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Huntington Library

The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, known as The Huntington, is a collections-based educational and research institution established by Henry E. Huntington and Arabella Huntington in San Marino, California. In addition to the library, the institution houses an extensive art collection with a focus on 18th and 19th century European art and 17th to mid-20th century American art. The property also has approximately 49 ha of specialized botanical landscaped gardens, including the "Japanese Garden", the "Desert Garden", and the "Chinese Garden".

History
As a landowner, Henry Edwards Huntington (1850–1927) played a major role in the growth of Southern California. Huntington was born in 1850, in Oneonta, New York, and was the nephew and heir of Collis P. Huntington (1821–1900), one of the famous "Big Four" railroad tycoons of nineteenth century California history. In 1892, Huntington relocated to San Francisco with his first wife, Mary Alice Prentice, and their four children. In 1902, he relocated from the financial and political center of Northern California, San Francisco, to the state's newer southern major metropolis, Los Angeles. In 1903, he purchased the 600-acre "San Marino Ranch" from James DeBarth Shorb Jr (1870-1907) for $240,000. He later purchased other large tracts of land in the Pasadena and Los Angeles areas of Los Angeles County for urban and suburban development. He divorced Mary Alice Prentice in 1906. He was one of the founders of the City of San Marino which was incorporated on April 25, 1913. On July 16, 1913, he married his uncle's widow, Arabella Huntington (1851–1924). As president of the Pacific Electric Railway Company, the regional streetcar and public transit system for the Los Angeles metropolitan area and southern California and also of the Los Angeles Railway Company, (later the Southern California Railway), he spearheaded urban and regional transportation efforts to link together far-flung communities, supporting growth of those communities as well as promoting commerce, recreation and tourism.

Huntington's interest in art was influenced in large part by Arabella, and with art experts to guide him, he benefited from a post-World War I European market that was "ready to sell almost anything". Before his death in 1927, Huntington amassed "far and away the greatest group of eighteenth-century British portraits ever assembled by any one man". In accordance with Huntington's will, the collection, then worth $50 million, was opened to the public in 1928.

On October 17, 1985, a fire erupted in an elevator shaft of the Huntington Art Gallery and destroyed Sir Joshua Reynolds's 1777 portrait of Mrs. Edwin Lascelles. After a year-long, $1 million refurbishing project, the Huntington Gallery reopened in 1986, with its artworks cleaned of soot and stains. Most of the funds for the cleanup and refurbishing of the Georgian mansion and its artworks came from donations from the Michael J. Connell Foundation, corporations and individuals. Both the Federal art-supporting establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities gave emergency grants, the former of $17,500 to "support conservation and other related costs resulting from a serious fire at the Gallery of Art", and the latter of $30,000 to "support the restoration of several fire-damaged works of art that depict the story of Western culture."

On September 5, 2019, The Huntington kicked off a year-long celebration of its centennial year with exhibitions, special programs, initiatives, a special Huntington 100th rose, and a float in the 2020 Rose Parade in nearby Pasadena, California.

Management
The executive leaders of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens are:
 * President: Karen R. Lawrence
 * Chief Financial Officer: Janet Alberti
 * Chief Human Resources Officer: Misty Bennett
 * Director of the Library: Sandra Ludig Brooke
 * Director of the Botanical Gardens: James Folsom (retired), Nicole Cavender (May 17, 2021)
 * Director of the Art Museum: Christina Nielsen
 * Vice Presidents and other executive leaders: Heather Hart, Susan Juster, Thomas Polansky, Randy Shulman, Susan Turner-Lowe, and Elizabeth (Elee) Wood

With an endowment of more than $400 million (and half a billion dollars raised between 2001 and 2013), the Huntington is among the wealthiest cultural institutions in the United States. It has undertaken major restorations and construction including a $60 million education and visitors center opened in 2015. Each year some 1,700 scholars conduct research there, and 600,000 people visit.

