0.2
 * 2
 * ±0
 * align=left| Alliance of Obenhauser Citizens (BOB)
 * 1,913
 * 2.9
 * 5.7
 * 2
 * 3
 * align=left| Open for Citizens (OfB)
 * 1,153
 * 1.8
 * New
 * 1
 * New
 * colspan=7 bgcolor=lightgrey|
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| The Violets (Die Violetten)
 * 445
 * 0.7
 * 0.5
 * 0
 * ±0
 * 1
 * New
 * colspan=7 bgcolor=lightgrey|
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| The Violets (Die Violetten)
 * 445
 * 0.7
 * 0.5
 * 0
 * ±0
 * 0
 * ±0
 * colspan=7| Source: State Returning Officer
 * }
 * }

Sport
Oberhausen is home to Regionalliga West football team Rot-Weiß Oberhausen, who play at the Niederrheinstadion situated on the banks of the Rhine–Herne Canal.

The city had a professional ice hockey team between 1997 and 2007, the Revierlöwen Oberhausen. The team initially played at the Arena Oberhausen when playing in the top-flight Deutsche Eishockey Liga but later moved to the Emscher-Lippe-Halle in Gelsenkirchen following financial woes.

The Rudolf Weber-Arena has hosted many international indoor sporting events including MMA event UFC 122 in 2010 and the PDC Unibet European Championship of darts in 2020.

The city has established itself as a popular destination for professional wrestling in Germany, with Essen-based promotion Westside Xtreme Wrestling (wXw) regularly running shows in Oberhausen's Turbinenhalle. wXw's 16 Carat Gold Tournament is considered one of the most prestigious independent wrestling tournaments in the world and is held in March every year in Oberhausen - attracting fans from around the world.

Twin towns – sister cities
Oberhausen is twinned with:

 * 🏴 Middlesbrough, England, United Kingdom (1974)
 * 🇺🇦 Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine (1986)
 * 🇩🇪 Freital, Germany (1990)
 * 🇮🇹 Carbonia, Italy (2002)
 * 🇮🇹 Iglesias, Italy (2002)
 * 🇹🇷 Mersin, Turkey (2004)
 * 🇵🇱 Tychy, Poland (2020)

Notable people

 * Georg Schaltenbrand (1897–1979), author, neurologist and Multiple Sclerosis specialist
 * Martha Schneider-Bürger (1903–2001), civil engineer and author
 * Reni Erkens (1909–1987), swimmer
 * Wilhelm Brinkmann (1910–1991), field handball player
 * Erich Kempka (1910–1975), SS-officer and Adolf Hitler's driver
 * Werner Töniges (1910–1995), naval officer
 * Willy Jürissen (1912–1990), footballer
 * Édouard Wawrzyniak (1912–1991), French footballer
 * Will Quadflieg (1914–2003), actor
 * Alf Marholm (1918–2006), actor, radio plays, audio books and voice
 * Arnulf Zitelmann (born 1929), writer
 * Paul Lange (1931–2016), kayaker, Olympic champion
 * Karl-Heinz Feldkamp (born 1934), football player and trainer
 * Wilhelm Keim (1934–2018), chemist and professor for technical chemistry
 * Theo Vennemann (born 1937), linguist and professor of German and theoretical linguistics
 * Siegfried Jerusalem (born 1940), opera singer
 * Hans Siemensmeyer (born 1940), football player and coach
 * Wolf-Dieter Ahlenfelder (1944–2014), football referee
 * Tilman Spengler (born 1947), writer and journalist, author and co-editor of the magazine Kursbuch
 * Eckhard Stratmann-Mertens (born 1948), teacher and politician (Alliance 90/The Greens), Member of Bundestag
 * Ditmar Jakobs (born 1953), footballer
 * Willi Wülbeck (born 1954), athlete
 * Achim Hofer (born 1955), musicologist
 * Christoph Klimke (born 1959), writer
 * Michael Grosse-Brömer (born 1960), politician (CDU), Member of Bundestag
 * Christoph Schlingensief (1960–2010), film and theater director, radio play writer and performance artist
 * Dirk Balthaus (born 1965), jazz pianist and composer
 * Esther Schweins (born 1970), actress and comedian
 * Markus Feldhoff (born 1974), footballer
 * Mark Kleinschmidt (born 1974), rower
 * Marcel Landers (born 1984), footballer
 * Max Meyer (born 1995), footballer
 * Davin Herbrüggen (born 1998), singer

title: Oberhausen


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Roky Erickson

Roger Kynard "Roky" Erickson (July 15, 1947 – May 31, 2019) was an American musician and singer-songwriter. He was a founding member and the leader of the 13th Floor Elevators and a pioneer of the psychedelic rock genre.

