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Major Taylor

Marshall Walter "Major" Taylor (November 26, 1878 – June 21, 1932) was an American professional cyclist. Even by modern cycling standards, Taylor could be considered the greatest American sprinter of all time.

He was born and raised in Indianapolis, where he worked in bicycle shops and began racing multiple distances in the track and road disciplines of cycling. As a teenager, he moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, with his employer/coach/mentor and continued his successful amateur career, which included breaking track records.

Taylor turned professional in 1896, at the age of 18, living in cities on the East Coast and participating in multiple track events including six-day races. He moved his focus to the sprint event in 1897, competing in a national racing circuit, winning many races and gaining popularity with the public. In 1898 and 1899, he set numerous world records in race distances ranging from the quarter-mile (0.25 mi) to the two-mile (2 mi).

Taylor won the 1-mile sprint event at the 1899 world track championships to become the first African American to achieve the level of cycling world champion and the second Black athlete to win a world championship in any sport (following Canadian boxer George Dixon, 1890 ). Taylor was also a national sprint champion in 1899 and 1900. He raced in the U.S., Europe and Australia from 1901 to 1904, beating the world's best riders. After a $2 1/2$-year hiatus, he made a comeback in 1907–1909, before retiring at age 32 to his home in Worcester in 1910.

Towards the end of his life Taylor faced severe financial difficulties. He spent the final two years of his life in Chicago, Illinois, where he died of a heart attack in 1932. Throughout his career he challenged the racial prejudice he encountered on and off the track and became a pioneering role model for other athletes facing racial discrimination. Several cycling clubs, trails, and events in the U.S. have been named in his honor, as well as the Major Taylor Velodrome in Indianapolis and Major Taylor Boulevard in Worcester. Other tributes include memorials and historic markers in Worcester, Indianapolis, and at his gravesite in Chicago. He has also been memorialized in film, music and fashion.

Early life
Marshall Walter Taylor was the son of Gilbert Taylor, a Civil War veteran, and Saphronia Kelter Taylor. His parents migrated from Louisville, Kentucky, and settled on a farm in Bucktown, a rural area on the western edge of Indianapolis, Indiana. Taylor, who was born on November 26, 1878, in Indianapolis was one of eight children in the family that included five girls and three boys. Around 1887, his father began working in Indianapolis as a coachman for a wealthy white family named Southard.

When Taylor was a child, he occasionally accompanied his father to work. Taylor soon became a close friend of the Southards' son, Daniel, who was the same age. Approximately from the age of 8 until he was about 12, Taylor lived with the family and along with Daniel was tutored at their home. Taylor's living arrangement with the Southards provided him with more advantages than his parents could provide; however, this period of his life abruptly ended when the Southards moved to Chicago. Taylor, who remained in Indianapolis, returned to live at his parents' home and "was soon thrust into the real world."

The Southards provided Taylor with his first bicycle. By 1891 or early 1892, he had become such an expert trick rider that Tom Hay, an Indianapolis bicycle shop owner, hired him to perform bicycle stunts in front of the Hay and Willits bicycle shop. Taylor earned $6 a week for cleaning the shop and performing the stunts, plus a free bicycle worth $35. It is likely that Taylor received his nickname of "Major" because he performed the cycling stunts wearing a military uniform.

Taylor left the Hay and Willits shop in 1892 or early 1893 to take a job as head trainer for Harry T. Hearsey's bicycle shop in Indianapolis, teaching local residents how to ride. While working at Hearsey's shop, Taylor got to know Louis D. "Birdie" Munger, a former high-wheel bicycle racer who owned the Munger Cycle Manufacturing Company, a racing bicycle factory in Indianapolis. (Munger later established the Worcester Cycle Manufacturing Company factory in Worcester, Massachusetts.) With a shared interest in bicycle racing, the two became friends and Munger hired the teenaged Taylor to work odd jobs that included sending Taylor to area high schools and colleges to train cyclists and promote Munger's line of racing bicycles. Munger had also "made up his mind to make Taylor a champion" and coached him to become a racer.

Early years and East Coast move
Although he competed in both road and track races during his amateur career, Taylor excelled in the track sprints, especially the 1 mi race. The first cycling race Taylor won was a 10 mi amateur event in Indianapolis in 1890. He received a 15-minute handicap (head start) in the road race because of his young age. Taylor subsequently traveled to Peoria, Illinois, to compete in another meet, finishing in third place in the under-16 age category.

Taylor encountered racial prejudice throughout his racing career from some of his competitors. In addition, some local track owners feared that other cyclists would refuse to compete if Taylor was present for a bicycle race and banned him from their tracks. In 1893, for example, after 15-year-old Taylor beat a one-mile amateur track record, he was "hooted" and then barred from the track. Taylor joined the See-Saw Cycling Club, which was formed by black cyclists of Indianapolis who were unable to join the local all-white Zig-Zag Cycling Club.

Major Taylor won his first significant cycling competition on June 30, 1895, when he was the only rider to finish a grueling 75 mi road race near his hometown of Indianapolis. During the race Taylor received threats from his white competitors, who did not know that he had entered the event until the start of the race. A few days later, on July 4, 1895, Taylor won a ten-mile road race in Indianapolis that made him eligible to compete at the national championships for Black racers in Chicago. Later that summer, he won the ten-mile championship race in Chicago by ten lengths and set a new record for Black cyclists of 27:32.

In 1895, Taylor and Munger relocated from Indianapolis to Worcester. At that time it was a center of the U.S. bicycle industry that included half a dozen factories and thirty bicycle shops. Munger, who was Taylor's employer, lifelong friend, and mentor, had decided to move his bicycle manufacturing business to the state of Massachusetts, which was also a more tolerant area of the country.

Munger and Charles Boyd, a business partner, established the Worcester Cycle Manufacturing Company with factories in Worcester, and Middletown, Connecticut. For Taylor, who continued to work for Munger as a bicycle mechanic and messenger between the company's two factory locations, the move to the East Coast offered "higher visibility, larger crowds, increased sponsorship dollars, and greater access to world-class cycling venues." After Taylor's relocation to Massachusetts, he joined the all-Black Albion Cycling Club in 1895 and trained at YMCA in Worcester. Taylor is first mentioned in The New York Times on September 26, 1895, as a competitor in the Citizen Handicap event, a ten-mile race on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, New York. Taylor raced with a 1:30 handicap in a field of 200 competitors that included nine scratch riders.

In 1896, Taylor entered numerous races in the Northeastern states of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut. After winning a ten-mile road race in Worcester, Taylor competed in the 25 mi Irvington–Millburn race in New Jersey, also known as the Derby of the East. Within half a mile (0.5 mi) of the finish line, someone startled Taylor by tossing ice water into his face and he finished in 23rd place. Taylor's first major East Coast race was in a League of American Wheelmen (LAW) one-mile contest in New Haven, Connecticut, where he started in last place but won the event. In August 1896, Taylor made a trip to Indianapolis, where he set an unofficial new track record of 2:11 $1/5$ for a distance of one mile at the Capital City velodrome, beating Walter Sanger's official track record of 2:19 $2/5$. (Taylor could not compete with Sanger, a professional racer, in a head-to-head contest because he was still an amateur.) Taylor's final amateur race took place on November 26, 1896, in the 25-mile Tatum Handicap at Jamaica, New York. Taylor finished the race in 14th place.

1896: First races
Taylor turned professional in 1896, at the age of eighteen, and soon emerged as the "most formidable racer in America." Taylor's first professional race took place in front of 5,000 spectators on December 5, 1896. He competed in a half-mile handicap event on an indoor track at New York City's Madison Square Garden II on the opening day of a multi-day event. Although the main event was a six-day race from December 6–12, other contests in shorter distances were held on December 5 to entertain the crowd. These races included the half-mile handicap for professionals in which Taylor competed, a half-mile race between Jay Eaton and Teddy Goodman, and a half-mile scratch race. In addition, there were half-mile scratch and handicap races for amateurs.

Taylor began the half-mile handicap race on December 5, with a 35 yd advantage over the scratch racers. He beat a field of competitors that included Tom Cooper, Philadelphia's A.C. Meixwell, and scratch rider Eddie C. Bald, who represented New York's Syracuse, and rode a Barnes bicycle. Taylor won the race riding Munger's "Birdie Special" bicycle and beat Bald by 20 yd in a sprint to the finish.

From December 6–12, 1896, Taylor participated as one of 28 competitors in a six-day event at Madison Square Garden. Although Taylor had just become a professional, he had achieved enough notoriety, possibly because of his stunning win on December 5, to be listed among the "American contestants" that also included A.A. Hansen (the Minneapolis "rainmaker") and Teddy Goodman. In addition, many "experts from abroad" participated in the meet such as Switzerland's Albert Schock, Germany's Frank J. Waller, Frank Forster, and Ed von Hoeg, and Canada's Burns W. Pierce. Several countries were represented in the event, including Scotland, Wales, France, England, and Denmark.