Library
The library building was designed in 1920 by the southern California architect Myron Hunt in the Mediterranean Revival style. Hunt's previous commissions for Mr. and Mrs. Huntington included the Huntington's residence in San Marino in 1909, and the Huntington Hotel in 1914. The library contains a substantial collection of rare books and manuscripts, concentrated in the fields of British and American history, literature, art, and the history of science. Spanning from the 11th century to the present, the library's holdings contain 7 million manuscript items, over 400,000 rare books, and over a million photographs, prints, and other ephemera. Highlights include one of eleven vellum copies of the Gutenberg Bible known to exist, the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer (ca. 1410), and letters and manuscripts by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln. It is the only library in the world with the first two quartos of Hamlet; it holds the manuscript of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, Isaac Newton's personal copy of his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica with annotations in Newton's own hand, the first seven drafts of Henry David Thoreau's Walden, John James Audubon's Birds of America, and first editions and manuscripts from authors such as Charles Bukowski, Jack London, Alexander Pope, William Blake, Mark Twain, and William Wordsworth.

The library's main exhibition hall showcases some of the most outstanding rare books and manuscripts in the collection, while the West Hall of the library hosts rotating exhibitions. The Dibner Hall of the History of Science is a permanent exhibition on the history of science with a focus on astronomy, natural history, medicine, and light.

With the 2006 acquisition of the Burndy Library, a collection of nearly 60,000 items, the Huntington became one of the top institutions in the world for the study of the history of science and technology.

On December 14, 2022, the library announced they had acquired the archive of American author Thomas Pynchon.

Research
Researchers over age 18 may use the Library's reading rooms to consult the collection upon establishing a research need that requires the use of The Huntington's collections, identifying specific materials, and presenting the required form(s) of identification at orientation. Through a rigorous peer-review program, the institution awards approximately 150 grants to scholars in the fields of history, literature, art, and the history of science, medicine, and technology. The Huntington also hosts numerous scholarly events, lectures, conferences, and workshops.

In September 1991, then-director William A. Moffett announced that the library's photographic archive of the Dead Sea Scrolls would be available to all qualified scholars, not just those approved by the international team of editors that had so long limited access to a chosen few. The collection consists of 3,000 photographs of all the original scrolls.

Through a partnership with the University of Southern California, the library has established two research centers: the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Art collections
The Huntington's collections are displayed in permanent installations housed in the Huntington Art Gallery and Virginia Steele Scott Gallery of American Art. Special temporary exhibitions are mounted in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery, with smaller, focused exhibitions displayed in the Works on Paper Room in the Huntington Art Gallery and the Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing of the Scott Galleries. In addition the gallery also hosts different exhibitions of photography throughout the year including those about different social and political subjects.

European art
The European collection, consisting largely of 18th- and 19th-century British & French paintings, sculptures and decorative arts, is housed in The Huntington Art Gallery, the original Huntington residence. The permanent installation also includes selections from the Arabella D. Huntington Memorial Art Collection, which contains Italian and Northern Renaissance paintings and a spectacular collection of 18th-century French tapestries, porcelain, and furniture. Some of the best known works in the European collection include The Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough, Pinkie by Thomas Lawrence, and Madonna and Child by Rogier van der Weyden.

American art
Complementing the European collections is the Huntington's American art holdings, a collection of paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, and photographs dating from the 17th to the mid-20th century. The institution did not begin collecting American art until 1979, when it received a gift of 50 paintings from the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation. Consequently, The Virginia Steele Scott Gallery of American Art was established in 1984. In 2009, the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries were expanded, refurbished, and reinstalled. The new showcase, a $1.6 million project designed to give the Huntington's growing American art collection more space and visibility, combines the original, 1984 American gallery with the Lois and Robert F. Erburu Gallery, a modern classical addition designed by Los Angeles architect Frederick Fisher. Highlights among the American art collections include Breakfast in Bed by Mary Cassatt, The Long Leg by Edward Hopper, Small Crushed Campbell's Soup Can (Beef Noodle) by Andy Warhol, and Global Loft (Spread) by Robert Rauschenberg. As of 2014, the collection numbers some 12,000 works, ninety percent of them drawings, photographs and prints.

In 2014, the library acquired the Millard Sheets mural Southern California landscape (1934), the dining room wall painting originally painted for homeowners Fred H. and Bessie Ranke in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles.

