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French frigate Méduse (1810)

Méduse was a 40-gun Pallas-class frigate frigate of the French Navy, launched in 1810. She took part in the Napoleonic Wars during the late stages of the Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 and in raids in the Caribbean.

In 1816, following the Bourbon Restoration, Méduse was armed en flûte to ferry French officials to the port of Saint-Louis, in Senegal, to formally re-establish French occupation of the colony under the terms of the First Peace of Paris. Through inept navigation by her captain, Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, who had been given command after the Bourbon Restoration for political reasons and even though he had hardly sailed in 20 years, Méduse struck the Bank of Arguin off the coast of present-day Mauritania and became a total loss.

Most of the 400 passengers on board evacuated, with 146 men and 1 woman forced to take refuge on an improvised raft towed by the frigate's launches. The towing proved impractical, however, and the boats soon abandoned the raft and its passengers in the open ocean. Without any means of navigating to shore, the situation aboard the raft rapidly turned disastrous. Dozens were washed into the sea by a storm, while others, drunk from wine, rebelled and were killed by officers. When supplies ran low, several of the injured were thrown into the sea, and some of the survivors resorted to the Custom of the Sea, engaging in cannibalism. After 13 days at sea, the raft was discovered with only 15 people still alive.

News of the tragedy stirred considerable public emotion, making Méduse one of the most infamous shipwrecks of the Age of Sail. Two survivors, a surgeon and an officer, wrote a widely read book about the incident, and the episode was immortalised when Théodore Géricault painted The Raft of the Medusa, which became a notable artwork of French Romanticism.

Service
Méduse was commissioned in Nantes on 26 September 1807.

Napoleonic Wars
In 1811, she was sent off to Java with FRENCH FRIGATE Nymphe, in a frigate division under the command of Joseph-François Raoul. On 2 September, the frigates arrived at Surabaya, tailed by the 32-gun frigate HMS Bucephalus. Two days later, another British ship, HMS Barracouta, joined the chase, but lost contact on 8 September. On 12 September, Méduse and Nymphe chased Bucephalus, which escaped and broke contact the next day. Méduse was back in Brest on 22 December 1811. She then continued her service in the Atlantic.

Between 27 and 29 December 1813, the French frigates FRENCH FRIGATE Nymphe and Méduse captured a number of British merchant ships at 16°N, -39°W. The vessels captured were Prince George, Lady Caroline Barham, and Potsdam, all three coming from London and bound to Jamaica; Flora, from London to Martinique; Brazil Packet, from Madeira to the Brazils; and Rosario and Thetis, from Cape Verde. The French burnt all the vessels they captured, except Prince George. They put their prisoners into her and sent her off as a cartel to Barbados, which she reached on 10 January 1814.

Bourbon Restoration
With the restoration of the French monarchy in 1814, Louis XVIII decided to restore Royalist and nobility dominance of the senior ranks of both the French Navy and Army. Consequently, Hugues Viscount Duroy de Chaumareys was appointed Capitaine de frégate and given command of Méduse; de Chaumareys had previous experience, but had been effectively retired for nearly 20 years.

Course to Senegal
On 17 June 1816, a convoy under the command of Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys on Méduse departed Rochefort accompanied by the storeship Loire, the brig Argus and the corvette Écho to receive the British handover of the port of Saint-Louis in Senegal. Méduse, armed en flûte, carried many passengers, including the appointed French governor of Senegal, Colonel Julien-Désiré Schmaltz, his wife Reine Schmaltz, and his secretary, Joseph Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Griffon du Bellay. Méduse's complement totaled 400, including 160 crew plus a contingent of marine infantrymen intended to serve as the garrison of Saint-Louis. The ship reached the island of Madeira on 27 June.

Schmaltz then wanted to reach Saint-Louis as fast as possible, by the most direct route, although this would take the fleet dangerously close to the shore, where there were many sandbars and reefs. Experienced crews usually sailed further out. Méduse was the fastest of the convoy and, despite his orders to maintain the convoy, Captain Chaumareys quickly lost contact with Loire and Argus. Écho kept pace and attempted to guide Méduse, but to no avail; the smaller ship eventually gave up and moved further out.

Chaumareys further compounded his poor decisions by allowing an inexperienced passenger named Richefort to serve as navigator. Richefort was a philosopher and a member of the Philanthropic Society of Cape Verde; his appointment was a violation of naval service regulations. As Méduse neared the coast of Africa, Richefort apparently mistook a large cloud bank on the horizon for Cape Blanco on the African coast, and so underestimated the proximity of the Bank of Arguin off the coast of Mauritania.

On 2 July 1816, now more than 160 km off course, Méduse ran into increasingly shallow water, and neither the captain nor the navigator noticed dangerous signs such as the mud bottom starting to become visible. Eventually, First Lieutenant Maudet began taking soundings off the bow, and, measuring only 18 fathom, recognized the danger. Chaumareys ordered the ship brought up into the wind, but it was too late, and Méduse ran aground 50 km from the coast. The accident occurred at spring high tide, making it dangerous to re-float the ship without massive flooding. The captain failed to jettison the ship's heavy 14 three-tonne cannons and so the ship soon lodged deep in the mud.

Raft
Méduse was not carrying enough lifeboats to transport all of the passengers to safety in a single trip. Instead, it was proposed that the ship's launches should ferry the passengers and crew to shore, 50 km away, in two separate trips. Numerous ideas for lightening Méduse in an effort to lift her off the reef were also proposed, such as building a raft so cargo could be safely removed.

A raft measuring 20 m long and 7 m wide was soon constructed with salvaged wood planks and was nicknamed "la Machine" by the crew. On 5 July, a gale developed and Méduse's battered hull began to break up. The passengers and crew panicked, and Chaumareys decided to evacuate the frigate immediately rather than enact the original plan to make two trips. The raft was hastily repurposed for moving passengers and the Méduse's longboats were rigged to tow it behind them; this left 146 men and 1 woman on an improvised craft that struggled to hold their weight. The raft could carry few supplies, had no means of steering, no navigational tools, and took on water easily. Seventeen men, fearing disaster, chose to stay with the sinking Méduse and await rescue.

The crew in the launches soon found that pulling the raft slowed them down considerably and became worried that the passengers might overwhelm them. After travelling only a few kilometers, they cut the tow line and abandoned the raft's occupants. The lifeboats, which carried the captain, Governor Schmaltz, and other high-ranking persons, were the first to reach the coast of Africa. Most of the boats' survivors made it to safety in French Senegal, though some died as they travelled overland.

On the raft, the situation deteriorated rapidly. Instead of water, only wine had been packed; drunken fights broke out between the officers and passengers on one hand, and the sailors and soldiers on the other. On the first night adrift, 20 men were killed or committed suicide. A storm then hit, and more survivors were either trampled to death in a panic or swept overboard to drown. Rations dwindled rapidly; by the fourth day there were only 67 people left alive on the raft, and some resorted to cannibalism (part of the Custom of the Sea) to survive. On the eighth day, the fittest decided to throw the weak and wounded overboard, leaving just 15 men remaining, all of whom survived another four days until their rescue on 17 July by the brig Argus, which accidentally encountered them.

Aftermath
Argus took the survivors of the raft to Saint-Louis to recover. Five of them, including Jean Charles, the last African crew member, died within days. Chaumareys decided to rescue the gold that was still on board Méduse and sent out a salvage crew, which discovered that Méduse was still largely intact. Only three of the 17 men who had decided to stay on Méduse were still alive 54 days later. British naval officers helped the survivors to return to France because aid from the French Minister of the Marine was not forthcoming.

Méduse's surviving surgeon, Henri Savigny, and the governor's secretary submitted their account of the tragedy to the authorities. It was leaked to an anti-Bourbon newspaper, the Journal des débats, and was published on 13 September 1816. The incident quickly became a scandal in French politics and Bourbon officials tried to cover it up. At his court-martial at Port de Rochefort in 1817, Chaumareys was tried on five counts but acquitted of abandoning his squadron, of failing to re-float his ship and of abandoning the raft; however, he was found guilty of incompetent and complacent navigation and of abandoning Méduse before all her passengers had been taken off. Even though this verdict exposed him to the death penalty, Chaumareys was sentenced to only three years in jail. The court-martial was widely thought to be a "whitewash." The Gouvion de Saint-Cyr Law later ensured that promotions in the French military would thereafter be based on merit.

Savigny and another survivor, the geographer-engineer Alexandre Corréard, subsequently wrote a book with their own account (Naufrage de la frégate la Méduse) of the incident, published in 1817. It went through five editions by 1821 and was also published with success in English, German, Dutch, Italian, and Korean translations. A revision of the text in later editions increased the political thrust of the work.