As the fascination with six-day races spread across the Atlantic from its origins in the United Kingdom, their appeal to base instincts attracted large crowds. The more spectators who paid at the gate, the bigger the prizes, which provided riders with the incentive to stay awake–or be kept awake–in order to ride the greatest distance. To prepare for the event, Taylor went to Brooklyn, where he became a member of the South Brooklyn Wheelmen. An estimated crowd of 6,000 spectators attended the final day of the Madison Square Garden races in December 1896. During these long, grueling races, riders suffered delusions and hallucinations, which may have been caused by exhaustion, lack of sleep, or perhaps use of drugs.

Madison Square Garden's six-day event in 1896 was the longest race Taylor had ever entered. After Taylor refused to continue racing on the final day of the long-distance competition, exhausted from physical exertion and lack of sleep, a Bearnings reporter overheard him comment: "I cannot go on with safety, for there is a man chasing me around the ring with a knife in his hand." Taylor completed a total of 1732 mi in 142 hours of racing to finish in eighth place. Teddy Hale, the race winner, completed 1910 mi and took home $5,000 in prize money. Taylor never competed in another race that long.

After Taylor's move to the East Coast in 1896, he initially lived in Worcester, where he worked for Munger, and in Middletown, the site of another of Munger's cycle factories. Taylor also lived in other eastern cities, such as South Brooklyn, where he once trained, but it is not known how long he still resided in New York after he became a professional racer.

1897–1898: Fame and records
Taylor initially raced for Munger's Worcester Cycle Manufacturing Company. After the company went into receivership in 1897 he joined other racing teams. Taylor competed in his first full year on the professional racing circuit in 1897. Early in the season, at the Bostonian Cycle Club's "Blue Ribbon Meet" on May 19, 1897, Taylor rode a Comet bicycle to win first place in the one-mile open professional race. On June 26, he won a quarter-mile (0.25 mi) race at the track at Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. Taylor also beat Eddie Bald in a one-mile race in Reading, Pennsylvania, but finished fourth in the prestigious LAW convention in Philadelphia.

As a professional racer Taylor continued to experience racial prejudice as a black cyclist in a white-dominated sport. In November and December 1897, when the circuit extended to the racially-segregated South, local race promoters refused to let Taylor compete because he was black. Taylor returned to Massachusetts for the remainder of the season and Eddie Bald became the American sprint champion in 1897. Despite the obstacles, Taylor was determined to race.

In the early years of his professional racing career, Taylor's reputation continued to increase as he competed in and won more races. Newspapers began referring to him as the "Worcester Whirlwind," the "Black Cyclone," the "Ebony Flyer," the "Colored Cyclone," and the "Black Zimmerman," among other nicknames. He also gained popularity among the spectators. One of his fans was President Theodore Roosevelt who kept track of Taylor throughout his seventeen-year racing career.

Early in the 1898 racing season Taylor beat Bald at Manhattan Beach, but lost to Eddie McDuffie at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a 30 mi paced race. On July 17 at Philadelphia, Taylor won his biggest victories of the season: first place in the one-mile championship and second place in the one-mile handicap races. On August 27, in a head-to-head race with Jimmy Michael of Wales, Taylor set a new world record of 1:41 $2/5$ for a one-mile paced match and beat the Welsh racer to the finish by 20 yd.

Taylor was among several top cyclists who could claim the national championship in 1898; however, scoring variations and the formation of a new cycling league that year "clouded" his claim to the title. Early in the year a group of professional racers that included Taylor had left the LAW to join a rival group, the American Racing Cyclists' Union (ARCU), and its professional racing group, the National Cycling Association (NCA). During the ARCU sprint championship in St. Louis and Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Taylor, who was a devout Baptist, refused to compete for religious reasons in the finals of the championship races because they were held on a Sunday. As a result of Taylor's decision not to race in the finals at Cape Girardeau, the ARCU suspended him from membership. Taylor petitioned the LAW for reinstatement in 1898 and was accepted, but Tom Butler, who had remained a LAW member after the break-up, was declared the League's champion that year.

During 1898–99, at the peak of his cycling career, Taylor established seven world records; the quarter-mile, the one-third-mile (0.33 mi), the half-mile, the two-thirds-mile (0.66 mi), the three-quarters-mile (0.75 mi), the one-mile, and the two-mile (2 mi) distances. His one-mile world record of 1:41 from a standing start stood for 28 years.

1899: World sprint champion
At the 1899 world championships in Montreal, Canada, Taylor won the one-mile sprint, to become the first African American to win a world championship in cycling. Taylor was the second black athlete, after Canadian bantamweight boxer George Dixon of Boston, to win a world championship in any sport. For decades he was the only black athlete to be a world champion in cycling. Taylor won the one-mile world championship sprint in a close finish a few feet ahead of Frenchman Courbe d'Outrelon and American Tom Butler. In addition, Taylor placed second in the two-mile championship sprint at Montreal behind Charles McCarthy and won the half-mile championship race. Because the finals were held on Sundays, when Taylor refused to compete for religious reasons, he did not compete in another world championship contest until 1909 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Taylor lost in a preliminary heat at Copenhagen and did not compete in the finals.

After Taylor's world championship win in 1899, many claimed that the event "had been a farce, because Taylor had not competed against the strongest riders." World cycling's governing body, the International Cycling Association (replaced with the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) in 1900), did not allow NCA racers to compete at the world championships in Montreal. As a result, Taylor's accomplishments were somewhat diminished. Because the rival organizations (LAW and the NCA) would not recognize each other, two American champions were crowned in 1899. Tom Cooper was the NCA champion and Taylor was the LAW champion.

In addition to the world championship wins in the one-mile and two-mile distances at Montreal and the LAW Championship, which he won on points, Taylor's victories in 1899 included twenty-two first-place finishes in major championship races around the U.S. Taylor's record-setting times were impossible to dismiss. No other rider had matched the "range and variety" of his winning performances, which made him an international celebrity. In 1899, Taylor made several unsuccessful attempts to recapture his world record for a one-mile paced distance in two "strenuous record-breaking campaigns," before he finally achieved the new world record of 1:19 in November to regain the title of "the fastest man in the world."

For the 1899 racing season, Taylor went to Syracuse and with Munger's assistance he signed a contract to race for the E. C. Stearns Company. Taylor, Munger, and Harry Sager, who was Taylor's bicycle parts sponsor, initially planned to negotiate a deal with the Olive Wheel Company; however, the men were able to work out a more lucrative contract with Stearns, who agreed to build Taylor's bicycles using a chainless gear mechanism that Sanger had designed. The bicycles only weighed about 20 lb and had an 88 in gear for sprinting and a 120 in gear for longer, paced runs. Stearns "also agreed to build Taylor a revolutionary steam-powered pacing tandem, behind which he could attack world records and challenge the leading exponents of paced racing." Although the tandem was temperamental, it helped Taylor break Eddie McDuffie's one-mile world record on November 15, 1899, with a time of 1:19 at a speed of 45.56 mph. In late 1899, Taylor signed a contract to race with the Iver Johnson's Arms & Cycle Works team of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, during the 1900 racing season.

1900: American sprint champion
In 1900, when the LAW no longer governed professional bicycle races in the U.S., Taylor's future as a professional racer was in jeopardy. Fortunately, the ARCU and the NCA, who had banned Taylor from competing in their leagues, readmitted him after payment of a $500 fine. Taylor won the American sprint championship on points in 1900. He also beat Tom Cooper, the 1899 NCA champion, in a head-to-head match in a one-mile race at Madison Square Garden in front of 50,000 to 60,000 spectators. In addition, Taylor set world records in the half-mile and two-thirds-mile sprints and raced indoors using a "home trainer" in head-to-head competitions with other riders as a vaudeville act. Taylor eventually settled in Worcester, where he purchased a home on Hobson Street in 1900.

1901–1904: Europe and Australia
Following his record-setting successes in the U.S. and Canada, Taylor agreed to a European tour. In 1901, Taylor made his first trip to Europe, but returned to compete in the U.S. after the conclusion of the European spring racing season. During his European tour Taylor still refused to race on Sundays, when most of the finals were held, because of his religious convictions. It was reported that Taylor took a Bible with him when he travelled and began each race with a silent prayer because of his religious beliefs. Taylor was popular among the European race fans and news reporters: "Everywhere he went he was mobbed, talked about, or written up." In 1901, Taylor won 18 of the 24 European races he entered, notching up 42 victories when the individual heats are counted. A highlight of Taylor's European tour in 1901 was the two match races with French champion Edmond Jacquelin at the Parc des Princes in Paris, the winner in each decided over the best of three heats. Jacquelin won the first match, on May 16, two heats to nil, a wheel length sealing the win in the first heat, two lengths the gap in the second. Taylor triumphed in the second match, on May 27, two heats to nil, four lengths his margin of victory in the first heat, three the gap in the second.