Acquisitions
In 1999, the Huntington acquired the collection of materials relating to Arts and Crafts artist and designer William Morris amassed by Sanford and Helen Berger, comprising stained glass, wallpaper, textiles, embroidery, drawings, ceramics, more than 2,000 books, original woodblock prints, and the complete archives of Morris's decorative arts firm Morris & Co. and its predecessor Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. These materials formed the foundation for the 2002 exhibit "William Morris: Creating the Useful and the Beautiful".

In 2005, actor Steve Martin gave $1 million to the Huntington to support exhibitions and acquisitions of American art, with three-quarters of the money to be spent on exhibitions and the rest on purchases of artworks. In 2009, Andy Warhol's painting Small Crushed Campbell's Soup Can (Beef Noodle) (1962) as well as group of the artist's Brillo Boxes were donated by the estate of Robert Shapazian, the founding director of Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills. In 2011, a $1.75 million acquisition fund for post-1945 American art was established by unidentified patrons in honor of the late Shapazian. The first purchase from the fund was the painting Global Loft (Spread) (1979) by Robert Rauschenberg.

In 2012, the museum acquired its first major work by an African-American artist when it purchased a 22-foot-long carved redwood panel from 1937 by sculptor Sargent Claude Johnson.

In October 2023, the museum unveiled a 320-year-old, 3000 ft2 Japanese home once owned by a shōya (village head). From 2018 to 2023, craftspeople carefully disassembled the house, labeled, cleaned, and repaired each part, reassembled the house in a Japanese warehouse, refitted the house to US building codes, disassembled it again, and reassembled it in California. Curator Robert Hori likened the whole process to building a "giant model airplane."

Botanical gardens
The Huntington's botanical gardens cover 120 acre and showcase plants from around the world. Huntington worked to make them thrive in the generous California climate. Today his many projects of horticulture live on, providing opportunities for botanical research and for enjoyment. The gardens are divided into more than a dozen themes, including the Australian Garden, Camellia Collection, Children's Garden, Desert Garden, Herb Garden, Japanese Garden, Lily Ponds, North Vista, Palm Garden, Rose Garden, the Shakespeare Garden, Subtropical and Jungle Garden, and the Chinese Garden (Liu Fang Yuan 流芳園 or the Garden of Flowing Fragrance).

The Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science has a large tropical plant collection, as well as a carnivorous plants wing. The Huntington has a program to protect and propagate endangered plant species. In 1999, 2002, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021, specimens of Amorphophallus titanum, or the odiferous "corpse flower", bloomed at the facility. There were a total of fourteen corpse flowers bloomed at Huntington since 1999. Three flowers opened in July 2021.

The Camellia Collection, recognized as an International Camellia Garden of Excellence, includes nearly eighty different camellia species and some 1,200 cultivated varieties, many of them rare and historic. The Rose Garden contains approximately 1,200 cultivars (4,000 individual plants) arranged historically to trace the development of roses from ancient to modern times.

Chinese Garden
A Chinese garden, the largest outside of China, was dedicated on February 26, 2008, after artisans from Suzhou, China spent some six months at Huntington to construct the first phase of the newest facility. On 4.9 ha at the northwest corner of the Huntington, the garden features man-made lakes ("Pond of Reflected Greenery" and "Lake of Reflected Fragrance") with pavilions connected by bridges. Unique Chinese names are assigned to many of the facilities in the garden, such as the tea house, known as the "Hall of the Jade Camellia". Other pavilions are the "Love for the Lotus Pavilion", "Terrace of the Jade Mirror", and "Pavilion of the Three Friends". The initial phase cost $18.3 million to build.

The second phase, which includes the "Clear and Transcendent Pavilion", "Lingering Clouds Peak" with a waterfall, Waveless Boat, "Crossing through Fragrance" bridge and the "Cloud Steps" bridge, opened on March 8, 2014. There were other pavilions, including the "Flowery Brush Studio", and structures completed under phase two. A place to display its large collections of penjing and bonsai has completed.

Desert Garden
The Desert Garden, one of the world's largest and oldest outdoor collections of cacti and other succulents, contains plants from extreme environments, many of which were acquired by Henry E. Huntington and William Hertrich (the garden curator). One of the Huntington's most botanically important gardens, the Desert Garden brings together a plant group largely unknown and unappreciated in the beginning of the 1900s. Containing a broad category of xerophytes (aridity-adapted plants), the Desert Garden grew to preeminence and remains today among the world's finest, with more than 5,000 species.