Shipwreck site
In 1980, a French marine archaeological expedition led by Jean-Yves Blot located the Méduse shipwreck site off the coast of modern-day Mauritania. The primary search tool was a one-of-a-kind magnetometer developed by the CEA.

The search area was defined on the basis of the accounts of survivors of Méduse and, more importantly, on the records of an 1817 French coastal mapping expedition that found the vessel's remains still projecting above the waves. The background research proved to be so good that the expedition team located the shipwreck site on the first day of searching. They then recovered enough artifacts to identify the wreck positively and to mount an exhibit in the Marine Museum in Paris.

Géricault's painting

Impressed by accounts of the shipwreck, the 25-year-old artist Théodore Géricault decided to create an oil painting based on the incident and contacted the writers in 1818. His work depicts a moment recounted by one of the survivors: prior to their rescue, the passengers saw a ship on the horizon, which they tried to signal. She disappeared, and in the words of one of the surviving crew members, "From the delirium of joy, we fell into profound despondency and grief". The ship Argus reappeared two hours later and rescued those who remained. The painting, titled Le Radeau de la Méduse (English: The Raft of the Medusa), is considered an iconic work of the French Romantic movement and Géricault's masterpiece. It is on display in the Louvre.

Film

 * Le Radeau de la Méduse (1994), directed by Iradj Azimi and starring Jean Yanne as Chaumareys, Daniel Mesguich as Coudein, Alain Macé as Henri Savigny, Claude Jade as Reine Schmaltz, Philippe Laudenbach as Julien Schmaltz, Michel Baumann as Alexandre Corréard and Laurent Terzieff as Théodore Géricault
 * The Medusa (2018), a biopic about the painting directed by Peter Webber and starring Jesse Eisenberg as Théodore Géricault

Music

 * Friedrich von Flotow wrote the opera Le naufrage de la Méduse (1839), based on this sad case.
 * French songwriter and poet Georges Brassens alludes to the raft of Méduse in his song "Les copains d'abord" (1964). The song is a hymn to friendship, symbolised by the crew of a ship named "Les Copains d'Abord" ("Friends first"), and in the first verse it says that she was not "the raft of Méduse".
 * German composer Hans Werner Henze wrote an oratorio, Das Floß der Medusa, in 1968 in memory of Che Guevara
 * "Raft of the Medusa", a track from the 2012 album Static on the Airwaves by Levellers
 * "Le Radeau de La Méduse", a track from the 2021 album A Dream of Wilderness by Aephanemer (Symphonic Melodic Death Metal band based in Toulouse, France)

Literature

 * Das Floß der Medusa (The Raft of the Medusa; 1940–1943), a play by German dramatist Georg Kaiser
 * Wreck of the Medusa by Alexander McKee, a narrative account of the final voyage, shipwreck and aftermath originally published in 1976 under the title Death Raft and reprinted in 2007. McKee draws upon multiple sources and provides analysis of the event in relation to similar maritime and aeronautical disasters.
 * The second volume of Peter Weiss's novel Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (The Aesthetics of Resistance), originally published in 1978, opens with a detailed historical account of Méduse and subsequently describes Géricault's painting
 * In A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989) by Julian Barnes, a semi-fictional work that attempts to deglaze and satirise popular historical legends, the chapter "Shipwreck" is devoted to analysis of the Géricault painting, with the first half narrating the incidents leading to the shipwreck and the survival of the crew members. The second half of the chapter renders a dark platonic and satirical analysis of the painting itself, and Géricault's "softening" the impact of crude reality in order to preserve the aestheticism of the work.
 * Ocean Sea (1993), a novel by Alessandro Baricco. The "second book" describes the event from the point of view of Méduse's surviving surgeon, Henri Savigny, and a sailor, both of them on the raft.
 * "Boot Mat (After Gericault's Raft of the Medusa)," a poem by Ken Babstock, published in his collection, Days into Flatspin.
 * Das Floß der Medusa. Roman. Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Wien 2017, ISBN 978-3-5520-5816-3, by Franzobel

Other references

 * The rock group Great White used the Géricault painting as the cover art for their 1994 album Sail Away
 * Irish folk-rock group The Pogues used the famous painting as the album cover for their second album Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash (1985), with the faces of the band members replacing those of the men on the raft. Also, on their album Hell's Ditch (1990), they pay tribute to the incident with the song "The Wake of the Medusa".
 * German Funeral Doom band Ahab used the Géricault painting as the cover for their album The Divinity of Oceans
 * The layout of the scene is copied in the French comic book Astérix Légionnaire (Goscinny/Uderzo, 1967) to depict yet another shipwreck of Astérix's recurring pirate enemies. The captain's comment is the pun, "Je suis médusé" ("I am dumbfounded"). In their English translation, Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge replaced this pun with a different joke specifically relating to the painting, having the captain say, "We've been framed, by Jericho!"
 * In The Adventures of Tintin comic The Red Sea Sharks, while the protagonists are escaping on a raft, a wave washes Captain Haddock off; he climbs back on with a jellyfish on his head. Tintin asks him: "Do you think this is some raft of Méduse?" ("Méduse" is the French word for "jellyfish")
 * In Arthur C. Clarke's 2061: Odyssey Three (1987), Dr. Heywood Floyd's friends give him a print of the painting as a tongue-in-cheek going-away present for his trip to Halley's comet. Their inscription reads, "Getting there is half the fun."
 * In the 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, Dr. Lecter's mind wanders to Géricault's anatomical studies for The Raft of the Medusa while waiting for Senator Martin to focus on their conversation
 * In Episode 5 of the 2018 AMC series The Terror, "First Shot a Winner, Lads," Franklin Expedition commander Captain Francis Crozier, on seeing one of his non-commissioned officers approach with a party from HMS Erebus, quips, "Ah, Edward! How fares the Raft of the Medusa?" – clearly a black humor reference to the 1816 disaster, but also an ominous foreshadowing of his own expedition's ultimately tragic fate, which would also be marred by incidents of cannibalism in the face of starvation among the crew in their final months.

title: French frigate Méduse (1810)


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Spirit duplicator

A spirit duplicator (also referred to as a Rexograph or Ditto machine in North America, Banda machine or Fordigraph machine in the U.K. and Australia) is a printing method invented in 1923 by Wilhelm Ritzerfeld that was commonly used for much of the rest of the 20th century. The term "spirit duplicator" refers to the alcohols that were a major component of the solvents used in these machines.

Spirit duplicators were used mainly by schools, churches, clubs, and other small organizations, such as in the production of fanzines, because of the limited number of copies one could make from an original, along with the low cost (and corresponding low quality) of copying.

The spirit duplicator coexisted alongside the mimeograph and the hectograph, devices with a similar purpose but different operation.

History
The spirit duplicator was invented in 1923 by Wilhelm Ritzerfeld. The best-known manufacturer in the United States and the world was Ditto Corporation of Illinois. Copiers in the United Kingdom were commonly manufactured by Associated Automation Ltd of Willesden, London NW10, a subsidiary company of the computer makers Elliott-Automation Ltd for the Block & Anderson company, under their "Banda" brand. In both cases the trademark became a generic name for both the copiers and the process in their respective markets.

The faintly sweet aroma of pages fresh off the duplicator was a feature of school life in the spirit-duplicator era.

Design

The duplicator uses two-ply "spirit masters", also called "master sheets". The first sheet can be typed, drawn, or written upon. The second sheet is coated with a layer of wax that had been impregnated with one of a variety of colorants. The pressure of writing or typing on the first sheet transfers the colored wax from the second sheet to the shiny, coated back side of the first sheet, producing a mirror image. This produces the same result as a sheet of carbon paper put in backwards. The two sheets are then separated, and the first sheet is fastened onto the drum of the machine, with the back side facing out, acting as a printing plate.

There is no separate ink used in spirit duplication, as the wax transferred to the back side of the first sheet contains the ink. As the paper to be printed moves through the printer, the solvent is spread across each sheet by an absorbent wick. When the solvent-impregnated paper comes into contact with the back side of the first sheet, it dissolves just enough of the pigmented wax to print the image onto the paper as it goes under the printing drum. One master can produce 40 or so good copies; after that, the copies gradually become paler as the colored wax is used up.

The usual wax color was aniline purple (mauve), a cheap, moderately durable pigment that provided good contrast, but masters were also manufactured in red, green, blue, and black, as well as the hard-to-find orange, yellow, and brown. All except black reproduced in pastel shades: pink, mint, sky blue, and so on.

