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Talk:Timeline of computer viruses and worms

Deleting 1979 "Millersville" entry
This entry (1) has no verifiable references, (2) reads like pure BS, (3) was inserted by a deleted user who (4) added +2,047 characters and marked it  m  (see revision), and (5) is currently tagged with. If this virus/worm was real and notable, please revert and add verifiable sources. Niubrad (talk) 23:25, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

early discussion of virus in computer fiction
"The Adolescence of P1" was a short story about the Trojan/Virus called "P1" that existed on 1970's series mainframes. It would make a good insertion point here if I could find a good subtopic to put it in. I'll look for an Internet reference to the short story. Jstdadd (talk) 19:01, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

virus on the iss
someone should mention the first virus that went to space, infecting the computers of the international space station --SquallLeonhart_ITA (talk) 13:34, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
 * If you've got a reliable source, put it in. James.DenholmTalk to me... 04:20, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Very poor coverage of Mac viruses 1988-1995
Mac viruses were enough of an issue in the early days that numerous anti-virus products were available, ranging from the free Disinfectant for Mac to Symantec Antivirus for Macintosh (aka SAM Intercept). Apple went so far as to put code block checksums into the OS and several Claris applications (and fund John Norstad's continued development of Disinfectant) which probably helped contribute to the current relative safety of the Mac ecosystem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.62.142.226 (talk) 06:15, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The Mac Zealots--probably people on Steve Jobs' staff, keep REMOVING references to the Mac OS Virus problem 76.126.238.69 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 07:24, 28 January 2011 (UTC).

 * Agreed. I used to regularly remove WDEF (a floppy-based macintosh virus) circa 1991 in a large enterprise environment. For a more objective, secondary source, view McAfee's site . They even mention Virex, which is a macintosh antivirus product we used to use, back in the day. WDEF became extinct because the version of MacOS it ran on became obsolete. Jfbrown42 (talk) 18:20, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

NPOV! Article is HEAVILY biased
Prior to OSX, the Mac was a festering cesspool of viruses. Even more so because the Mac community was insular and piracy vs bbs systems was rampant. Yet there's NOT ONE MENTION of Mac OS viruses. This is why the Wikipedia has no credibility 76.126.238.69 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 07:23, 28 January 2011 (UTC).

Agree about OS 7 to OS9 having many exploits in the past. It can also be argued that by not pointing out that viruses have been virtually non-existent since OSX was introduced a decade ago that the article leans toward the view that Macs get viruses. Since Apple's market share was smaller when they had more malware, the often repeated statement that as Macs gain popularity they will become targets doesn't sound logical. There have only been a few widespread instances beyond proof of concept, social engineered malware or pirated software exploits with the current operating system.22yearswothanks (talk) 16:00, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Merger
I will be merging content from List of trojan horses over the next few days, consensus to achieve this can be found here. I will also be archiving both this page and the Trojan list talk page here as well. Assistance is always appreciated. — Ched (talk) 03:40, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
 * No refs found to date following files:

— Ched ~ (yes?) 04:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Insurrection (trojan horse)
 * Micro Bill Systems (company claims to be reputable - Symantec disputes, will detail later)

These don't indicate any dates in the articles:
 * Trojan.Vundo
 * Trojan.Zonebac

Merger is now complete.--Sloane (talk) 18:41, 1 March 2009 (UTC) dug up ref for vundo, zonebac not worth the bother. — Ched ~ (yes?) 19:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Proposed Rename / Move
Somewhere down the road here we're going to have to discuss renaming / moving this article to "Timeline of notable computer malware" (redirect to be left in place). The floor is now open ;) — Ched (talk) 04:05, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

 * Well we have to find the year each of the trojan horses listed were discovered. TechOutsider (talk) 05:24, 28 February 2009 (UTC)TechOutsider

 * Been doing that as I merge them over - but you bring up a bigger point, it should be referenced for ALL the items on this list. — Ched (talk) 05:47, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

 * It'll be easier if you just delete all the trojan horses articles without any references. Then you'll be down to about 3. TechOutsider (talk) 16:03, 28 February 2009 (UTC)TechOutsider

 * I've only found one so far that I couldn't find a reference to, I put it on the talk page. — Ched ~ (yes?) 03:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

What about Zeus
Zues seems to be missing from the list and is one of the big ones out there.

Zeus started out in 2007 as a password&Bank account stealer and evolved on from there. It was the first trojan to sell parts of it's infrastructure directly to customers, thus creating the first "CaaS" (Crimeware as a Service) scheme.

Assaf
 * Well, you know, if you've got a source, be bold! James.DenholmTalk to me... 07:36, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Conficker
I've been doing some reading-up on the Conficker worm because I was wondering if I could find enough sources to add it to the list, since it seems significant enough, but based on what I've found the situation around Conficker seems to be too complicated and multi-faceted for a relative computer-security greenhorn like myself.

Anyone feeling inspired to look in to it, or to give me some directions / tips as to how I could coordinate my own investigation? Kinzarr (talk) 16:13, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Ties to vulnerabilities
I am interested in knowing which vulnerabilities in Windows were exploited for each virus, along with the security updates that Microsoft released for each. Although I think I see that the majority were trojans exploiting the user's naivety. Campoftheamericas (talk) 05:38, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Brontok
How come Brontok does not appear on this list? It even has it's own wikipedia entry and it is still on the wild. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.171.106.215 (talk) 06:41, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

 * ✅, but not by me. Brontok variant N is listed as "Late March 2006". --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 14:22, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Hacking and destruction of PlayStation Network, 2011
What about the time the PlayStation Network was hacked and destroyed? --99.163.133.132 (talk) 01:34, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe that was as a result of malware. MC3craze (talk) 14:59, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Heartbleed
Apparently this page lists Heartbleed as a virus. It's not a virus or worm per se, but is a bug. I think that it should be removed from the list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thegreatgrabber (talk • contribs) 05:03, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Which one moved/hid all a user's files?
A few years ago there was a big outbreak of a malware that moved and hid most of the files on Windows, clearing off the Desktop and if you looked at the C: drive in Explorer there appeared to be almost nothing on the drive, but checking the Properties would show much of the space in use. Removing the malware was somewhat difficult but once taken out the folders and files it moved could be restored to their proper locations. There were some freeware utilities available to move the folders and files. IIRC it operated as scareware on the web, opening a popup saying the system was infected, then clicking the button to "scan" the computer would download and install the malware. What was that malware? Bizzybody (talk) 08:27, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

List improvements
There should be links to example source code and decompiles by security experts on this list or external links.

Here's somethings that could be included in this list.

MiniPanzer and MegaPanzer

Linux.Darlloz - A computer worm that targets home routers, set-top boxes, security cameras and industrial control systems.

Back Orifice and Back Orifice 2000

Tiny Banker Trojan

FockeWulf FW 190 (talk) 02:53, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

HammerToss?
Surely HammerToss for 2015 should be listed here? Stephen Howe (talk) 11:24, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

No details/sources for EyeSpy?
I don't see any reliable sources on the EyeSpy trojan from November. Really curious about where this came from, considering I can't find anything related thru basic Google searches. MobiusAnticuus (talk) 21:49, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090517083356/http://vx.netlux.org/lib/atc01.html to http://vx.netlux.org/lib/atc01.html
 * Added tag to http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/encyclopedia?virusid=2008
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090722030020/http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_98074.htm to http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_98074.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090713092458/http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/encyclopedia?chapter=153311162 to http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/encyclopedia?chapter=153311162
 * Added archive https://archive.is/20031211194335/http://securityresponse1.symantec.com/sarc/sarc.nsf/html/backdoor.graybird.html to http://securityresponse1.symantec.com/sarc/sarc.nsf/html/backdoor.graybird.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120315225141/http://www.securelist.com/en/descriptions/old61021 to http://www.securelist.com/en/descriptions/old61021
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090217105948/http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_127690.htm to http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_127690.htm
 * Added tag to http://www.infoworld.com/print/137598
 * Added archive https://www.webcitation.org/6B98SI8gJ?url=http://www.crysys.hu/in-the-press.html to http://www.crysys.hu/in-the-press.html
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.crysys.hu/skywiper/skywiper.pdf
 * Added tag to http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090502053018/http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Government&articleId=9131924&taxonomyId=13&pageNumber=1 to http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Government&articleId=9131924&taxonomyId=13&pageNumber=1

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Fiction?
Before I go in an nuke all the fictional viruses, why were the added to begin with? Start a new article on fictional viruses if anyone wants, but they don't belong here. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:09, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Add
Predator spyWare, it was deleted TWICE :-((( 86.110.240.167 (talk) 19:30, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Computer virus
Sober 42.107.192.43 (talk) 13:15, 21 November 2022 (UTC)


text:
Red Scare

A Red Scare is a form of moral panic provoked by fear of the rise, supposed or real, of leftist ideologies in a society, especially communism. Historically, "red scares" have led to mass political persecution, scapegoating, and the ousting of those in government positions who have had connections with left-wing to far-left ideology. The name is derived from the red flag, a common symbol of communism.

The term is most often used to refer to two periods in the history of the United States which are referred to by this name. The First Red Scare, which occurred immediately after World War I, revolved around a perceived threat from the American labor movement, anarchist revolution, and political radicalism that followed revolutionary socialist movements in Germany and Russia during the 19th–early 20th century.

The Second Red Scare, which occurred immediately after World War II, was preoccupied with the perception that national or foreign communists were infiltrating or subverting American society and the federal government.

Following the end of the Cold War, unearthed documents revealed substantial Soviet spy activity in the United States.

First Red Scare (1917–1920)

The first Red Scare in the United States accompanied the Russian Revolution of 1917 (specifically, the October Revolution) and subsequent communist revolutions in Europe and beyond. Citizens of the United States in the years of World War I (1914–1918) were intensely patriotic; anarchist and left-wing social agitation aggravated national, social, and political tensions. Political scientist and former member of the Communist Party USA Murray B. Levin wrote that the Red Scare was "a nationwide anti-radical hysteria provoked by a mounting fear and anxiety that a Bolshevik revolution in America was imminent—a revolution that would change Church, home, marriage, civility, and the American way of Life". News media exacerbated such fears, channeling them into anti-foreign sentiment due to the lively debate among recent immigrants from Europe regarding various forms of anarchism as possible solutions to widespread poverty. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the Wobblies, backed several labor strikes in 1916 and 1917. These strikes covered a wide range of industries including steel working, shipbuilding, coal mining, copper mining, and others necessary for wartime activities.