Japanese Garden
In 1911, art dealer George Turner Marsh (who also created the Japanese Tea Garden at the Golden Gate Park) sold his commercial Japanese tea garden to Henry E. Huntington to create the foundations of what is known today as the Japanese Garden. The garden was completed in 1912 and opened to the public in 1928. According to historian Kendall Brown, the garden consists of three gardens: the original stroll garden with koi-filled ponds and a drum or moon bridge, the raked-gravel dry garden added in 1968, and the traditionally landscaped tea garden.

In addition, the gardens feature a large bell, the authentic ceremonial teahouse Seifu-an (the Arbor of Pure Breeze), a fully furnished Japanese house, the Zen Garden, and the bonsai collections with hundreds of trees. The Bonsai Courts at the Huntington is the home of the Golden State Bonsai Federation Southern Collection. Another ancient Japanese art form can be found at the Harry Hirao Suiseki Court, where visitors can touch the suiseki or viewing stones.

Other gardens

 * Australian Garden
 * Camellia Garden
 * Children's Garden
 * Conservatory
 * Herb Garden
 * Jungle Garden
 * Lily Ponds
 * Palm Garden
 * Ranch Garden
 * Rose Garden
 * Shakespeare Garden
 * Subtropical Garden

In popular culture
The Huntington Botanical Gardens were honored with a postal stamp as a part of the American Gardens stamps on May 13, 2020. The Desert Garden was featured.

The gardens are frequently used as a filming location. Footage shot there has been included in:

 * Mame (1974)
 * "Only Yesterday" (music video) – Carpenters (1975)
 * Midway (1976)
 * Justice (Star Trek: The Next Generation) (1987)
 * Heathers (1988)
 * "Ordinary World" (music video) – Duran Duran (1993)
 * Indecent Proposal (1993)
 * Beverly Hills Ninja (1997)
 * JAG (1997), used as the White House rose garden
 * The Wedding Singer (1998)
 * Mystery Men (1999)
 * Charlie's Angels (2000)
 * The Wedding Planner (2001)
 * The Hot Chick (2002)
 * S1m0ne (2002)
 * Anger Management (2003)
 * The West Wing (2003), used as the National Arboretum
 * Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
 * Starsky & Hutch (2004)
 * Monster-in-Law (2005)
 * Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
 * Serenity (2005)
 * Ned's Declassified Field Trip, the final episode of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide (2007)
 * National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007), used as the White House rose garden
 * CSI Miami, in You May Now Kill the Bride (2008)
 * G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009), used during the flashback fighting scenes between ten-year-old Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow.
 * "A Beautiful End" (music video) – J.R. Richards (2009)
 * The Muppets (2011)
 * Bridesmaids (2011), the driveway to Helen's bridal shower
 * Parks and Recreation, used as Five Mile Grounds, the new Eagleton park, in the episode "Pawnee Commons" (2012)
 * The Good Place, as the afterlife's fictional setting (2016–2020)
 * "Garden Song" by singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers mentions the Huntington by name.

title: Huntington Library


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Talk:Control Data Corporation

CDC alive still going strong?
I would like to know if Control Data Corporation is Alive today. Thanks. Jocax@usp.br

 * Yes. It is no longer called Control Data Corporation (August, 2003). Control Data Corporation changed its name twice in the 1990s. The first time, they changed to Control Data Systems. The second time, they changed to Syntegra, when Control Data Systems was bought out by British Telecommunications, PLC. Now, according to Charles Babbage Institute, Control Data is operating as Syntegra. Paul G.

 * I disagree; the brief answer definitely should be "no". CDC sold off some business units in the early 1990s, and the remainder in 1992 split into 2 parts, neither named "Control Data"-anything today, and neither manufacturing computers--the basis of CDC's fame. Although the reality is different from--and more complex than--the description above by "Paul G.", I've created a WikiWiki page at Control Data that should clear things up for readers arriving at this page with questions about the fate of CDC. --ClayPhipps 23:06, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Also see: RJBurkhart 10:58, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Ceridian

IBM Model 92 FUD or not?
Can IBM's non-existent Model 92 really be referred to as FUD, shorthand for "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt"? Isn't paper launch a more appropriate term?