Spirit duplicators had the useful ability to print multiple colors in a single pass, which made them popular with cartoonists. Multi-colored designs could be made by swapping out the waxed second sheets; for instance, shading in only the red portion of an illustration while the top sheet was positioned over a red-waxed second sheet. This was possible because the duplicating fluid was not ink, but a clear solvent.

The duplicating fluid typically consisted mostly of methanol or ethanol, both of which were inexpensive, readily available in quantity, evaporated quickly, and would not wrinkle the paper. Sometimes small amounts of other solvents, such as “cellosolve“ were added to improve image quality.

In 1938, a nonflammable solvent was invented by Johan Bjorksten to allow the possibility of using electrically driven machines without the concern of the flammability of pure methyl/ethyl alcohol. "A composition composed of 10% of trichlorofluoromethane and 90% of a mixture of 50% methyl alcohol, 40% ethyl alcohol, 5% water and 5% of ethylene glycol mono-ethyl ether. This solvent mixture is non-flammable in the closed space of the reservoir and has a flash point of 100 °F when fully exposed to air. The solvent mixture has a pleasant odor, reduced toxicity and gives at least as good copies as the duplication liquid before the addition of the trichlorofluoromethane. It is believed that the high efficiency of trichlorofluoromethane as a flame reducing agent is due to the fact that its boiling point is sufficiently low as to cause the formation of a non-flammable vapor film on the surface of the organic solvent, with sufficiently high boiling point as to be substantially retained by the solvents even at high summer temperatures."

Durability
Dittoed copies now pose a serious challenge to archivists responsible for historic document and artistic preservation. Dittoed images gradually fade with exposure to ultraviolet light, limiting their usability for permanent labels and signage. Fluorescent lighting emits small amounts of ultraviolet light. When exposed to direct sunlight ditto copies can fade to illegibility in less than a month. The low-quality paper often used would yellow and degrade due to residual acid in the untreated pulp. In the worst case, old copies can crumble into small particles when handled.

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

title: Spirit duplicator


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Wind power

Wind power is the use of wind energy to generate useful work. Historically, wind power was used by sails, windmills and windpumps, but today it is mostly used to generate electricity. This article deals only with wind power for electricity generation. Today, wind power is generated almost completely with wind turbines, generally grouped into wind farms and connected to the electrical grid.

In 2022, wind supplied over 2000 TWh of electricity, which was over 7% of world electricity and about 2% of world energy. With about 100 GW added during 2021, mostly in China and the United States, global installed wind power capacity exceeded 800 GW. To help meet the Paris Agreement goals to limit climate change, analysts say it should expand much faster - by over 1% of electricity generation per year.

Wind power is considered a sustainable, renewable energy source, and has a much smaller impact on the environment compared to burning fossil fuels. Wind power is variable, so it needs energy storage or other dispatchable generation energy sources to attain a reliable supply of electricity. Land-based (onshore) wind farms have a greater visual impact on the landscape than most other power stations per energy produced. Wind farms sited offshore have less visual impact and have higher capacity factors, although they are generally more expensive. Offshore wind power currently has a share of about 10% of new installations.

Wind power is one of the lowest-cost electricity sources per unit of energy produced. In many locations, new onshore wind farms are cheaper than new coal or gas plants.

Regions in the higher northern and southern latitudes have the highest potential for wind power. In most regions, wind power generation is higher in nighttime, and in winter when solar power output is low. For this reason, combinations of wind and solar power are suitable in many countries.

Wind energy resources
Wind is air movement in the Earth's atmosphere. In a unit of time, say 1 second, the volume of air that had passed an area $$A$$ is $$Av$$. If the air density is $$\rho$$, the mass of this volume of air is $$M=\rho Av$$, and the power transfer, or energy transfer per second is $$P =\tfrac {1}{2}M v^{2}= \tfrac {1}{2}\rho A v^{3}$$. Wind power is thus proportional to the third power of the wind speed; the available power increases eightfold when the wind speed doubles. Change of wind speed by a factor of 2.1544 increases the wind power by one order of magnitude (multiply by 10).

The global wind kinetic energy averaged approximately 1.50 MJ/m2 over the period from 1979 to 2010, 1.31 MJ/m2 in the Northern Hemisphere with 1.70 MJ/m2 in the Southern Hemisphere. The atmosphere acts as a thermal engine, absorbing heat at higher temperatures, releasing heat at lower temperatures. The process is responsible for the production of wind kinetic energy at a rate of 2.46 W/m2 thus sustaining the circulation of the atmosphere against friction.

Through wind resource assessment, it is possible to estimate wind power potential globally, by country or region, or for a specific site. The Global Wind Atlas provided by the Technical University of Denmark in partnership with the World Bank provides a global assessment of wind power potential. Unlike 'static' wind resource atlases which average estimates of wind speed and power density across multiple years, tools such as Renewables.ninja provide time-varying simulations of wind speed and power output from different wind turbine models at an hourly resolution. More detailed, site-specific assessments of wind resource potential can be obtained from specialist commercial providers, and many of the larger wind developers have in-house modeling capabilities.

The total amount of economically extractable power available from the wind is considerably more than present human power use from all sources. The strength of wind varies, and an average value for a given location does not alone indicate the amount of energy a wind turbine could produce there.

To assess prospective wind power sites, a probability distribution function is often fit to the observed wind speed data. Different locations will have different wind speed distributions. The Weibull model closely mirrors the actual distribution of hourly/ten-minute wind speeds at many locations. The Weibull factor is often close to 2 and therefore a Rayleigh distribution can be used as a less accurate, but simpler model.

Wind farms
A wind farm is a group of wind turbines in the same location. A large wind farm may consist of several hundred individual wind turbines distributed over an extended area. The land between the turbines may be used for agricultural or other purposes. A wind farm may also be located offshore. Almost all large wind turbines have the same design — a horizontal axis wind turbine having an upwind rotor with 3 blades, attached to a nacelle on top of a tall tubular tower.

In a wind farm, individual turbines are interconnected with a medium voltage (often 34.5 kV) power collection system and communications network. In general, a distance of 7D (7 times the rotor diameter of the wind turbine) is set between each turbine in a fully developed wind farm. At a substation, this medium-voltage electric current is increased in voltage with a transformer for connection to the high voltage electric power transmission system.

Generator characteristics and stability
Most modern turbines use variable speed generators combined with either a partial or full-scale power converter between the turbine generator and the collector system, which generally have more desirable properties for grid interconnection and have low voltage ride through-capabilities. Modern turbines use either doubly fed electric machines with partial-scale converters or squirrel-cage induction generators or synchronous generators (both permanently and electrically excited) with full-scale converters. Black start is possible and is being further developed for places (such as Iowa) which generate most of their electricity from wind.

Transmission system operators will supply a wind farm developer with a grid code to specify the requirements for interconnection to the transmission grid. This will include the power factor, the constancy of frequency, and the dynamic behaviour of the wind farm turbines during a system fault.

Offshore wind power
Offshore wind power is wind farms in large bodies of water, usually the sea. These installations can use the more frequent and powerful winds that are available in these locations and have less visual impact on the landscape than land-based projects. However, the construction and maintenance costs are considerably higher.

As of November 2021, the Hornsea Wind Farm in the United Kingdom is the largest offshore wind farm in the world at 1,218 MW.

Collection and transmission network
Near offshore wind farms may be connected by AC and far offshore by HVDC.

Wind power resources are not always located near to high population density. As transmission lines become longer, the losses associated with power transmission increase, as modes of losses at lower lengths are exacerbated and new modes of losses are no longer negligible as the length is increased; making it harder to transport large loads over large distances.

When the transmission capacity does not meet the generation capacity, wind farms are forced to produce below their full potential or stop running altogether, in a process known as curtailment. While this leads to potential renewable generation left untapped, it prevents possible grid overload or risk to reliable service.

One of the biggest current challenges to wind power grid integration in some countries is the necessity of developing new transmission lines to carry power from wind farms, usually in remote lowly populated areas due to availability of wind, to high load locations, usually on the coasts where population density is higher. Any existing transmission lines in remote locations may not have been designed for the transport of large amounts of energy. In particular geographic regions, peak wind speeds may not coincide with peak demand for electrical power, whether offshore or onshore. A possible future option may be to interconnect widely dispersed geographic areas with an HVDC super grid.