After World War I ended (November 1918), the number of strikes increased to record levels in 1919, with more than 3,600 separate strikes by a wide range of workers, e.g. steel workers, railroad shop workers, and the Boston police department. The press portrayed these worker strikes as "radical threats to American society" inspired by "left-wing, foreign agents provocateurs". The IWW and those sympathetic to workers claimed that the press "misrepresented legitimate labor strikes" as "crimes against society", "conspiracies against the government", and "plots to establish communism". Opponents of labor viewed strikes as an extension of the radical, anarchist foundations of the IWW, which contends that all workers should be united as a social class and that capitalism and the wage system should be abolished.

In June 1917, as a response to World War I, Congress passed the Espionage Act to prevent any information relating to national defense from being used to harm the United States or to aid her enemies. The Wilson administration used this act to make anything "urging treason" a "nonmailable matter". Due to the Espionage Act and the then Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson, 74 separate newspapers were not being mailed. In April 1919, authorities discovered a plot for mailing 36 bombs to prominent members of the U.S. political and economic establishment: J. P. Morgan Jr., John D. Rockefeller, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, U.S. Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer, and immigration officials. On June 2, 1919, in eight cities, eight bombs exploded simultaneously. One target was the Washington, D.C., house of U.S. Attorney General Palmer, where the explosion killed the bomber, who (evidence indicated) was an Italian-American radical from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Afterwards, Palmer ordered the U.S. Justice Department to launch the Palmer Raids (1919–21). He deported 249 Russian immigrants on the "Soviet Ark", formed the General Intelligence Unit – a precursor to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – within the Department of Justice, and used federal agents to jail more than 5,000 citizens and to search homes without respecting their constitutional rights.

In 1918, before the bombings, President Woodrow Wilson had pressured Congress to legislate the anti-anarchist Sedition Act of 1918 to protect wartime morale by deporting putatively undesirable political people. Law professor David D. Cole reports that President Wilson's "federal government consistently targeted alien radicals, deporting them... for their speech or associations, making little effort to distinguish terrorists from ideological dissidents". President Wilson used the Sedition Act of 1918 to limit the exercise of free speech by criminalizing language deemed disloyal to the United States government.

Initially, the press praised the raids; The Washington Post stated: "There is no time to waste on hairsplitting over [the] infringement of liberty", and The New York Times wrote that the injuries inflicted upon the arrested were "souvenirs of the new attitude of aggressiveness which had been assumed by the Federal agents against Reds and suspected-Reds". In the event, twelve publicly prominent lawyers characterized the Palmer Raids as unconstitutional. The critics included future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who published A Report on the Illegal Practices of The United States Department of Justice, documenting systematic violations of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution via Palmer-authorized "illegal acts" and "wanton violence". Defensively, Palmer then warned that a government-deposing left-wing revolution would begin on 1 May 1920—May Day, the International Workers' Day. When it failed to happen, he was ridiculed and lost much credibility. Strengthening the legal criticism of Palmer was that fewer than 600 deportations were substantiated with evidence, out of the thousands of resident aliens arrested and deported. In July 1920, Palmer's once-promising Democratic Party bid for the U.S. presidency failed. Wall Street was bombed on September 16, 1920, near Federal Hall National Memorial and the JP Morgan Bank. Although both anarchists and communists were suspected as being responsible for the bombing, ultimately no individuals were indicted for the bombing, in which 38 died and 141 were injured.

In 1919–20, several states enacted "criminal syndicalism" laws outlawing advocacy of violence in effecting and securing social change. The restrictions included limitations on free speech. Passage of these laws, in turn, provoked aggressive police investigation of the accused persons, their jailing, and deportation for being suspected of being either communist or left-wing. Regardless of ideological gradation, the Red Scare did not distinguish between communism, anarchism, socialism, or social democracy. This aggressive crackdown on certain ideologies resulted in many Supreme Court cases over free speech. In the 1919 case of Schenk v. United States, the Supreme Court, introducing the clear-and-present-danger test, effectively deemed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 constitutional.

Second Red Scare (1947–1957)

The second Red Scare occurred after World War II (1939–1945), and is known as "McCarthyism" after its best-known advocate, Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthyism coincided with an increased and widespread fear of communist espionage that was consequent of the increasing tension in the Cold War through the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, the Berlin Blockade (1948–49), the end of the Chinese Civil War, the confessions of spying for the Soviet Union that were made by several high-ranking U.S. government officials, and the outbreak of the Korean War.

Internal causes of the anti-communist fear
The events of the late 1940s, the early 1950s—the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (1953), the trial of Alger Hiss, the Iron Curtain (1945–1991) around Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union's first nuclear weapon test in 1949 (RDS-1)—surprised the American public, influencing popular opinion about U.S. national security, which, in turn, was connected to the fear that the Soviet Union would drop nuclear bombs on the United States, and fear of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA).

In Canada, the 1946 Kellock–Taschereau Commission investigated espionage after top-secret documents concerning RDX, radar and other weapons were handed over to the Soviets by a domestic spy-ring.

At the House Un-American Activities Committee, former CPUSA members and NKVD spies, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, testified that Soviet spies and communist sympathizers had penetrated the U.S. government before, during and after World War II. Other U.S. citizen spies confessed to their acts of espionage in situations where the statute of limitations on prosecuting them had run out. In 1949, anti-communist fear, and fear of American traitors, was aggravated by the Chinese Communists winning the Chinese Civil War against the Western-sponsored Kuomintang, their founding of the Communist China, and later China intervenes (October–December 1950) in the Korean War (1950–53) against U.S. ally South Korea.

A few of the events during the Red Scare were also due to a power struggle between director of FBI J. Edgar Hoover and the Central Intelligence Agency. Hoover had instigated and aided some of the investigations of members of the CIA with "leftist" history, like Cord Meyer. This conflict could also be traced back to the conflict between Hoover and William J. Donovan, going back to the first Red Scare, but especially during World War II. Donovan ran the OSS (CIA's predecessor). They had differing opinions on the nature of the alliance with the Soviet Union, conflicts over jurisdiction, conflicts of personality, the OSS hiring of communists and criminals as agents, etc.

Historian Richard Powers distinguishes two main forms of anti-communism during the period, liberal anti-communism and countersubversive anti-communism. The countersubversives, he argues, derived from a pre-WWII isolationist tradition on the right. Liberal anti-communists believed that political debate was enough to show Communists as disloyal and irrelevant, while countersubversive anticommunists believed that Communists had to be exposed and punished. At times, countersubversive anticommunists accused liberals of being "equally destructive" as Communists due to an alleged lack of religious values or supposed "red web" infiltration into the New Deal.

Much evidence for Soviet espionage existed, according to Democratic Senator and historian Daniel Moynihan, with the Venona project consisting of "overwhelming proof of the activities of Soviet spy networks in America, complete with names, dates, places, and deeds." However, Moynihan argued that because sources like the Venona project were kept secret for so long, "ignorant armies clashed by night". With McCarthy advocating an extremist view, the discussion of communist subversion was made into a civil rights issue instead of a counterintelligence one. This historiographical perspective is shared by historians John Earl Haynes and Robert Louis Benson. While President Truman formulated the Truman Doctrine against Soviet expansion, it is possible he was not fully informed of the Venona intercepts, leaving him unaware of the domestic extent of espionage, according to Moynihan and Benson.

Early years
By the 1930s, communism had become an attractive economic ideology, particularly among labor leaders and intellectuals. By 1939, the CPUSA had about 50,000 members. In 1940, soon after World War II began in Europe, the U.S. Congress legislated the Alien Registration Act (aka the Smith Act, 18 USC § 2385) making it a crime to "knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the duty, necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association"—and required Federal registration of all foreign nationals. Although principally deployed against communists, the Smith Act was also used against right-wing political threats such as the German-American Bund, and the perceived racial disloyalty of the Japanese-American population (cf. hyphenated-Americans).

World War II
After the Soviet Union signed the non-aggression Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany on August 23, 1939, negative attitudes towards communists in the United States were on the rise. While the American communist party at first attacked Germany for its September 1, 1939 invasion of western Poland, on September 11 it received a blunt directive from Moscow denouncing the Polish government. On September 17, the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland and occupied the Polish territory assigned to it by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland. The CPUSA turned the focus of its public activities from anti-fascism to advocating peace, not only opposing military preparations, but also condemning those opposed to Hitler. The party did not at first attack President Roosevelt, reasoning that this could devastate American Communism, blaming instead Roosevelt's advisors.

In October and November, after the Soviets invaded Finland and forced mutual assistance pacts from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the Communist Party considered Russian security sufficient justification to support the actions. Secret short wave radio broadcasts in October from Comintern leader Georgi Dimitrov ordered CPUSA leader Earl Browder to change the party's support for Roosevelt. On October 23, the party began attacking Roosevelt. The party was active in the isolationist America First Committee. The CPUSA also dropped its boycott of Nazi goods, spread the slogans "The Yanks Are Not Coming" and "Hands Off", set up a "perpetual peace vigil" across the street from the White House and announced that Roosevelt was the head of the "war party of the American bourgeoisie". By April 1940, the party Daily Worker's line seemed not so much antiwar as simply pro-German. A pamphlet stated the Jews had just as much to fear from Britain and France as they did Germany. In August 1940, after NKVD agent Ramón Mercader killed Trotsky with an ice axe, Browder perpetuated Moscow's fiction that the killer, who had been dating one of Trotsky's secretaries, was a disillusioned follower.

In allegiance to the Soviet Union, the party changed this policy again after Hitler broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact by attacking the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The CPUSA opposed labor strikes in the weapons industry and supporting the U.S. war effort against the Axis Powers. With the slogan "Communism is Twentieth-Century Americanism", the chairman, Earl Browder, advertised the CPUSA's integration to the political mainstream. In contrast, the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party opposed U.S. participation in the war and supported labor strikes, even in the war-effort industry. For this reason, James P. Cannon and other SWP leaders were convicted per the Smith Act.