--Drhex 07:59, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Perhaps, but considering CDC successfully sued IBM based on the argument that it was FUD (although as the article notes this term was not common), I think it's suitable to refer to it this way. According to what I have read of the case, IBM salesdrones were telling potential customers to ignore the CDC machines because the 92 was going to be out "Real Soon Now" and would outperform it. Neither of those claims turned out to be true, as history noted. Maury 15:32, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

FUD was a common technique used by IBM salesmen, against most of their competitors, not just CDC. (It was just used more heavily in this case, because IBM had no machine that could compete with the 6600.) Along with the saying "no manager ever got fired for buying IBM", implying that choosing anything other than the conventional product might risk your career. And if a manager was seriously considering buying non-IBM, those IBM salespeople had a habit of sending an IBM Regional VP to the manager's superior (often a VP who had no computer experience) and 'warning' them that the manager was making a serious mistake that could really hurt the company.

 * It's still used today, often by IBM's competitor, Microsoft. Try getting a corporate manager to replace their 500 copies of Microsoft Office with the open source product Open Office, and you'll hear the same FUD.  Or any big-name PC software product.  T bonham (talk) 02:55, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

CPI & Centronics
I wrote articles on Computer Peripherals Inc and Centronics some time back that might deserve a mention here. CDC is not my area of expertise, so if someone thinks it fits and can find a good way to fit it in, please do so. --Gadget850 13:22, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Control Data Institute
Is this company related to the "Control Data Institute" that used to advertise their vocational education program rather heavily?

 * Yes it is. I attended Control Data Institute (CDI) in 1965. I was in the first graduating class. --Dennis Fernkes 21:26, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

 * I attended CDI (Long Beach)in 1970. Retired in 2009 after 39 years in IT. da_golf_guy@yahoo.com  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.13.26.33 (talk) 04:22, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

 * I attended CDI in 1973. I was in the last class to graduate from the Long Beach, CA campus.  My final project was a 'paperless' timekeeping system design.  No punched cards.  Data was entered via a terminal.  The instructors didn't think a system like that would work! 169.3.168.209 20:34, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

 * Control Data set up CDI because there was a shortage of computer programmers at the time, which was slowing down sales. And also because IBM machines dominated the academic market, so most programmers had trained on IBM machines, and knew nothing about Control Data machines.  The company wanted to create a sizable group of new available programmers with a Control Data background.  Also, it was cheap to start:  with the CDC service bureaus, they had plenty of machine time available in many locations, and CDC employees who could be part-time instructors.

 * There was eventually a problem with CDI, though. Schools in some locations were unwilling to tell students that "you don't have the aptitude to be an effective programmer; you should look to a different career" -- they would just keep the student retaking classes until they passed (or ran out of money).  Thus in some areas, hiring CDI graduates was a crapshoot -- having a CDI diploma didn't mean the person could program.  Not a good reputation for a school.  (But this was a common problem in for-profit trade schools, both then & now.) T bonham (talk) 02:29, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

PLATO
I would like to begin creating a section about PLATO ("Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations"), the computer-based education system that CDC co-developed during the 1960s-70s and, I think, sold off in the 80s. It was, according to them at the time (my father worked in PR there, which is the source of my memories), the first computer system that attempted to be user-friendly, using as much street language as possible for commands. Its greatest significance, however, may be that it created the formation of the first online community, at the same time ARPANET was being developed. The first personal email and discussion groups were evolved on PLATO as well, at least according to this page, which has many details:

"PLATO: The Emergence of Online Community," by David R. Woolley

This site, by Brian Dear, also has a lot of information: PLATO People: A History Book Research Project

A quote from the above: "Before Microsoft. Apple. The Web. AOL. The Internet. Before everything, there was PLATO: the first online community. The network that time forgot. The birthplace of instant messaging, chat rooms, MUDs (multi-user dungeons), personal publishing, screen savers, flat-panel plasma displays, one of the first spell-checking/answer-judging mechanisms, and countless other innovations."

