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Maquiladora

A maquiladora, or maquila , is a word that refers to factories that are largely duty free and tariff-free. These factories take raw materials and assemble, manufacture, or process them and export the finished product. These factories and systems are present throughout Latin America, including Mexico, Paraguay, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Maquiladoras date back to 1964, when the Mexican government introduced the Programa de Industrialización Fronteriza ('Border Industrialization Program'). Specific programs and laws have made Mexico's maquila industry grow rapidly.

History
From 1942 to 1964, the Bracero program allowed men with farming experience to work on US farms on a seasonal basis, and its end ushered in a new era for the development of Mexico. The Border Industrialization Program (BIP) began in 1965 and allowed for a lowering in restrictions and duties on machinery, equipment and raw materials. Before this program, PRONAF, a national border program for infrastructure developments like building roads, parks, electricity, water, building factories, and cleaning up border cities, helped to improve situations along the US-Mexico Border. With BIP, foreign firms were able to use factories built under PRONAF to import raw materials and export goods for a cheaper cost than in other countries. One of the main goals of the Border Industrialization Program was to attract foreign investment.

In 1989, the federal government put in place specific procedures and requirements for maquilas under the "Decree for Development and Operation of the Maquiladora Industry". Following a debt crisis in 1980, the Mexican economy liberalized and foreign investment increased. Factory jobs began to leave central Mexico, and workers followed the jobs from central Mexico to the maquilas in the north and on the border. In 1985, maquiladoras overtook tourism as the largest source of foreign exchange, and since 1996 they have been the second largest industry in Mexico behind the petroleum industry.

NAFTA
With the introduction of NAFTA in 1994, Northern Mexico became an export processing zone. This allowed multinational corporations from the US to produce products cheaply. Corporations could use a maquila to import materials and produce a good more cheaply than in the US by paying Mexican laborers lower wages and paying less in duties. Mexicans work for approximately one-sixth of the U.S. hourly rate. During the five years before NAFTA, maquila employment had grown at a rate of 47%; this figure increased to 86% in the next five years. The number of factories also increased dramatically. Between 1989 and 1994, 564 new plants opened; in the five years following, 1460 plants opened. However, the maquiladora growth is largely attributable to growth in US demand and devaluation of the peso, not NAFTA itself. In the 1970s, most maquiladoras were located around the Mexico–United States border. By 1994, these were spread in the interior parts of the country, although the majority of the plants were still near the border.

The 2000s
A 2011 Federal Reserve report indicated that the maquiladora industry affects U.S. border city employment in service sectors. Although the maquiladora industry suffered due to the early 2000s recession, maquiladoras constituted 54% of the US-Mexico trade in 2004, and by 2005, the maquiladora exports accounted for half of Mexico's exports. In the 2000s, the maquila industry faced competition due to rise of other countries with availability of cheap labor, including Malaysia, India, and Pakistan. The biggest threat came from China's Special Economic Areas.

Growth and development
During the later half of the 1960s, maquiladora industries rapidly expanded geographically and economically and by 1985, had become Mexico's second largest source of income from exports, behind oil. Since 1973, maquiladoras have also accounted for nearly half of Mexico's export assembly. Between 1995 and 2000, exports of assembled products in Mexico tripled, and the rate of the industry's growth amounted to about one new factory per day. By the late twentieth century, the industry accounted for 25 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product, and 17 percent of total Mexican employment.

Globalization
Since globalization and physical restructuring have contributed to the competition and advent of low-cost offshore assembly in places such as China, and countries in Central America, maquiladoras in Mexico have been on the decline since 2000. According to federal sources, approximately 529 maquiladoras shut down and investment in assembly plants decreased by 8.2 percent in 2002 after the imposition of countervailing duties on Chinese products, not available in North America, that were part of the electronics supply chain. Despite the decline, over 3,000 maquiladoras still exist along the 2,000 mile-long United States–Mexico border, providing employment for approximately one million workers, and importing more than $51 billion in supplies into Mexico. Research indicates that maquiladoras' post-NAFTA growth is connected to changes in Mexican wages relative to those in Asia and in the United States, and to fluctuations in U.S. industrial production. As of 2006, maquiladoras still accounted for 45 percent of Mexico's exports. Maquiladoras, in general, are best represented among operations that are particularly assembly intensive.

The benefits and drawbacks of export-oriented industrial vocations for women as well as how international labor standards, affect these occupations. The goal of this piece is to challenge ideas that portray export-based, industrial occupations as respectable choices for women in Mexico and Central America, as well as to cast doubt on the idea that global labor standards may serve as a substitute for bettering working conditions. This article is based on extensive research on women in Mexico's and Central America's maquiladoras and emphasizes three interconnected issues: the importance of local and regional settings that shape various industrialization trajectories across time, the agency represented by women workers, and the legal tools already set in place in efforts to improve working conditions.

Women enter the labor force and face inequality through different means
Women entered the labor force in Mexico in large numbers in the latter half of the 20th century. Devaluations of the peso in 1982 and 1994 pushed many Mexican women into the labor force. Between 1970 and 1995, 18% more women were part of the working force, and many of these women were working in maquila factories. Women looked for work in factories because they could get jobs with few credentials and receive on the job training. Men working in maquilas were given positions of supervision, management, engineers, and technical jobs, while women were relegated to low-skill jobs. Young women tended to be hired more often than older women, but it depended on the circumstances of the job and type of factory. However, young single women often ended up in factories with better working conditions, like the electronics plants, while older women and mothers worked in more dangerous apparel factories.

Gender plays a key role in both disguising and preserving economic frustration in the city of Juárez, Mexico. Given that several women are brutally murdered in Mexico, with Juárez as one of the main city targets, it is essential to look into the orientations of male authority, cheap labor exploitation, and the maquiladoras export processing zone. Oftentimes, young women are murdered as a result of economic frustration, being directed at the maquiladora workers. Working women are viewed by the maquiladora system as "cheap labor" and easily replaceable, which makes it easy and acceptable to kill these women without consequences. In order to examine the relationship between gender and production, gender and violence, this article focuses on situating the killings of these women within their social and ideological contexts. In this piece, the reasons for these women's treatment and the social justifications for it are examined.

Poverty is a key factor that motivates women to work in maquiladoras. The minimum wage set by the Mexican government is barely enough to help sustain a family even with both parents working. The minimum wage "buys only about a quarter of the basic necessities that are essential for a typical worker's family". Maquilas pay at much higher rate than the minimum wage in most markets since there is a lot of competition for the best workers, and workers will not work without transportation and other bonuses. The 2015 minimum wage was 70.1 pesos per day in Tijuana (minimum wages vary by zone and worker classification) or about $0.55 per hour at the 2016 exchange rate of 16 pesos per dollar, while most entry-level positions in maquilas paid closer to $2 per hour including bonuses and 25% being paid to Social Security, housing, and retirement. Even in maquila factories, wages are still very low and in many families the children are encouraged to start working at an early age to support the family. In some maquiladoras, workers are cut and their responsibilities are given to a single worker. These workers are not given a higher pay, and are expected to maintain their output without a decrease in quality. They often work involuntary overtimes and are often not paid for their extra labor.

Gendered violence in the maquiladora labor force
Allegedly, women are not allowed to be pregnant while working. Some maquilas require female workers to take pregnancy tests. Some require that workers resign if they are pregnant. Female applicants are made to take pregnancy tests and are only hired if not pregnant, and women that become pregnant while working at maquila factories are given more strenuous tasks and forced to work unpaid overtime to influence them to resign. The Humans Rights Watch wrote a report in 1996 about the failures of the government to address this issue despite the fact that pregnancy testing violates Mexican federal labor law. These practices have continued into the 21st century. Once on the job, many women face sexual harassment by supervisors and find no help from human resources.

Due to the cruel and horrific appearances of violence against women in Mexican society, feminists have been working at the community level to end sexual violence against women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, many years before the #MeToo movement was even conceived. Sociologists and feminists wonder whether the #MeToo movement has already taken root in Mexico and if so, how? Sociologists and feminists ask themselves questions such as: Has Ciudad Juárez's #MeToo movement made an influence on women's lives there? If so, by how much and why? This article explores the significance of maquiladoras and how the working conditions there have impacted women as well, by allowing the exploitation of women. Finally, the article successfully communicates all of its ideas through a thorough discussion between its authors.