Growth trends
In 2020, wind supplied almost 1600 TWh of electricity, which was over 5% of worldwide electrical generation and about 2% of energy consumption. With over 100 GW added during 2020, mostly in China, global installed wind power capacity reached more than 730 GW. But to help meet the Paris Agreement's goals to limit climate change, analysts say it should expand much faster - by over 1% of electricity generation per year. Expansion of wind power is being hindered by fossil fuel subsidies.

The actual amount of electric power that wind can generate is calculated by multiplying the nameplate capacity by the capacity factor, which varies according to equipment and location. Estimates of the capacity factors for wind installations are in the range of 35% to 44%.

Capacity factor
Since wind speed is not constant, a wind farm's annual energy production is never as much as the sum of the generator nameplate ratings multiplied by the total hours in a year. The ratio of actual productivity in a year to this theoretical maximum is called the capacity factor. Online data is available for some locations, and the capacity factor can be calculated from the yearly output.

Penetration
Wind energy penetration is the fraction of energy produced by wind compared with the total generation. Wind power's share of worldwide electricity usage in 2021 was almost 7%, up from 3.5% in 2015.

There is no generally accepted maximum level of wind penetration. The limit for a particular grid will depend on the existing generating plants, pricing mechanisms, capacity for energy storage, demand management, and other factors. An interconnected electric power grid will already include reserve generating and transmission capacity to allow for equipment failures. This reserve capacity can also serve to compensate for the varying power generation produced by wind stations. Studies have indicated that 20% of the total annual electrical energy consumption may be incorporated with minimal difficulty. These studies have been for locations with geographically dispersed wind farms, some degree of dispatchable energy or hydropower with storage capacity, demand management, and interconnected to a large grid area enabling the export of electric power when needed. Electrical utilities continue to study the effects of large-scale penetration of wind generation on system stability.

A wind energy penetration figure can be specified for different duration of time but is often quoted annually. To generate almost all electricity from wind annually requires substantial interconnection to other systems, for example some wind power in Scotland is sent to the rest of the British grid. On a monthly, weekly, daily, or hourly basis—or less—wind might supply as much as or more than 100% of current use, with the rest stored, exported or curtailed. The seasonal industry might then take advantage of high wind and low usage times such as at night when wind output can exceed normal demand. Such industry might include the production of silicon, aluminum, steel, or natural gas, and hydrogen, and using future long-term storage to facilitate 100% energy from variable renewable energy. Homes and businesses can also be programmed to vary electricity demand, for example by remotely turning up water heater thermostats.

Variability

Wind power is variable, and during low wind periods, it may need to be replaced by other power sources. Transmission networks presently cope with outages of other generation plants and daily changes in electrical demand, but the variability of intermittent power sources such as wind power is more frequent than those of conventional power generation plants which, when scheduled to be operating, may be able to deliver their nameplate capacity around 95% of the time.

Electric power generated from wind power can be highly variable at several different timescales: hourly, daily, or seasonally. Annual variation also exists but is not as significant. Because instantaneous electrical generation and consumption must remain in balance to maintain grid stability, this variability can present substantial challenges to incorporating large amounts of wind power into a grid system. Intermittency and the non-dispatchable nature of wind energy production can raise costs for regulation, incremental operating reserve, and (at high penetration levels) could require an increase in the already existing energy demand management, load shedding, storage solutions, or system interconnection with HVDC cables.

Fluctuations in load and allowance for the failure of large fossil-fuel generating units require operating reserve capacity, which can be increased to compensate for the variability of wind generation.

Utility-scale batteries are often used to balance hourly and shorter timescale variation, but car batteries may gain ground from the mid-2020s. Wind power advocates argue that periods of low wind can be dealt with by simply restarting existing power stations that have been held in readiness, or interlinking with HVDC.

The combination of diversifying variable renewables by type and location, forecasting their variation, and integrating them with dispatchable renewables, flexible fueled generators, and demand response can create a power system that has the potential to meet power supply needs reliably. Integrating ever-higher levels of renewables is being successfully demonstrated in the real world.

Solar power tends to be complementary to wind. On daily to weekly timescales, high-pressure areas tend to bring clear skies and low surface winds, whereas low-pressure areas tend to be windier and cloudier. On seasonal timescales, solar energy peaks in summer, whereas in many areas wind energy is lower in summer and higher in winter. Thus the seasonal variation of wind and solar power tend to cancel each other somewhat. Wind hybrid power systems are becoming more popular.

Predictability
For any particular generator, there is an 80% chance that wind output will change less than 10% in an hour and a 40% chance that it will change 10% or more in 5 hours.

In summer 2021, wind power in the United Kingdom fell due to the lowest winds in seventy years, In the future, smoothing peaks by producing green hydrogen may help when wind has a larger share of generation.

While the output from a single turbine can vary greatly and rapidly as local wind speeds vary, as more turbines are connected over larger and larger areas the average power output becomes less variable and more predictable. Weather forecasting permits the electric-power network to be readied for the predictable variations in production that occur.

It is thought that the most reliable low-carbon electricity systems will include a large share of wind power.

Energy storage
Typically, conventional hydroelectricity complements wind power very well. When the wind is blowing strongly, nearby hydroelectric stations can temporarily hold back their water. When the wind drops they can, provided they have the generation capacity, rapidly increase production to compensate. This gives a very even overall power supply and virtually no loss of energy and uses no more water.

Alternatively, where a suitable head of water is not available, pumped-storage hydroelectricity or other forms of grid energy storage such as compressed air energy storage and thermal energy storage can store energy developed by high-wind periods and release it when needed. The type of storage needed depends on the wind penetration level – low penetration requires daily storage, and high penetration requires both short- and long-term storage – as long as a month or more. Stored energy increases the economic value of wind energy since it can be shifted to displace higher-cost generation during peak demand periods. The potential revenue from this arbitrage can offset the cost and losses of storage. Although pumped-storage power systems are only about 75% efficient and have high installation costs, their low running costs and ability to reduce the required electrical base-load can save both fuel and total electrical generation costs.

Energy payback
The energy needed to build a wind farm divided into the total output over its life, Energy Return on Energy Invested, of wind power varies, but averages about 20–25. Thus, the energy payback time is typically around a year.

Economics
Onshore wind is an inexpensive source of electric power, cheaper than coal plants and new gas plants. According to BusinessGreen, wind turbines reached grid parity (the point at which the cost of wind power matches traditional sources) in some areas of Europe in the mid-2000s, and in the US around the same time. Falling prices continue to drive the Levelized cost down and it has been suggested that it has reached general grid parity in Europe in 2010, and will reach the same point in the US around 2016 due to an expected reduction in capital costs of about 12%. In 2021, the CEO of Siemens Gamesa warned that increased demand for low-cost wind turbines combined with high input costs and high costs of steel result in increased pressure on the manufacturers and decreasing profit margins.

Northern Eurasia, Canada, some parts of the United States, and Patagonia in Argentina are the best areas for onshore wind: whereas in other parts of the world solar power, or a combination of wind and solar, tend to be cheaper.

Electric power cost and trends

Wind power is capital intensive but has no fuel costs. The price of wind power is therefore much more stable than the volatile prices of fossil fuel sources. However, the estimated average cost per unit of electric power must incorporate the cost of construction of the turbine and transmission facilities, borrowed funds, return to investors (including the cost of risk), estimated annual production, and other components, averaged over the projected useful life of the equipment, which may be more than 20 years. Energy cost estimates are highly dependent on these assumptions so published cost figures can differ substantially.

The presence of wind energy, even when subsidized, can reduce costs for consumers (€5 billion/yr in Germany) by reducing the marginal price, by minimizing the use of expensive peaking power plants.

The cost has decreased as wind turbine technology has improved. There are now longer and lighter wind turbine blades, improvements in turbine performance, and increased power generation efficiency. Also, wind project capital expenditure costs and maintenance costs have continued to decline.

In 2021, a Lazard study of unsubsidized electricity said that wind power levelized cost of electricity continues to fall but more slowly than before. The study estimated new wind-generated electricity cost from $26 to $50/MWh, compared to new gas power from $45 to $74/MWh. The median cost of fully deprecated existing coal power was $42/MWh, nuclear $29/MWh and gas $24/MWh. The study estimated offshore wind at around $83/MWh. Compound annual growth rate was 4% per year from 2016 to 2021, compared to 10% per year from 2009 to 2021.

Incentives and community benefits
Turbine prices have fallen significantly in recent years due to tougher competitive conditions such as the increased use of energy auctions, and the elimination of subsidies in many markets. As of 2021, subsidies are still often given to offshore wind. But they are generally no longer necessary for onshore wind in countries with even a very low carbon price such as China, provided there are no competing fossil fuel subsidies.