I participated on PLATO as a teenager and everything I've read on these websites ring true to me, though I had nothing to do with programming and so was and am ignorant on those issues. I do know, however, that the PLATO story has been lost to the (silicon) sands of time, and that Wikipedia is the perfect place to return it to its rightful place in computer and online history.

One of the rare mainstream press articles about PLATO: "PLATOfest to Celebrate First Online Community," by Steve Silberman

I'm new on Wikipedia and made the mistake of editing large parts of another entry without discussing it first (out of ignorance, not pure rudeness), and didn't want to make the same mistake with this, so here I am, on the Discussion page.

MaudB 3:06 pm, 14 June 2006

 * Have you looked at the wikipedia article PLATO? It ought to be linked from this article though.  EncMstr 19:19, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

 * That is so weird; I looked for a Wikipedia article on PLATO before posting in here, but didn't see it.

Apologies; I'll look it over. MaudB 4:44, 17 June 2006

 * The Wiki search engine is extremely poor, IMHO. Changes in capitalization, spacing (etc) result in no hits. The same term typed into the "search" field and then GO'ed works fine. It's a real problem. Maury 15:32, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

STAR
The section on the STAR is a bit light and completely ignores the contributions of Neil Lincoln who assumed project leadership after Jim Thornton went on to other things. In particular, Neil was a very big part of ETA systems.

Also, the section omits quite a bit of history in the design and evolution of the STAR. The first incarnation of the STAR was the STAR-100, which had an incredibly huge instruction set with instructions for everything from approximate masked key searches to BCD arithmentic. A number of potential customers had expressed interest in Thornton's design, but all with very diverse requirements. Given that the STAR was heavily microprogrammed, an attempt was made to accomodate all of them, with disastrous results.

As an aside, there were two other STAR models at the same time. The STAR-1B was a low-speed emulator that could make use of STAR-100 peripherals and stations, but otherwise probably ran at the speed of a slow microprocessor. It was used heavily for operating system and product software development. All extant examples of the 1B were scrapped sometime around 1976. The STAR-65, renamed from the PL50 then under development in Canada, was intended to provide an interim computer at least for one client until the STAR-100 could be completed and delivered. However, because it was a very complex micro-programmed machine, it was never fully debugged, and its development was finally abandoned.

The STAR-100 used its long pipelined vector units for everything, including the simplest scalar operation (memory fetches and stores were performed in 512-bit "superwords" or SWORDs). This meant a very large latency for instruction startup with sometimes startling effects. For example, for N<1000, a serial vector search was substantially faster than a binary search. On the other hand, the ability to handle large sparsely-populated vectors ("sparse vectors") using a bitmap to indicate populated positions represented a welcome feature.

The STAR-100A incorporated a separate scalar unit and began the process of pruning away some of the ridiculously large instruction set. (At one time, it was a mark of distinction if you could think of a use for some of the more esoteric ones, or even knew that they existed.) I believe this became the CYBER 201.

The STAR 100B and 100C models were released as the CYBER 202 and 203, respectively, with incremental improvements in architecture (e.g. semiconductor memory, additional vector pipes). In this sense, the STAR was an evolutionary product, not a revolutionary one.

--71.210.15.112 21:14, 6 August 2006 (UTC)Chuck G.

 * Chuck, please go nuts in the STAR article! I wrote what I could based on the books I had (The Supermen being the only useful one, and only marginally so) and lots of "overview" descriptions in print and online (mostly copies of print material, obviously). I realize the article is extremely thin and needs work, but I have exhausted my own knowledge on the issue. If you can help, please, feel free to re-write! Maury 15:32, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

 * This section on the STAR, and other sections, would be greatly improved by citing sites. The STAR burned the careers of friends, both mentioned in Supermen and not for security reasons.  Attempting to locate artifacts for the preservation of computer history makes this doubly important. 143.232.210.150 (talk) 23:47, 13 December 2007 (UTC) --enm