Biography
Erickson was born in Dallas, Texas to Roger and Evelyn Erickson, and had four younger brothers. The nickname "Roky", a contraction of his first and middle names, was given to him by his parents. His father, an architect and civil engineer, was stern and disapproving of Erickson's countercultural attitudes, once forcibly cutting his son's hair rather than allow him to grow it out Beatles-style. His mother was an amateur artist and opera singer, and encouraged Erickson's musical talent by taking guitar lessons herself so she could teach him.

Erickson was interested in music from his youth, playing piano from age five and taking up guitar at 10. He attended school in Austin and dropped out of Travis High School in 1965, one month before graduating, rather than cut his hair to conform to the school dress code. Erickson wrote his first songs, "You're Gonna Miss Me" and "We Sell Soul", at age 15, and started a band with neighborhood friends which evolved into his first notable group, the Spades. The Spades scored a regional hit with "We Sell Soul"; the song is included as an unlisted bonus track on Erickson's 1995 album All That May Do My Rhyme and was adapted as "Don't Fall Down" by the 13th Floor Elevators for their debut album. In 1967, Erickson was a guest on a few songs on labelmate Red Krayola's debut album The Parable of Arable Land, playing electric organ on "Hurricane Fighter Plane" and harmonica on "Transparent Radiation".

The 13th Floor Elevators
In late 1965, at age 18, Erickson co-founded the 13th Floor Elevators. He and bandmate Tommy Hall were the main songwriters. Early in her career, singer Janis Joplin considered joining the Elevators, but Family Dog's Chet Helms persuaded her to go to San Francisco instead, where she found major fame.

The band released their debut album The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators in 1966. It contained the band's only charting single, Erickson's "You're Gonna Miss Me". A stinging breakup song, the single was a major hit on local charts in the U.S. southwest and appeared at lower positions on national singles charts as well. Critic Mark Deming writes that "If Roky Erickson had vanished from the face of the earth after The 13th Floor Elevators released their epochal debut single, "You're Gonna Miss Me", in early 1966, in all likelihood he'd still be regarded as a legend among garage rock fanatics for his primal vocal wailing and feral harmonica work."

In 1967, the band followed up with Easter Everywhere, perhaps the band's most focused effort, featuring "Slip Inside This House", and a noted cover of Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". The album Live was released in 1968 by the band's record label International Artists, with little to no input from the band. It featured audience applause dubbed over studio recordings of cover versions, alternate takes, and older material.

Bull of the Woods (1969) was the 13th Floor Elevators' final album on which they worked as a group and was largely the work of Stacy Sutherland. Erickson—due to health and legal problems—and Tommy Hall were only involved with a few tracks, including "Livin' On" and "May the Circle Remain Unbroken".

Mental illness and legal problems
In 1968, while performing at HemisFair, Erickson began speaking gibberish. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and sent to a Houston psychiatric hospital, where he involuntarily received electroconvulsive therapy.

The Elevators were vocal proponents of marijuana and psychedelic drug use, and were subject to extra attention from law enforcement agencies. In 1969, Erickson was arrested for possession of a single marijuana joint in Austin. Facing a potential ten-year incarceration, Erickson pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to avoid prison. He was first sent to the Austin State Hospital. After several escapes, he was sent to the Rusk State Hospital in Rusk, Texas, where he was subjected to more electroconvulsive therapy and Thorazine treatments, ultimately remaining in custody until 1972. During his time at Rusk, he continued writing songs and poetry. Family and friends managed to smuggle some of these poems, and in 1972, self-published the book Openers, intending to use the proceeds to hire a lawyer. (Various sources claim approximately 1,000 copies of Openers were printed; how many copies were actually sold remains unknown.) Six tracks from the 1999 Erickson collection Never Say Goodbye were also recorded during his time at Rusk.