Increasing tension
In March 1947, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9835, creating the "Federal Employees Loyalty Program" establishing political-loyalty review boards who determined the "Americanism" of Federal Government employees, and requiring that all federal employees to take an oath of loyalty to the United States government. It then recommended termination of those who had confessed to spying for the Soviet Union, as well as some suspected of being "Un-American". This led to more than 2,700 dismissals and 12,000 resignations from the years 1947 to 1956. It also was the template for several state legislatures' loyalty acts, such as California's Levering Act. The House Committee on Un-American Activities was created during the Truman administration as a response to allegations by Republicans of disloyalty in Truman's administration. The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and the committees of Senator Joseph McCarthy (R., Wisc.) conducted character investigations of "American communists" (actual and alleged), and their roles in (real and imaginary) espionage, propaganda, and subversion favoring the Soviet Union—in the process revealing the extraordinary breadth of the Soviet spy network in infiltrating the federal government. The process also launched the successful political careers of Richard Nixon and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as that of Joseph McCarthy. The HUAC held a large interest in investigating those in the entertainment industry in Hollywood. They interrogated actors, writers, and producers. The people who cooperated in the investigations got to continue working as they had been, but people who refused to cooperate were blacklisted. Critics of the HUAC claim their tactics were an abuse of government power and resulted in a witch hunt that disregarded citizens’ rights and ruined their careers and reputations. Critics claim the internal witch hunt was a use for personal gain to spread influence for government officials by intensifying the fear of Communists infiltrating the country. Supporters, however, believe the actions of the HUAC were justified given the level of threat Communism posed to democracy in the United States.

Senator McCarthy stirred up further fear in the United States of communists infiltrating the country by saying that communist spies were omnipresent, and he was America's only salvation, using this fear to increase his own influence. In 1950 Joseph McCarthy addressed the senate, citing 81 separate cases, and made accusations against suspected communists. Although he provided little or no evidence, this prompted the Senate to call for a full investigation.

Senator McCarran introduced the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 that was passed by the U.S. Congress and which modified a great deal of law to restrict civil liberties in the name of security. President Truman declared the act a "mockery of the Bill of Rights" and a "long step toward totalitarianism" because it represented a government restriction on the freedom of opinion. He vetoed the act but his veto was overridden by Congress. Much of the bill eventually was repealed.

The formal establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and the beginning of the Korean War in 1950 meant that Asian Americans, especially those of Chinese or Korean descent, came under increasing suspicion by both American civilians and government officials of being Communist sympathizers. Simultaneously, some American politicians saw the prospect of American-educated Chinese students bringing their knowledge back to "Red China" as an unacceptable threat to American national security, and laws such as the China Aid Act of 1950 and the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 gave significant assistance to Chinese students who wished to settle in the United States. Despite being naturalized, however, Chinese immigrants continued to face suspicion of their allegiance. The general effect, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison scholar Qing Liu, was to simultaneously demand that Chinese (and other Asian) students politically support the American government yet avoid engaging directly in politics.

The Second Red Scare profoundly altered the temper of American society. Its later characterizations may be seen as contributory to works of feared communist espionage, such as the film My Son John (1952), about parents' suspicions their son is a spy. Abundant accounts in narrative forms contained themes of the infiltration, subversion, invasion, and destruction of American society by un–American thought. Even a baseball team, the Cincinnati Reds, temporarily renamed themselves the "Cincinnati Redlegs" to avoid the money-losing and career-ruining connotations inherent in being ball-playing "Reds" (communists).

In 1954, Congress passed the Communist Control Act of 1954 which prevented members of the communist party in America from holding office in labor unions and other labor organizations.

Wind down
Examining the political controversies of the 1940s and 1950s, historian John Earl Haynes, who studied the Venona decryptions extensively, argued that Joseph McCarthy's attempts to "make anti-communism a partisan weapon" actually "threatened [the post-War] anti-Communist consensus", thereby ultimately harming anti-communist efforts more than helping them. Meanwhile, the "shockingly high level" of infiltration by Soviet agents during WWII had largely dissipated by 1950. Liberal anti-communists like Edward Shils and Daniel Moynihan had contempt for McCarthyism, and Moynihan argued that McCarthy's overreaction distracted from the "real (but limited) extent of Soviet espionage in America." In 1950, President Harry Truman called Joseph McCarthy "the greatest asset the Kremlin has."

In 1954, after accusing the army, including war heroes, Senator Joseph McCarthy lost credibility in the eyes of the American public and the Army-McCarthy Hearings were held in the summer of 1954. He was formally censured by his colleagues in Congress and the hearings led by McCarthy came to a close. After the Senate formally censured McCarthy, his political standing and power were significantly diminished, and much of the tension surrounding the idea of a possible communist takeover died down.

From 1955 through 1959, the Supreme Court made several decisions which restricted the ways in which the government could enforce its anti-communist policies, some of which included limiting the federal loyalty program to only those who had access to sensitive information, allowing defendants to face their accusers, reducing the strength of congressional investigation committees, and weakening the Smith Act.

In the 1957 case Yates v. United States and the 1961 case Scales v. United States, the Supreme Court limited Congress's ability to circumvent the First Amendment, and in 1967 during the Supreme Court case United States v. Robel, the Supreme Court ruled that a ban on communists in the defense industry was unconstitutional.

In 1995, the American government declassified details of the Venona Project following the Moynihan Commission, which when combined with the opening of the USSR Comintern archives, provided substantial validation of intelligence gathering, outright spying, and policy influencing, by Americans on behalf of the Soviet Union, from 1940 through 1980. Over 300 American communists, whether they knew it or not, including government officials and technicians that helped in developing the atom bomb, were found to have engaged in espionage. This allegedly included some pro-Soviet capitalists, such as economist Harry Dexter White, and communist businessman David Karr.

New Red Scare
According to The New York Times, China's growing military and economic power has resulted in a "New Red Scare" in the United States. Both Democrats and Republicans have expressed anti-China sentiment. According to The Economist, the New Red Scare has caused the American and Chinese governments to "increasingly view Chinese students with suspicion" on American college campuses.

The fourth iteration of the Committee on the Present Danger, a United States foreign policy interest group, was established on March 25, 2019, branding itself Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC). The CPDC has been criticized as promoting a revival of Red Scare politics in the United States, and for its ties to conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney and conservative activist Steve Bannon. David Skidmore, writing for The Diplomat, saw it as another instance of "adolescent hysteria" in American diplomacy, as another of the "fevered crusades [which] have produced some of the costliest mistakes in American foreign policy".

Between 2000 and 2023, there were 224 reported instances of Chinese espionage directed at the United States.

Outside the United States
The American Red Scares, combined with the general atmosphere of the Cold War, had a marked influence on other Anglophone countries. Anticommunist paranoia and violence was significantly advanced in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In other parts of the world, fear and loathing of communism has escalated to the level of political violence.

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

title: Red Scare


text:
Motion JPEG

Motion JPEG (M-JPEG or MJPEG) is a video compression format in which each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is compressed separately as a JPEG image.

Originally developed for multimedia PC applications, Motion JPEG enjoys broad client support: most major web browsers and players provide native support, and plug-ins are available for the rest. Software and devices using the M-JPEG standard include media players, game consoles, digital cameras, IP cameras, webcams, streaming servers, video cameras, and non-linear video editors.

History
Motion JPEG was originally developed for multimedia PC applications.

Early implementations of MJPEG were generally implemented in Hardware. C-Cube was an early proponent with their CL550 JPEG codec been used in several hardware implementations. It was announced that the NeXTdimension from NeXT would ship with an onboard CL550 to implement MJPEG. This was however later shelved and wasn't included in the final product that was shipped.

Apple provided a Software implementation of MJPEG in their QuickTime Player in the mid-1990s.

Design
M-JPEG is an intraframe-only compression scheme (compared with the more computationally intensive technique of interframe prediction). Whereas modern interframe video formats, such as MPEG1, MPEG2 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, achieve real-world compression ratios of 1:50 or better, M-JPEG's lack of interframe prediction limits its efficiency to 1:20 or lower, depending on the tolerance to spatial artifacting in the compressed output. Because frames are compressed independently of one another, M-JPEG imposes lower processing and memory requirements on hardware devices.

As a purely intraframe compression scheme, the image quality of M-JPEG is directly a function of each video frame's static (spatial) complexity. Frames with large smooth transitions or monotone surfaces compress well and are more likely to hold their original details with few visible compression artifacts. Frames exhibiting complex textures, fine curves and lines (such as writing on a newspaper) are prone to exhibit discrete cosine transform (DCT) artifacts such as ringing, smudging and macroblocking. M-JPEG-compressed video is also insensitive to motion complexity, i.e. variation over time. It is neither hindered by highly random motion (such as the water-surface turbulence in a large waterfall), nor helped by the absence of motion (such as static landscape shot by tripod), which are two opposite extremes commonly used to test interframe video formats.

For QuickTime formats, Apple has defined two types of coding: MJPEG-A and MJPEG-B. MJPEG-B no longer retains valid JPEG Interchange Files within it, hence it is not possible to take a frame into a JPEG file without slightly modifying the headers.

JPEG is inefficient, using more bits to deliver similar quality, compared to more modern formats (such as JPEG 2000 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC). Since the development of the original JPEG standard in the early 1990s, technology improvements have been made not only to the JPEG format but to the interframe compression schemas possible as well.

Features
Motion JPEG is simple to implement because it uses a mature compression standard (JPEG) with well-developed libraries, and it is an intraframe method of compression.

It tolerates rapidly changing motion in the video stream, whereas compression schemes using interframe compression can often experience unacceptable quality loss when the video content changes significantly between each frame.

Minimal hardware is required because it is not computationally intensive.