 * "STAR-100, which had an incredibly huge instruction set..." -- that's why they couldn't work on this until Seymour Cray was gone from CDC.  He was really opposed to the idea of big instruction sets.  (There's a reason people say RISC means Really Invented by Seymour Cray.  He strongly advocated small instruction sets, saying they could be made to execute faster.
 * In the CRAY-1, the CIA/NSA had to put real pressure on him to add a single instruction (pop-count) to the machine. But they were customers for his machines, and had much influence on other customers, like the nuclear labs, and they really wanted this instruction for cryptographic work.  T bonham (talk) 03:11, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Operating Systems and Networks
There should be some discussion of CDC's software and networking, which was excellent for its time. Sometimes around 1976, CDC built the MERITSS time sharing system, which supported 2000 terminals located in the highschools of Minnesota. In terms of operating systems, they has a batch system called SCOPE, and later KRONOS and NOS, which were time-sharing systems based in part on paradigms from the Dartmouth Timesharing system. CDC was the king of timesharing. Having use the hideous IBM and Univac TS systems, I can say CDC really did get it right. DonPMitchell 03:11, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

One should mention that some of CDCs better products were "bootleg" efforts. KRONOS, for example, used to be known as MACE, a product of Greg Mansfield (with Dave Cahlander) done mostly in the wee hours on the QA floor at Arden Hills.

SCOPE was primarily a PP-resident operating system, with only the memory-move function be CP-resident. One could run SCOPE wihtout the CEJ/MEJ feature enabled, whereas KRONOS required it.

SCOPE was updated a bit to compete with KRONOS and re-named NOS/BE (batch-environment).

Other customized operating systems were developed for Special Systems projects, such as TCOS (Time Critical Operating System) for synchronized real-time requirements to achieve a guaranteed 100 microsecond response time and RT SCOPE (Real-Time SCOPE) to meet asynchronous real-time requirements with a similar response time.

7000 SCOPE bore no resemblence to 6000 SCOPE. 7000 SCOPE was mostly resident in the CP, and used a clever scheme of nested privilege levels, with each higher-level including the lower ones in its RA and FL. SCOPE was also the first CDC operating system to introduce the idea of a Record Manager. ChuckGuzis 04:26, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

CDC_and_the_PC (cmd-click)">CDC and the PC.

CDC had some chances to change its focus but could not see the need. The upper management had lost its willingness to take chances as the team grew older. Personal computing was introduced as a concept for funding in the 1970s (around 1973). Even though CDC understood the technology and was manufacturing many of the required component parts, it was felt that this was too risky ($250K R&D) and a concept that would never take off. These ideas were revisited circa 1985 when it was suggested that the then mainframe operating system (NOS VE) could and should be ported onto personal computers. Again personal computers were seen as no more than expensive adaptable mainframe terminals by the teams that set company direction.Gr11zzly 22:51, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

CDC_and_the_internet (cmd-click)">CDC and the internet.

A small team of systems architects saw the need for distributed communications to rid the mainframes of what was termed the ‘front end bottle neck’. A product was proposed and implemented called CDCNET. CDCNET was a network of intelligent routers and bridges that in 1989 had some 10,000 active users in 16 countries In 1985(?) a CDCNET prototype was demonstrated at a New York trade show where CDC showed 16 different applications running in 16 windows with each application on geographically diverse systems including IBM, Burroughs, Honeywell and CDC mainframes. The user was able to cut and paste data from a machine in Belgium to a machine in San Francisco from the terminal in New York. It had the potential to be winning product but for a few poor decisions that caused the delivery to miss the market window. The protocol chosen was not TCP/IP but an up and coming ECMA standard. And the implementation language was changed midstream from C ( with off the shelf available code modules) to Cybil (a home grown Pascal based language) These decisions added 5 years to the delivery.Gr11zzly 22:51, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