Taylor also participated in a European tour in 1902, when he entered 57 races and won 40 of them to defeat the champions of Germany, England, and France. In addition to racing in Europe, Taylor also competed in Australia and New Zealand in 1903 and 1904. In February 1903, for example, Taylor, lured by a £1,200 appearance fee and a world record 1st prize of £750, competed in the inaugural Sydney Thousand handicap. His fee the next year hit £2,000. During his world tour in 1903, Taylor earned prize money estimated at $35,000 ($0 in 2015 chained dollars).

1907–1910: Later years
Following a collapse from the mental and physical strain of professional competition, Taylor took a $2 1/2$-year hiatus from cycling between 1904 and 1906, before returning to race in France. He set two world records in Paris in 1907 for the half-mile standing start at 0:42 $1/5$ and the quarter-mile standing start at 0:25 $2/5$. Taylor also returned to Europe for the racing season in 1908 and in 1909. He finally broke his long-standing decision to avoid Sunday races in 1909 when he was nearing the end of his racing career. Taylor's last professional race took place on October 10, 1909, in Roanne, France, in a match race against French world champion Charles Dupré. Taylor won the race, but he did not return to Europe for the 1910 season and retired from competitive cycling.

Taylor was still breaking records in 1908, but his age was starting to "creep up on him." He retired from racing in 1910 at the age of 32. When Taylor returned to his home in Worcester at the end of his racing career, his estimated net worth was $75,000 ($0 in 2015 chained dollars) to $100,000 ($0 in 2015 chained dollars). Taylor won his final competition, an "old-timers race" among former professional racers, in New Jersey in September 1917.

Racism in cycling
As Taylor gained notoriety as an amateur and a professional, he did not escape racial segregation. In 1894, the LAW changed its bylaws to exclude blacks from membership; however, it did permit them to compete in its races. Although Taylor's cycling was greatly celebrated abroad, particularly in France, his career was still restricted by racism, particularly in the Southern U.S., where some local promoters would not permit Taylor to compete against white cyclists. Some restaurants and hotels also refused to serve him or provide him lodging.

Taylor asserted in his autobiography that prominent bicycle racers of his era often cooperated to defeat him, such as the Butler brothers (Nat and Tom) were accused of doing in the one-mile world championship race at Montreal in 1899. At the LAW races in Boston, shortly after Taylor had won the world championship, he accused the entire field that included Tom Cooper and Eddie Bald, among others for fouling him. Taylor complained after the event that he had been "bumped, jostled, and elbowed until I was sorely tried." Racing promoter William A. Brady, who was also Taylor's manager, chastised the other riders for their "rough treatment" of Taylor during the race.

While some of Taylor's fellow racers refused to compete with him, others resorted to intimidation, verbal insults, and threats to physically harm him. While racing in Savannah, Georgia, in the Winter of 1898, he received a written threat saying "Clear out if you value your life"; the previous day Taylor had challenged three riders together to a race after one of them had said they "didn't pace niggers." Taylor recalled that ice water had been thrown at him during races and nails were scattered in front of his wheels. Taylor further stated in his autobiography that he had been elbowed and "pocketed" (boxed in) by other riders to prevent him from sprinting to the front of the pack, a tactic at which he was so successful.

Taylor's competitors also tried to injure him. One incident occurred after the one-mile Massachusetts Open race at Taunton on September 23, 1897; at the conclusion of the race, William Becker, who placed third behind Taylor in second place, tackled Taylor on the race track and choked him into unconsciousness. Becker, who claimed that Taylor had crowded him during the race, was temporarily suspended while the incident was investigated. Becker received a $50 fine as punishment for his actions, but was reinstated and allowed to continue racing. In another incident, which occurred in February 1904, when Taylor was competing in Australia, he was seriously injured on the final turn of a race when fellow competitor Iver Lawson veered his bicycle toward Taylor and collided with his front wheel. Taylor crashed and lay unconscious on the track before he was taken to a local hospital and later made a full recovery. Lawson was suspended from racing anywhere in the world for a year as a result of his actions.

Taylor explained that he included details of these incidents in his autobiography, along with his comments about his experiences, to serve as an inspiration for other African American athletes trying to overcome racial prejudice and discriminatory treatment in sports. Taylor cited exhaustion as well as the physical and mental strain caused by the racial prejudice he experienced on and off the track as his reasons for retiring from competitive cycling in 1910. His advice to African American youths wishing to emulate him straightforward was that although bicycle racing had been the appropriate route to success for him, he would not recommend it in general. He suggested that individuals "practice clean living, fair play and good sportsmanship" and develop their best talent with a strong character, significant willpower, and "physical courage." Despite many obstacles, Taylor rose to the top of his sport and became "one of the dominant athletes of his era."

Retirement and death
After retiring from competition, Taylor applied to Worcester Polytechnic Institute to study engineering, despite the fact that he did not have a high school diploma, but he was denied admission and took up various business ventures.

Nearly twenty years after his retirement, Taylor wrote and self-published his autobiography, The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World: The Story of a Colored Boy's Indomitable Courage and Success Against Great Odds: An Autobiography (1928). According to his book, Taylor was upbeat about his retirement: "I felt I had my day, and a wonderful day it was too." Taylor also claimed he had no regrets and "no animosity toward any man," but his autobiography included hints of bitterness in regard to his treatment as a competitor: "I always played the game fairly and tried my hardest, although I was not always given a square deal or anything like it."

By 1930 Taylor had experienced severe financial difficulties from bad investments (including self-publishing his autobiography), the stock market crash, and businesses that proved unsuccessful. Taylor's home in Worcester and some of the family's personal property were sold to pay off debts. He also suffered from persistent ill health in his later years.

Little is known of Taylor's life after the failure of his marriage and his move to Chicago around 1930. Taylor spent the final two years of his life in poverty, selling copies of his autobiography to earn a meagre income and residing at YMCA Hotel in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood.

In March 1932, Taylor suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized in the Provident Hospital. After an unsuccessful heart operation, he was moved to Cook County Hospital's charity ward in April, where he died on June 21, at age 53. The official cause on his death certificate is "nephrosclerosis and hypertension," contributed by "Chronic myocarditis". His wife and daughter, who survived him, did not immediately learn of his death and no one claimed his remains. He was initially buried at Mount Glenwood Cemetery in Thornton Township, Cook County, near Chicago, in an unmarked pauper's grave. In 1948, a group of former professional bicycle racers used funds donated by Frank W. Schwinn, owner of the Schwinn Bicycle Co. at that time, to organize the exhumation and reburial of Taylor's remains in a more prominent location at the cemetery. The plaque at the grave reads: "World's champion bicycle racer who came up the hard way without hatred in his heart, an honest, courageous and God-fearing, clean-living gentlemanly athlete. A credit to his race who always gave out his best. Gone but not forgotten."

Legacy
Taylor's legacy lies in his willingness to challenge racial prejudice as an African American athlete in the white-dominated sport of cycling. He was also hailed as a sports hero in France and Australia. Taylor, who became a role model for other athletes facing racial prejudice and discrimination, was "the first great black celebrity athlete" and a pioneer in his efforts to challenge segregation in sports. He also paved the way for others facing similar circumstances. Taylor explained in his autobiography that he had no other African Americans to offer him advice and "therefore had to blaze my own trail."

Honors and tributes
Taylor's legacy remained largely unknown until 1982, when the Major Taylor Velodrome in Indianapolis opened for the city's hosting of the U.S. Olympic Festival. Annual events taking place in the velodrome or the wider Indy Cycloplex named in honor of Taylor include the Major Taylor Racing League track series, and from 2015, the Major Taylor Cross Cup second division UCI cyclo-cross event. Taylor was posthumously inducted into the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame in 1989. In 1996 and 1997, Taylor was posthumously awarded with the USA Cycling Korbel Lifetime Achievement Award and the Massachusetts Hall of Black Achievement, respectively. In 2002, he was one of the nine track cyclists inducted into the UCI Hall of Fame, created to commemorate 100 years of the Paris–Roubaix one-day road race and the inauguration of the World Cycling Centre. In 2003, he was named a Sports Ethics Fellow by the Institute for International Sport. During the 2005 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles, a Peugeot bicycle that Taylor had owned, and then was donated to the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame, was put on display inside the ADT Event Center. In 2009, a state historical marker was installed as a tribute to Taylor near the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis, where the Capital City track once stood, and where he had set an unofficial track record in 1896. In 2018, he was honored with a special tribute award at the International Athletic Association's Jesse Owens Awards held at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

In 1998, in Taylor's adopted hometown of Worcester, where he lived for 35 years, the Major Taylor Association was formed by locals with the goal of erecting a permanent memorial to Taylor outside the Worcester Public Library and telling his story. On July 24, 2006, the city renamed the Worcester Center Boulevard, a high-traffic downtown street, to Major Taylor Boulevard. At the same time, funding for the memorial was secured with the Massachusetts Legislature approving $205,000, signed by governor Mitt Romney. The opening ceremony took place on May 21, 2008, attended by Tour de France winner Greg LeMond. The memorial features a bronze sculpture of Taylor surrounded by granite was created by Antonio Tobias Mendez, who was chosen from over more than 60 others. At the grand opening of Worcester's Applebee's restaurant in 2000, Taylor was selected as their "hometown hero", and has a display of his memorabilia. In 2002, the Educational Association of Worcester and the Worcester Public Schools, together with the Major Taylor Association, developed a curriculum guide on Taylor, which has since been expanded and used in schools nationwide. Since 2003, Worcester has hosted the annual "George Street Bike Challenge for Major Taylor" amateur hillclimb event.