Standardisation
Unlike the video formats specified in international standards such as MPEG-2 and the format specified in the JPEG still-picture coding standard, there is no document that defines a single exact format that is universally recognized as a complete specification of “Motion JPEG” for use in all contexts. This raises compatibility concerns about file outputs from different manufacturers. However, each particular file format usually has some standard on how M-JPEG is encoded. For example, Microsoft documents their standard format to store M-JPEG in AVI files, Apple documents how M-JPEG is stored in QuickTime files, RFC 2435 describes how M-JPEG is implemented in an RTP stream, and an M-JPEG CodecID is planned for the Matroska file format.

Applications
M-JPEG is now used by video-capture devices such as digital cameras, IP cameras, and webcams, as well as by non-linear video editing systems. It is natively supported by the QuickTime Player, the PlayStation console, and web browsers such as Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge.

Video editing
M-JPEG is frequently used in non-linear video editing systems. Modern desktop CPUs are powerful enough to work with high-definition video, so no special hardware is required, and they in turn offer native random-access to any frame.

Game consoles
The PlayStation game console integrated M-JPEG like decompression hardware for in-game FMV sequences, while the PlayStation Portable handheld game console can play M-JPEG from the Memory Stick Pro Duo under the .avi extension with a resolution of 480×272. Both can record clips in M-JPEG with its Go!Cam camera.

Nintendo's Wii game console, as well as VTech's InnoTab, can play M-JPEG-encoded videos on SD card using its Photo Channel. The SanDisk Sansa e200 and the Zen V digital audio players play short M-JPEG videos. Recent firmware updates to the Nintendo 3DS can now record and play "3D-AVI" M-JPEG-encoded files, which is the same format used in the Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D series, from a SD card in 320×240 resolution so long as the video duration is 10 minutes or less.

Digital cameras
Prior to the rise in MPEG-4 encoding in consumer devices, a progressive scan form of M-JPEG saw widespread use in the “movie” modes of digital still cameras, allowing video encoding and playback through the integrated JPEG compression hardware with only a software modification. The resultant quality is still inferior compared to a similar-sized MPEG, particularly as the sound (when included) was uncompressed PCM and recorded at a low sample rate or low-compression, low processor-demand ADPCM.

To keep file sizes and transfer rates under control, frame sizes and rates, along with sound sampling rates, are kept relatively low with very high levels of compression for each individual frame. Resolutions of 160×120 or 320×240 are common sizes, typically at 10, 12 or 15 frames per second, with picture quality equivalent to a JPEG setting of “50” with mono ADPCM sound sampled at ~8 kHz. This results in a very basic, but serviceable video output at a similar storage cost to MPEG (~120 kB/s video rate, ~8 kB/s audio – or approx 1 Mbit/s at 320×240 resolution), but with minimal processing overheads. This video is typically stored in Microsoft's AVI or Apple's QuickTime Movie container files. These files are viewable natively on most operating systems, however sometimes an additional codec must be installed.

The AMV video format, common on cheap "MP4" players, is a modified version of M-JPEG.

In addition to portable players (which are mainly "consumers" of the video), many video-enabled digital cameras use M-JPEG for video-capture. For instance:
 * In August 2008, Nikon announced the D90, the first D-SLR to record video. The format used is M-JPEG. The D90 uses three different motion JPEG formats: 320×216 pixels, 640×424 pixels and 1280×720 pixels.
 * In June 2009, Pentax announced that the then-upcoming K-7 camera would use M-JPEG in resolutions 640×416, 1280×720, and 1536×1024. The data rate for the M-JPEG files created can be up to 74 Mbit/s.
 * In August 2016, Canon announced that the 5D Mark IV camera would record 4K video in M-JPEG, with a data rate of approximately 500 Mbit/s.

Many network-enabled cameras provide M-JPEG streams that network clients can connect to. Mozilla and Webkit-based browsers have native support for viewing these M-JPEG streams.

Some network-enabled cameras provide their own M-JPEG interfaces as part of the normal feature set. For cameras that don't provide this feature natively, a server can be used to transcode the camera pictures into an M-JPEG stream and then provide that stream to other network clients.

Media players
Apple announced on September 1, 2010 that their newest version of the Apple TV would support M-JPEG up to 35 Mbit/s, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in μlaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format.

Certain media players such as the Netgear NeoTV 550 do not support the playback of M-JPEG.

Video streaming
HTTP streaming separates each image into individual HTTP replies on a specified marker. HTTP streaming creates packets of a sequence of JPEG images that can be received by clients such as QuickTime or VLC.

In response to a GET request for a MJPEG file or stream, the server streams the sequence of JPEG frames over HTTP. A special mime-type content type multipart/x-mixed-replace;boundary= informs the client to expect several parts (frames) as an answer delimited by . This boundary name is expressly disclosed within the MIME-type declaration itself. The TCP connection is not closed as long as the client wants to receive new frames and the server wants to provide new frames. Two basic implementations of a M-JPEG streaming server are cambozola and MJPG-Streamer. The more robust ffmpeg-server also provides M-JPEG streaming support.

Native web browser support includes: Safari, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Firefox. Other browsers, such as Internet Explorer can display M-JPEG streams with the help of external plugins. Cambozola is an applet that can show M-JPEG streams in Java-enabled browsers. M-JPEG is also natively supported by PlayStation and QuickTime. Most commonly, M-JPEG is used in IP based security cameras.

Successors
Technology improvements can be found in the designs of H.263v2 Annex I and MPEG-4 Part 2, that use frequency-domain prediction of transform coefficient values, and in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, that use spatial prediction and adaptive transform block size techniques. There are also more sophisticated entropy coding than what was practical when the first JPEG design was developed. All of these new developments make M-JPEG an inefficient recording mechanism.

title: Motion JPEG


text:
Phaistos Disc

The Phaistos Disc or Phaistos Disk is a disk of fired clay from the island of Crete, Greece, possibly from the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (second millennium BC), bearing a text in an unknown script and language. Its purpose and its original place of manufacture remain disputed. It is now on display at the archaeological museum of Heraklion. The name is sometimes spelled Phaestos or Festos.

The disk was discovered in 1908 by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier during the excavation of the Minoan palace of Phaistos. The disk is about 15 cm in diameter and is covered on each side with a spiral text, consisting of a total of 241 occurrences of 45 distinct signs, which were created by pressing individual sign stamps onto the soft clay before firing. While its unique features initially led some scholars to suspect a forgery or hoax, the disk is now generally accepted as authentic by archaeologists.

This mysterious object captured the imagination of amateur and professional palaeographers, and many attempts have been made to decipher the code behind the disc's signs. While it is not clear that it is a script, most attempted decipherments assume that it is; most additionally assume a syllabary, others an alphabet or logography.

Discovery

The Phaistos Disc was discovered in the Minoan palace-site of Phaistos, near Hagia Triada, on the south coast of Crete; specifically the disc was found in the basement of room 8 in building 101 of a group of buildings to the northeast of the main palace. This grouping of four rooms also served as a formal entry into the palace complex. Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier recovered the intact "dish" on 3 July 1908 during his excavation of the first Minoan palace.

The disc was found in the main cell of an underground "temple depository". These basement cells, only accessible from above, were neatly covered with a layer of fine plaster. Their content was poor in precious artifacts, but rich in black earth and ashes, mixed with burnt bovine bones. In the northern part of the main cell, in the same black layer, a few centimetres south-east of the disc and about 50 cm above the floor, Linear A tablet 'PH-1' was also found.

Dating
Yves Duhoux (1977) dates the disc to between 1850 B.C. and 1600 B.C. (MMIII in Minoan chronology) on the basis of Luigi Pernier's report, which says that the disc was in a Middle Minoan undisturbed context. Jeppesen (1963) dates it to after 1400 (LMII–LMIII in Minoan chronology). Doubting the viability of Pernier's report, Louis Godart (1990) resigns himself to admitting that archaeologically, the disc may be dated to anywhere in Middle or Late Minoan times (MMI–LMIII, a period spanning most of the second millennium B.C.). Jan Best suggests a date in the first half of the 14th century B.C. (LMIIIA) based on his dating of tablet PH-1.

Material
The disk is made of fine-grained clay. Some authors have stated that the clay does not appear to be of local origin, perhaps not even from Crete. It was intentionally and properly fired, unlike tablets and seals that were baked only accidentally.

Shape and dimensions
The disk is approximately cylindrical, about 16 cm in diameter and almost 2 cm thick, with rounded edges. More precisely, the outline is slightly egg-shaped, with the diameter varying from 15.8 to 16.5 cm and the thickness from 1.6 to 2.1 cm. The disk is slightly concave on side A and convex on side B.

Typographic writing
The most remarkable feature of the Phaistos disk is that the embossed signs that comprise its inscription all result from pressing separate stamps – one for each symbol – into the soft clay before firing. Thus the disk can be seen as an early example of movable-type printing. Typesetter and linguist Herbert Brekle writes:

"If the disc is, as assumed, a textual representation, we are really dealing with a 'printed' text, which fulfills all definitional criteria of the typographic principle. The spiral sequencing of the graphematical units, the fact that they are impressed in a clay disc (blind printing!) and not imprinted are merely possible technological variants of textual representation. The decisive factor is that the material 'types' are proven to be repeatedly instantiated on the clay disc."

A medieval example of a similar blind printing technique is the Prüfening dedicatory inscription.

Popular-science author Jared Diamond describes the disc as an example of a technological innovation that did not become widespread because it was made at the wrong time in history. Diamond contrasts the process with Gutenberg's printing press.

Scribed lines
Besides the stamped symbols, there are a few markings made by scoring the moist clay with a sharp stylus. On each side there is a continuous spiral line that separates successive turns of the text. The strip between successive spires of this line is divided into sections by short radial lines, so that each section contains a few whole signs. The presumed start of the text, adjacent to the edge, is also marked by such a radial stroke, with the addition of five dots punched along it with the stylus. Finally, under some of the stamped signs, there are short oblique strokes.

Sign list and counts
There are 45 distinct signs on the disk, occurring a total of 242 times — 123 on side A and 119 on side B. In addition to these, a small diagonal line was incised with a stylus (not stamped) underneath some signs, a total of 18 times. The 45 symbols were numbered by Arthur Evans from 01 to 45, and this numbering has been adopted by most researchers.