Rita Segato, is an Argentine-Brazilian scholar who also identifies as a feminist and has a sociological point of view, makes an effort to make sense of the femicides that occur in Ciudad Juárez. Segato examines the violence, bigotry, and ego with which Mexican men treat their women. These women are typically young ladies who are small, dark skinned, with long hair and work largely in the maquiladora labor force... In comparison to other parts of Mexico, Ciudad Juárez is a risky place for women to live. These Mexican men view these women's bodies as throwaway and erasable objects that they can use anyway they choose. As if that weren't clear, the bodies of women from the Mexican border continue to be consumed by misogyny that has reached the most dreadful level of brutality. Many women are injured in maquilas. Intense work pace and pressure on high production leads to injuries including upper back, neck, and shoulder pain. Many maquilas do not report accidents and workers are not compensated for injuries received on the job. Workplace hazards include toxic chemicals, and workplaces lack health and safety practices like ventilation and face masks. The men in authority severely exploit these women, which makes matters worse.

Unionization
While labor unions exist in maquiladoras, many are charro unions, which are government-supported and often fail to act in the interest of workers. Official unions discredit maquiladora workers by calling them "agitators". Workers who complain can be fired and blacklisted from other jobs. Many contracts are only for a few months, allowing companies to have a high turn-over rate in which workers never have the chance to organize for their rights. Many tried to organize independent unions, but often failed. Rita Segato investigates the historical changes associated with war and the essential role that inhumanity obtains in it toward people who do not participate in the conflict, such as women and children. According to Segato, violence against women has stopped being an outcome of war but instead has turned into a strategic goal. Governed by armed corporations with the participation of state and para-state forces, this is where the new forms of conflict take place. Tragically, women and children have become victims of both physical abuse, bodily mutilation, body trafficking and commercialization.

In 1993, the Mexican labor federation, the Authentic Labor Front, and the United Electrical Workers worked together to improve conditions at the General Electric factory, but failed in the loss of an election. The Center for Labor Studies (CETLAC) was opened in the mid-1990s and worked to educate workers about their rights and activism decreased in light of violence against women. In Juarez, between 1993 and 2005, more than 370 women were murdered. In 2010, more than 370 women were murdered. A new wave of worker protests has emerged in the 21st Century as workers decide that enough is enough. In 2015 in Juarez, maquiladora workers set up encampments, plantons, to protest and demand independent unions. Rita Segato argues using a de-colonial feminist viewpoint that contends that patriarchal political structures existed in communal societies prior to colonialism. According to Segato, the modern gender system's capture the changes of pre colonial dual gender structures which worsen inequality, boosts violence against women, and depoliticizes them. To Segato, pre colonial gender differs significantly from colonial-modern societies gender structures, which operate in terms of a beneficiary and its subordinated others. In this article, Segato focuses on the patriarchal institutions of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico and Brazil's National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) to extensively analyze and characterize these preexisting structures.

The US–Mexico border region is highly stratified by race, class, and gender. According to Segato, the racialization of individuals living south of the border underlies and reinforces prosecution of "illegal aliens", ultimately endangering Mexican women and children. In the city of Juarez, women have been murdered as a result of the maquiladora killings.

The Han Young case
The Han Young maquiladora was a plant in Tijuana that manufactured car parts for Hyundai. In 1997, what started as a complaint by a single injured worker turned into a years-long conflict where employees protested for their right to unionize. The struggle put the NAFTA labor side agreement to the test, but despite the workers' efforts, nothing ever came of it. The case became increasingly political and news-worthy as time went on. However, despite various US NAO hearings and transnational labor rights organizing, the workers were never able to unionize. On the contrary, by the end of the conflicts, all of the laborers had been fired and the maquiladora had been moved to the other side of Tijuana. This was in the face of a Mexican federal court ruling that the strikes had been legal and in fact the corporation had violated the law.

Environmental effects
Both the United States and Mexican governments claim to be committed to environmental protection, yet environmental policies have not always been enforced despite the fact that  maquilas are required to be certified and to provide an environmental impact statement. In Mexico, most maquiladoras are global players that use international standards for waste treatment and disposal that exceed Mexican requirements and that require any waste generated to be re-exported. The La Paz Agreement signed by Mexico and the United States in 1983 requires hazardous waste created by United States corporations to be transported back to the United States for disposal. However, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that only 91 of the 600 maquiladoras located along the Texas–Mexico border have returned hazardous waste to the United States since 1987. Among others, the United States Geological Survey, the state of California, and the Imperial County Health Department have all asserted that the New River, which flows from Mexicali in Mexico near the Americanborder into California's Salton Sea, is "the dirtiest river in America". The presence of toxic waste in towns near maquila factories has led to negative health outcomes for the people living there. Between 1988 and 1992, 163 children in Juarez were born without brains due to the toxic chemicals from factories.

Improvement
There have been some improvement at the corporate level of environmental policy. As of the early 2000s, around 90% of maquiladoras had attained an environmental certification. This push to improve environmental policy was led by the Mexican government, not the international companies themselves. The EPA's US–Mexico Border 2012 Program has an extensive plan to help with environmental issues along that border.

Journal articles

 * Brown, Garrett D. "Protecting Workers’ Health and Safety in the Globalizing Economy through International Trade Treaties". International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health. Apr-Jun 2005.
 * Choi, Dae Won and Martin Kenney. "The Globalization of Korean Industry: Korean Maquiladoras in Mexico." (Archive) Frontera Norte, January–July 1997. Volume 5, No. 7. p. 5-22. Article in English, abstract available in Spanish.
 * Clapp, Jennifer. Piles of Poisons: Despite NAFTA’s Green Promises, Hazardous Waste Problems are Deepening in Mexico. Alternatives Journal, Vol. 28, Iss. 2. Waterloo: Spring 2002.
 * Hampton, Elaine. Globalization Legacy: A View of U.S. Factory Involvement in Mexican Education. Multicultural Education. Summer 2004.
 * Hausman, Angela and Diana L. Haytko. Cross-Border Supply Chain Relationships: Interpretive Research of Maquiladora Realized Strategies. The Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Vol 18, Iss. 6/7. Santa Barbara: 2003
 * Moffatt, Allison. Murder, Mystery and Mistreatment in Mexican Maquiladoras. Women & Environments International Magazines 66 (2006): 19.
 * Villalobos, J. Rene, et al., Inbound for Mexico. Industrial Engineer. Norcross: April 2004. Vol. 36, Iss. 4.

Government/NGO reports

 * Gruben, William C. and Sherry L. Kiser. The Border Economy: NAFTA and Maquiladoras: Is the Growth Connected? Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. June 2001.
 * Human Rights Watch. No Guarantees: Sex Discrimination in Mexico’s Maquiladora Sector. The Maquiladora Reader. Philadelphia: Mexico-U.S. Border Program, 1999.

News

 * Article on worker-run maquiladora in El Salvador

Music

 * Maquiladora - Radiohead

Video

 * Campbell, Monica. Maquiladoras: Rethinking NAFTA. PBS, 2002.
 * The Human Race: Escaping From History. dir. Josh Freed. Green Lion Productions Inc., videocassette, 1994.
 * Maquilapolis Documentary

title: Maquiladora


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Talk:Diana, Princess of Wales

Bringing to GA status
I think it is time to bring this article to GA status because it has the potential. I wanted to leave a message here first before starting the nomination process to see if anyone has any objections before a formal review. Keivan.f Talk 22:47, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 October 2023
There is a grammatical error for Diana, Princess of Wales. In the privacy and legal issues section. Spritejhope (talk) 00:26, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I scanned and didn't find anything. Perhaps if you could copy the offending text here.... HiLo48 (talk) 01:37, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I changed "Diana lawyers..." to "Diana's lawyers...". Kiwipete (talk) 08:05, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Recent edit to "Titles, styles, honours and arms:"
In response to the 08:50, 19 November 2023 revert by user @DrKay - please reconsider. The current text in the article does not accurately reflect her actual title at time of death as it was revised by the Palace in 1996 upon her divorce. Source: https://www.royal.uk/diana-princess-wales

If there was a particular part of my edit you found excessive I can edit it. But it should be accurate and it is not currently. SassyMay (talk) 09:52, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

ETA - thank you @DrKay for reinstating the correct title. Curious though why you didn't also keep the source reference? Isn't it better to have citations? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SassyMay (talk • contribs) 10:13, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Coats of arms and copyright
A discussion is going on at the Commons concerning the copyright status of several coats of arms that are in use on pages related to British royalty. Please feel free to share your comments and input at commons:Commons:Deletion requests/Coat of arms of Queen Camilla.svg. Thanks. Keivan.f Talk 18:34, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Introduction
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales (later Charles III)? Just like Anne Hype’s Wikipedia page, the first wife of James, Duke of York, later James II. AlexWillC (talk) 03:10, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Diana, Princess of Wales


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Sidereus Nuncius

Sidereus Nuncius (usually Sidereal Messenger, also Starry Messenger or Sidereal Message) is a short astronomical treatise (or pamphlet) published in Neo-Latin by Galileo Galilei on March 13, 1610. It was the first published scientific work based on observations made through a telescope, and it contains the results of Galileo's early observations of the imperfect and mountainous Moon, of hundreds of stars not visible to the naked eye in the Milky Way and in certain constellations, and of the Medicean Stars (later Galilean moons) that appeared to be circling Jupiter.