The first of the many cycling clubs named in Taylor's honor was organized in Columbus, Ohio, in 1979. In 2008, a number of these clubs joined with other African-American clubs to form the National Brotherhood of Cyclists (NBC), a nonprofit organization that aims to further diversity in cycling. The Major Taylor Trail, a 6 mi rail trail that navigates through South Side, Chicago, opened in 2007. Eleven years later, Chicagoan artist Bernard Williams oversaw the creation of a 400 ft community mural honoring Taylor along the metal siding of the Little Calumet River bridge, which the trail crosses. Taylor is also celebrated along the Alum Creek Greenway Trail in Columbus, Ohio. In 2009, the Cascade Bicycle Club community organization of Washington state launched The Major Taylor Project, a youth cycling program.

A small museum devoted to Taylor opened in 2021 in the former Worcester County Courthouse. Taylor's great-granddaughter attended the dedication. A mural was dedicated in Indianapolis, in September 2021, to honor his legacy.

In popular culture
Actor Philip Morris portrayed Taylor in the 1992 television mini-series Tracks of Glory. Blues musician Otis Taylor (no relation) recorded "He Never Raced on Sunday," a song about Taylor for his 2004 album Double V. In 2007, Nike produced the Major Taylor "premium" collection of their most iconic sneakers in a light brown/neon yellow/white colorway. In the same year, SOMA Fabrications began making a set of bicycle handlebars called the Major Taylor Bar, which is a replica of 1930s drop handlebar that was named for Taylor. Dewshane Williams portrayed Taylor in the 2013 episode of television drama series Murdoch Mysteries, "Tour de Murdoch".

On April 12, 2018, at a private exhibition in the TheTimesCenter in New York City, cognac brand Hennessy announced that Taylor would become the subject of the company's fifth instalment of their "Wild Rabbit" advertising campaign, created with agency Droga5, which through a series of partnerships tells inspirational the stories of culturally influential people, with the slogan "Never stop. Never settle." The event included the unveiling some of the partnerships including Kadir Nelson's bronze sculpture of Taylor, The Major. The campaign launched to the public with a television commercial during the 2018 NBA Finals in April. The Major directed by Derek Cianfrance, which has cuts in various lengths, features a voiceover from rapper Nas and recreates Taylor racing in an indoor velodrome. The 30-second cut was shown during third and fourth quarters of the Super Bowl LIII in February 2019, Hennessy's first appearance in a Super Bowl commercial. On April 22, 2018, ESPN premiered the Hennessy-sponsored television documentary short The Six Day Race: The Story of Marshall "Major" Taylor; directed by Colin Barnicle, it features interviews with contemporary African-American athletes, road cyclist Ayesha McGowan and BMX rider Nigel Sylvester.

In 2019, two Taylor-inspired brand collaborations were released, with part of the proceeds going to the NBC. Kerby Jean-Raymond, under his haute couture fashion label Pyer Moss, designed a five-piece collection "MMT 140", and Affinity Cycles made limited-run of a modern replica Taylor-era track bicycle. In partnership with the NBC, a series of tribute bicycle rides took place across the U.S. in November and December marking Taylor's birth date, and the creation of the $25,000 "MMT Higher Education Scholarship", awarded to one winner with the best "Never stop. Never settle." story. Also in 2019, Taylor's name and likeness was licensed to Major Taylor Cycling Wear of Columbus Ohio to manufacture and distribute official sports- and cycling-wear bearing the image of Major Taylor.

Graphic novel publisher Drawn and Quarterly planned to publish a biography of Taylor by comic artist Frederick Noland in 2023.

Marriage and family
Taylor's wife, Daisy Victoria Morris, was born on January 28, 1876, in Hudson, New York. Taylor married Morris in Ansonia, Connecticut, on March 21, 1902. Taylor met her around 1900 when she was living in Worcester, with her aunt and uncle.

While in Australia in 1904, Taylor and his wife had their only child, a daughter that they named Rita Sydney in honor of Sydney, where she was born on May 11. When Taylor, his wife, and daughter were not traveling, they lived in a large home on Hobson Avenue in Worcester that Taylor had purchased in 1900.

After his retirement from racing in 1910 and the failure of subsequent business ventures in the 1920s, Taylor and his wife became estranged. She left him in 1930 and moved to New York City. Around the same time Taylor left Worcester and moved to Chicago; he never saw his wife or daughter again.

Taylor's daughter, who graduated from the Sargent School of Culture in Boston in 1925 and the University of Chicago in 1936, taught physical education at West Virginia State University. She died in 2005 at age 101; her survivors include a son, Dallas C. Brown Jr., and his five children. In 1984, Taylor's daughter donated an extensive scrapbook collection on her father to the University of Pittsburgh Archives. The original scrapbooks were donated to the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites in 1988.

title: Major Taylor


text:
User:Dmp~enwiki

based Faversham, Kent, UK.

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

title: User:Dmp~enwiki


text:
Bluebeard (Vonnegut novel)

Bluebeard, the Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916–1988) is a 1987 novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut. It is told as a first-person narrative and describes the late years of fictional Abstract Expressionist painter Rabo Karabekian, who first appeared as a minor character in Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions (1973). Circumstances of the novel bear rough resemblance to the fairy tale of Bluebeard popularized by Charles Perrault. Karabekian mentions this relationship once in the novel.

Plot summary
At the opening of the book, the narrator, Rabo Karabekian, apologizes to the arriving guests: "I promised you an autobiography, but something went wrong in the kitchen..." He describes himself as a museum guard who answers questions from visitors coming to see his priceless collected art. He shares the lonely home with his live-in cook and her daughter, Celeste.

One afternoon, Circe Berman, a woman living nearby, wanders onto Karabekian's private beach. When he reaches out to greet her, she catches him by surprise with the forward statement "Tell me how your parents died." He tells her the story and proceeds to invite her back to his home for a drink. After a drink and supper, Karabekian invites her to stay with him, as Paul Slazinger, a friend of Karabekian does. After a time, he begins to find her charm "manipulative", as she typically gets her way. Mrs. Berman does not respect his abstract art collection, including works by Jackson Pollock. She explores every inch of Karabekian's home, constantly asking him questions. The only place that is off-limits to her is the potato barn.

The potato barn is the home of Karabekian's studio and holds his "secret". The barn has no windows, and Karabekian has gone through the trouble of nailing one end shut and immobilizing the other with six padlocks. The mystery of the potato barn has enticed collectors to make outrageous offers and to raise suspicions of stolen masterpieces. Upon help from Berman, Karabekian comes to a realization in his life, that he was merely afraid of people, and opens the painting in the potato barn to the public.

Characters

 * Rabo Karabekian — Karabekian is a 71-year-old, one-eyed, first-generation Armenian-American painter. He lives in a 19-room house on the waterfront of East Hampton, Long Island, which he has inherited from his second wife Edith.
 * Circe Berman - Circe selects Rabo's home as a place to research and write about working-class adolescents living with multi-millionaires. While living there she more or less takes charge of Rabo's life and tells him to start writing an autobiography, which he does. After she impulsively renovates Rabo's foyer without his permission—removing many of the things Rabo's dead wife had used to decorate it in doing so—the two get into a heated argument which results in her departure, although she soon returns and is accepted back. This is the most notable example of Circe's disregard for other people's privacy and personal space. Although Rabo does most of the things she wants him to, he will not tell her what is in the potato barn no matter how much she pressures him to do so. She is a well-published novelist under the pen name "Polly Madison." Her novels, although very popular, are criticized for tainting the world's youth.
 * Paul Slazinger - Slazinger is a poor, wounded World War II veteran. Though he owns his own home, he stays with Rabo and eats from his kitchen. He refuses permanent residence on the grounds that "he can only write at home". He has had eleven novels published, but is not in the league of Circe Berman. Circe is pretending not to be Polly Madison, so Paul looks down on her and condescendingly gives her writing advice.
 * Dan Gregory - Originally named Dan Gregorian before moving to America and changing his name. A magazine article estimates him to be the highest-paid artist in American history. That he is Armenian like Rabo's family causes Rabo's mother to believe he is a great man, an example of an Armenian who has become a success in America. She insists that her son write to "Gregorian", as she calls him, to ask for an apprenticeship. Rabo became "Gregorian's" apprentice at the age of 17. He is extremely pro-fascist and is obsessed with Benito Mussolini, whom he greatly admires. His high opinion of Mussolini results in him getting into arguments with such men as W.C. Fields and Al Jolson, who subsequently refuse to associate with him. He eventually goes to Italy to work directly for Mussolini during the Second World War. He is accepted by Mussolini, who welcomes the public support of such a famous artist, but is finally killed in battle by British troops.
 * Marilee Kemp - Marilee is Dan Gregory's mistress, who persuades Gregory to take Rabo as his apprentice. She eventually becomes Rabo's love interest and later the two of them are expelled from Gregory's studio when he catches them leaving the Museum of Modern Art together. They have a very brief affair which Marilee ends, claiming that Rabo is not the man she needed at the time. Through a series of events she becomes a rich countess in Italy.
 * Edith Taft - Edith is Rabo's second wife of twenty years.
 * Dorothy Roy - Dorothy is Rabo's first wife. She has left with their two boys, Terry and Henri.
 * Rabo's Parents - Rabo's parents are survivors of the Armenian genocide who are then tricked by a con man into buying a fake deed for a house in San Ignacio, California, where they move in order to create a better life. His father, having been a teacher in Turkey, ends up becoming a cobbler when they reach their new home. When the Great Depression hits the family falls on very hard times.
 * Allison White - She is Rabo's live-in cook, though he never refers to her as anything besides that until she becomes upset with him for never using her name. She has a daughter, Celeste, who also lives with them.