The signs were added to the Unicode universal computer character (UCS) set in 2008, after a 2006 proposal by Michael Everson and John H. Jenkins. In the following table, the No. column is the Evans number of each sign; the Glyph column is a modern drawing of the symbol; and the Font column uses the UCS font available in the browser. The assigned Unicode names are PHAISTOS DISC SIGN followed by the names shown under Name in the table below, taken from a 1995 book by Louis Godart.

One sign occurrence on side A is too damaged to identify. According to Godart, it may be sign 03 (TATTOOED HEAD) or 20 (DOLIUM); or less probably 08 (GAUNTLET) or 44 (SMALL AXE). Theoretically, it could also be a 46th distinct sign.

The sign images below are reversed left-to-right relative to their appearance on the disk, reflecting their presentation in most Western books and articles.

Also, some signs occur in the disk in two or more orientations, rotated by 90 or 180 degrees. It is generally assumed that the rotation has no semantic or linguistic value, so the rotated copies are still the same symbol. Therefore, the "normal" orientation of those signs is not known, and might have been left to the scribe's discretion.

Nature of depicted objects
Many of the signs are depictions of concrete objects with a recognizable general nature (such as humans, birds, plants, a boat), or parts thereof (heads, hides, flowers). However, in most cases the precise nature of objects depicted is still unknown (as of 2023). The sign names assigned by scholars, in particular by Godart and the Unicode consortium, were rather arbitrary, often based on the slightest shape similarity.

Symbol 21 (Godart's "COMB") was once conjectured to be a palace floorplan. However, this hypothesis was cast in doubt by the discovery of a vase with a nearly identical symbol incised on the bottom, believed to be a potter's mark.

Symbol 20 ("DOLIUM") was assumed to be the conch of a large sea snail, such as Tonna dolium or some Eudolium species. One such conch was found at Phaistos and is believed to have been used as a musical instrument for ritual uses.

Sign distribution
The distribution of symbols is highly non-random, and quite different between the two sides. Evans's symbol 02 (PLUMED HEAD) is the most frequent one, occurring 19 times — 14 of them on side A. The next most frequent signs are 07 (HELMET), with 18 occurrences, mostly on side B; 12 (SHIELD), with 17, mostly on side A; and 27 (HIDE), with 15, of which 10 on side A.

Still, 26 of the 45 symbols occur on both sides, at least once on each. The most common signs that occur on only one side are 31 (EAGLE), on side A, and 22 (SLING), on side B; both with five occurrences each.

The following table shows how many distinct signs (Sign count) have the same number of occurrences (Frequency). The third number in each column is the product of the two numbers above, that is, the total number of occurrences (Token count) of those signs:

The nine hapaxes (symbols occurring just once) are 04 (A5), 05 (B3), 11 (A13), 15 (B8), 17 (A24), 30 (B27), 42 (B9), 43 (B4), 44 (A7). Of the eight twice-occurring symbols, four (03, 21, 28, 41) occur on side A only, three (09, 16, 20) on side B only, and only one (14) occurs on both sides.

Sign correlations
The distribution of symbol pairs too is highly non-uniform. For example, of the 17 occurrences of sign 12 (SHIELD), thirteen follow immediately sign 02 (PLUMED HEAD).

Text
The following is a single image of the text "unrolled". While the order of the characters is left-to-right reversed, the signs themselves are in the original orientation.

Directionality
Evans, at one point, published an assertion that the disc had been written, and should be read, from the center out; because it would have been easiest to place the inscription first and then size the disc to fit the text. There is general agreement that he was wrong, and Evans himself later changed his mind: the inscription was made, and should be read, in the clockwise sense, from the outside in toward the centre, as with the similar spiral inscription on the Lead Plaque of Magliano.

"Words"
The signs are laid out on each side as a single spiral text, which is split by the inscribed radial strokes into "words". Both ends of the text on each side are also assumed to be "word" boundaries. There are 61 such "words" on the Disc, with two to seven sign occurrences each: 31 on side A and 30 on side B. These "words" are conventionally numbered A1 to A31 and B1 to B30, reading from right to left (clockwise, edge-to-center).

There may be one additional radial stroke near the center of side A, over-stamped by the sign 03 (TATTOOED HEAD), between sign 10 (ARROW) and the central sign 38 (ROSETTE). However, most scholars ignore that possible stroke and count the last three symbols as a single "word" 10-03-38 (which happens to occur also at about the same position on the next-to-last turn).

On both sides, there is a radial line also right before the start (outermost end) of the text, with five dots punched along it using a sharp round stylus.

"Paragraphs"
The short oblique strokes that were drawn with a stylus (not stamped) below some signs are always attached to the last sign of a "word" (assuming outside-in reading direction). Their meaning is a matter of discussion. One hypothesis, supported by Evans, is that they further subdivide the text into "paragraphs".

Transcriptions
The following transcriptions of the text all assume a right-to-left (clockwise, edge-to-center) reading direction on the disk, starting at the vertical (radial) line of five dots. In these transcription, however, the order of the characters has been flipped, so that they should be read left-to-right and top-to-bottom. The oblique stroke is assumed to indicate the last word of a "paragraph". A horizontal line has been added after each "paragraph" for clarity.

For consistency with most published sources, these transcriptions assume that there is an oblique stroke at the end of word A24, even though high-resolution images show it to be just a crack.

Unicode
The following is a rendering of the Phaistos Disc inscription in Unicode characters from the Phaistos code block (code points +101D0 to +101FC). The radial strokes are denoted by the ASCII character "|" (+7C), and the oblique subscripted stroke by the comma-like PHAISTOS DISK COMBINING OBLIQUE STROKE (+101FD) after the affected symbol. The radial stroke with five dots, that indicates the presumed start of text, is denoted by the ISO Latin 1 character "¦" (+A6). The boxed question mark "⍰" (+2370) denotes the illegible sign in word A8. The appearance of the signs will depend on the font used by the browser, but normally they should all be left-to-right flipped relative to their appearance on the disk.

Side A:

Side B

Pictorial
The following transcription uses modern drawings of the signs, which are left-to-right reversed with respect to their appearance on the disk. The labels A1-A31 and B1-B30 are the traditional word numbers.

Side A:
 * Phaistos glyph 48.svg A1 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svgPhaistos glyph 13.svgPhaistos glyph 01.svgPhaistos glyph 18.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg A2 Phaistos glyph 24.svgPhaistos glyph 40.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A3 Phaistos glyph 29.svgPhaistos glyph 45.svgPhaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg A4 Phaistos glyph 29.svgPhaistos glyph 29.svgPhaistos glyph 34.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A5 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svgPhaistos glyph 04.svgPhaistos glyph 40.svgPhaistos glyph 33.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A6 Phaistos glyph 27.svgPhaistos glyph 45.svgPhaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A7 Phaistos glyph 27.svgPhaistos glyph 44.svgPhaistos glyph 08.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A8 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svgPhaistos glyph 06.svgPhaistos glyph 18.svgPhaistos glyph 49.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A9 Phaistos glyph 31.svgPhaistos glyph 26.svgPhaistos glyph 35.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A10 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svgPhaistos glyph 41.svgPhaistos glyph 19.svgPhaistos glyph 35.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A11 Phaistos glyph 01.svgPhaistos glyph 41.svgPhaistos glyph 40.svgPhaistos glyph 07.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A12 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svgPhaistos glyph 32.svgPhaistos glyph 23.svgPhaistos glyph 38.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg A13 Phaistos glyph 39.svgPhaistos glyph 11.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A14 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 27.svgPhaistos glyph 25.svgPhaistos glyph 10.svgPhaistos glyph 23.svgPhaistos glyph 18.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A15 Phaistos glyph 28.svgPhaistos glyph 01.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg A16 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svgPhaistos glyph 31.svgPhaistos glyph 26.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg A17 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svgPhaistos glyph 27.svgPhaistos glyph 27.svgPhaistos glyph 35.svgPhaistos glyph 37.svgPhaistos glyph 21.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A18 Phaistos glyph 33.svgPhaistos glyph 23.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg A19 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svgPhaistos glyph 31.svgPhaistos glyph 26.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg A20 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 27.svgPhaistos glyph 25.svgPhaistos glyph 10.svgPhaistos glyph 23.svgPhaistos glyph 18.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A21 Phaistos glyph 28.svgPhaistos glyph 01.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg A22 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svgPhaistos glyph 31.svgPhaistos glyph 26.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg A23 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svgPhaistos glyph 27.svgPhaistos glyph 14.svgPhaistos glyph 32.svgPhaistos glyph 18.svgPhaistos glyph 27.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg A24 Phaistos glyph 06.svgPhaistos glyph 18.svgPhaistos glyph 17.svgPhaistos glyph 19.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg A25 Phaistos glyph 31.svgPhaistos glyph 26.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A26 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svgPhaistos glyph 13.svgPhaistos glyph 01.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A27 Phaistos glyph 23.svgPhaistos glyph 19.svgPhaistos glyph 35.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg A28 Phaistos glyph 10.svgPhaistos glyph 03.svgPhaistos glyph 38.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg A29 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svgPhaistos glyph 27.svgPhaistos glyph 27.svgPhaistos glyph 35.svgPhaistos glyph 37.svgPhaistos glyph 21.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A30 Phaistos glyph 13.svgPhaistos glyph 01.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg A31 Phaistos glyph 10.svgPhaistos glyph 03.svgPhaistos glyph 38.svg