Secondary market forces provide incentives for businesses to use wind-generated power, even if there is a premium price for the electricity. For example, socially responsible manufacturers pay utility companies a premium that goes to subsidize and build new wind power infrastructure. Companies use wind-generated power, and in return, they can claim that they are undertaking strong "green" efforts. Wind projects provide local taxes, or payments in place of taxes and strengthen the economy of rural communities by providing income to farmers with wind turbines on their land.

The wind energy sector can also produce jobs during the construction and operating phase. Jobs include the manufacturing of wind turbines and the construction process, which includes transporting, installing, and then maintaining the turbines. An estimated 1.25 million people were employed in wind power in 2020.

Small-scale wind power
Small-scale wind power is the name given to wind generation systems with the capacity to produce up to 50 kW of electrical power. Isolated communities, that may otherwise rely on diesel generators, may use wind turbines as an alternative. Individuals may purchase these systems to reduce or eliminate their dependence on grid electric power for economic reasons, or to reduce their carbon footprint. Wind turbines have been used for household electric power generation in conjunction with battery storage over many decades in remote areas.

Examples of small-scale wind power projects in an urban setting can be found in New York City, where, since 2009, several building projects have capped their roofs with Gorlov-type helical wind turbines. Although the energy they generate is small compared to the buildings' overall consumption, they help to reinforce the building's 'green' credentials in ways that "showing people your high-tech boiler" cannot, with some of the projects also receiving the direct support of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

Grid-connected domestic wind turbines may use grid energy storage, thus replacing purchased electric power with locally produced power when available. The surplus power produced by domestic microgenerators can, in some jurisdictions, be fed into the network and sold to the utility company, producing a retail credit for the microgenerators' owners to offset their energy costs.

Off-grid system users can either adapt to intermittent power or use batteries, photovoltaic, or diesel systems to supplement the wind turbine. Equipment such as parking meters, traffic warning signs, street lighting, or wireless Internet gateways may be powered by a small wind turbine, possibly combined with a photovoltaic system, that charges a small battery replacing the need for a connection to the power grid.

Airborne wind turbines, such as kites, can be used in places at risk of hurricanes, as they can be taken down in advance.

Impact on environment and landscape

The environmental impact of electricity generation from wind power is minor when compared to that of fossil fuel power. Wind turbines have some of the lowest life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions of energy sources: far less greenhouse gas is emitted than for the average unit of electricity, so wind power helps limit climate change. Use of engineered wood may allow carbon negative wind power. Wind power consumes no fuel, and emits no local air pollution, unlike fossil fuel power sources.

Onshore wind farms can have a significant visual impact. Due to a very low surface power density and spacing requirements, wind farms typically need to be spread over more land than other power stations. Their network of turbines, access roads, transmission lines, and substations can result in "energy sprawl"; although land between the turbines and roads can still be used for agriculture. Some wind farms are opposed for potentially spoiling protected scenic areas, archaeological landscapes and heritage sites. A report by the Mountaineering Council of Scotland concluded that wind farms harmed tourism in areas known for natural landscapes and panoramic views.

Habitat loss and fragmentation are the greatest potential impacts on wildlife of onshore wind farms, but the worldwide ecological impact is minimal. Thousands of birds and bats, including rare species, have been killed by wind turbine blades, though wind turbines are responsible for far fewer bird deaths than fossil-fueled power stations. This can be mitigated with proper wildlife monitoring.

Many wind turbine blades are made of fiberglass, and have a lifetime of 20 years. Blades are hollow: some blades are crushed to reduce their volume and then landfilled. However, as they can take a lot of weight they can be made into long lasting small bridges for walkers or cyclists. Blade end-of-life is complicated, and blades manufactured in the 2020s are more likely to be designed to be completely recyclable.

Wind turbines also generate noise. At a distance of 300 m, this may be around 45 dB, which is slightly louder than a refrigerator. At 1.5 km, they become inaudible. There are anecdotal reports of negative health effects on people who live very close to wind turbines. Peer-reviewed research has generally not supported these claims.

Central government

Although wind turbines with fixed bases are a mature technology and new installations are generally no longer subsidized, floating wind turbines are a relatively new technology so some governments subsidize them, for example to use deeper waters.

Fossil fuel subsidies by some governments are slowing the growth of renewables.

Permitting of wind farms can take years and some governments are trying to speed up - the wind industry says this will help limit climate change and increase energy security - sometimes groups such as fishers resist this but governments say that rules protecting biodiversity will still be followed.

Public opinion
Surveys of public attitudes across Europe and in many other countries show strong public support for wind power. Bakker et al. (2012) found in their study that residents who did not want turbines built near them suffered significantly more stress than those who "benefited economically from wind turbines".

Although wind power is a popular form of energy generation, onshore or near offshore wind farms are sometimes opposed for their impact on the landscape (especially scenic areas, heritage areas and archaeological landscapes), as well as noise, and impact on tourism.

In other cases, there is direct community ownership of wind farms. The hundreds of thousands of people who have become involved in Germany's small and medium-sized wind farms demonstrate such support there.

A 2010 Harris Poll found strong support for wind power in Germany, other European countries, and the United States.

Public support in the United States has decreased from 75% in 2020 to 62% in 2021, with the Democratic Party supporting the use of wind energy twice as much as the Republican Party. President Biden has signed an executive order to begin building large scale wind farms.

In China, Shen et al. (2019) found that Chinese city-dwellers may be resistant to building wind turbines in urban areas, with a surprisingly high proportion of people citing an unfounded fear of radiation as driving their concerns. Also, the study finds that like their counterparts in OECD countries, urban Chinese respondents are sensitive to direct costs and wildlife externalities. Distributing relevant information about turbines to the public may alleviate resistance.

Community

Many wind power companies work with local communities to reduce environmental and other concerns associated with particular wind farms. In other cases there is direct community ownership of wind farm projects. Appropriate government consultation, planning and approval procedures also help to minimize environmental risks. Some may still object to wind farms but many say their concerns should be weighed against the need to address the threats posed by air pollution, climate change and the opinions of the broader community.

In the US, wind power projects are reported to boost local tax bases, helping to pay for schools, roads, and hospitals, and to revitalize the economies of rural communities by providing steady income to farmers and other landowners.

In the UK, both the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England have expressed concerns about the effects on the rural landscape caused by inappropriately sited wind turbines and wind farms.

Some wind farms have become tourist attractions. The Whitelee Wind Farm Visitor Centre has an exhibition room, a learning hub, a café with a viewing deck and also a shop. It is run by the Glasgow Science Centre.

In Denmark, a loss-of-value scheme gives people the right to claim compensation for loss of value of their property if it is caused by proximity to a wind turbine. The loss must be at least 1% of the property's value.

Despite this general support for the concept of wind power in the public at large, local opposition often exists and has delayed or aborted a number of projects. As well as concerns about the landscape, there are concerns that some installations can produce excessive sound and vibration levels leading to a decrease in property values. A study of 50,000 home sales near wind turbines found no statistical evidence that prices were affected.

While aesthetic issues are subjective and some find wind farms pleasant and optimistic, or symbols of energy independence and local prosperity, protest groups are often formed to attempt to block some wind power stations for various reasons.

Some opposition to wind farms is dismissed as NIMBYism, but research carried out in 2009 found that there is little evidence to support the belief that residents only object to wind farms because of a "Not in my Back Yard" attitude.

Geopolitics
Wind cannot be cut off unlike oil and gas so can contribute to energy security.

Turbine design
Wind turbines are devices that convert the wind's kinetic energy into electrical power. The result of over a millennium of windmill development and modern engineering, today's wind turbines are manufactured in a wide range of horizontal axis and vertical axis types. The smallest turbines are used for applications such as battery charging for auxiliary power. Slightly larger turbines can be used for making small contributions to a domestic power supply while selling unused power back to the utility supplier via the electrical grid. Arrays of large turbines, known as wind farms, have become an increasingly important source of renewable energy and are used in many countries as part of a strategy to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

Wind turbine design is the process of defining the form and specifications of a wind turbine to extract energy from the wind. A wind turbine installation consists of the necessary systems needed to capture the wind's energy, point the turbine into the wind, convert mechanical rotation into electrical power, and other systems to start, stop, and control the turbine.

In 1919, the German physicist Albert Betz showed that for a hypothetical ideal wind-energy extraction machine, the fundamental laws of conservation of mass and energy allowed no more than 16/27 (59%) of the kinetic energy of the wind to be captured. This Betz limit can be approached in modern turbine designs, which may reach 70 to 80% of the theoretical Betz limit.