Major themes
A number of critics have suggested that the possibility of creating art with meaning is a major theme in Bluebeard. According to David Rampton in "Studies in Contemporary Fiction," Circe Berman's approaching Rabo with the challenge of making meaningful, moral art is Vonnegut himself directly addressing meaninglessness in art by asking for "committed art." Rampton also proposed that Vonnegut may be questioning the possibility of truly moral art by writing about the lack of morality in the lives of many artists. Critics have also said that meaningful art is Karabekian's way of battling his own demons. Donald Morse said that Karabekian's accomplishment in the novel is realising that "through self-acceptance, and the serious use of imagination and creativity, human beings can become reconciled to their weaknesses while still remaining outraged at human greed." Morse added that Karabekian's final masterpiece, "Now It's the Women's Turn," achieves the goal of meaningful art by developing a backstory for each of the 5,219 characters in the composition before painting it.

Other themes that critics have discussed are Survivor's syndrome, family, and relationships with women. One critic wrote that Rabo escapes the Survivor's syndrome that his parents suffered from by painting "Now It's the Women's Turn." It has also been said that Karabekian's mission in the narrative is to find a family that he feels a part of, which he achieves with the army and the Abstract Expressionism community. Lastly, women are certainly a theme in Bluebeard. New York Times reviewer Julian Moynahan said that Circe Berman sees Karabekian's main life struggle as strained relationships with women.

Literary significance and reception
Bluebeard received positive reviews from many critics. Some considered the novel a milestone in Vonnegut's career; Philadelphia Inquirer called it "Vonnegut at his edifying best," and the Chicago Tribune said it was "a major breakthrough for Vonnegut," and "a new and vital phase in his career." Newsday said it was "worth reading twice," and Atlanta Journal & Constitution wrote that "Bluebeard ranks with [Vonnegut's] best and goes one step beyond."

Bluebeard was also met with significantly negative reception. Julian Moynahan wrote in a New York Times book review that Bluebeard was a "minor achievement" and that Vonnegut "isn't moving ahead." In Library Journal, the novel is identified as "not among [Vonnegut's] best."

Style
There were several unique aspects of the style in which Vonnegut wrote Bluebeard. Donald Morse identified a difference between Bluebeard and other Vonnegut's novels, which was that the protagonist was happy and satisfied at the end of the narrative. Morse also said that Karabekian as a writer is very similar to Vonnegut as a writer, and that the criticism Circe Berman gives to Karabekian about his writing is a parallel to the issues critics have with Vonnegut's writing.

Paintings
In the novel, several of Karabekian's paintings are described in detail. The first is a photo-realistic painting of Dan Gregory's studio. The second is an abstract painting of a lost Arctic explorer and a charging polar bear. It consists of a white background with two strips of tape, one white, one orange. The third painting is of six deer and a hunter, titled "Hungarian Rhapsody Number Six" which later fell apart in storage at the Guggenheim Museum. The scene is represented by a greenish-orange background with six strips of brown tape for the deer on one side, and one strip of red tape on the opposite side for the hunter. His most famous, which once hung in the lobby of GEFFCo headquarters on Park Avenue, is titled "Windsor Blue Number Seventeen." The entire painting consisting of eight 8×8 panels hung side by side displays nothing but the paint by Sateen Dura-Luxe in the shade of the title of the work. However, the painting literally fell apart when the Sateen Dura-Luxe began to shred itself from the canvas upon which it was painted becoming Rabo Karabekian's biggest embarrassment as an abstract expressionist. These very panels upon which Windsor Blue used to cover fully became the canvases Karabekian would prime back to pure white and use for his last work locked within his potato barn.

The last painting is the secret in the potato barn. The painting is an enormous photo-realistic picture of Karabekian's experience of World War II where he and 5,219 other prisoners of war, Romani people, and concentration camp victims were dumped in a valley when the German forces realized that the war was lost. The painting, which becomes enormously successful as a tourist attraction, is meant to be the only painting that Karabekian created which contained "soul".

title: Bluebeard (Vonnegut novel)


text:
Ira Glass

Ira Jeffrey Glass (born March 3, 1959) is an American public radio personality. He is the host and producer of the radio and television series This American Life and has participated in other NPR programs, including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Talk of the Nation. His work in radio and television has won him awards, such as the Edward R. Murrow Award for Outstanding Contributions to Public Radio and the George Polk Award in Radio Reporting.

Originally from Baltimore, Glass began working in radio as a teenager. While attending Brown University, he worked alongside Keith Talbot at NPR during his summer breaks. He worked as a story editor and interviewer for years before he began to cover his own stories in his late twenties. After he moved to Chicago, he continued to work on the public radio programs All Things Considered and The Wild Room, the latter of which he co-hosted. After Glass received a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, he and Torey Malatia developed This American Life, which won a Peabody Award within its first six months and became nationally syndicated a year later. The show was formulated into a television program of the same name on Showtime that ran for two seasons. Glass also performs a live show, and has contributed to or written articles, books, and a comic book related to the radio show.

Early life and education
Glass was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 3, 1959, to Jewish parents Barry and Shirley Glass, and grew up with two sisters, one younger and one older. Barry started out as a radio announcer, but eventually became a CPA and businessman who founded the Glass Jacobson Financial Group, while Shirley Glass was a clinical psychologist, whose work prompted The New York Times to call her "the godmother of infidelity research".

As a child, Glass wanted to be an astronaut, while his parents hoped he would become a doctor. From a young age, he loved comedy and his family frequented the theater. By the time he was 11, he and his sister put on shows in their house's basement and invited neighborhood children to watch. As a teen, he moonlighted as a magician.

Glass attended Milford Mill High School in Baltimore County where he held editorial roles as a member of the school's yearbook staff and as co-editor of the student literary magazine. His involvement in yearbook started in tenth grade and continued until his graduation in 1977. As a member of the Milford drama club, Glass was cast in several stage productions: his roles include Captain George Brackett in Milford's 1975 production of South Pacific, Lowe in the school's 1976 production of Damn Yankees, and Bud Frump in its 1977 production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Glass was also a member of the International Thespian Society. Glass has remarked that his style of journalism is heavily influenced by the musicals he enjoyed when he was younger, especially Fiddler on the Roof. He was involved in student government during his junior and senior years as a member of the executive board, made Milford's morning announcements, and was a member of the Milford Mill Honor Society in 1977. While in high school, he wrote jokes for Baltimore radio personality Johnny Walker.

After Glass graduated from high school, he was accepted into Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and was initially a pre-medical student. He attended with fellow alums Mary Zimmerman and David Sedaris, though he did not know them at the time. He spent a lot of time at the university's radio station making its promos. He transferred to Brown University, where he concentrated in semiotics. There, he was introduced to S/Z by Roland Barthes, an analysis that, in hindsight, "made [him] understand what [he] could do in radio". He graduated in 1982.

Early career
After his freshman year, 19-year-old Glass looked around Baltimore for work in television, radio, and advertising without success; meanwhile, he was employed in the shock trauma unit at a medical center. After someone at the local rock station recommended that he seek out Jay Kernis at National Public Radio's headquarters in Washington, DC, he found work as an unpaid intern editing promotional announcements, before becoming the production assistant to Keith Talbot. At the end of the summer, he chose to stay with NPR and abandon medicine, a decision that disappointed his parents. When he graduated from college, they placed a sardonic ad in the classified section of their local newspaper that read, "Corporate office seeks semiotics grad for high paying position." Talbot brought Glass with him to New York between 1986-87 as an intern on Kids America produced at WNYC. In Glass' half-hour weekly segments, he took the on-air persona of "Bob" and asked opinion poll style questions.