Alien years
In 1974, after having been released from the state hospital, Erickson formed a new band which he called "Bleib Alien", Bleib being an anagram of Bible and/or German for "remain", and "Alien" being a pun on the German word allein ("alone") – the phrase in German, therefore, being "remain alone". His new band exchanged the psychedelic sounds of The 13th Floor Elevators for a more hard rock sound that featured lyrics on old horror film and science fiction themes. "Two Headed Dog (Red Temple Prayer)" (produced by The Sir Douglas Quintet's Doug Sahm and inspired by Vladimir Demikhov's 1950s head transplant experiments) was released as a single.

The new band was renamed Roky Erickson and the Aliens. In 1979, after playing with the Reversible Cords on May Day at Raul's, Erickson recorded 15 new songs with producer Stu Cook, former bass player of Creedence Clearwater Revival. These efforts were released in two "overlapping" LPs – Roky Erickson and the Aliens (CBS UK, 1980) and The Evil One (415 Records, 1981). Cook played bass on two tracks, "Sputnik" and "Bloody Hammer".

Creative decline and renewed interest
Roky performed with The Nervebreakers as his backup band at The Palladium in Dallas in July 1979. A recording was issued on the French label New Rose and was recently re-issued elsewhere. The Austin-based band the Explosives served as Roky's most frequent back-up band during the early Raul's era, between 1978 and the early 1980s. Billed as Roky Erickson and the Explosives, they were regulars at Raul's, the Continental Club, and other Austin venues. It was this incarnation that contributed two live tracks to the first Live at Raul's LP, released in 1980, with other Raul's top bands: The Skunks, Terminal Mind, The Next, Standing Waves, and The Explosives (without Roky Erickson). The Roky Erickson tracks ("Red Temple Prayer" and "Don't Shake Me Lucifer") were not included on the initial release for contractual reasons, but were included on a later release.

In 1984 an observational documentary was produced in Austin for Swedish television, titled Demon Angel: A Day and Night with Roky Erickson. It featured Erickson in plugged and unplugged performances, solo and with local musician/producer Mike Alvarez on additional guitar, in an underground creek beneath the Congress Street Bridge on Halloween. Alvarez later released the film on VHS, updating it with interviews of some of Erickson's friends and relatives; it was toured to several cities including Pittsburgh, where the screening was followed by a set of Erickson covers by Alvarez and others, as well as a performance by the Mount McKinleys with guest vocalist Sumner Erickson (Roky's brother). A soundtrack of the film also was issued on CD, receiving positive reviews.

Several live albums of his older material have been released since the mid-1980s, and in 1990 Sire Records/Warner Bros. Records released the tribute album Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye, produced by Bill Bentley. It featured versions of Erickson's songs performed by The Jesus and Mary Chain, R.E.M., ZZ Top, Poi Dog Pondering, Julian Cope, Butthole Surfers, Bongwater, John Wesley Harding, Doug Sahm, and Primal Scream. According to the liner notes, the title of the album came from a remark Erickson made to a friend who asked him to define psychedelic music, to which Erickson reportedly replied "It's where the pyramid meets the eye, man", an apparent reference to the Eye of Providence, which appears on the album cover.

Return to music and later life

In 1995, Erickson released All That May Do My Rhyme on Butthole Surfers drummer King Coffey's label Trance Syndicate Records. Produced by Texas Tornados bassist Speedy Sparks, Austin recording legend Stuart Sullivan, and Texas Music Office director Casey Monahan, the release coincided with the publication of Openers II, a complete collection of Erickson's lyrics. Published by Henry Rollins's 2.13.61 Publications, it was compiled and edited by Monahan with assistance from Rollins and Erickson's youngest brother Sumner Erickson, a classical tuba player.

Sumner was granted legal custody of Roky in 2001, and established a legal trust to aid his brother. As a result, Roky received some of the most effective medical and legal aid of his life, the latter useful in helping sort out the complicated tangle of contracts that had reduced royalty payments to all but nothing for his recorded works. He also started taking medication to better manage his schizophrenia.