Side B:
 * Phaistos glyph 48.svg B1 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svgPhaistos glyph 22.svgPhaistos glyph 40.svgPhaistos glyph 07.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg B2 Phaistos glyph 27.svgPhaistos glyph 45.svgPhaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 35.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg B3 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 37.svgPhaistos glyph 23.svgPhaistos glyph 05.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg B4 Phaistos glyph 22.svgPhaistos glyph 25.svgPhaistos glyph 27.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B5 Phaistos glyph 33.svgPhaistos glyph 24.svgPhaistos glyph 20.svgPhaistos glyph 12.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B6 Phaistos glyph 16.svgPhaistos glyph 23.svgPhaistos glyph 18.svgPhaistos glyph 43.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg B7 Phaistos glyph 13.svgPhaistos glyph 01.svgPhaistos glyph 39.svgPhaistos glyph 33.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B8 Phaistos glyph 15.svgPhaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 13.svgPhaistos glyph 01.svgPhaistos glyph 18.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B9 Phaistos glyph 22.svgPhaistos glyph 37.svgPhaistos glyph 42.svgPhaistos glyph 25.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B10 Phaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 24.svgPhaistos glyph 40.svgPhaistos glyph 35.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B11 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 26.svgPhaistos glyph 36.svgPhaistos glyph 40.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B12 Phaistos glyph 27.svgPhaistos glyph 25.svgPhaistos glyph 38.svgPhaistos glyph 01.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B13 Phaistos glyph 29.svgPhaistos glyph 24.svgPhaistos glyph 24.svgPhaistos glyph 20.svgPhaistos glyph 35.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B14 Phaistos glyph 16.svgPhaistos glyph 14.svgPhaistos glyph 18.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B15 Phaistos glyph 29.svgPhaistos glyph 33.svgPhaistos glyph 01.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B16 Phaistos glyph 06.svgPhaistos glyph 35.svgPhaistos glyph 32.svgPhaistos glyph 39.svgPhaistos glyph 33.svg Phaistos glyph 47.svg B17 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 09.svgPhaistos glyph 27.svgPhaistos glyph 01.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B18 Phaistos glyph 29.svgPhaistos glyph 36.svgPhaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 08.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg B19 Phaistos glyph 29.svgPhaistos glyph 08.svgPhaistos glyph 13.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B20 Phaistos glyph 29.svgPhaistos glyph 45.svgPhaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg B21 Phaistos glyph 22.svgPhaistos glyph 29.svgPhaistos glyph 36.svgPhaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 08.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg B22 Phaistos glyph 27.svgPhaistos glyph 34.svgPhaistos glyph 23.svgPhaistos glyph 25.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B23 Phaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 18.svgPhaistos glyph 35.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B24 Phaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 45.svgPhaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg B25 Phaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 23.svgPhaistos glyph 18.svgPhaistos glyph 24.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B26 Phaistos glyph 22.svgPhaistos glyph 29.svgPhaistos glyph 36.svgPhaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 08.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg
 * Phaistos glyph 47.svg B27 Phaistos glyph 09.svgPhaistos glyph 30.svgPhaistos glyph 39.svgPhaistos glyph 18.svgPhaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B28 Phaistos glyph 02.svgPhaistos glyph 06.svgPhaistos glyph 35.svgPhaistos glyph 23.svgPhaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B29 Phaistos glyph 29.svgPhaistos glyph 34.svgPhaistos glyph 23.svgPhaistos glyph 25.svgPhaistos glyph 47.svg B30 Phaistos glyph 45.svgPhaistos glyph 07.svgPhaistos glyph 46.svg

Numerical
The following transcription uses the Evans numbers for the signs. The vertical bar characters "¦" and "|" represent the start-of-text and word-separating radial lines, respectively. The slash "/" denotes the oblique stroke under the preceding sign. The caret "^" indicates the transition from the first turn of the text (along the disk's edge) to the inner turns, and "??" is the unreadable sign.

Side A:
 * ¦ 02 12 13 01 18/
 * 24 40 12 | 29 45 07/
 * 29 29 34 | 02 12 04 40 33 | 27 45 07 12 | 27 44 08 | 02 12 06 18 ?? | 31 26 35 | 02 12 41 19 35 | 01 41 40 07 | 02 12 32 23 38/
 * 39 11 | ^ 02 27 25 10 23 18 | 28 01/
 * 02 12 31 26/
 * 02 12 27 27 35 37 21 | 33 23 | 02 12 31 26/
 * 02 27 25 10 23 18 | 28 01/
 * 02 12 31 26/
 * 02 12 27 14 32 18 27 | 06 18 17 19/
 * 31 26 12 | 02 12 13 01 | 23 19 35/
 * 10 03 38 | 02 12 27 27 35 37 21 | 13 01 | 10 03 38

Side B
 * ¦ 02 12 22 40 07 | 27 45 07 35 | 02 37 23 05/
 * 22 25 27 | 33 24 20 12 | 16 23 18 43/
 * 13 01 39 33 | 15 07 13 01 18 | 22 37 42 25 | 07 24 40 35 | 02 26 36 40 | 27 25 38 01 | 29 ^ 24 24 20 35 | 16 14 18 | 29 33 01 | 06 35 32 39 33 | 02 09 27 01 | 29 36 07 08/
 * 29 08 13 | 29 45 07/
 * 22 29 36 07 08/
 * 27 34 23 25 | 07 18 35 | 07 45 07/
 * 07 23 18 24 | 22 29 36 07 08/
 * 09 30 39 18 07 | 02 06 35 23 07 | 29 34 23 25 | 45 07/

Corrections
The disc shows signs of corrections having been made, with some signs erased and over-printed by other signs.

Godart describes these corrections as occurring in the following words: A1 (signs 02-12-13-01), A4 (29-29-34) together with A5 (02-12-04), A8 (12), A10 (02-41-19?-35), A12 (12), A16 (12-31-26?), A17 (second 27?), A29 (second 27?), B1 (12-22), B3 (37?), B4 (22-25 imprinted over the same), B10 (07?-24?-40?), B13 (beside 29?). Question marks indicate uncertainty about that particular sign being the result of a correction.

The borders of word B28 were also widened to make room for sign 02.

Sign rotations
The two signs 27 (HIDE) in word A29 are rotated 180 degrees compared with all other occurrences of this sign: "head down" versus "head up". This rotation might be motivated by lack of space in A29.

Arie Cate observed that if signs rotations were random with uniform distribution, then the probability that they end up in only two (or three) signs is very small.

Signs in adjacent windings
There are several locations on side A where two occurrences of the same sign lie near each other in adjacent turns of the spiral, such as sign 02 (PLUMED HEAD) in word A1 and in word A14. Also the two 27 signs (HIDE) signs in word A29 are upside down, with the "heads" pointing to the HIDE sign of word A23, in the adjacent turn. Arie Cate claims that the probability of these alignments being coincidental is rather small.

Origin of the artifact
For the first few decades after its discovery most scholars argued strongly against the local origin of the artifact. Evans wrote that:

"...when one comes to compare the figures in detail with those of the Minoan hieroglyphic signary, very great discrepancy is observable... Out of the forty-five separate signs on the Phaistos Disk, no more than ten more or less resemble Cretan hieroglyphic forms... The human figures in their outline and costume are non-Minoan... The representation of the ship also differs from all similar designs that occur either among the hieroglyphic or the linear documents of Crete."

Gustave Glotz claimed that the clay was not from Crete. Ipsen concluded that the disc was certainly from somewhere on the Aegean; however, because of its differences from Linear A or B, he, like Evans, supported a non-Cretan origin for the Disc. He observes, however, that since Linear A was a common Aegean script such an assumption will not resolve the problem of multiplicity.

However, the consensus on this question changed in later decades, as a few other artifacts were found on Crete with significant resemblances to the disk. For instance, a vase found at Knossos (Vase 14 236) bears a stamped sign identical to the disk's 25 SHIELD sign (a circle with seven dots). Also, under the bottom of a bowl found in 1965 at Phaistos (bowl F 4718 from the House South of the Ramp) there is a sign in relief, believed to be a potter's mark, that is practically identical to sign 21 (COMB). A very similar sign is found as an impression on a sealing from a deposit of administrative documents discovered in 1955, beneath Room 25 of the Second Palace of Phaistos (sealing CMS II.5, n. 246). Female images with pendulous breasts have also been found at Malia and Phaistos. The Arkalochori Axe also bears a short inscription that uses several signs similar to those of the disk.

These and other finds have made Cretan origin more popular. This view was expressed by Michael Trauth in 1990, Duhoux in 2000 and Andrew Robinson in 2008.

Hoax hypothesis
The uniqueness of the script, of the spiral arrangement, and of the method of writing (individual glyph stamps) have led some scholars to raise the possibility that the Phaistos disc is a 1908 forgery or hoax. It was pointed out that the date of manufacture has never been established by thermoluminescence dating. However, the Disc is now generally accepted as authentic by archaeologists. Andrew Robinson concurs that thermoluminescence dating would be highly desirable, but does not endorse the forgery arguments.

The precise excavation records maintained by Luigi Pernier have always been a problem for the hoax hypothesis. That hypothesis was eventually put to rest by the discovery of the other artifacts in Crete with similar glyphs, which a 1909 hoaxer would not have known about. Also, a gold signet ring from Knossos (the Mavro Spilio ring), found in 1926, contains a Linear A inscription laid out in a spiral, similar to the Phaistos Disc.

Decipherment attempts
A great deal of speculation developed around the disc during the 20th century, particularly capturing the imagination of amateur archeologists. Many attempts have been made to decipher the code behind the disc's signs, with a wide variety of theories having been suggested, including prayers, a narrative or an adventure story, a "psalterion", a call to arms, a board game, and a geometric theorem; some of these theories are considered to be pseudoarchaeology, with little realistic chance of being accurate.

Most linguistic interpretations assume a syllabary, based on the proportion of 45 symbols in a text of 241 tokens typical for that type of script; some assume a syllabary with interspersed logographic symbols, a property of every known syllabary of the Ancient Near East (Linear B as well as cuneiform and hieroglyphic writing). There are, however, also alphabetic and purely logographical interpretations.

While enthusiasts still believe the mystery can be solved, scholarly attempts at decipherment are thought to be unlikely to succeed unless more examples of the signs turn up elsewhere, as it is generally thought that there is not enough context available for meaningful analysis. Any decipherment without external confirmation, such as successful comparison to other inscriptions, is unlikely to be accepted as conclusive.

Comparison with other scripts
While the Phaistos disk writing system is, on the whole, very different from other known scripts, several scholars have argued against it being an entirely independent invention. Gunther Ipsen argued that the creator must have been influenced by other scripts, and points out the Hieroglyphic Luwian script from Anatolia as an example of an original script inspired by other writing systems (its symbol values inspired by cuneiform, its shapes by Egyptian hieroglyphs).