Glass returned to DC and worked at NPR for 17 years, where he eventually graduated to being a tape-cutter, before becoming a reporter and host on several NPR programs, including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Talk of the Nation. In an interview, Glass recalled that his first show was with NPR's Joe Frank, and says the experience influenced him in a "huge way", adding: "Before I saw Joe put together a show, I had never thought about radio as a place where you could tell a certain kind of story." He has also said that editing for Noah Adams, an early host of All Things Considered, taught him how "to step back from the action and move to some bigger thought and then return to the plot", a technique that he still uses to structure This American Life. As he approached 30, he tried reporting his own stories, but said he was not good at it and that he performed poorly on air, took a long time to create a single piece, and did not have strong interviewing skills. During this time, he dated a lawyer for seven years who, according to him, made him feel terrible and did not take his work seriously or love him. He says that while she was away working in Texas, he felt his writing improved in her absence, and their relationship ended by the end of the summer.

In 1989, Glass followed his then-girlfriend, cartoonist Lynda Barry, to Chicago and settled into the Lakeview neighborhood. Although he began producing award-winning reports for NPR's All Things Considered, specifically on school reform at Taft High School and Irving Elementary School, Glass said it was a piece he did on the 75th anniversary of Oreo cookies that taught him how to write for radio. Soon, he and Gary Covino created and co-hosted a Friday-night WBEZ Chicago Public Radio program called The Wild Room, which featured eclectic content with a loose style and aired for the first time in November 1990. By this time, Barry and Glass were no longer a couple, but she initially collaborated on the project, even giving the show its title after she and Glass agreed that Covino's suggestion (The Rainbow Room) was "stupid". The first show aired in November 1990. In Glass's first professional interview (with Cara Jepsen in 1993), he said: "I like to think of it as the only show on public radio other than Car Talk that both NPR news analyst Daniel Schorr and Kurt Cobain could listen to." During this time they spent two years reporting on the Chicago Public Schools—one year at a high school, and another at an elementary school. The largest finding of their investigations was that smaller class sizes would contribute to more success in impoverished, inner-city schools.

Glass eventually tired of "free-form radio" and, looking at other opportunities, began sending grant proposals to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

This American Life
In 1995, the MacArthur Foundation approached Torey Malatia, the general manager of Chicago Public Radio, with an offer of US$150,000 to produce a show featuring local Chicago writers and performance artists. Malatia approached Glass with the idea, who countered that he wanted to do a weekly program, but with a different premise, a budget of US$300,000, and a desire to make it a national show. He then took two months off without pay to work on the pilot. Glass, however, didn't include his co-host in his plans, assuring him that the deal was unlikely to happen. When the show went on without him, Covino says he felt "betrayed". He continued to produce The Wild Room alone until February 1996.

Early on, the idea was to make a show telling stories of "nobody who's famous, nothing you've ever heard of, nothing in the news". The everyday stories would be placed between works from journalists, fiction authors, or performing artists. Glass invited David Sedaris to read his essays on the program before producing Sedaris' commentaries on NPR and contributing to Sedaris's success as an independent author. The show—then called Your Radio Playhouse—first aired on November 17, 1995; the episode was titled "New Beginnings". It included interviews with talk-show host Joe Franklin and Shirley Glass—who maintained her position that her son should consider work in television because of his resemblance to Hugh Grant—as well as stories by Kevin Kelly (the founding editor of Wired) and performance artist Lawrence Steger. The show's name changed to This American Life beginning with the episode on March 21, 1996, and was syndicated nationally in June 1996 by Public Radio International after NPR passed on it.

Glass devoted himself to the effort by making the daily commute from his North Side apartment and spending 70 to 80 hours per week in the offices on the Navy Pier.

The show quickly received wide acclaim and is often credited with changing the landscape of journalistic radio in the US. It won a Peabody Award within six months of its first broadcast for excellence in broadcast media. The fictional pieces were gradually replaced with more reporting in a storytelling format, such as in the show's coverage of victims of Hurricane Katrina. Over the years, guest contributors included Dave Eggers, Sarah Vowell, Michael Chabon, Tobias Wolff, Anne Lamott and Spalding Gray. On November 17, 2005, This American Life reached its tenth anniversary and the following week, in celebration, broadcast for the first time outside of Chicago. The television network Showtime approached the show's production team and proposed to convert This American Life into a television program; the team originally refused, as they did not want to compromise the format and make something "tacky and awful", but agreed to make the program for television after Showtime conceded to various conditions, including a format that did not resemble a news magazine. After viewing the pilot, Showtime ordered six episodes in January 2007 and the first half-hour episode aired on March 22, 2007. Glass had to move to New York for filming, and said in an interview with Patt Morrison on Southern California Public Radio that he lost 30 lb over the project. The show aired for thirteen episodes over two seasons before ending in 2009 because of the heavy workload needed to produce it.

Chicago Public Media announced it would begin self-distribution of This American Life starting on July 1, 2014, through Public Radio Exchange (PRX).

By 2020, This American Life reached more than 4.7 million listeners each week. Glass can be heard in all but four episodes. In July 2013, the 500th episode premiered. For the 2013 fiscal year, the WBEZ board voted to raise Glass's salary from $170,000 annually to $278,000. However, he requested that it be lowered to $146,000 the following year, and has since asked for it be lowered again, calling the original sum "unseemly". He supplements his income with speaking engagements, which earn him "five figures per talk".

In May 2009, the This American Life radio show episode "Return to the Scene of the Crime" was broadcast live to more than 300 movie theaters.

Other works
Outside of radio, Glass has also worked as a print author. In September 1999, he collaborated on a comic book, Radio: An Illustrated Guide, with Jessica Abel. The book describes how This American Life is produced and instructs the reader into building their own radio program. In October 2007, he published the anthology The New Kings of Nonfiction.

Glass has collaborated on several feature films. In the show's contract with Warner Bros., This American Life has first pick options on any films that emerge from stories of that program. By extension, Glass goes to Warner Bros. with any movie idea he may have. In 2006, he was an executive producer of the feature film Unaccompanied Minors, which is based on the true story of what happened to This American Life contributing editor Susan Burton and her sister Betsy at an airport one day before Christmas. Burton had already produced a segment on This American Life about the same experience before the story was adapted to film. In 2007, he and Dylan Kidd wrote a screenplay based on the nonfiction book Urban Tribes about a man who must choose between his friends and his girlfriend. Glass also produced the 2018 Netflix movie Come Sunday.

Glass regularly collaborates with comedian Mike Birbiglia. In 2012, Glass co-wrote and produced Birbiglia's film Sleepwalk with Me and they both went on a country-wide promotional tour for the film to give interviews and visit theaters to introduce the film. On September 17, 2012, Glass made a special voice appearance on The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert to promote Sleepwalk with Me and invite Colbert to participate in a This American Life episode. Glass was credited as a co-producer in Birbiglia's 2016 film Don't Think Twice, alongside Miranda Bailey and Amanda Marshall. Glass is also the producer for Birbiglia's 2018 one-man Broadway show The New One.

In 2013, Glass partnered with Monica Bill Barnes & Company to produce Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host and worked alongside Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass.

Glass toured Google's headquarters in November 2013 and met the Google Doodle team, who collectively agreed to collaborate with This American Life. Glass suggested that for Valentine's Day 2014 they interview "random" people about their experiences with love. Users in the American market could click on a candy heart that corresponded to each letter in "Google" and listen to a different story of unusual love in the same style as the radio program. Roger Neill composed the music, while Glass, fellow American Life producer Miki Meek, and Birbiglia conducted the interviews.

In 2019, Glass went on tour with the show Seven Things I've Learned, where he talks about the art of storytelling. The titles of the show's acts include "How to tell a story", "Save the cat", "Failure is Success", "Amuse yourself, and "It's war".  Two dancers from Monica Bill Barnes & Company, whom Glass had collaborated with before, performed in the show.

Tours

 * This American Life — Live! (2009)
 * Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host (2013–2017)
 * Seven Things I've Learned (2019)

Books

 * Radio: An Illustrated Guide (1999)—written with Jessica Abel
 * The New Kings of Nonfiction (2007)

Appearances
Glass made several appearances on late-night television, his first being Late Show With David Letterman. He has also been on The Colbert Report.

In 2004, UCLA commissioned a one-night storytelling event called Visible and Invisible Drawings: An Evening With Chris Ware and Ira Glass. In February 2005, Glass visited the Orpheum Theater in New Orleans to present Lies and Sissies and Fiascoes, Oh, My!, which shares a name with a This American Life compilation album. Glass served as the monologist for ASSSSCAT at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York on February 21, 2010. On September 17, 2011, Glass participated in the Drunk Show at the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival, during which Glass became so drunk he blacked out and vomited backstage.