A documentary film on the life of Roky Erickson titled You're Gonna Miss Me was made by director Keven McAlester and screened at the 2005 SXSW film festival. In September of the same year, Erickson performed his first full-length concert in 20 years at the annual Austin City Limits Music Festival with The Explosives with special guest and longtime associate Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top.

In the December 30, 2005, issue of the Austin Chronicle, an alternative weekly newspaper in Austin, Texas, Margaret Moser chronicled Erickson's recovery, stating that Erickson had weaned himself off his medication, played at 11 gigs in Austin that year, obtained a driver's license, bought a car, and voted.

In 2007, Erickson played his first ever gigs in New York City at Southpaw in Brooklyn, NY, as well as California's Coachella Festival and made a debut performance in England to a capacity audience at the Royal Festival Hall, London. Roky continued to play in Europe, performing for the first time in Finland at Ruisrock festival. The performance was widely considered the highlight of the festival day.

On September 8, 2008, Scottish post-rock band Mogwai released the Batcat EP. Erickson is featured on "Devil Rides". Erickson performed alongside Austin-based indie rock band Okkervil River at the Austin Music Awards in 2008 and then again at the 2009 South by Southwest music festival.

Erickson returned to the stage in 2008 to perform songs from the 13th Floor Elevators catalog that had not been performed in decades with fellow Austinites The Black Angels as his backing band. After months of practices and time recording in an Austin studio, they performed a show in Dallas followed by a West Coast tour. The Black Angels played a regular set and then backed Erickson as his rhythm section, playing 13th Floor Elevators songs as well as songs from Erickson's solo albums.

On April 20, 2010, Erickson released True Love Cast Out All Evil, his first album of new material in 14 years. Okkervil River serves as Erickson's backing band on the album.

In March 2012 Erickson toured New Zealand and Australia for the first time headlining Golden Plains Festival in Meredith, Victoria and playing sold-out side shows in Sydney and Melbourne.

On May 10, 2015, he performed with the reunited 13th Floor Elevators at Levitation (formerly Austin Psych Fest, the event was renamed "Levitation" after the song of the same title). The band consisted of original band members Erickson, Tommy Hall, John Ike Walton, and Ronnie Leatherman, joined by Roky's son Jegar Erickson on harmonica, Roky's lead guitarist Eli Southard, and rhythm guitarist Fred Mitchim. On Oct. 7, 2018, Erickson performed outdoors to an audience of thousands at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco.

Death
Erickson died in Austin on May 31, 2019. His death was made public through a Facebook post by his brother Mikel, who wrote "My brother Roky passed away peaceably today. Please allow us time." No cause of death was announced.

Discography

 * Red Temple Prayer (Two Headed Dog) / Starry Eyes [as "R.Ericson and Bliebalien"] (1975, Mars Records)
 * Mine, Mine, Mind (1977, EP, Sponge)
 * Bermuda / The Interpreter (1977, Virgin [UK]/Rhino [USA])
 * Clear Night For Love (1985, EP, New Rose)
 * Don't Slander Me (1986)
 * Gremlins Have Pictures (1986)
 * Casting the Runes (Roky Erickson & The Explosives, 1987)
 * Holiday Inn Tapes (1987)
 * Click Your Fingers Applauding The Play (1988)
 * Openers (1988)
 * Live at the Ritz 1987 (1988)
 * Live Dallas 1979 (1992)
 * All That May Do My Rhyme (1995)
 * Demon Angel: A Day and a Night with Roky Erickson (1995)
 * Roky Erickson and Evilhook Wildlife (1995)
 * Never Say Goodbye (1999)
 * Don't Knock the Rok! (2004)
 * I Have Always Been Here Before (2005)
 * Halloween (2008)
 * True Love Cast Out All Evil (2010)

Roky Erickson and the Aliens
 * Roky Erickson and the Aliens (1980)
 * The Evil One (1981)

Roky Erickson and the Resurrectionists
 * Beauty and the Beast (1993)

Tribute albums
 * Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye (1990)
 * We're Gonna Miss You: A Tribute to Roky Erickson (2020)
 * May the Circle Remain Unbroken: A Tribute to Roky Erickson (2021)

Filmography

 * Demon Angel: A Day and Night with Roky Erickson (1984)
 * You're Gonna Miss Me (2005)

Legacy and influence
Author Jonathan Lethem titled his 2007 novel You Don't Love Me Yet in honor of two (otherwise unconnected) songs of the same title by Erickson and The Vulgar Boatmen. Lethem called Erickson's song "irresistible" and "one of those incredibly versatile songs."