The aerodynamics of a wind turbine are not straightforward. The airflow at the blades is not the same as the airflow far away from the turbine. The very nature of how energy is extracted from the air also causes air to be deflected by the turbine. This affects the objects or other turbines downstream, which is known as "wake effect". Also, the aerodynamics of a wind turbine at the rotor surface exhibit phenomena that are rarely seen in other aerodynamic fields. The shape and dimensions of the blades of the wind turbine are determined by the aerodynamic performance required to efficiently extract energy from the wind, and by the strength required to resist the forces on the blade.

In addition to the aerodynamic design of the blades, the design of a complete wind power system must also address the design of the installation's rotor hub, nacelle, tower structure, generator, controls, and foundation.

History
Wind power has been used as long as humans have put sails into the wind. Wind-powered machines used to grind grain and pump water, the windmill and wind pump, were developed in what is now Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan by the 9th century. Wind power was widely available and not confined to the banks of fast-flowing streams, or later, requiring sources of fuel. Wind-powered pumps drained the polders of the Netherlands, and in arid regions such as the American mid-west or the Australian outback, wind pumps provided water for livestock and steam engines.

The first windmill used for the production of electric power was built in Scotland in July 1887 by Prof James Blyth of Anderson's College, Glasgow (the precursor of Strathclyde University). Blyth's 10 m high cloth-sailed wind turbine was installed in the garden of his holiday cottage at Marykirk in Kincardineshire, and was used to charge accumulators developed by the Frenchman Camille Alphonse Faure, to power the lighting in the cottage, thus making it the first house in the world to have its electric power supplied by wind power. Blyth offered the surplus electric power to the people of Marykirk for lighting the main street, however, they turned down the offer as they thought electric power was "the work of the devil." Although he later built a wind turbine to supply emergency power to the local Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary, and Dispensary of Montrose, the invention never really caught on as the technology was not considered to be economically viable.

Across the Atlantic, in Cleveland, Ohio, a larger and heavily engineered machine was designed and constructed in the winter of 1887–1888 by Charles F. Brush. This was built by his engineering company at his home and operated from 1886 until 1900. The Brush wind turbine had a rotor 17 m in diameter and was mounted on an 18 m tower. Although large by today's standards, the machine was only rated at 12 kW. The connected dynamo was used either to charge a bank of batteries or to operate up to 100 incandescent light bulbs, three arc lamps, and various motors in Brush's laboratory. With the development of electric power, wind power found new applications in lighting buildings remote from centrally generated power. Throughout the 20th century parallel paths developed small wind stations suitable for farms or residences. From 1932 many isolated properties in Australia ran their lighting and electric fans from batteries, charged by a "Freelite" wind-driven generator, producing 100watts of electrical power from as little wind speed as 10 mph.

The 1973 oil crisis triggered the investigation in Denmark and the United States that led to larger utility-scale wind generators that could be connected to electric power grids for remote use of power. By 2008, the U.S. installed capacity had reached 25.4 gigawatts, and by 2012 the installed capacity was 60 gigawatts. Today, wind-powered generators operate in every size range between tiny stations for battery charging at isolated residences, up to gigawatt-sized offshore wind farms that provide electric power to national electrical networks. The European Union is working to augment these prospects.

In 2023, the global wind power sector experienced significant growth, with 116.6 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity added to the power grid, representing a 50% increase over the amount added in 2022. This surge in capacity brought the total installed wind power capacity worldwide to 1,021 GW by the end of the year, marking a growth of 13% compared to the previous year.

title: Wind power


text:
Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police

 Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police is a 1939 English Castle murder mystery film directed by James P. Hogan, based on the H. C. McNeile novel Temple Tower. It is one of many films featuring the British sleuth and adventurer Bulldog Drummond. In 1930, Fox produced Temple Tower, directed by Donald Gallaher and starring Kenneth MacKenna and Marceline Day, which was also based on the McNeile book.

The story is set 28 miles outside London in Rockingham, as a sign on the railroad station states.

Plot
An absent-minded Professor Downie (Forrester Harvey) makes a call upon Capt. Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond (John Howard) as he is making plans for his much-delayed wedding to fiancée Phyllis Claverling (Heather Angel) in his ancestral home Temple Tower.

The professor informs Drummond that a fortune was buried in one of the walled off storerooms underneath his estate, and that Downie was in possession of a book written in code that would lead them to discover the treasure. Unfortunately for the professor, someone else also wanted the riches and Drummond once again is dragged into the plot as the code book is stolen, Professor Downie is murdered, and Phyllis is kidnapped.

Cast

 * Heather Angel as Phyllis Clavering
 * John Howard as Captain Hugh C. "Bulldog" Drummond
 * H.B. Warner as Colonel Nielson
 * Reginald Denny as Algy Longworth
 * E.E. Clive as Tenny
 * Elizabeth Patterson as Aunt Blanche
 * Leo G. Carroll as Henry Seaton/Andrew Boulton
 * Forrester Harvey as Professor Downie
 * Clyde Cook as Constable Hawkins
 * David Clyde as Constable Jenkins
 * Neil Fitzgerald as Station Master
 * Elspeth Dudgeon as Housekeeper
 * Louise Campbell as Woman in Drummond's Dream (uncredited)

title: Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police


text:
Talk:The Adventures of Robin Hood (film)

Political Undertones
There is a scene where Robin comments on the King being involved in foreign pursuits instead of paying attention to home...that's not the exact quote, but it is something very much like that and there is more to the conversation. I'm wondering if this had some political connotations in terms of the 1930s and, if so, this would be worth commenting on in the article. Afabbro 20:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * In 1938, up to 12-7-1941, the US was doing the exact opposite: letting Der BadMustache conquer Europe while we tried to tell ourselves it was all none of our business. Britain was also trying to ignore Hitler, up until 1939, if I remember History class correctly.--The4sword 00:19, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Move
This page has been moved from The Adventures of Robin Hood to disambiguate it from the TV series of the same name (The Adventures of Robin Hood (series)).

Summary of original article's page history:

05:27 8 Feb 2003. . Ortolan 88 (maid marian said it, not maid marion ) 04:30 8 Feb 2003. . 62.30.123.242 (Maid Marion, not King John, said "you speak treason") 19:48 5 Aug 2002. . Zoe 10:18 3 Aug 2002. . Ortolan 88 (add quote: King John: You speak treason! :Robin Hood: Fluently.) M 08:45 2 Aug 2002. . Tarquin M 08:44 2 Aug 2002. . Koyaanis Qatsi 08:43 2 Aug 2002. . Koyaanis Qatsi M 16:32 14 Jul 2002. . Zoe

...of course to see the previous versions you'll have to check out the original article. Sorry to make life complicated in the cause of simplifying things...

User:Lee M has moved The Adventures of Robin Hood to The Adventures of Robin Hood (movie) by copying-and-pasting instead of using the "Move this page" link, leaving the edit history behind. Can someone with the appropriate elite skills sort it out? —Paul A 02:29 26 Jul 2003 (UTC)

(PS. Is there a dedicated page for requests like this?)

Unfortunately he has actually put something at The Adventures of Robin Hood, so this is going to take a little more work than I am willing to do quite this second. If someone beats me to it, please also put the disambiguation boiler text at The Adventures of Robin Hood. MB 04:03 26 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * Fixed. Although I hosed the old disambiguation text by mistake. Can you check I got all the entries right? CGS 09:51 26 Jul 2003 (UTC).

 * The old disambiguation text is still in the page history. Looks to me like you got them right. —Paul A 14:40 26 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Howard Hill
Hi. I am a traditional archery fan. I particularly love the Howard Hill style of shooting. I have heard hints that he took the trick stunt shots in this movie.(The Adventures of Robin Hood 1938). Is there any documentation to this fact or is it speculation.

Yep he did, there's a short subject of him and it's talked about in the 2-disc dvd. --Mole Man 10:03, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

The IMDB trivia page on this movie also mentions that he did all of the shots requiring human targets to be shot (and they really were shot, although wearing armor where being shot).