The Latin word nuncius was typically used during this time period to denote messenger; however, it was also (though less frequently) rendered as message. Though the title Sidereus Nuncius is usually translated into English as Sidereal Messenger, many of Galileo's early drafts of the book and later related writings indicate that the intended purpose of the book was "simply to report the news about recent developments in astronomy, not to pass himself off solemnly as an ambassador from heaven."

Telescope
The first telescopes appeared in the Netherlands in 1608 when Middelburg spectacle-maker Hans Lippershey tried to obtain a patent on one. By 1609 Galileo had heard about it and built his own improved version. He probably was not the first person to aim the new invention at the night sky but his was the first systematic (and published) study of celestial bodies using one. One of Galileo's first telescopes had 8x to 10x linear magnification and was made out of lenses that he had ground himself. This was increased to 20x linear magnification in the improved telescope he used to make the observations in Sidereus Nuncius.

Content

Sidereus Nuncius contains more than seventy drawings and diagrams of the Moon, certain constellations such as Orion, the Pleiades, and Taurus, and the Medicean Stars of Jupiter. Galileo's text also includes descriptions, explanations, and theories of his observations.

Moon
In observing the Moon, Galileo saw that the line separating lunar day from night (the terminator) was smooth where it crossed the darker regions of the Moon but quite irregular where it crossed the brighter areas. From this he deduced that the darker regions are flat, low-lying areas, and the brighter regions rough and mountainous. Basing his estimate on the distance of sunlit mountaintops from the terminator, he judged, quite accurately, that the lunar mountains were at least four miles high. Galileo's engravings of the lunar surface provided a new form of visual representation, besides shaping the field of selenography, the study of physical features on the Moon.

Stars
Galileo reported that he saw at least ten times more stars through the telescope than are visible to the naked eye, and he published star charts of the belt of Orion and the star cluster Pleiades showing some of the newly observed stars. With the naked eye observers could see only six stars in the Taurus cluster; through his telescope, however, Galileo was capable of seeing thirty-five – almost six times as many. When he turned his telescope on Orion, he was capable of seeing eighty stars, rather than the previously observed nine – almost nine times more. In Sidereus Nuncius, Galileo revised and reproduced these two star groups by distinguishing between the stars seen without the telescope and those seen with it. Also, when he observed some of the "nebulous" stars in the Ptolemaic star catalogue, he saw that rather than being cloudy, they were made of many small stars. From this he deduced that the nebulae and the Milky Way were "congeries of innumerable stars grouped together in clusters" too small and distant to be resolved into individual stars by the naked eye.

Medicean Stars (Moons of Jupiter)
In the last part of Sidereus Nuncius, Galileo reported his discovery of four objects that appeared to form a straight line of stars near Jupiter. On the first night he detected a line of three little stars close to Jupiter parallel to the ecliptic; the following nights brought different arrangements and another star into his view, totalling four stars around Jupiter. Throughout the text, Galileo gave illustrations of the relative positions of Jupiter and its apparent companion stars as they appeared nightly from late January through early March 1610. That they changed their positions relative to Jupiter from night to night and yet always appeared in the same straight line near it, persuaded Galileo that they were orbiting Jupiter. On January 11 after four nights of observation he wrote:

 * I therefore concluded and decided unhesitatingly, that there are three stars in the heavens moving about Jupiter, as Venus and Mercury round the Sun; which at length was established as clear as daylight by numerous subsequent observations. These observations also established that there are not only three, but four, erratic sidereal bodies performing their revolutions round Jupiter...the revolutions are so swift that an observer may generally get differences of position every hour.

In his drawings, Galileo used an open circle to represent Jupiter and asterisks to represent the four stars. He made this distinction to show that there was in fact a difference between these two types of celestial bodies. It is important to note that Galileo used the terms planet and star interchangeably, and "both words were correct usage within the prevailing Aristotelian terminology."

At the time of Sidereus Nuncius' publication, Galileo was a mathematician at the University of Padua and had recently received a lifetime contract for his work in building more powerful telescopes. He desired to return to Florence, and in hopes of gaining patronage there, he dedicated Sidereus Nuncius to his former pupil, now the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II de' Medici. In addition, he named his discovered four moons of Jupiter the "Medicean Stars," in honor of the four royal Medici brothers. This helped him receive the position of Chief Mathematician and Philosopher to the Medici at the University of Pisa. Ultimately, his effort at naming the moons failed, for they are now referred to as the "Galilean moons".

Reception
The reactions to Sidereus Nuncius, ranging from appraisal and hostility to disbelief, soon spread throughout Italy and England. Many poems and texts were published expressing love for the new form of astronomical science. Three works of art were even created in response to Galileo's book: Adam Elsheimer's The Flight into Egypt (1610; contested by Keith Andrews ), Lodovico Cigoli's Assumption of the Virgin (1612), and Andrea Sacchi's Divine Wisdom (1631). In addition, the discovery of the Medicean Stars fascinated other astronomers, and they wanted to view the moons for themselves. Their efforts "set the stage for the modern scientific requirement of experimental reproducibility by independent researchers. Verification versus falsifiability…saw their origins in the announcement of Sidereus Nuncius."

But many individuals and communities were sceptical. A common response to the Medicean Stars was simply to say that the telescope had a lens defect and was producing illusory points of light and images; those saying this completely denied the existence of the moons. That only a few could initially see and verify what Galileo had observed supported the supposition that the optical theory during this period "could not clearly demonstrate that the instrument was not deceiving the senses." By naming the four moons after the Medici brothers and convincing the Grand Duke Cosimo II of his discoveries, the defence of Galileo's reports became a matter of State. Moran notes, “the court itself became actively involved in pursuing the confirmation of Galileo’s observations by paying Galileo out of its treasury to manufacture spyglasses that could be sent through ambassadorial channels to the major courts of Europe."

The first astronomer to publicly support Galileo's findings was Johannes Kepler, who published an open letter in April 1610, enthusiastically endorsing Galileo's credibility. It was not until August 1610 that Kepler was able to publish his independent confirmation of Galileo's findings, due to the scarcity of sufficiently powerful telescopes.

Several astronomers, such as Thomas Harriot, Joseph Gaultier de la Vatelle, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, and Simon Marius, published their confirmation of the Medicean Stars after Jupiter became visible again in the autumn of 1610. Marius, a German astronomer who had studied with Tycho Brahe, was the first to publish a book of his observations. Marius attacked Galileo in Mundus Jovialis (published in 1614) by insisting that he had found Jupiter's four moons before Galileo and had been observing them since 1609. Marius believed that he therefore had the right to name them, which he did: he named them after Jupiter's love conquests: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. But Galileo was not confounded; he pointed out that being outside the Church, Marius had not yet accepted the Gregorian calendar and was still using the Julian calendar. Therefore, the night Galileo first observed Jupiter's moons was January 7, 1610 on the Gregorian calendar—December 28, 1609 on the Julian calendar (Marius claimed to have first observed Jupiter's moons on December 29, 1609). Although Galileo did indeed discover Jupiter's four moons before Marius, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto are now the names of Galileo's four moons.

By 1626 knowledge of the telescope had spread to China when German Jesuit and astronomer Johann Adam Schall von Bell published Yuan jing shuo, (Explanation of the Telescope) in Chinese and Latin.

Controversy with the Catholic Church
Galileo's drawings of an imperfect Moon directly contradicted Ptolemy's and Aristotle's cosmological descriptions of perfect and unchanging heavenly bodies made of quintessence (the fifth element in ancient and medieval philosophy of which the celestial bodies are composed).

Before the publication of Sidereus Nuncius, the Catholic Church accepted the Copernican heliocentric system as strictly mathematical and hypothetical. However, once Galileo began to speak of the Copernican system as fact rather than theory, it introduced "a more chaotic system, a less-than-godly lack of organization." In fact, the Copernican system that Galileo believed to be real challenged the Scripture, "which referred to the sun 'rising' and the earth as 'unmoving.

The conflict ended in 1633 with Galileo being sentenced to a form of house arrest by the Catholic Church.