Glass has been a guest on various podcasts, such as TBTL. On February 24, 2010, the podcast Freakonomics published a bonus episode (after its first) interviewing Glass on how to make a great podcast. On June 17, 2011, he and his wife at the time, Anaheed Alani, appeared on the podcast How Was Your Week, where he revealed that, if he were not in radio, he would be a professional poker player. Glass appeared on the edition of June 24, 2011, of The Adam Carolla Podcast, where he and Adam Carolla discussed the podcast claiming the title of "Most Downloaded Podcast" from the Guinness Book of World Records. On September 19, 2011, Glass appeared on WTF Live with Marc Maron. Glass guest co-hosted Dan Savage's sex-advice podcast, "Savage Love", on January 31, 2012. On Monday, November 24, 2014, Glass appeared on the Here's The Thing podcast. In 2022, Glass's interview with Debbie Millman was featured on the Storybound season 5 premiere.

On May 18, 2012, Glass gave the commencement address for the Goucher College class of 2012 graduation ceremony, where he also received an honorary degree. Glass was one of the voice artists for the audiobook "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories" by Etgar Keret.

Glass also lent his voice to The Simpsons in Season 22 in the episode "Elementary School Musical" and appeared in a green motion capture suit in a John Hodgman segment on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on November 4, 2010, where he acted as the main character of the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City video game. Archival footage of Glass is used in the film We Cause Scenes, which premiered at the 2013 South by Southwest conference. In 2014, Glass appeared as himself in the film adaptation of the U.S. television series Veronica Mars. and in the extended cut of John Hodgman's Netflix comedy special John Hodgman: Ragnarok. In 2018, Glass made a cameo appearance in the film Ocean's 8. In 2019 Glass appeared as himself in the episode "The Struggle for Stonewall" (season 1, episode 8) of the Fox legal drama Proven Innocent.

Ben Sinclair, a co-creator of HBO's TV show High Maintenance, sought out Glass to appear in the 2020 season premiere.

Public image
Glass has been called a visionary for his work in radio. In 2001, Time magazine named Glass the "Best Radio Host in America". Critics remark on the dedication and distinct vision he brings to the show. Steve Johnson with the Chicago Tribune called Glass "the deliberately mysterious, apparently highly romantic force who is the program's host, co-founder and executive producer". After remarking that, unlike on most shows, Glass serves as the director, senior producer, host, administrator, librarian, and researcher, Chicago writer Sarah Vowell said, "Part of that is that he's a control freak. Part of it is he has so much experience. Part of it is he really does have a vision for the show." Glass is credited with being a forebear of podcasting and modern audio storytelling. Samuel Fishwick of the Evening Standard called Glass the "godfather of podcasting".

The nature of his voice also inspires commentary in the media. Vogue called his voice "the aural embodiment of Sensitive Guy Who Is Friends with All the Girls." American Journalism Review called his voice "adenoidal" and said it has a "slight stutter, not a speech defect, but a verbal tic, a device". Johnson said Glass' voice sounds like it does not belong on the radio and that it is "kind of querulous, decidedly conversational."

Jenji Kohan has said that Glass is part of the inspiration behind the character Maury Kind on her show Orange Is the New Black, in particular, his glasses. She offered Glass a role on the show, but he "politely declined" the offer due to his busy schedule.

Personal life
For a time, Glass dated cartoonist and author Lynda Barry. She briefly joined him in Washington, D.C., but she moved to Chicago to be near fellow cartoonists in the summer of 1989, with Glass following her. Reflecting on the relationship, Barry called it the "worst thing [she] ever did", and said he told her she "was boring and shallow, and...wasn't enough in the moment for him." She later drew a comic based on their relationship titled "Head Lice and My Worst Boyfriend", which was later included in her book ''One! Hundred! Demons!... Glass did not deny her assertions, and told the Chicago Reader'': "I was an idiot. I was in the wrong...about so many things with her. Anything bad she says about me I can confirm."

Glass married Anaheed Alani, a writer and editor, in August 2005. They had dated before splitting harshly, but decided to give the relationship another try. "We have the entire Middle East crisis in our house," joked Glass. "Her mom is Christian and her dad is Muslim, from Iraq." They shared a pit bull named Piney, which they refused to put down even after it bit several people including two children, drawing blood. (Glass referred to these bites as "nips".) In March 2017, Glass announced on This American Life that he and Alani had separated, and in an interview later that year, specified that they had been separating over the previous three years. On April 17, 2017, Glass reportedly filed for divorce. The pitbull contributed to the divorce. Alani later bought another pitbull. Glass has since resumed dating, calling it "kind of nice and sort of sweet," and saying, "[t]here's a lot of hope to it."

His older sister, Randi Glass Murray, is a literary agent based in San Francisco, while his younger sister, Karen Glass Barry, was a senior vice president in film development at Disney Studios. He is a first cousin once removed of composer Philip Glass, who has appeared on Glass' show and whose music can often be heard on the program.

Glass has donated to Prison Performing Arts and dedicated a whole episode of This American Life around one of the organization's productions of Hamlet.

Glass decided to become a vegetarian after visiting United Poultry Concerns' chicken sanctuary.

Glass likes the shows Gilmore Girls and Family Guy, and says he never missed an episode of The O.C. His favorite podcasts include WTF with Marc Maron, The Daily, Reply All, Radiolab, Heavyweight, ''Stay Tuned with Preet'."

Religion
Glass has stated on This American Life that he is a staunch atheist. "It's not like I don't feel like I'm a Jew," he explained. "I feel like I don't have a choice about being a Jew. Your cultural heritage isn't like a suitcase you can lose at the airport...But even when I was 14 or 15, it didn't make that much sense to me that there was this Big Daddy who created the world and would act so crazy in the Old Testament. That we made up these stories to make ourselves feel good and explain the world seems like a much more reasonable explanation. I've tried to believe in God but I simply don't." Atheism aside, he said, "Some years I have a nostalgic feeling to go into a shul and I'll go in for a High Holiday service. Rabbi Seymour Essrog was really funny, a great storyteller. He was so good that even the kids would stay and watch him. He'd tell a funny anecdote, something really moving, and go for a big finish. That's what the show is."

Glass stated that "Christians get a really bad rap in the media" and that contrary to the way they are portrayed in pop-culture, the Christians in his life "were all incredibly wonderful and thoughtful".

Awards
Glass was named the recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award for Outstanding Contributions to Public Radio in 2009. In 2011, he earned the George Polk Award in Radio Reporting for "Very Tough Love", an hour-long report that showed alarmingly severe punishments being meted out by a county drug court judge in Georgia. The episode prompted Georgia's Judicial Qualifying Commission to file 14 ethical misconduct charges against Judge Amanda Williams and, within weeks, Williams stepped down from the bench and agreed never to seek other judicial offices.

In 2012, Glass was awarded a Doctorate of Humane Letters honoris causa from Goucher College in Baltimore. In May 2013, Glass received the Medal for Spoken Language from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was on the team that won the Gold Award for best documentary from the Third Coast International Audio Festival in 2013 for Harper High School, and was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in November 2014.

In 2020, Glass and the rest of the This American Life staff (together with Molly O'Toole of the Los Angeles Times and Emily Green of Vice News) won the inaugural Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting for the episode "The Out Crowd," which demonstrated "revelatory, intimate journalism that illuminates the personal impact of the Trump Administration's "Remain in Mexico" policy".

title: Ira Glass


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Intent scale translation

Intent scale translation is a mathematical technique used by marketers to convert stated purchase intentions into purchase probabilities, that is, into an estimate of actual buying behaviour. It takes survey data on consumers purchase intentions, and converts it into actual purchase probabilities.

A survey might ask a question using a five-point scale such as:

 * Which is most true about product X?
 * ___ I definitely would use product X
 * ___ I probably would use product X
 * ___ I might use product X
 * ___ I probably would not use product X
 * ___ I definitely would not use product X

A marketing researcher will first assign numerical values to these intention categories. If the numbers range from zero to one, they can be thought of as intent probabilities. This is a typical example:
 * definitely -> .99
 * probably -> .75
 * maybe -> .5
 * probably not -> .25
 * definitely not -> .01

Next, the researcher uses a predefined functional relationship to convert the stated intentions into estimates of actual purchase probabilities. The diagram that follows illustrates one such translation function. If a survey respondent were to choose a response of “definitely” and an intent probability of .99 was assigned to that category, then the actual probability of purchase could be read off the vertical axis. The translation function gives a value of about .8, indicating the specifiers of the function feel that not all people that claim they definitely intend to purchase will actually purchase.