Fair use rationale for Image:Flynn robin hood.jpg
Image:Flynn robin hood.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 05:43, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Plot summary
I've removed the plot tag. At some 650 words, I don't think the plot summary section of this article is excessively long. --Tony Sidaway 04:02, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, I don't know. I'm kind of partial to: Outlaw gets maid; outlaw loses maid; outlaw rescues maid and restores rightful king to throne. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:46, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Photo
The image of Robin and Marian doesn't occur in the film. It is, however, in the trailer as seen on the DVD. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Saintmesmin (talk • contribs) 16:49, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Robin hood movieposter.jpg
Image:Robin hood movieposter.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 04:25, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Splitting headache
I've removed the following line from the article: "Hill performed that feat in a single take without the use of trick photography." The Howard Hill article says he wasn't able split the arrow as shown, much less in one take. The claim seems to have been lifted from IMDb. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:43, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

As a side note
It was the sixteenth film to be shot in Technicolor. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.157.175.106 (talk) 15:50, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

More specifically, live-action film. Many animated features had been shot in Technicolor. WilliamSommerwerck (talk) 19:44, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

home video
There is no listing of home-video editions. This would be of particular interest, as the film has been issued in DVD and Blu-ray editions created from an Ultra Resolution transfer. WilliamSommerwerck (talk) 16:13, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

irony
"It was an unusually extravagant production for the Warner Bros. studio, which had made a name for itself in producing socially conscious low-budget gangster films..."

And The Adventures of Robin Hood isn't a "socially conscious gangster film"? WilliamSommerwerck (talk) 19:43, 27 June 2011 (UTC)


text:
Magnetite

Magnetite is a mineral and one of the main iron ores, with the chemical formula Fe(2+)Fe2(3+)O4. It is one of the oxides of iron, and is ferrimagnetic; it is attracted to a magnet and can be magnetized to become a permanent magnet itself. With the exception of extremely rare native iron deposits, it is the most magnetic of all the naturally occurring minerals on Earth. Naturally magnetized pieces of magnetite, called lodestone, will attract small pieces of iron, which is how ancient peoples first discovered the property of magnetism.

Magnetite is black or brownish-black with a metallic luster, has a Mohs hardness of 5–6 and leaves a black streak. Small grains of magnetite are very common in igneous and metamorphic rocks.

The chemical IUPAC name is iron(II,III) oxide and the common chemical name is ferrous-ferric oxide.

Properties
In addition to igneous rocks, magnetite also occurs in sedimentary rocks, including banded iron formations and in lake and marine sediments as both detrital grains and as magnetofossils. Magnetite nanoparticles are also thought to form in soils, where they probably oxidize rapidly to maghemite.

Crystal structure
The chemical composition of magnetite is Fe2+(Fe3+)2(O2-)4. This indicates that magnetite contains both ferrous (divalent) and ferric (trivalent) iron, suggesting crystallization in an environment containing intermediate levels of oxygen. The main details of its structure were established in 1915. It was one of the first crystal structures to be obtained using X-ray diffraction. The structure is inverse spinel, with O2- ions forming a face-centered cubic lattice and iron cations occupying interstitial sites. Half of the Fe3+ cations occupy tetrahedral sites while the other half, along with Fe2+ cations, occupy octahedral sites. The unit cell consists of thirty-twoO2- ions and unit cell length is a = 0.839 nm.

As a member of the inverse spinel group, magnetite can form solid solutions with similarly structured minerals, including ulvospinel (Fe2TiO4) and magnesioferrite (MgFe2O4).

Titanomagnetite, also known as titaniferous magnetite, is a solid solution between magnetite and ulvospinel that crystallizes in many mafic igneous rocks. Titanomagnetite may undergo oxy-exsolution during cooling, resulting in ingrowths of magnetite and ilmenite.

Crystal morphology and size
Natural and synthetic magnetite occurs most commonly as octahedral crystals bounded by {111} planes and as rhombic-dodecahedra. Twinning occurs on the {111} plane.

Hydrothermal synthesis usually produces single octahedral crystals which can be as large as 10 mm across. In the presence of mineralizers such as 0.1M HI or 2M NH4Cl and at 0.207MPa at 416–800 °C, magnetite grew as crystals whose shapes were a combination of rhombic-dodechahedra forms. The crystals were more rounded than usual. The appearance of higher forms was considered as a result from a decrease in the surface energies caused by the lower surface to volume ratio in the rounded crystals.

Reactions
Magnetite has been important in understanding the conditions under which rocks form. Magnetite reacts with oxygen to produce hematite, and the mineral pair forms a buffer that can control how oxidizing its environment is (the oxygen fugacity). This buffer is known as the hematite-magnetite or HM buffer. At lower oxygen levels, magnetite can form a buffer with quartz and fayalite known as the QFM buffer. At still lower oxygen levels, magnetite forms a buffer with wüstite known as the MW buffer. The QFM and MW buffers have been used extensively in laboratory experiments on rock chemistry. The QFM buffer, in particular, produces an oxygen fugacity close to that of most igneous rocks.

Commonly, igneous rocks contain solid solutions of both titanomagnetite and hemoilmenite or titanohematite. Compositions of the mineral pairs are used to calculate oxygen fugacity: a range of oxidizing conditions are found in magmas and the oxidation state helps to determine how the magmas might evolve by fractional crystallization. Magnetite also is produced from peridotites and dunites by serpentinization.

Magnetic properties
Lodestones were used as an early form of magnetic compass. Magnetite has been a critical tool in paleomagnetism, a science important in understanding plate tectonics and as historic data for magnetohydrodynamics and other scientific fields.

The relationships between magnetite and other iron oxide minerals such as ilmenite, hematite, and ulvospinel have been much studied; the reactions between these minerals and oxygen influence how and when magnetite preserves a record of the Earth's magnetic field.

At low temperatures, magnetite undergoes a crystal structure phase transition from a monoclinic structure to a cubic structure known as the Verwey transition. Optical studies show that this metal to insulator transition is sharp and occurs around 120K. The Verwey transition is dependent on grain size, domain state, pressure, and the iron-oxygen stoichiometry. An isotropic point also occurs near the Verwey transition around 130K, at which point the sign of the magnetocrystalline anisotropy constant changes from positive to negative. The Curie temperature of magnetite is 580 C.

If magnetite is in a large enough quantity it can be found in aeromagnetic surveys using a magnetometer which measures magnetic intensities.

Melting point
Solid magnetite particles melt at about 1583–1597 C.

Distribution of deposits
Magnetite is sometimes found in large quantities in beach sand. Such black sands (mineral sands or iron sands) are found in various places, such as Lung Kwu Tan in Hong Kong; California, United States; and the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand. The magnetite, eroded from rocks, is carried to the beach by rivers and concentrated by wave action and currents. Huge deposits have been found in banded iron formations. These sedimentary rocks have been used to infer changes in the oxygen content of the atmosphere of the Earth.

Large deposits of magnetite are also found in the Atacama region of Chile (Chilean Iron Belt); the Valentines region of Uruguay; Kiruna, Sweden; the Tallawang region of New South Wales; and in the Adirondack Mountains of New York in the United States. Kediet ej Jill, the highest mountain of Mauritania, is made entirely of the mineral. In the municipalities of Molinaseca, Albares, and Rabanal del Camino, in the province of León (Spain), there is a magnetite deposit in Ordovician terrain, considered one of the largest in Europe. It was exploited between 1955 and 1982. Deposits are also found in Norway, Romania, and Ukraine. Magnetite-rich sand dunes are found in southern Peru. In 2005, an exploration company, Cardero Resources, discovered a vast deposit of magnetite-bearing sand dunes in Peru. The dune field covers 250 square kilometers (100 sq mi), with the highest dune at over 2,000 meters (6,560 ft) above the desert floor. The sand contains 10% magnetite.

In large enough quantities magnetite can affect compass navigation. In Tasmania there are many areas with highly magnetized rocks that can greatly influence compasses. Extra steps and repeated observations are required when using a compass in Tasmania to keep navigation problems to the minimum.

Magnetite crystals with a cubic habit are rare but have been found at Balmat, St. Lawrence County, New York, and at Långban, Sweden. This habit may be a result of crystallization in the presence of cations such as zinc.

Magnetite can also be found in fossils due to biomineralization and are referred to as magnetofossils. There are also instances of magnetite with origins in space coming from meteorites.

Biological occurrences
Biomagnetism is usually related to the presence of biogenic crystals of magnetite, which occur widely in organisms. These organisms range from magnetotactic bacteria (e.g., Magnetospirillum magnetotacticum) to animals, including humans, where magnetite crystals (and other magnetically sensitive compounds) are found in different organs, depending on the species. Biomagnetites account for the effects of weak magnetic fields on biological systems. There is also a chemical basis for cellular sensitivity to electric and magnetic fields (galvanotaxis).