English

 * Edward Stafford Carlos; translations with introduction and notes. The Sidereal messenger of Galileo Galilei, and a part of the preface to Kepler's Dioptrics. Waterloo Place, London: Oxford and Cambridge, January 1880. 148 pp. ISBN 9781151499646.
 * Stillman Drake. Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, includes translation of Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius. Doubleday: Anchor, 1957. 320 pp. ISBN 978-0385092395.
 * Stillman Drake. Telescopes, Tides, and Tactics: A Galilean Dialogue about The Starry Messenger and Systems of the World, including translation of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius. London: University Of Chicago Press, 1983. 256 pp. ISBN 978-0226162317.
 * Albert Van Helden (Professor Emeritus of History at Rice University ); translation with introduction, conclusion and notes. Galileo Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius, or The Sidereal Messenger. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989. xiii + 127 pp. ISBN 978-0226279039.
 * William R. Shea and Tiziana Bascelli; translated from the Latin by William R. Shea, introduction and notes by William R. Shea and Tiziana Bascelli. Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius or Sidereal Message. Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications/USA, 2009. viii + 115 pp. ISBN 978-0-88135-375-4.

French

 * Isabelle Pantin. Sidereus Nuncius: Le Messager Celeste. Paris: Belles Lettres, 1992. ASIN B0028S7JLK.
 * Fernand Hallyn. Le messager des étoiles. France: Points, 1992. ISBN 978-2757812259.

Italian

 * Maria Timpanaro Cardini. Sidereus nuncius. Firenze: Sansoni, 1948.

title: Sidereus Nuncius


text:
Eddie Rickenbacker

Edward Vernon Rickenbacker (born Edward Rickenbacher, October 8, 1890 – July 23, 1973) was an American fighter pilot in World War I and a Medal of Honor recipient. With 26 aerial victories, he was the most successful and most decorated United States flying ace of the war. He was also a racing driver, an automotive designer, and a long-time head of Eastern Air Lines.

Early life
Rickenbacker was born Edward Rickenbacher in Columbus, Ohio. He was the third of eight children born to German-speaking Swiss immigrants, Lizzie (née Liesl Basler) and Wilhelm Rickenbacher. Later in life, he changed the spelling of his last name to Rickenbacker and adopted a middle name, Vernon.

His father worked for breweries and street-paving crews and his mother Lizzie took in laundry to supplement the family income. In 1893, his father owned a construction company. With a loan from Lizzie's parents, the couple purchased a lot and built a small home on 1334 East Livingston Avenue, 2 mi southeast of downtown at the edge of the city limits in 1893. The house lacked running water, indoor plumbing, and electricity. This is where Edd, as he was called by his parents, spent his childhood.

Growing up, Rickenbacker worked before and after school. He helped in the garden where the family grew potatoes, cabbages, and turnips and cared for the family's chickens, goats, and pigs. He earned money by delivering papers, setting up pins at a bowling alley, and selling scavenged goods. He gave most of his earnings to his mother but spent some on Bull Durham tobacco, a habit he picked up from his older brother Bill.

As a child, Rickenbacker was accident-prone. Before entering school, he toddled into an oncoming horse-drawn streetcar and fell 12 ft into an open cistern. His brother rescued him from a passing coal car twice. Once, he ran back into his burning school building to retrieve his coat and nearly paid for it with his life. Sixty years later when producing his autobiography, he found significance in these close calls. He came to believe that God had repeatedly saved him for a higher purpose.

Young Rickenbacker had an artistic side and enjoyed painting watercolors of animals, flowers, and scenery. He tried to design a perpetual motion machine, but, his father berated him for wasting time on an invention with no purpose. He was also "sort of the leader" of the Horsehead Gang, with whom he smoked, played hooky, and broke streetlamps. With the Horsehead Gang, he constructed pushcarts that were a precursor to the Soapbox Derby. Once, the Horsehead Gang took a "roller coaster ride" in a quarry cart and his leg was run over and badly sliced. After the Wright brothers' first airplane flight, Rickenbacker tried to "fly" a bicycle outfitted with an umbrella off of his friend's barn roof.

The summer before Rickenbacker's fourteenth birthday, his father was injured in a brawl. After being hit in the head with a level, Rickenbacker's father was in a coma for almost six weeks before his death on August 26, 1904. His assailant was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Career beginnings
Though his older siblings Bill and Mary were working, Rickenbacker felt a responsibility to help replace his father's lost income. He dropped out of the seventh grade and went to work full-time, lying about his age to work around child labor laws. He worked eight different jobs during the next two years. While working at the Oscar Lear Automobile Company in 1905, he took an engineering course from the International Correspondence School. Chief engineer Lee Frayer took Rickenbacker under his wing, giving him more responsibility in the workshop.

Two months later, when it came time to compete in the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup race, Frayer brought Rickenbacker to New York as his riding mechanic. After two practice runs, their engine overheated and they failed to get to the starting line for their qualifying run.

Back in Columbus, Rickenbacker followed his mentor to the Columbus Buggy Company as a chief testing engineer, supervising upwards of a dozen men in his department. The sixteen-year-old Rickenbacker's hard work and mechanical acumen impressed Harvey S. Firestone, his new employer. Firestone chose Rickenbacker for special assignments, including troubleshooting in Atlantic City and demonstrating at the 1909 Chicago Automobile Show.

Later that year, Firestone sent Rickenbacker to Texas to figure out why the new Frayer-designed engines were overheating. Rickenbacker solved the problem and stayed on to head up Columbus Buggy's Dallas agency. At eighteen, he was the chief engineer, experimenter, demonstrator, mechanic, and salesman. During this time, he served as a chauffeur to the visiting William Jennings Bryan, getting his picture and his cars in the newspaper. He made three sales as a result. In March 1910, Firestone sent Rickenbacker to direct the Upper Midwest Agency out of Omaha. At nineteen, Rickenbacker was in charge of six men, covering sales, distribution, and maintenance of Firestone-Columbus automobiles in four states. He earned $125 per week.

Automobile racing

To draw attention to his company's car, Rickenbacker entered a 25-mile race in Red Oak, Iowa. He failed to finish in his first automobile race after crashing through an outer fence. That summer, Rickenbacker went on to win most of the dirt track races he entered, including five of six races at Omaha's Aksarben Festival in October. When reporting on races, newspapers misspelled his name as Reichenbaugh, Reichenbacher, or Reichenberger, before settling on Rickenbacker.

The following May, Lee Frayer invited his protégé to join him in another racing venture: the first ever Indianapolis 500. As relief driver, Rickenbacker replaced Frayer in the middle portion of the race, driving the majority of miles and helping his former boss take thirteenth place. The next year he drove Frayer's Red Wing Special by himself but was forced out after 100 miles with mechanical difficulties. Rickenbacker quit his sales job and went on the county fair circuit with a Flying Squadron team.

In October 1912, the American Automobile Association (AAA) cracked down on drivers known for flouting safety regulations. Rickenbacker was barred from the track for the next twelve months. He joined the automobile workshop of Frederick and August Duesenberg in Des Moines, Iowa. For the next year, he worked sixteen-hour days at $3 a day, developing a Mason race car, named for Duesenberg's chief investor.

In July 1913, Rickenbacker received dispensation from AAA to compete in his hometown Columbus 200-mile race. Somehow, he kept his racing reinstatement through the rest of the season. He won three times and finished the season in 27th place on the AAA standings with 115 points. In 1914, the Duesenberg team separated from their investor, Edward R. Mason. Winning the prize money became vital for Rickenbacker because he would be out of racing for the season if Duesenberg ran out of funds. With some hard driving, he won the Fourth of July race at Sioux City. A third-place finish by another Duesenberg driver brought in $12,500 and ensured that the team would complete the season. Rickenbacker finished the year in sixth place in the AAA standings.

Rickenbacker was now a national racing figure, earning the nickname "Fast Eddie". One sportswriter called him "the most daring and...the most cautious driver in America today." The top-ranked Peugeot team lured Rickenbacker away from Duesenberg at the start of 1915. However, a couple of bad outings caused him to abandon Peugeot and switch to the Maxwell team. Looking back decades later, Rickenbacker called this "the major mistake of my racing career". Still, he finished the season ranked fifth among all racers, with three victories to his credit. In September 1915, Rickenbacker received financial backing from Indianapolis Speedway owner Carl Fisher and his partner, Fred Allison. They made Rickenbacker the leader of a new Presto-Lite team, giving him free rein over three drivers and four mechanics as they developed four Maxwell Special race cars.

In 1915, newspapers began spelling his name with a second "k" more frequently, with his active encouragement. He also decided his given name "looked a little plain" and adopted a middle initial, signing his name 26 times with different letters before settling upon "V." The Hartford Courant referred to him as "Edward Victor Rickenbacher" after his win at Sheepshead Bay in 1916.

In the 1915–16 seasons, Rickenbacker won at Sioux City for the third year in a row, as well as Tacoma and Sheepshead Bay (New York). In September, he was in a three-way tie for the championship with Dario Resta and Johnny Aitken. He needed a win at the Indianapolis Harvest 100 to take first place. He had the lead in the penultimate lap but had driven his car into the ground. Driving on three wheels, Aitken passed Rickenbacker's broken-down Maxwell Special. Rickenbacker called it "one of the grandest free-for-alls I ever was in." He finished the year in third place in the standings but with a win in Los Angeles. He was now one of the most famous race car drivers in America and was earning $40,000 a year.