The X-Files episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" features a character named Roky Crikenson in homage to Erickson. Crikenson, like the original Roky, believes himself to be an alien abductee.

A plotline in an episode of 1990s sitcom The John Larroquette Show revolved around a sighting of reclusive novelist Thomas Pynchon. Pynchon did not appear, but agreed to allow his name to be used on the condition that it was specifically mentioned that Pynchon was seen wearing a T-shirt showing a picture of Erickson. This spurred an increase in sales of Erickson's albums.

The album It's Spooky by Daniel Johnston and Jad Fair features the song "I Met Roky Erickson", named after an encounter Johnston had with the artist.

True Love Cast Out All Evil: The Songwriting Legacy of Roky Erickson by author Brian T. Atkinson was released by Texas A&M University Press in 2021. The book includes forewords by ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons and legendary punk rock icon Henry Rollins.

title: Roky Erickson


text:
Talk:OK

Ok
Origin of Ok is Greek. Ola Kala. Used on Container around the 50' in USA meaning that the Container is Ok to be shipped. 82.102.71.238 (talk) 18:17, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

 * If true, then noteworthy. But, accepted origin is English 1830s, near Boston. The word is without question used in many languages today. Stevebroshar (talk) 15:58, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Italian has OK too!
Italy also uses Ok in the same exact way as English, but adjective usage is rare. 37.161.198.13 (talk) 10:17, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

 * The word is used in many languages today. Stevebroshar (talk) 15:58, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Hasnain
12245 154 81 182247 154.81.247.182 (talk) 12:06, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:OK


text:
Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre

Jean Baptiste Joseph, chevalier Delambre (19 September 1749 – 19 August 1822) was a French mathematician, astronomer, historian of astronomy, and geodesist. He was also director of the Paris Observatory, and author of well-known books on the history of astronomy from ancient times to the 18th century.

Biography
After a childhood fever, he suffered from very sensitive eyes, and believed that he would soon go blind. For fear of losing his ability to read, he devoured any book available and trained his memory. He thus immersed himself in Greek and Latin literature, acquired the ability to recall entire pages verbatim weeks after reading them, became fluent in Italian, English and German and even wrote an unpublished Règle ou méthode facile pour apprendre la langue anglaise (Easy rule or method for learning English).

Delambre's quickly achieved success in his career in astronomy, such that in 1788, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1790, to establish a universally accepted foundation for the definition of measures, the National Constituent Assembly asked the French Academy of Sciences to introduce a new unit of measurement. The academics decided on the metre, defined as 1 / 10,000,000 of the distance from the North Pole to the equator, and prepared to organise an expedition to measure the length of the meridian arc between Dunkirk and Barcelona. This portion of the meridian, which also passes through Paris, was to serve as the basis for the length of the quarter meridian, connecting the North Pole with the Equator. In April 1791, the academy's Metric Commission confided this mission to Jean-Dominique de Cassini, Adrien-Marie Legendre and Pierre Méchain. Cassini was chosen to head the northern expedition but, as a royalist, he refused to serve under the revolutionary government after the arrest of King Louis XVI on his Flight to Varennes. On 15 February 1792, Delambre was elected unanimously a member of the French Academy of Sciences and in May 1792, after Cassini's final refusal, was placed in charge of the northern expedition, measuring the meridian from Dunkirk to Rodez in the south of France. Pierre Méchain headed the southern expedition, measuring from Barcelona to Rodez. The measurements were finished in 1798. The gathered data were presented to an international conference of savants in Paris the following year.

In 1801, First Consul Bonaparte took the presidency of the French Academy of Sciences and appointed Delambre its Permanent Secretary for the Mathematical Sciences, a post he held until his death. In 1803, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.