Pure magnetite particles are biomineralized in magnetosomes, which are produced by several species of magnetotactic bacteria. Magnetosomes consist of long chains of oriented magnetite particle that are used by bacteria for navigation. After the death of these bacteria, the magnetite particles in magnetosomes may be preserved in sediments as magnetofossils. Some types of anaerobic bacteria that are not magnetotactic can also create magnetite in oxygen free sediments by reducing amorphic ferric oxide to magnetite.

Several species of birds are known to incorporate magnetite crystals in the upper beak for magnetoreception, which (in conjunction with cryptochromes in the retina) gives them the ability to sense the direction, polarity, and magnitude of the ambient magnetic field.

Chitons, a type of mollusk, have a tongue-like structure known as a radula, covered with magnetite-coated teeth, or denticles. The hardness of the magnetite helps in breaking down food.

Biological magnetite may store information about the magnetic fields the organism was exposed to, potentially allowing scientists to learn about the migration of the organism or about changes in the Earth's magnetic field over time.

Human brain
Living organisms can produce magnetite. In humans, magnetite can be found in various parts of the brain including the frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes, brainstem, cerebellum and basal ganglia. Iron can be found in three forms in the brain – magnetite, hemoglobin (blood) and ferritin (protein), and areas of the brain related to motor function generally contain more iron. Magnetite can be found in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is associated with information processing, specifically learning and memory. However, magnetite can have toxic effects due to its charge or magnetic nature and its involvement in oxidative stress or the production of free radicals. Research suggests that beta-amyloid plaques and tau proteins associated with neurodegenerative disease frequently occur after oxidative stress and the build-up of iron.

Some researchers also suggest that humans possess a magnetic sense, proposing that this could allow certain people to use magnetoreception for navigation. The role of magnetite in the brain is still not well understood, and there has been a general lag in applying more modern, interdisciplinary techniques to the study of biomagnetism.

Electron microscope scans of human brain-tissue samples are able to differentiate between magnetite produced by the body's own cells and magnetite absorbed from airborne pollution, the natural forms being jagged and crystalline, while magnetite pollution occurs as rounded nanoparticles. Potentially a human health hazard, airborne magnetite is a result of pollution (specifically combustion). These nanoparticles can travel to the brain via the olfactory nerve, increasing the concentration of magnetite in the brain. In some brain samples, the nanoparticle pollution outnumbers the natural particles by as much as 100:1, and such pollution-borne magnetite particles may be linked to abnormal neural deterioration. In one study, the characteristic nanoparticles were found in the brains of 37 people: 29 of these, aged 3 to 85, had lived and died in Mexico City, a significant air pollution hotspot. Some of the further eight, aged 62 to 92, from Manchester, England, had died with varying severities of neurodegenerative diseases. Such particles could conceivably contribute to diseases like Alzheimer's disease. Though a causal link has not yet been established, laboratory studies suggest that iron oxides such as magnetite are a component of protein plaques in the brain. Such plaques have been linked to Alzheimer's disease.

Increased iron levels, specifically magnetic iron, have been found in portions of the brain in Alzheimer's patients. Monitoring changes in iron concentrations may make it possible to detect the loss of neurons and the development of neurodegenerative diseases prior to the onset of symptoms due to the relationship between magnetite and ferritin. In tissue, magnetite and ferritin can produce small magnetic fields which will interact with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) creating contrast. Huntington patients have not shown increased magnetite levels; however, high levels have been found in study mice.

Applications
Due to its high iron content, magnetite has long been a major iron ore. It is reduced in blast furnaces to pig iron or sponge iron for conversion to steel.

Magnetic recording
Audio recording using magnetic acetate tape was developed in the 1930s. The German magnetophon first utilized magnetite powder that BASF coated onto cellulose acetate before soon switching to gamma ferric oxide for its superior morphology. Following World War II, 3M Company continued work on the German design. In 1946, the 3M researchers found they could also improve their own magnetite-based paper tape, which utilized powders of cubic crystals, by replacing the magnetite with needle-shaped particles of gamma ferric oxide (γ-Fe2O3).

Catalysis
Approximately 2–3% of the world's energy budget is allocated to the Haber Process for nitrogen fixation, which relies on magnetite-derived catalysts. The industrial catalyst is obtained from finely ground iron powder, which is usually obtained by reduction of high-purity magnetite. The pulverized iron metal is burnt (oxidized) to give magnetite or wüstite of a defined particle size. The magnetite (or wüstite) particles are then partially reduced, removing some of the oxygen in the process. The resulting catalyst particles consist of a core of magnetite, encased in a shell of wüstite, which in turn is surrounded by an outer shell of iron metal. The catalyst maintains most of its bulk volume during the reduction, resulting in a highly porous high-surface-area material, which enhances its effectiveness as a catalyst.

Magnetite nanoparticles
Magnetite micro- and nanoparticles are used in a variety of applications, from biomedical to environmental. One use is in water purification: in high gradient magnetic separation, magnetite nanoparticles introduced into contaminated water will bind to the suspended particles (solids, bacteria, or plankton, for example) and settle to the bottom of the fluid, allowing the contaminants to be removed and the magnetite particles to be recycled and reused. This method works with radioactive and carcinogenic particles as well, making it an important cleanup tool in the case of heavy metals introduced into water systems.

Another application of magnetic nanoparticles is in the creation of ferrofluids. These are used in several ways. Ferrofluids can be used for targeted drug delivery in the human body. The magnetization of the particles bound with drug molecules allows "magnetic dragging" of the solution to the desired area of the body. This would allow the treatment of only a small area of the body, rather than the body as a whole, and could be highly useful in cancer treatment, among other things. Ferrofluids are also used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology.

Coal mining industry
For the separation of coal from waste, dense medium baths were used. This technique employed the difference in densities between coal (1.3–1.4 tonnes per m3) and shales (2.2–2.4 tonnes per m3). In a medium with intermediate density (water with magnetite), stones sank and coal floated.

Magnetene
Magnetene is a two-dimensional flat sheet of magnetite noted for its ultra-low-friction properties.

title: Magnetite


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Talk:John Schlesinger

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John Schlesinger died today, will someone add him to the front page?

 * What did he die from? Would you put it on the article if you know ( or just everybody who knows ). webkid 20:26 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * Can we get a citation for the "implicitly gay" main characters in Marathon Man, please? I think that statement is kind of stretch... 90.136.129.43 (talk) 23:56, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

 * For that matter, Buck and Rizzo were far from explicitly gay. We need a cite from Herlihy or Salt or JS (or all of 'em) as well. — HarringtonSmith (talk) 00:03, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

If memory serves, there is a citation for Marathon Man to be found in Vitto Russo's The Celuloid Closet. I believe he cites changes made to the original script. Plus, if you've seen the movie it's perfectly obvious that the Roy Schieder character was carrying on an affair with his CIA handler. Really all you have to do is look. Theonemacduff (talk) 06:59, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

New "Sexuality" section
Do we really need these anecdotes about his sexuality? Do they contribute to the discussion of his work? Would they be included if he were straight? There's more discussion about his difficulty in finding a sex partner in a bath house than about his Oscar for Best Director or his Best Picture-winning picture. — HarringtonSmith (talk) 13:23, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I quite agree, I don't see why his sexuality has to be addressed through anecdotes. Nor do I see the relevance of Alan Bennett to this section. Schlesinger had several long term partners in any case, the emphasis on the bath house story is an odious character stain.Scotchegg (talk) 22:31, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed. This is not the Enquirer; his sexuality should not be made into a punchline. Prayer for the wild at heart (talk) 13:30, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Another one for the filmography
A short film made for the BBC’s topical magazine Tonight, Song of the Valley [1957] is not strictly a documentary. Showing a man’s reminiscences of home as he is escorted to prison, it is set to Dorothy Squires’ ‘Song of the Valley’ and though it is dramatised, it portrays a working-class Yorkshire community in much the same style as documentaries being produced by directors like Denis Mitchell in this period.

The use of the streets and landscapes of Yorkshire certainly correspond to John Grierson’s oft-used definition of documentary as a “creative treatment of actuality” and in this pioneering period experimental formats were regularly used with little attention to distinctions between genres. What Song of the Valley best shows is the kind of short, beautifully made film that was regularly being produced for magazine style programmes. Schlesinger of course would later make the transition from television to film, where he would become one of Britain’s most well-known directors. Song of the Valley is included on the forthcoming DVD box set Visions of Change Volume 1: BBC 1951-1967. cassandra — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cassandrathesceptic (talk • contribs) 12:37, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

title: Talk:John Schlesinger