Signing with the British Sunbeam team for the upcoming season, Rickenbacker sailed to England to work to develop a new race car. Before he could disembark at Liverpool for his new job with Sunbeam, Rickenbacker was detained by two plainclothes agents from Scotland Yard. A 1914 Los Angeles Times article had fabricated a story claiming that the young driver was Baron Rickenbacher, "the disowned son of a Prussian noble." With Britain deep into World War I, Scotland Yard considered him a potential spy.

In England, Rickenbacker worked at the Sunbeam shop in Wolverhampton during the week and spent weekends at the Savoy Hotel in London. The English police surveilled Rickenbacker the entire six weeks he was in England and for another two weeks when he was back in the United States. In 1917, after his experience as a suspected spy and to anglicize his name, he officially changed the spelling of his name from Rickenbacher to Rickenbacker. A few years later, he settled on the middle name "Vernon" after the brother of his boyhood crush, Blanche Calhoun.

Pre–U.S. entry
While in England, Rickenbacker watched Royal Flying Corps airplanes fly over the Thames from the Brooklands aerodrome. He began to consider a role in aviation if the United States entered the European war. The month before, while he had been in Los Angeles, Rickenbacker had had two chance encounters with aviators. Glenn Martin, founder of Glenn L. Martin Company and more recently with Wright-Martin Aircraft, gave Rickenbacker his first ride aloft. Next, Major Townsend F. Dodd was stranded with his plane in a field and Rickenbacker diagnosed a magneto problem. Dodd later became General John J. Pershing's aviation officer and an important contact in Rickenbacker's attempt to join air combat.

Back in the United States after the revelation of the Zimmermann Telegram, Rickenbacker shared his idea for an aero squadron composed of race car drivers and mechanics with a New York Times reporter: "War would practically put a stop to racing, and we have a training that our country would need in the time of war. We are experts in judging speed and in motor knowledge." After the April 6 declaration of war by the United States, Rickenbacker went to Washington, D.C. to propose his idea without success.

Flight training

In late May 1917, a week before he was to race in Cincinnati, Rickenbacker was invited to sail to England with General John J. Pershing. By mid-June, he was in France, where he enlisted in the United States infantry. He was assigned to drive Army officials between Paris and A.E.F. headquarters in Chaumont, and on to various points on the Western Front. Rickenbacker earned the rank of Sergeant First Class but never drove for General Pershing. Rather, he mostly drove for Major Dodd. A chance encounter with Captain James Miller on the Champs-Elysees put Rickenbacker on the track to becoming a fighter pilot. Miller asked Rickenbacker to be the chief engineer at the flight school and aerodrome he was establishing at Issoudun. Rickenbacker bargained for the chance to learn to fly at the French flight school outside Toul. He received five weeks of training or 25 hours in the air in September 1917. Then, he went to Issoudun to start constructing the United States Air Service's pursuit training facility,

During the next three months, Rickenbacker took time from his work schedule to continue his flight training, standing in at the back of lectures and taking airplanes up on his own to practice new maneuvers. In January 1918, Rickenbacker finagled his way into a release for gunnery school, the final step to becoming a pursuit pilot.

In February and March, Lieutenant Rickenbacker and the officers of the nascent 1st Pursuit Group completed advanced training at Villeneuve–les–Vertus Aerodrome. There he came under the tutelage and mentorship of the French flying ace, Major Raoul Lufbery. With regards to flying, Rickenbacker said, "All I learned, I learned from Lufbery". Lufbery took Rickenbacker and Douglas Campbell on their first patrol before their Nieuport 28s were outfitted with machine guns. Rickenbacker earned the respect of the other fliers, who called him "Rick".

Both squadrons relocated to Toul, in the St. Mihiel sector, where Rickenbacker had begun his training with the French seven months earlier. Now the American air service had its aerodrome at nearby Gengoult. Before beginning their patrols, the two squadrons chose an insignia to paint on their planes. The 95th chose a kicking mule. The 94th chose an Uncle Sam stovepipe hat, tipped inside a surrounding circle. One officer remarked, "Well, I guess our hat is in the ring now!", and the squadron became known as The Hat-in-the-Ring Gang.

Early aerial combat

Rickenbacker's first sortie was with Reed Chambers on April 13, 1918. It almost ended in disaster when both became lost in the fog and Chambers was forced to land. Flight commander David Peterson called Rickenbacker a "bloody fool for flying off in a fog". Two weeks later, on April 29, Rickenbacker shot down his first enemy plane. On May 28, he claimed his fifth victory and became an ace. Rickenbacker received the French Croix de Guerre that month. However, Rickenbacker was not perfect: he almost fired on friendly planes several times, his gun jammed, and he nearly crashed when his Nieuport's fabric wing tore off in a dive.

On May 30, 1918, he achieved his sixth victory, but it would be his last for three and a half months. In late June, he had a fever and ear infection that turned into an abscess and grounded him most of the Chateau Thierry campaign. While recovering in a Paris hospital in July, Rickenbacker reflected on his shortcomings as a pilot, deciding he needed more self-discipline and less impetuosity.

Rickenbacker was out of the hospital in time for the St. Mihiel offensive based out of Rembercourt Aerodrome on September 12, 1918. By this time, the 94th and the other squadrons of the 1st Pursuit had converted from their agile but temperamental Nieuport airplanes to the more rugged, higher-powered Spad XIII. The Spad was a good fit for Rickenbacker's style of attack. He made another kill on September 14 against a Fokker D-VII, and another the day after that. Although Rickenbacker's performance was rising, the 94th squadron's was still disappointing. After a sluggish summer at Chateau Thierry, Major Harold Hartney wanted new leadership to lead the Hat-in-the-Ring Gang to its former greatness. He chose Lieutenant Rickenbacker over several captains as the new commander of the 94th Squadron.

Commander of the 94th Aero Squadron

Rickenbacker went to work turning his men "back into a team". He gathered his pilots and exhorted them to stay focused on their mission. Reminding the mechanics that he was one of them, he stressed the crucial importance of their work. Above all, he let them know that he was a "gimper" or "a bird who will stick by you through anything" and "would never ask anybody to do anything that [he] would not do [him] self first or do at the same time." To underscore his point, Rickenbacker took a solo patrol over the line and shot down two enemy planes the next morning. His victories above Billy, France, earned him the Medal of Honor, awarded by President Herbert Hoover in 1931.

Building on the leadership skills he developed with Maxwell, Rickenbacker turned the 94th Squadron into a winning team. He was determined to "blind the eyes of the enemy" by taking out their observation balloons. The giant gas bags appeared easy to bring down, but were heavily guarded and dangerous to attack. Rickenbacker led planning sessions for multi-squadron raids of as many as fourteen planes. One reporter likened him to a football coach, "boning up for the season ahead" with "conferences on methods, blackboard talks, and ideas for air battle tactics". Rickenbacker was credited with bringing down five balloons,

Rickenbacker inculcated into the squadron with his new principles of engagement, which germinated while he was confined in the hospital: Never attack unless there is at least a fifty-fifty chance of success, always break off an engagement that seems hopeless, and know the difference between cowardice and common sense. He continued to fly aggressively, but with calculated caution. He also flew more patrols and spent more hours in the air than any other pilot in the service—a total of 300 combat hours. He brought down fifteen aircraft in the final six weeks of the war. In September 1918, he received the rank of captain. At the end of the war in France, the 94th had the highest number of air victories of the American squadrons.

When Rickenbacker learned of the Armistice, he flew an airplane above the No Man's Land to observe the ceasefire as it occurred at 11:00 a.m. on November 11, 1918. He later wrote, "I was the only audience for the greatest show ever presented. On both sides of no man's land, the trenches erupted. Brown-uniformed men poured out of the American trenches, gray-green uniforms out of the German. From my observer's seat overhead, I watched them throw their helmets in the air, discard their guns, wave their hands."

Military achievements
Rickenbacker received the Distinguished Service Cross a record number of eight times. In 1930, one of these awards was upgraded to the Medal of Honor. In addition, he received the Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre from France.

He brought down 26 aircraft during the war, making him the United States ace of aces for the war. His 26 victories remained the American record until Richard Bong's forty victories in World War II. The following data is from Rickenbacker's book, Fighting the Flying Circus. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1919, pp. 363–364.

War hero
Rickenbacker returned home as a war hero. At the Waldorf-Astoria, 600 people, including Secretary of War Newton Baker and his mother, shuttled in from Columbus. They "cheered him and toasted him and shouted and sang to him". On the streets, he was mobbed by souvenir seekers who tore buttons and ribbons off his uniform. He noted, "The onslaught was pretty heavy, more than I liked, but I took it...." Los Angeles gave him a parade in June.