After Méchain's death in 1804, he was appointed director of the Paris Observatory. He was also professor of astronomy at the Collège de France. The same year he married Elisabeth-Aglaée Leblanc de Pommard, a widow with whom he had lived already for a long time. Her son, Achille-César-Charles de Pommard (1781–1807) assisted Delambre on several occasions in his astronomical and geodetical surveys, notably the measuring of the baselines for the meridian survey, and the latitude definition for Paris in December 1799 which was presented to the Conference of Savants.

Delambre was one of the first astronomers to derive astronomical equations from analytical formulas, was the author of Delambre's analogies and, after the age of 70, also the author of works on the history of astronomy like the Histoire de l'astronomie. He was a knight (chevalier) of the Order of Saint Michael and of the Légion d'honneur. His name is also one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel tower. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1822.

Delambre died in 1822 and was interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. The crater Delambre on the Moon is named after him.

Delambre was an atheist.

Works
Reprinted by New York and London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1965 (Sources of Science, #23), with a new preface by Otto Neugebauer. . Text on line: vol. 1,, , ; vol. 2, ,. Reprinted by New York and London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1965 (Sources of Science, #24.). Also reprinted by Paris: J. Gabay, 2006. . Text on line:. Reprinted by New York and London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1969 (Sources of Science, #25), with a new introduction and tables of contents by I. Bernard Cohen. . Also reprinted by Paris: Editions Jacques Gabay, 2006. . This takes the history to the 17th century. Text on line: both volumes, with usable plates, ; vol. 1,, , ; vol. 2,. Reprinted by Paris: J. Gabay, 2004. . This includes the history of astronomy in the 18th century, especially critiques of his colleagues at the academy, which he withheld to be published posthumously. Text on line: ; with usable plates,. Some works are digitalized on Paris Observatory digital library.
 * Méthodes analytiques pour la détermination d'un arc du méridien (Crapelet, Paris, 1799)
 * Notice historique sur M. Méchain, lue le 5 messidor XIII (Baudouin, Paris, January 1806; this is the eulogy on the late Pierre Méchain, read at the academy by Secretary Delambre on 24 June 1805)
 * Base du système métrique décimal, ou Mesure de l'arc du méridien – compris entre les parallèles de Dunkerque et Barcelone, exécutée en 1792 et années suivantes, par MM. Méchain et Delambre. (editor; Baudouin, Imprimeur de l'Institut National; Paris; 3. vol.; January 1806, 1807, 1810; this includes both his own and Méchain's data gathered during the meridian survey 1792–1799 and calculations derived thereof)
 * Rapport historique sur le progrès des sciences mathématiques depuis 1799 (Imprimerie Impériale, Paris, 1810)
 * Tables écliptiques des satellites de Jupiter: d'après la théorie de M. le Marquis de Laplace, et la totalité des observations faites depuis 1662 jusqu'à l'an 1802 (Paris : Courcier, 1817.)
 * A history of astronomy, comprising four works and six volumes in all:
 * Histoire de l'astronomie ancienne, Paris: Mme Ve Courcier, 1817. 2 volumes; vol. 1, lxxii, 556 pp., 1 folded plate; vol. 2, viii, 639 pp., [1], 16 folded plates..
 * Histoire de l'astronomie du moyen age, Paris: Mme Ve Courcier, 1819. lxxxiv, 640 pp., 17 folded plates..
 * Histoire de l'astronomie moderne, Paris: Mme Ve Courcier, 1821. 2 volumes; vol. 1, lxxxii, 715 pp., [1], 9 folded plates; vol. 2, [4], 804 pp., 8 folded plates..
 * Histoire de l'astronomie au dix-huitième siècle, edited by Claude-Louis Mathieu, Paris: Bachelier (successeur de Mme Ve Courcier), 1827. lii, 796 p., 3 folded plates.
 * Grandeur et figure de la terre, ouvrage augmenté de notes, de cartes (1912)(edited by Guillaume Bigourdan, Gauthiers-Villars, Paris, 1912; about the figure of the Earth)

title: Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre


text:
Doubly special relativity

Doubly special relativity (DSR) – also called deformed special relativity or, by some, extra-special relativity – is a modified theory of special relativity in which there is not only an observer-independent maximum velocity (the speed of light), but also an observer-independent maximum energy scale (the Planck energy) and/or a minimum length scale (the Planck length). This contrasts with other Lorentz-violating theories, such as the Standard-Model Extension, where Lorentz invariance is instead broken by the presence of a preferred frame. The main motivation for this theory is that the Planck energy should be the scale where as yet unknown quantum gravity effects become important and, due to invariance of physical laws, this scale should remain fixed in all inertial frames.