Several scholars have proposed that the Phaistos signs are older or alternate forms of Linear A glyphs, specifically. Others have pointed to similar resemblances with the Anatolian (Luwian) hieroglyphs, or with Egyptian hieroglyphs. More remote possibilities are the Phoenician abjad or the Byblos syllabary.

Linear A
Comparison of the disk's signs with those of Linear A inscriptions go back to Evans in 1909. In 1959, Benjamin Schwartz asserted a genetic relationship between the Phaistos Disc script and the Cretan linear scripts. Similar claims were made also by Werner Nahm in 1975, Torsten Timm in 2004, and others.

Some of these proposals point to similarities between some glyphs, such as 12 (SHIELD), 43 (STRAINER) , and 31 (EAGLE) to both Linear A and Linear B characters, and conjecture that they may have the same phonetic values — respectively 'qe', 'ta', and 'ku'. Based on the Linear A character distribution patterns collected by Giulio Facchetti, Torsten Timm goes as far as identifying 20 of the 45 characters with Linear A/B signs.

Anatolian hieroglyphs
Parallels between the Phaistos disk script and Anatolian hieroglyphs were proposed, among others, by S. Davis in 1961  and Jan Best and Fred Woudhuizen in 1988  In 2004, Winfried Achterberg and others proposed an extensive mapping to Anatolian hieroglyphs, which led them to a full decipherment claim. The third revised and extended edition of the authors' monograph on the subject was published in 2021.

Summary table
The following table summarizes the proposed identifications of Phaistos signs with Linear A/B, the Arkalochori Axe glyphs, and Luwian hieroglyphs:

List of decipherment claims
Decipherment claims can be categorized into linguistic decipherments, identifying the language of the inscription, and non-linguistic decipherments. A purely logographical reading is not linguistic in the strict sense: while it may reveal the meaning of the inscription, it will not allow for the identification of the underlying language.

Linguistic
Unless said otherwise, the attempts below assumed the right-to-left (clockwise, edge-to-center) reading direction, starting with side A.

 * George Hempl, 1911: interpretation as Ionic Greek, syllabic writing.
 * Florence Stawell, 1911: interpretation as Homeric Greek, syllabic writing); B-side first.
 * Albert Cuny, 1914: interpretation as an ancient Egyptian document, syllabic-logographic writing.
 * Benjamin Schwartz, 1959: interpretation as Mycenean Greek, syllabic writing, comparison to Linear B.
 * Jean Faucounau, 1975: interpretation as "proto-Ionic" Greek, syllabic writing.
 * Vladimir I. Georgiev, 1976: interpretation as Hittite language, syllabic writing; reading outward.
 * Steven R. Fischer, 1988: interpretation as a Greek dialect, syllabic writing.
 * Kjell Aartun, 1992: interpretation as a Semitic language, syllabic writing; reading outward.
 * Derk Ohlenroth, 1996: interpretation as a Greek dialect, alphabetic writing; reading outward; numerous homophonic signs.
 * Adam Martin, 2000: interpretation as a Greek-Minoan bilingual text, alphabetic writing; reading outward, side A as Greek, side B as Minoan.
 * Achterberg et al., 2004: interpreted as Luwian.
 * Torsten Timm, 2005: syllabic writing, comparison to Linear A; B-side first.
 * Gareth Alun Owens, 2007: interpretation as Indo-European, syllabic writing, comparison to Linear A.

Non-linguistic or logographic

 * Paolo Ballotta, 1974: interpretation as logographic writing.
 * Leon Pomerance, 1976: interpretation as astronomical document.
 * Reiner J. van Meerten, 1977: interpretation as documentation of a gift to Minos.
 * Peter Aleff, 1982:interpretation as ancient gameboard.
 * Ole Hagen, 1988: interpretation as calendar.
 * Harald Haarmann, 1990: interpretation as logographic writing.
 * Bernd Schomburg, 1997: calendar interpretation, logograms.
 * Patrick Berlingame, 2010: interpretation as the mythical labyrinth.
 * Hermann Wenzel, 1998: astronomical interpretation.
 * Alan Butler, 1999: interpretation as calendar.
 * Friedhelm Will, 2000: interpretation as number-philosophically-document of "Atlantean" origin.
 * Axel Hausmann, 2002: document from Atlantis, dated to 4400 B.C., logographic reading.
 * Helène Whittaker, 2005: a votive miniature version of a game board similar to the Egyptian Mehen.
 * Wolfgang Reczko, 2009: eclipse table for Knossos, covering 4 Saros cycles of 18 years each.

Unicode
A set of 46 symbols from the Phaistos Disc, comprising Evans's 45 signs and one combining oblique stroke, have been encoded in Unicode since April 2008 (Unicode version 5.1). They are assigned to the range 101D0–101FF in Plane 1 (the Supplementary Multilingual Plane). These characters were encoded with strong left-to-right directionality, and so in code charts and text (such as elsewhere on this page) the glyphs are mirrored from the way they appear on the disc itself.

Modern use
Side A of the Phaistos Disc is used as the logo of FORTH, one of the largest research centers in Greece.

General

 * Bennett, Emmett L. (1996) — Aegean Scripts, (in The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (Eds.) Oxford: University Press. ISBN 0-19-507993-0
 * Chadwick, John. The Decipherment of Linear B, Cambridge University Press, 1958.
 * Faure, P. "Tourne disque", l'énigme du disque de Phaistos, Notre Histoire n°213, October 2003 (PDF 0.7 Mb).
 * Gaur, Albertine. 1984 — A History of Writing — Charles Scribner's Sons.
 * Kober, Alice. The Minoan Scripts: Facts and Theory, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 52, No. 1 (1948), pp. 82–103.
 * International Phaistos Disk Conference 2008, sponsored by Minerva Magazine. abstracts
 * International Phaistos Disk Conference 2008, sponsored by Minerva Magazine. abstracts

Attempted decipherments

 * Aartun, Kjell, 'Der Diskos von Phaistos; Die beschriftete Bronzeaxt; Die Inschrift der Taragona-tafel' in Die minoische Schrift : Sprache und Texte vol. 1, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz (1992) ISBN 3-447-03273-1
 * Ephron, Henry D, (1962), "Tharso and Iaon: The Phaistos Disk, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 66. (1962), pp. 1–91. JSTOR URL
 * Gordon, F. G. 1931. Through Basque to Minoan: transliterations and translations of the Minoan tablets. London: Oxford University Press.
 * Hausmann, Axel, Der Diskus von Phaistos. Ein Dokument aus Atlantis, BoD GmbH (2002), ISBN 3-8311-4548-2.
 * Thomas G. Palaima, Emmet L. Bennet, Jr., Michael G.F. Ventris, Alice E. Kober, "Cryptanalysis, Decipherment and the Phaistos Disc.", in M.-L. Nosch and H. Landenius-Enegren eds., Aegean Scripts, (Incunabula Graeca 105, Rome: 2017) vol. 2, pp. 771–788
 * Polygiannakis, Ο Δισκος της Φαιστού Μιλάει Ελληνικά (The Phaistos disk speaks in Greek), Georgiadis, Athens (2000).
 * Pomerance, Leon, The Phaistos Disk: An Interpretation of Astronomical Symbols, Paul Astroms forlag, Goteborg (1976). reviewed by D. H. Kelley in The Journal of Archeoastronomy (Vol II, number 3, Summer 1979)

title: Phaistos Disc


text:
Backslash

The backslash \ is a mark used mainly in computing and mathematics. It is the mirror image of the common slash /. It is a relatively recent mark, first documented in the 1930s. It is sometimes called a hack, whack, escape (from C/UNIX), reverse slash, slosh, downwhack, backslant, backwhack, bash, reverse slant, reverse solidus, and reversed virgule.

History
, efforts to identify either the origin of this character or its purpose before the 1960s have not been successful. The earliest known reference found to date is a 1937 maintenance manual from the Teletype Corporation with a photograph showing the keyboard of its Kleinschmidt keyboard perforator WPE-3 using the Wheatstone system. The symbol was called the "diagonal key", and given a (non-standard) Morse code of.

In June 1960, IBM published an "Extended character set standard" that includes the symbol at 0x19. In September 1961, Bob Bemer (IBM) proposed to the X3.2 standards committee that [, ] and \ be made part of the proposed standard, describing the backslash as a "reverse division operator" and cited its prior use by Teletype in telecommunications. In particular, he said, the \ was needed so that the ALGOL Boolean operators ∧ (logical conjunction) and ∨ (logical disjunction) could be composed using /\ and \/ respectively. The Committee adopted these changes into the draft American Standard (subsequently called ASCII) at its November 1961 meeting.

These operators were used for min and max in early versions of the C programming language supplied with Unix V6 and V7.

Programming languages
In many programming languages such as C, Perl, PHP, Python, Unix scripting languages, and many file formats such as JSON, the backslash is used as an escape character, to indicate that the character following it should be treated specially (if it would otherwise be treated literally), or literally (if it would otherwise be treated specially). For instance, inside a C string literal the sequence \n produces a newline byte instead of an 'n', and the sequence \" produces an actual double quote rather than the special meaning of the double quote ending the string. An actual backslash is produced by a double backslash \\.

Regular expression languages used it the same way, changing subsequent literal characters into metacharacters and vice versa. For instance \b searches for either '|' or 'b', the first bar is escaped and searched for, the second is not escaped and acts as an "or".

Outside quoted strings, the only common use of backslash is to ignore ("escape") a newline immediately after it. In this context it may be called a "continued line" as the current line continues into the next one. Some software replaces the backslash+newline with a space.

To support computers that lacked the backslash character, the C trigraph ??/ was added, which is equivalent to a backslash. Since this can escape the next character, which may itself be a ?, the primary modern use may be for code obfuscation. Support for trigraphs in C++ was removed in C++17, and support for them in C is planned to be removed in C23.

In Visual Basic (and some other BASIC dialects) the backslash is used as an operator symbol to indicate integer division. This rounds toward zero.

The ALGOL 68 programming language uses the "\" as its Decimal Exponent Symbol. ALGOL 68 has the choice of 4 Decimal Exponent Symbols: e, E, \, or 10. Examples: 6.0221415e23, 6.0221415E23, 6.0221415\23 or 6.02214151023.