Rickenbacker turned down several endorsement offers and an opportunity to star in a feature film. He said producer Carl Laemmle "shoved a hundred-thousand-dollar certified check under my nose". Rickenbacker turned down these opportunities because he did not want to cheapen his image. He signed a book deal worth $25,000, publishing his memoir of the war, Fighting the Flying Circus. Rickenbacker also contracted for a speaking tour for $10,000; still in the Army, Rickenbacker also used this tour to promote liberty bonds. After the Liberty Bond tour, he was released from the army in November 1919 with a promotion to the rank of major, but he did not claim the promotion. He felt the rank of captain was the only one that was "earned and deserved". He was referred to as Captain Eddie or just "the Captain" for the rest of his life.

Rickenbacker had a name he could capitalize on in any business he chose. He told a reporter, "There is no comparison between the auto and the air. I am through with the automobile and I stand ready to place my skill and talents in flying." Around December 1919, Rickenbacker talked to Reed Chambers about a joint venture in aircraft manufacturing. However, the performance and safety of airplanes were a concern for the government and the general public. Rickenbacker resorted to his promotional abilities to generate public and governmental enthusiasm, but with limited success. In 1920 and 1921, he made four transcontinental crossings—twice in Junkers-Larsen JL-6s and twice in de Havilland DH-4s. During these trips, he had seven crack-ups, nine near misses, and eight forced landings in cornfields.

In 1925, Rickenbacker was a defense witness, along with Hap Arnold, Tooey Spaatz, Ira Eaker, and Fiorello H. La Guardia, in the court-martial of General Billy Mitchell.

Rickenbacker Motor Company
In October 1919, Rickenbacker accepted an offer from millionaire Byron F. Everitt of Everitt-Metzger-Flanders to develop a new car under the name Rickenbacker Motor Company (RMC). Other partners in the business were Harry Cunningham and Walter Flanders.

Rickenbacker designed the car, with Ray McNamara developing its core engineering. Rickenbacker's most significant innovation was the tandem flywheel construction at the rear of the crankshaft that reduced vibration. The Rickenbacker automobile model took two years of development and 100000 mi of test driving by Rickenbacker before being unveiled at the New York Auto Show in 1922.

RMC marketed its vehicle as "A Car Worthy of Its Name" and also used the Hat-in-the Ring squadron symbol. It was a high-quality mid-priced car, "up to the minute in every detail". RMC models sold for $1,500 to $2,000. Because it "offers the least resistance to radio because of vibration", the Rickenbacker was selected to make the first transcontinental radio tour in June 1922. The next year, Leo Wood extolled its smooth ride in a pop song, "In My Rickenbacker Car".

In mid-1923 Rickenbacker introduced his next innovation—four-wheel brakes. A decade earlier, he had benefited from these on the race track and wanted to make them standard on his commercial vehicles. However, his decision to make a mid-year introduction was costly. Rickenbacker blamed sales problems on a concerted industry media attack led by Studebaker. He said, "That broke me; it was more responsible for my going broke...than anything else." A second mid-year change in 1924 left RMC dealers feeling mistreated and taking a financial hit. In 1925, the Rickenbacker model 8 was the pace car of the Indianapolis 500.

RMC declined when Rickenbacker failed to fully focus on RMC and continued work on aviation. In addition, the company's production engineer, Walter Flanders, died. Above all, the arrival of the less expensive, equally reliable Chrysler cut into the RMC market. As RMC sales dropped and leadership bickered, Rickenbacker resigned from his role as vice president and director of sales. In November 1927, the company went bankrupt. Because he was a founder, Rickenbacker was responsible for $250,000 of debt.

Florida Airways
While he was supposed to be focusing on RMC, Rickenbacker tried to achieve speed and distance records in aviation across the United States. His focus shifted to creating a light plane that would be affordable for private ownership. In January 1923, he announced the Glider Trophy, an annual worldwide contest he established to encourage experimentation with glider design. The trophy cost $5,000 to produce.

In 1926, Rickenbacker started Florida Airways, with wartime comrade Reed Chambers. Investors in the company included Henry Ford, Richard C. Hoyt of the Hayden, Stone & Co. financial empire, and Percy Rockefeller. Ford's investment included supplying three new airplanes.

Florida Airways began carrying airmail in April and passengers two months later, going between Miami and Jacksonville. However, Florida Airways was out of business before completing a full year of operations. It was a victim of the 1926 hurricane, the decline of the Florida real estate boom, and the failure of Tampa officials to deliver a promised airport. The company was purchased from receivership by Harold Pitcairn.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway
On November 1, 1927, Rickenbacker purchased the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from Carl Fisher for $700,000. He considered his salary of $5,000 a year and the opportunities for public relations to be more valuable than the $700,000 in debt he incurred. He also drove the speedway's pace car for several years.

He operated the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for more than ten years, overseeing many improvements to the facility. He was responsible for the first radio broadcast of the Memorial Day 500 race. After a final 500 mi race in 1941, he closed the Speedway to conserve gasoline, rubber, and other resources during World War II. In 1945, Rickenbacker sold the racetrack to the businessman Anton Hulman Jr.

General Motors
Before going to Detroit to produce his automobile with RMC, Rickenbacker took a job with General Motors (GM) as the California distributor for its new car, the Sheridan. He spent the first eight months of 1921 in California, creating a network of dealerships. He often traveled between cities by plane, a leased Bellanca.

In January 1928, Rickenbacker became assistant general manager for sales at GM for its Cadillac and LaSalle models. Later in the year, he took out a $90,000 loan to buy the Allison Engine Company and earned a significant amount on its resale to GM. Rickenbacker repeated this strategy with Bendix Corporation soon after.

By mid-1929, Rickenbacker returned his focus to aviation. He convinced GM to purchase Fokker Aircraft Corporation of America (FACA), the designer of the fighter planes he once faced on the Western Front. As compensation for his advice, Rickenbacker was promoted to vice president for sales for GM's Fokker Aircraft Company. When Fokker Aircraft relocated its headquarters to Baltimore in 1932, Rickenbacker left. He became the vice president for governmental relations for American Airways, part of American Air Transport. While there, he convinced American Air Transport to purchase North American Aviation.

Ten months later, he left American Air Transport and returned to GM, convincing the automaker to purchase North American Aviation. When the deal went through in June 1933, Rickenbacker became vice president for public affairs in GM's new aviation venture. North American Aviation was the parent company for Eastern Air Transport, Curtiss-Wright Corporation, and Trans World Airlines.

In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt rescinded existing mail contracts with private airlines and moved air mail transportation to the U.S. Army Air Corps. At the time, Rickenbacker was vice president of Eastern Air Transport, one of the companies affected. He became an outspoken critic of Roosevelt's New Deal policies, seeing them as little better than socialism. This drew criticism and ire from the press and the Roosevelt administration, which ordered NBC Radio to no longer allow Rickenbacker to broadcast his criticisms of Roosevelt's policies. When several inexperienced, undertrained Army pilots crashed and died while hauling mail on treacherous routes, Rickenbacker called it "legalized murder!"

Eastern Air Lines
Rickenbacker called upon his connections to achieve a merger of Eastern Air Transport with Florida Airways, forming Eastern Air Lines. In early 1935, Rickenbacker became general manager of Eastern Air Lines. In April 1938, after learning that GM was considering selling Eastern to John D. Hertz, Rickenbacker met with GM's chairman of the board, Alfred P. Sloan, and bought the company for $3.5 million.

Under his leadership, Eastern Air Lines grew from a company flying a few thousand miles per week into a major airline. Rickenbacker oversaw many radical changes in the field of commercial aviation. He negotiated with the U.S. government to acquire air mail routes, a great advantage to companies that needed regular income. He helped develop and support new aircraft designs. Rickenbacker bought larger and faster airliners, including the four-engine Lockheed Constellation and Douglas DC-4. He also collaborated with pioneers of aviation design, including Donald W. Douglas, the founder of the Douglas Aircraft Company and the designer and builder of the DC-4, DC-6, DC-7, and DC-8 (its first jet airliner).

Comic strips
Rickenbacker scripted the popular Sunday comic strip, Ace Drummond, from 1935 to 1940 for King Features Syndicate. He worked with aviation artist and author Clayton Knight, who illustrated the series. The strip followed the adventures of barnstormer Drummond as he traveled around the world and defeated evil-doers. The comic was cross-promoted through Rickenbacker's Junior Pilots Club which distributed buttons featuring Ace Drummond characters. Ace Drummond was adapted into a film serial, a radio program, and a Big Little Book, Ace Drummond (Whitman Publishing Co., 1935).