History
First attempts to modify special relativity by introducing an observer-independent length were made by Pavlopoulos (1967), who estimated this length at about $metres$. In the context of quantum gravity, Giovanni Amelino-Camelia (2000) introduced what is now called doubly special relativity, by proposing a specific realization of preserving invariance of the Planck length $1.616 m$. This was reformulated by Kowalski-Glikman (2001) in terms of an observer-independent Planck mass. A different model, inspired by that of Amelino-Camelia, was proposed in 2001 by João Magueijo and Lee Smolin, who also focused on the invariance of Planck energy.

It was realized that there are, indeed, three kinds of deformation of special relativity that allow one to achieve an invariance of the Planck energy; either as a maximum energy, as a maximal momentum, or both. DSR models are possibly related to loop quantum gravity in 2+1 dimensions (two space, one time), and it has been conjectured that a relation also exists in 3+1 dimensions.

The motivation for these proposals is mainly theoretical, based on the following observation: The Planck energy is expected to play a fundamental role in a theory of quantum gravity; setting the scale at which quantum gravity effects cannot be neglected and new phenomena might become important. If special relativity is to hold up exactly to this scale, different observers would observe quantum gravity effects at different scales, due to the Lorentz–FitzGerald contraction, in contradiction to the principle that all inertial observers should be able to describe phenomena by the same physical laws. This motivation has been criticized, on the grounds that the result of a Lorentz transformation does not itself constitute an observable phenomenon. DSR also suffers from several inconsistencies in formulation that have yet to be resolved. Most notably, it is difficult to recover the standard transformation behavior for macroscopic bodies, known as the soccer ball problem. The other conceptual difficulty is that DSR is a priori formulated in momentum space. There is, as of yet, no consistent formulation of the model in position space.

Predictions
Experiments to date have not observed contradictions to Special Relativity.

It was initially speculated that ordinary special relativity and doubly special relativity would make distinct physical predictions in high-energy processes and, in particular, the derivation of the GZK limit on energies of cosmic rays from distant sources would not be valid. However, it is now established that standard doubly special relativity does not predict any suppression of the GZK cutoff, contrary to the models where an absolute local rest frame exists, such as effective field theories like the Standard-Model Extension.

Since DSR generically (though not necessarily) implies an energy-dependence of the speed of light, it has further been predicted that, if there are modifications to first order in energy over the Planck mass, this energy-dependence would be observable in high energetic photons reaching Earth from distant gamma ray bursts. Depending on whether the now energy-dependent speed of light increases or decreases with energy (a model-dependent feature), highly energetic photons would be faster or slower than the lower energetic ones. However, the Fermi-LAT experiment in 2009 measured a 31 GeV photon, which nearly simultaneously arrived with other photons from the same burst, which excluded such dispersion effects even above the Planck energy. Moreover, it has been argued that DSR, with an energy-dependent speed of light, is inconsistent and first order effects are ruled out already because they would lead to non-local particle interactions that would long have been observed in particle physics experiments.

De Sitter relativity
Since the de Sitter group naturally incorporates an invariant length parameter, de Sitter relativity can be interpreted as an example of doubly special relativity because de Sitter spacetime incorporates invariant velocity, as well as length parameter. There is a fundamental difference, though: whereas in all doubly special relativity models the Lorentz symmetry is violated, in de Sitter relativity it remains as a physical symmetry. A drawback of the usual doubly special relativity models is that they are valid only at the energy scales where ordinary special relativity is supposed to break down, giving rise to a patchwork relativity. On the other hand, de Sitter relativity is found to be invariant under a simultaneous re-scaling of mass, energy and momentum, and is consequently valid at all energy scales.

title: Doubly special relativity