In APL \ is called Expand when used to insert fill elements into arrays, and Scan when used to produce prefix reduction (cumulative fold).

In PHP version 5.3 and higher, the backslash is used to indicate a namespace.

In Haskell, the backslash is used both to introduce special characters and to introduce lambda functions (since it is a reasonable approximation in ASCII of the Greek letter lambda, λ).

Filenames
MS-DOS 2.0, released 1983, copied the idea of a hierarchical file system from Unix and thus used the (forward) slash as the directory separator. Possibly on the insistence of IBM, Microsoft added the backslash to allow paths to be typed at the command line interpreter prompt, while retaining compatibility with MS-DOS 1.0 (in which / was the command-line option indicator. Typing "DIR/W" gave the "wide" option to the "DIR" command, so some other method was needed if one actually wanted to run a program called W inside a directory called DIR). Except for COMMAND.COM, all other parts of the operating system accept both characters in a path, but the Microsoft convention remains to use a backslash, and APIs that return paths use backslashes. In some versions, the option character can be changed from / to - via SWITCHAR, which allows COMMAND.COM to preserve / in the command name.

The Microsoft Windows family of operating systems inherited the MS-DOS behavior and so still support either character – but individual Windows programs and sub-systems may, wrongly, only accept the backslash as a path delimiter, or may misinterpret a forward slash if it is used as such. Some programs will only accept forward slashes if the path is placed in double-quotes. The failure of Microsoft's security features to recognize unexpected-direction slashes in local and Internet paths, while other parts of the operating system still act upon them, has led to some serious lapses in security. Resources that should not be available have been accessed with paths using particular mixes, such as http://example.net/secure\private.aspx.

Text markup
The backslash is used in the TeX typesetting system and in RTF files to begin markup tags.

In USFM, the backslash is used to mark format features for editing Bible translations.

In caret notation, ^\ represents the control character 0x1C, file separator. This is entirely a coincidence and has nothing to do with its use in file paths.

Mathematics
A backslash-like symbol is used for the set difference.

The backslash is also sometimes used to denote the right coset space.

Especially when describing computer algorithms, it is common to define backslash so that $a\b$ is equivalent to $\floor{a/b}$. This is integer division that rounds down, not towards zero. In Wolfram Mathematica the backslash is used this way for integer divide.

In MATLAB and GNU Octave the backslash is used for left matrix divide, while the (forward) slash is for right matrix divide.

Confusion with ¥ and other characters
In the Japanese encodings ISO 646-JP (a 7-bit code based on ASCII), JIS X 0201 (an 8-bit code), and Shift JIS (a multi-byte encoding which is 8-bit for ASCII), the code point 0x5C that would be used for backslash in ASCII is instead rendered as a yen sign ¥. Due to extensive use of the 005C code point to represent the yen sign, even today some fonts such as MS Mincho render the backslash character as a ¥, so the characters at Unicode code points 00A5 (¥) and 005C (\) both render as ¥ when these fonts are selected. Computer programs still treat 005C as a backslash in these environments but display it as a yen sign, causing confusion, especially in MS-DOS filenames.

Several other ISO 646 versions also replace backslash with other characters, including ₩ (Korean), Ö (German, Swedish), Ø (Danish, Norwegian), ç (French) and Ñ (Spanish), leading to similar problems, though with less lasting impact compared to the yen sign.

In 1991, RFC 1345 suggested // as a unique two-character mnemonic that might be used in internet standards as "a practical way of identifying [this] character, without reference to a coded character set and its code in [that] coded character set". Consequently, this style may be seen in early Internet Engineering Task Force documents.

title: Backslash


text:
Wood gas

Wood gas is a fuel gas that can be used for furnaces, stoves, and vehicles. During the production process, biomass or related carbon-containing materials are gasified within the oxygen-limited environment of a wood gas generator to produce a combustible mixture. In some gasifiers this process is preceded by pyrolysis, where the biomass or coal is first converted to char, releasing methane and tar rich in polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

In stark contrast with synthesis gas, which is almost pure mixture of H$2$ / CO, wood gas also contains a variety of organic compound ("distillates") that require scrubbing for use in other applications. Depending on the kind of biomass, a variety of contaminants are produced that will condense out as the gas cools. When producer gas is used to power cars and boats or distributed to remote locations it is necessary to scrub the gas to remove the materials that can condense and clog carburetors and gas lines. Anthracite and coke are preferred for automotive use, because they produce the smallest amount of contamination, allowing smaller, lighter scrubbers to be used.

History
The first wood gasifier was apparently built by Gustav Bischof in 1839. The first vehicle powered by wood gas was built by T.H. Parker in 1901. Around 1900, many cities delivered fuel gases (centrally produced, typically from coal) to residences. Natural gas came into use only in the 1930s.

Wood gas vehicles were used during World War II as a consequence of the rationing of fossil fuels. In Germany alone, around 500,000 "producer gas" vehicles were in use at the end of the war. Trucks, buses, tractors, motorcycles, ships, and trains were equipped with a wood gasification unit. In 1942, when wood gas had not yet reached the height of its popularity, there were about 73,000 wood gas vehicles in Sweden, 65,000 in France, 10,000 in Denmark, and almost 8,000 in Switzerland. In 1944, Finland had 43,000 "woodmobiles", of which 30,000 were buses and trucks, 7,000 private vehicles, 4,000 tractors and 600 boats.

Wood gasifiers are still manufactured in China and Russia for automobiles and as power generators for industrial applications. Trucks retrofitted with wood gasifiers are used in North Korea in rural areas, particularly on the roads of the east coast.

Production
A wood gasifier takes wood chips, sawdust, charcoal, coal, rubber or similar materials as fuel and burns these incompletely in a fire box, producing wood gas, solid ash and soot, the latter of which have to be removed periodically from the gasifier. The wood gas can then be filtered for tars and soot/ash particles, cooled and directed to an engine or fuel cell. Most of these engines have strict purity requirements of the wood gas, so the gas often has to pass through extensive gas cleaning in order to remove or convert, i.e., "crack", tars and particles. The removal of tar is often accomplished by using a water scrubber. Running wood gas in an unmodified gasoline-burning internal combustion engine may lead to problematic accumulation of unburned compounds.

The quality of the gas from different "gasifiers" varies a great deal. Staged gasifiers, where pyrolysis and gasification occur separately instead of in the same reaction zone as was the case in the World War II gasifiers, can be engineered to produce essentially tar-free gas (less than 1 mg/m3), while single-reactor fluidized bed gasifiers may exceed 50,000 mg/m³ tar. The fluidized bed reactors have the advantage of being much more compact, with more capacity per unit volume and price. Depending on the intended use of the gas, tar can be beneficial, as well by increasing the heating value of the gas.

The heat of combustion of "producer gas" – a term used in the United States, meaning wood gas produced for use in a combustion engine – is rather low compared to other fuels. Taylor (1985) reports that producer gas has a lower heat of combustion of 5.7 MJ/kg versus 55.9 MJ/kg for natural gas and 44.1 MJ/kg for gasoline. The heat of combustion of wood is typically 15–18 MJ/kg. Presumably, these values can vary somewhat from sample to sample. The same source reports the following chemical composition by volume which most likely is also variable:

 * {| style="textalign:left;"

|+ "Producer gas" composition |- ! Chemical name  !! Formula !! Fraction |- | Nitrogen              || N$2$        || 50.9% |- | Carbon monoxide || CO                || 27.0% |- | Hydrogen              || H$2$        || 14.0% |- | Carbon dioxide        || CO$2$       || 4.5% |- | Methane               || CH$4$       || 3.0% |- | Oxygen                || O$2$        || 0.6% |}

The composition of the gas is strongly dependent on the gasification process, the gasification medium (air, oxygen or steam), and the fuel moisture. Steam-gasification processes typically yield high hydrogen contents, downdraft fixed bed gasifiers yield high nitrogen concentrations and low tar loads, while updraft fixed bed gasifiers yield high tar loads.

During the production of charcoal for blackpowder, the volatile wood gas is vented. Extremely-high-surface-area carbon results, suitable for use as a fuel in black powder.

title: Wood gas


text:
Ysaye M. Barnwell

Ysaye M. Barnwell is an American singer and composer. Barnwell was a member of the African American a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock from 1979 to 2013.

In addition to writing many of the group's songs, A female bass, she conducts music workshops around the United States, UK, Canada and Australia, including a workshop she created called "Building a Vocal Community: Singing in the African American Tradition". In 1977, she founded the Jubilee Singers, a choir at All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, DC.

Early life and education
Barnwell was raised in New York City in Harlem and later in Jamaica, Queens. The daughter of a violinist, Barnwell began her 15 year study of the violin with her father at the age of 2 ½.

Barnwell earned bachelor's and master's degrees (1967 and 1968) in speech pathology from State University of New York at Geneseo, and a PhD (1975) in speech pathology from the University of Pittsburgh. In 1981, she also earned a Master of Science in Public health, from Howard University.

Career
Barnwell spent over a decade as a professor at Howard University's College of Dentistry. Afterwards, she turned to community based projects in computer technology and the arts. She also directed health programs in Washington, D.C. at Children's Hospital National Medical Center and Gallaudet University.

While attending All Souls Church, Unitarian, Dr. Barnwell noticed that the racial makeup of the choir did not reflect that of the congregation. This led her to found the Jubilee Singers in 1977, which she directed for three years. Her work with the Jubilee singers led her to begin arranging and composing music for vocal ensembles. She produced Sweet Honey in the Rock's 1998 25th anniversary album, ...Twenty-Five..., and edited Continuum: The First Songbook of Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Barnwell's acting credits include a principal role on a television series called A Man Called Hawk; she also appeared in the 1998 film Beloved. She released a solo recording of stories and song, Um Humm, in 2000.

She wrote a children's book with CD, No Mirrors in My Nana's House. A second children's book and CD set was released in March 2008: We Are One.

Barnwell was named after the great Belgian violinist, Eugène Ysaÿe.

title: Ysaye M. Barnwell