Between 1935 and 1940, Knight and Rickenbacker created another Sunday comic strip for King Features. Called The Hall of Fame of the Air, this fact-based comic featured airplanes and air battles of famous aviators and aces. As one modern writer noted, "Whether 'America's Ace of Aces' wrote the pieces or not; his name added authenticity to the strip." This comic strip was adapted into a Big Little Book, Hall of Fame of the Air, by Whitman Publishing Co. in 1936.

Support for Britain
Rickenbacker supported the war effort as a civilian. While initially supporting the isolationist movement, Rickenbacker officially left the America First organization in 1940, having been a member for a few months. He then took an outspoken pro-British stance. He was inspired by "England's heroic resistance to relentless air attacks" from the Luftwaffe's campaign during the Battle of Britain in 1940, writing: "Should these gallant British withstand the terrific onslaught of the totalitarian states until the summer of 1941, it is my sincere conviction that by that time this nation will have declared war."

Rickenbacker was one of a few celebrities who participated in campaigns to rally World War I veterans to the British cause before the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1942, he toured training bases in the southwestern United States and England. He encouraged the American public to contribute time and resources and pledged Eastern Air Lines equipment and personnel for use in military activities. Under Rickenbacker's direction, Eastern Air Lines flew munitions and supplies across the Atlantic to the British.

In 1942, with a letter of authorization from Henry L. Stimson, U.S. Secretary of War, Rickenbacker visited England on an official war mission and made ground-breaking recommendations for better war operations. He inspected troops, operations, and equipment, serving in a publicity role to increase support from civilians and soldiers. Later, he worked with both the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces on bombing strategy, including work with air chief marshal Sir Arthur Harris and general Carl Andrew Spaatz.

Adrift at sea
In October 1942, Stimson sent Rickenbacker on a tour of air bases in the Pacific Theater of Operations to review living conditions and operations. In addition, he was to deliver a secret message from the president to General Douglas MacArthur. After visiting several air and sea bases in Hawaii, Rickenbacker was provided with a B-17D Flying Fortress (AAF Ser. No. 40-3089) as transportation to the South Pacific. Due to faulty navigation equipment, the bomber strayed hundreds of miles off course while on its way to a refueling stop on Canton Island. When the airplane ran out of fuel, the pilot, Captain William T. Cherry Jr., was forced to ditch or water land the airplane in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.

For 24 days, Rickenbacker, Army Captain Hans C. Adamson (his friend and business partner), and six crewmen drifted for thousands of miles at sea in life rafts. Adamson sustained serious injuries during the ditching. The other crewmen—John Bartek, Wiliam Cherry, John De Angelis, Alexander Kaczmarczyk, James Reynolds, and James Whittaker—were hurt to varying degrees. Their food supply ran out after three days. On the eighth day, a seagull landed on Rickenbacker's head. He captured it, and the bird became both a meal for the men and fishing bait. They survived on sporadic rainwater and small fish that they caught with their bare hands. While suffering from dehydration, Kaczmarczyk drank seawater; he died after two weeks adrift and was buried at sea.

The U.S. Army Air Forces and the U.S. Navy's patrol planes planned to abandon the search for the lost B-17 crewmen after just over two weeks, but Rickenbacker's wife convinced them to search for another week. However, the newspapers and radio reported that Rickenbacker was dead.

The surviving men split up. Cherry rowed off in the small raft and was rescued on day 23. Reynolds, De Angelis, and Whittaker found a small island that was close to an inhabited island where the natives were hosting an allied radio station. A U.S. Navy patrol OS2U-3 Kingfisher float-plane rescued the survivors on November 13, 1942, in the Ellice Island chain (now Tuvalu). All were suffering from exposure, sunburn, dehydration, and near starvation. He had lost 40 lb, but after a few days of rest, Rickenbacker completed his assignment and delivered his message to General MacArthur.

The failure in the airplane's navigation was blamed on an out-of-adjustment bubble octant that gave a systematic bias to all of its readings. The octant suffered a severe shock in a failed takeoff attempt in a different bomber. When the bomber's landing gear's brakes seized, the crew unknowingly moved the damaged bubble octant to Rickenbacker's plane. This ditching spurred the development of improved navigational instruments and also better survival gear for the air crewmen.

In 1943, Rickenbacker wrote Seven Came Through about his experience, saying he was lost for 21 days. He corrected the number to 24 days in his 1967 autobiography.

1943 mission to the USSR
Still determined to support the war effort, Rickenbacker suggested a fact-finding mission in the Soviet Union to provide the Soviets with technical assistance with their American aircraft. To get approval for this trip, Rickenbacker approached Soviet diplomats, rather than President Roosevelt. By trading favors with the Soviet ambassador and with Stimson's help, Rickenbacker secured permission to travel to the Soviet Union. Stimson assigned Rickenbacker to visit the bases and production facilities in the Aleutian Islands, Burma, China, India, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Soviet Union. The War Department provided everything Rickenbacker needed, including a highly unusual letter giving the bearer permission to "visit...any...areas he may deem necessary for such purposes as he will explain to you in person", signed by the Secretary of War.

In April 1943, Rickenbacker began his trip, traveling to Cairo, Egypt, in a United States Army Air Forces C-54 provided by General Henry H. Arnold. Rickenbacker made observations at every stop and reviewed American operations with a critical eye, forwarding reports to authorities. From Cairo, he traveled by C-87 to India to experience the Hump airlift into China—he reported unfavorably on the Hump airlift to Arnold after his return to the United States. Continuing into China, Rickenbacker was impressed by the determination of the Chinese people but disgusted with the corruption of the Kuomintang government. Next, he went to Iran and, from there, to the Soviet Union.

In the Soviet Union, Rickenbacker observed wartime conditions, the dedication and patriotism of the Russians, and the denial of food to those deemed unproductive to the war effort. He befriended many Soviet officials and shared his knowledge of the aircraft they had received from the United States. He was lavishly entertained by the Soviets and recalled attempts by NKVD agents to get him intoxicated enough to disclose sensitive information.

Rickenbacker's mission was successful. A commander of Moscow's defense had stayed at Rickenbacker's home in 1937, and this personal connection aided his information-gathering. He learned about Soviet defense strategies and capabilities. When the Battle of Kursk started, he took advantage of the Soviets' distraction, viewing and memorizing a map that detailed the locations of Soviet military units at the front. He also persuaded his hosts to give him an unprecedented tour of the Shturmovik aircraft factory. However, Rickenbacker made comments during his trip that alerted the Soviets to the existence of the secret B-29 Superfortress program.

After Rickenbacker visited the Soviet Union, British prime minister Winston Churchill interviewed him. In the United States, Rickenbacker's information resulted in some diplomatic and military action; however, the president did not meet with him. For his support of the war effort, Rickenbacker received the Medal for Merit from the United States government.

Postwar
For a time, Eastern was the most profitable airline in the postwar era. During the late 1950s, however, Eastern Air Lines' fortunes declined. Rickenbacker was forced out of his position as CEO on October 1, 1959. At the age of 73, Rickenbacker also resigned as the chairman of the board on December 31, 1963.

In the 1960s, Rickenbacker became a well-known speaker. He shared his vision for the future of technology and commerce, exhorting Americans to respect the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but still uphold American values. He also endorsed many conservative ideas.

In 1967, Rickenbacker published his autobiography, giving a special edition to the employees of Eastern Air Lines.

Personal life

Rickenbacker met Adelaide Frost Durant in Los Angeles before World War I. At the time, she was married to Clifford Durant, a racing competitor of Rickenbacker and the hard-partying son of William Durant of General Motors fame. Durant was also an abusive husband. Adelaide chose to get a hysterectomy to ensure she would bear him no children. Her father-in-law stepped in to allow her to live independently, buying her a comfortable home and giving her $220,000 in equities, half being GM stock.

Rickenbacker saw Adelaide again in New York in 1921 and was smitten. She finalized her divorce in July 1922, and the two were married on September 16, 1922, in Cumberland Presbyterian Church of South Beach, Connecticut. Following a seven-week honeymoon in Europe, the newlyweds set up home at Indian Village Manor in Detroit, Michigan. They adopted two boys: David Edward in 1925, and William Frost in 1928. Before the second adoption, the couple purchased a home in Grosse Pointe. In 1931, the family moved to Bronxville, New York. New York City was Rickenbacker's favored home base and remained the couple's primary residence for the rest of their lives, along with their second home in Key Biscayne. They also owned a ranch in Kerr County, Texas in the 1950s. Both of their sons attended the Asheville School where Rickenbacker served on the board of trustees.