If a survey respondent were to choose a response of “probably not” and an intent probability of .25 was assigned to that category, then the actual probability of purchase could be read off the vertical axis as .35, indicating the specifiers of the function feel that some people that claim they probably will not purchase will actually purchase. Other purchase intention/rating translations include logit analysis and the preference-rank translation.

title: Intent scale translation


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Theodore Maiman

Theodore Harold Maiman (July 11, 1927 – May 5, 2007) was an American engineer and physicist who is widely credited with the invention of the laser. Maiman's laser led to the subsequent development of many other types of lasers. The laser was successfully fired on May 16, 1960. In a July 7, 1960, press conference in Manhattan, Maiman and his employer, Hughes Aircraft Company, announced the laser to the world. Maiman was granted a patent for his invention, and he received many awards and honors for his work. His experiences in developing the first laser and subsequent related events are recounted in his book, The Laser Odyssey, later being republished in 2018 under a new title, The Laser Inventor: Memoirs of Theodore H. Maiman.

Early and student life
Maiman was born in Los Angeles to a Jewish family. Abraham "Abe" Maiman, an electrical engineer and inventor, and Rose Abramson. At a young age his family moved to Denver, Colorado, where he helped his father with experimentation in a home electronics laboratory. Maiman says in his autobiography that "as with most hyperactive kids, I was skinny, some 10–15 pounds underweight", and considers himself to have been a target for Ritalin should it have existed at the time. In his teens Maiman earned money by repairing electric appliances and radios, and after leaving high school was employed as a junior engineer with the National Union Radio Company at age 17.

Following a year's service in the United States Navy at the end of World War II, he earned a B.S. in engineering physics from the University of Colorado Boulder. Maiman then went on to graduate studies at Stanford University where he earned an M.S. in electrical engineering in 1951 and a PhD in physics in 1955.

Maiman's doctoral thesis in experimental physics, under the direction of physicist Willis Lamb, involved detailed microwave-optical measurements of fine structural splittings in excited helium atoms. He also devised laboratory instrumentation for Lamb's experiments. Maiman published two articles jointly with Lamb in Physical Review, the second of which was based on his own thesis research. His thesis experiment was instrumental in his development of the laser.

Career
In 1956 Maiman started work with the Atomic Physics Department of the Hughes Aircraft Company (later Hughes Research Laboratories or HRL Laboratories) in California where he led the ruby maser redesign project for the U.S. Army Signal Corps, reducing it from a 2.5-ton cryogenic device to 4 lb while improving its performance. As a result of this success Maiman persuaded Hughes management to use company funds to support his laser project beginning in mid-1959. On a total budget of $50,000, Maiman turned to the development of a laser based on his own design with a synthetic ruby crystal, which other scientists seeking to make a laser felt would not work.

On May 16, 1960, at Hughes' Malibu, California, laboratories, Maiman's solid-state pink ruby laser emitted mankind's first coherent light, with rays all the same wavelength and fully in phase. Maiman documented his invention in Nature on August 6, 1960, after two rejections by Samuel A. Goudsmit at Physical Review Letters, besides which he published other scholarly articles describing the science and technology underlying his laser.

Maiman had begun conceptualizing a solid-state laser design even before he undertook the maser project at Hughes. Moving the microwave frequency of masers up the electromagnetic spectrum 50,000-fold to the frequency of light would require finding a feasible lasing medium and excitation source and designing the system. Other major research groups at IBM, Bell Labs, MIT, Westinghouse, RCA and Columbia University, among others, were also pursuing projects to develop a laser.

Their work was stimulated by a 1958 paper by Arthur L. Schawlow and Charles H. Townes offering theoretical analysis and a proposal for a gaseous system using potassium vapor excited by a potassium lamp. However Maiman identified multiple flaws in the Schawlow-Townes proposal and the reason for their rejection of a solid-state design, including a significant difference in the band-gap nature of pink rubies and red rubies, and pursued his own vision:  "I was the only one that analyzed ruby in enough detail to have the confidence to stick with it." His successful design used synthetic pink ruby crystal grown by the Linde Division of Union Carbide as the active laser medium and a helical xenon flash lamp as the excitation source. As Townes later wrote, "Maiman's laser had several aspects not considered in our theoretical paper, nor discussed by others before the ruby demonstration." One piece of evidence that convinced Maiman (and later the world) that he had lased pink ruby was that "when the crystal was pushed above threshold, we observed a brightness ratio" of the twin red lines "of more than 50 times".

Following his invention of the laser, in 1961 Maiman departed Hughes to join the newly formed Quantatron company, which grew in-house ruby crystals for lasers. Maiman was installed as vice president of the Applied Physics Laboratory, and he hired seven Hughes colleagues. Together they started a Verneuil plant to grow synthetic rubies, which were domestically available at that time only at Linde, who had been chosen by the US government to receive the WW2 technology transferred from Switzerland. "The Swiss for many years used this Verneuil technology to make the jewel bearings in their famous precision watches." Brothers Rick and Tony Pastor were hired by Maiman from Hughes in order to start the Quantatron synthetic ruby plant. Rick devised methods to make ultra-high purity powder, while Tony improved the burner and powder handling process.

By 1962, when Smullin and Fiocco had already bounced the beam from a 50J 0.5 millisecond ruby laser off the moon, and the Soviets too, Maiman had hired 35 people for his APL lab at Quantatron. When its funds dried up because the venture capitalist was taken over, Maiman found an eager partner in Union Carbide with whom to nurse his improved synthetic ruby plant, and in 1962 Maiman founded and became the president of the Korad Corporation, which manufactured high-power ruby lasers. Among other developments while he was at Korad, Maiman supported Hellwarth in his Q-switch patent litigation against Gould. After Korad was fully acquired by Union Carbide in 1968, when they exercised the option written into the venture capital contract, Maiman left to found Maiman Associates, a venture capital firm of his own.

Maiman was awarded US Patent Number 3,353,115 for his "Ruby Laser Systems" on November 14, 1967, and paid $300 for it by assignee Hughes Aircraft Company. It turned out to be Hughes' most profitable patent.

In 1971 Maiman founded the Laser Video Corporation, and from 1976 to 1983 he worked as vice president for advanced technology at TRW Electronics (now Northrop Grumman). He later served as consultant to Laser Centers of America, Inc. (now LCA-Vision Inc.) and director of Control Laser Corporation. Maiman continued his involvement in laser developments and applications. In addition to his patent for the first working laser, Maiman authored a number of patents on masers, lasers, laser displays, optical scanning, and modulation.

Prior to his death, Maiman held an adjunct professor position in the School of Engineering Science at Simon Fraser University, where he worked on the development of curricula in biophotonics, photonics and optical engineering.

Awards and recognition
Maiman received numerous prizes, awards, and accolades over the years for his development of the first laser. He was granted membership in both the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering. He was made a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America (OSA), and the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). In 1962 Maiman was awarded the Franklin Institute's Stuart Ballantine Medal for physics.

In 1966 Maiman received the American Physical Society's Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize and the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Award for distinguished contribution in the field of science, presented in a White House ceremony by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

In 1976, Maiman was awarded the Optical Society of America's R.W. Wood Prize for "Pioneer Development of the First Laser". In 1980, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. He was the recipient of the 1983/84 Wolf Prize in Physics and was also inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame that year. In 1987 Maiman was awarded the Japan Prize in Electro-Optics for "realization of the world's first laser."

In 1994, he was inducted as an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the only non-physician, non-royal member. Time magazine cited Maiman's invention of the laser as among the twenty most important technological developments of the 20th century. Many universities granted Maiman honorary degrees, with the last from Simon Fraser University in 2002.

Recognition for Maiman and his laser invention continued posthumously. In a 2007 obituary testimonial, maser co-inventor Charles H. Townes described Maiman's 1960 Nature article on his laser as "probably more important per word than any of the papers published by Nature over the past century." The annual Theodore Maiman Student Paper Competition was established in 2008, endowed by major laser groups, and is administered by the OSA Foundation. In 2010 numerous events were staged worldwide by major scientific and industry photonics organizations to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Maiman's first laser and subsequent lasers under the umbrella of LaserFest.

The U.S. Congress passed a resolution celebrating the invention of the laser and citing Maiman. Also in 2010 Maiman's laser achievement was recognized as an IEEE Milestone, and the American Physical Society presented Hughes Research Laboratories with a plaque to commemorate the historic site of the world's first laser.

In 2011, Maiman was recognized by Stanford University as a "Stanford Engineering Hero", citing his "rare blend of advanced training in physics and engineering combined with significant laboratory experience". In 2014, the National Academy of Sciences published a biographical memoir of Maiman including a tribute by Nick Holonyak, Jr.

In 2017 UNESCO declared May 16 the International Day of Light, which is celebrated every year by numerous laser and light-related events around the world. That date commemorates Maiman's first successful firing of his laser.

Death
Maiman died from systemic mastocytosis on May 5, 2007, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where he lived with his second wife, Kathleen, whom he met on February 13, 1984. He had one daughter, named Sheri, with his first wife, Shirley, whom he married in 1956. Sheri Maiman died of cancer in 1988 at the age of 30.

title: Theodore Maiman


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