On February 26, 1941, Rickenbacker was a passenger on Eastern Air Lines Flight 21 on a Douglas DC-3 airliner that crashed outside Atlanta, Georgia. The survivors were rescued after spending the night at the crash site. Rickenbacker barely survived being soaked in fuel and trapped in the wreckage. The press mistakenly announced his death.

In his autobiography, Rickenbacker gave a dramatic retelling of the incident. While he was still conscious and in terrible pain, he was left behind while some ambulances carried away the bodies of the dead. When he arrived at the hospital, his injuries were so severe that the emergency surgeons and physicians left him for dead for some time. The doctors instructed their assistants to "take care of the live ones". Rickenbacker's injuries included a fractured skull, a shattered left elbow with a crushed nerve, a paralyzed left hand, several broken ribs, a crushed hip socket, a pelvis broken in two places, a severed nerve in his left hip, a broken left knee, and his left eyeball was out of its socket. He was in critical condition at Atlanta's Piedmont Hospital for ten days. After four months in the hospital, followed by months of home care, Rickenbacker healed from his injuries and regained his full eyesight. Rickenbacker later noted the supreme act of will that it took to stave off dying.

Rickenbacker was an avid golfer, often playing at the Siwanoy Country Club course near his home in Bronxville. He is one of a very select few members who were granted honorary lifetime membership. He was also a member of the Los Angeles Elks Lodge #99. After he left Eastern Airlines, the Rickenbackers traveled for several years in the Orient.

In 1972, Rickenbacker had a stroke that left him in a coma for a short time. He recovered and traveled to Zürich, Switzerland in July 1973, seeking medical treatments for his wife's failing vision. While in Zürich, Rickenbacker contracted pneumonia and died at the age of 82. His memorial service was held at the Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church with the eulogy given by Lt. General Jimmy Doolittle. He was interred in Columbus, Ohio, at Green Lawn Cemetery. When he died, Rickenbacker was the last living Medal of Honor recipient from the United States Army Air Service.

In 1977, Adelaide was blind, in failing health, and still grieving severely from the loss of her husband. She died by suicide via gunshot at their home in Key Biscayne, Florida at the age of 92.

Military awards

 * Junior Military Aviation Badge
 * Mackay Trophy for bringing down sixteen enemy aircraft, 1918
 * Croix de Guerre with Palm from France in May 1918
 * Legion of Honor (Chevalier) from France in May 1918
 * Distinguished Service Cross for service near Billy, France on September 25, 1918 (replaced by a Medal of Honor in 1930)
 * Distinguished Service Cross for heroism near Montsec, France on April 29, 1918
 * Distinguished Service Cross Oak Leaf Cluster for heroic action over Richecourt, France on May 17, 1918
 * Distinguished Service Cross Oak Leaf Cluster for heroism over Saint-Mihiel, France on May 22, 1918
 * Distinguished Service Cross Oak Leaf Cluster for heroism in action over Boise Rate, France on May 28, 1918
 * Distinguished Service Cross Oak Leaf Cluster for heroism in action at 4000 m over Jaulny, France on May 30, 1918
 * Distinguished Service Cross Oak Leaf Cluster for heroism in action near Villecy, France on September 14, 1918
 * Distinguished Service Cross Oak Leaf Cluster for action in the region of Bois-de-Wavrille, France, September 15, 1918
 * World War I Victory Medal with six battle clasps
 * Medal of Honor awarded on November 6, 1930, for service near Billy, France on September 25, 1918 (replaced his first Distinguished Service Cross)

Other awards

 * Medal for Merit for efforts as a civilian during World War II
 * Veterans of Foreign Wars Merit Award, 1953
 * Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame, 1954
 * Tony Jannus Award,1967
 * Automotive Hall of Fame, 1973
 * International Motorsports Hall of Fame, 1992
 * National Sprint Car Hall of Fame, 1992
 * Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, 1994
 * Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame, 1999
 * National Aviation Hall of Fame, 2004

Other honors

 * When it opened in 1941, Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia was originally called Rickenbacker Field, in his honor.
 * In November 1947, a 4 mi Rickenbacker Causeway was completed, linking Miami with Crandon Park with Key Biscayne.
 * He was made an honorary brother of the Alpha Pi Sigma fraternity in March 1949 at Parks Air College in Cahokia, Illinois.
 * In 1974, Lockbourne Air Force Base, a Strategic Air Command (SAC) installation in Columbus, Ohio was renamed Rickenbacker Air Force Base. On April 1, 1980, it was turned over to the Ohio Air National Guard and renamed Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base which shares an airfield with Rickenbacker International Airport.
 * The Rickenbacker Award is the Civil Air Patrol cadet achievement equivalent to an Air Force Technical Sergeant.
 * The United States Postal Service issued a postage stamp honoring Rickenbacker as an aviation pioneer in 1995. The stamp was reprinted in 1999 and reissued in 2000.
 * A coffee shop and deli located at Maxwell Air Force Base's University Inn is called Rickenbacker's.
 * Rickenbacker was named as the class exemplar at the United States Air Force Academy for the Class of 2004.
 * His childhood home in Columbus, Ohio is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Captain Edward V. Rickenbacker House.

Pop culture references

 * Co-founded in 1931 by a second cousin, Adolph Rickenbacker, Rickenbacker Guitars was given its name because of its association with the already famous Eddie Rickenbacker.
 * The 1945 biographical movie, Captain Eddie, starred Fred MacMurray as Rickenbacker.
 * The story of Eddie Rickenbacker "and his courageous company" appears in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, the 1953 book from Alcoholics Anonymous. It pertains to when his plane crashed in the Pacific and is used in the closing remarks of Tradition One: "Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon A.A. unity."
 * In the 1955 film The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, Rickenbacker is played by Tom Mckee.
 * In the 1959 television show, The Twilight Zone episode "The Parallel", in a parallel universe, Rickenbacker was never found after the B-17 incident.
 * In the early 1960s, Al Capp included an airplane pilot, Cap'n Eddie Ricketyback, in his comic strip Li'l Abner.
 * In a 1960s Peanuts comic strip, Lucy tells Snoopy that he received a postcard from Charlie Brown who is on vacation. Snoopy imagines that the message was sent from Captain Eddie Rickenbacker claiming that "Rick will never amount to much...Those racing drivers don't know anything about flying airplanes."
 * The 1975 children's television series Fraidy Cat stars a cat who lived his seventh life as an ace pilot named Eddie Kittenbacker, a feline caricature of Rickenbacker.
 * In the pilot episode of the science fiction series Voyagers! (1982), the protagonists help Rickenbacker defeat the Red Baron.
 * Eddie Rickenbacker appears in the 1990 video game Red Baron as one of the Allied aces.
 * In the 1999 video game System Shock 2, a military spaceship is named the UNN Rickenbacker.
 * The 2004 board game Wings of War: Famous Aces features Rickenbacker's Spad XIII.
 * In the 2004 novel The Godfather Returns, Nick Geraci is reading Eddie Rickenbacker's autobiography. His father quotes from the sleeve of the book.
 * Rickenbacker is an instructor in the World War I simulation game Rise of Flight, released in 2009.
 * In the 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, Billy Mitchell compares Eddie Rickenbacker with the Red Baron to illustrate his dominance of competitive video gaming. He says, "The top French pilot in World War I shot down 24 enemy planes. The top American pilot—you don't know his name, do you? Nobody does, but it's Eddie Rickenbacker. Shot down 26 enemy planes. The German Ace, the Red Baron—everyone knows who the Red Baron is. That's 'cause he shot down 87 enemy planes. I mean, he was the best...There's a level of difference between people, and it translates into some games."
 * In 2009, musician Todd Snider wrote a song called "Money, Compliments, and Publicity," which revolves around a statement Rickenbacker made indicating that the pinnacle of success is when you lose interest in money, compliments, and publicity.
 * In the 2017 film Wonder Woman, the fictional pilot/spy Steve Trevor has Rickenbacker's logo and number on his plane.

Publications

 * Fighting the Flying Circus: The Greatest True Air Adventure to Come out of World War I. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1919
 * Ace Drummond (Big Little Book no. 1177). Racine, Wisconsin: Whitman Publishing Company, 1935
 * Hall of Fame of the Air (Big Little Book no. 1159). Racine, Wisconsin: Whitman Publishing Company, 1936.
 * Seven Came Through. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., 1943
 * Rickenbacker: an Autobiography. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967. ISBN 978-0-13-781005-5
 * From Father to Son; The Letters of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker To his Son William, from Boyhood to Manhood. William Rickenbacker, ed. New York: Walker & Co, 1970. ISBN 978-0-8027-0325-5
 * Fighter Pilot: The Combat Memoir of Eddie Rickenbacker (Modern Annotated Edition). Laurence La Tourette Driggs and David W. Bradford, ed. Boston Hill Press, 2015.

title: Eddie Rickenbacker