NPOV and References
Much of this article sounds as though it were written by a disgruntled employee ruminating on the "glory days" of CDC. I have no idea whether or not this is truly the case, but the tone of this article needs a massive overhaul. Sentences like "For most of the 1960s they built the fastest computers in the world by far, only losing that crown in the 1970s to what was effectively a spinoff" and "CDC was well known and highly regarded throughout the industry at one time, but today is largely forgotten" are all well and good with citation, but as there are no citations throughout MOST of this article, I am forced to add both a Citations Needed and an NPOV tag.--Icetitan17 20:08, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, for most of the 1960s they did build the worlds fastest computers, by far. And they did lose their crown shortly after their chief computer architect, Seymour Cray, left to start Cray Research in 1972. And CDC was very well-known, and was highly regarded in the industry in its day. (For example in 1988 they had revenues of $3.6 billion/year, had over 30,000 employees, and was the 5th largest mainframe manufacturer.) However they never had a presence in the microprocessor market, so they are very unknown to most young 'uns today. But many have heard have heard of Commercial Credit, Arbitron, Ticketron, portions of Seagate Technology, and dozens of other spinoffs that are still with us today. --Wws 04:25, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with the originator of this section, and I believe that the NPOV tag should be removed. When I read the article, I too thought that it might have been written by a CDC technical old-timer, because the technical detail is so good. I worked for CDC from 1980-91 in the division that was formed (years before I joined) to fight the IBM antitrust case. We used the history of our division, Control Data Litigation Support Services, as a marketing tool. For this reason, I have seen the IBM internal marketing documents relating to "pre-announcement" of a system to compete with the 6600 that were discovered during the case. The use of FUD was (and is) common in markets where there is a dominant player. IBM was hugely dominant in the computing market during the 1960s. It is unfortunate that the original author did not include references, but I know quite a bit about CDC history, and I did not see a single factual error. I would hope that a moderator/editor would remove the NPOV tag. 68.164.1.11 (talk) 19:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

 * I agree with you, however I arrived here to read the summary and ended reading most of article plus Cray's bio only to clear up wich spinn-off is alluded. Well, also because it's nice reading... 81.41.112.102 (talk) 12:58, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I side with Wws on the NPOV, but I am not certain that I would consider the term "disgruntled." For instance the early year section mentions Parker, a name which I could guess and later confirmed on the ERA wikipedia page, and doesn't mention Norris until later down on the page and completely leaving out another significant founder. I think that the NPOV should be kept and increasingly I've noticed how the ETA pages have become increasingly glowing. 143.232.210.150 (talk) 23:02, 13 December 2007 (UTC) --enm

 * Most of this article, and ERA, was originally written by me (it has grown significantly and in very positive ways since then). I am not a former CDC employee, and am too young to have even seen one of their machines in operation. I do, however, have a good basic understanding of the technical details and am relatively well read on the topic. I was quite flattered to see two people think I may have worked there :-)
 * The original argument is that the terminology is too glowing. This may well be the case, but of the two examples given the first is simply a statement of fact. The 6600 was ten times as fast as the next fastest machine when it was released, and they kept this performance crown until the 1970s. They only lost it because Cray left in the aftermath of the 8600, and went off to build a machine that simply crushed all comers. Forget CDC: the key issue here is that Cray was the key element in machines that held the performance lead for twenty years. How can one state this very important point without sounding "glowing"?
 * Watering down statements about the effect this company had on the industry does every reader a disservice. Maury (talk) 20:48, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

 * It's time to remove the NPOV tag. As an architecture and OS specialist, I can attest to the speed of the 6600 series. Terms that it was a factor of 10 faster than IBM machines is actually conservative. Many batch jobs that would take minutes on an IBM mainframe took seconds on a CDC. The prose may be a little flowery, but it's not inaccurate. Even IBMers had great respect for Cray and Norris.

 * --UnicornTapestry (talk) 22:36, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons and other images
I added Category:Control Data Corporation to Wikimedia Commons so that any images pertaining to Control Data could be found from there, because a cursory search for just 'CDC' yields results that mention Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in one way or another. — Which is why all CDC computer images are welcome to be categorized to the aforementioned category. I also added an external link to Commons. -Mardus 03:53, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

The entry on Control Data Corp. contains the following sentence: Thus SPIN explored all of these approaches, and eventually delivered a very large 28" fixed disk of extremely high performance, much better than "hard drives" of today with their overly complex giant magnetoresistance design, as well as a smaller multi-platter 14" removable disk pack system as well. I suggest that this sentence be removed or rewritten to remove the reference to today. Although that old SLED (Single, Large Expensive Disk) fixed-disk design was fast for the time, the performance of storage systems and servers -- as of 1987-1990 -- began getting much faster with a quite different architecture (RAID), and today, drives far exceed anything available from CDC's heyday. As of 2008, certain enterprise-caliber corporate data storage arrays contain solid-state disk that perform at nearly pure memory speed.

CDC 3800
CDC also made a model called the 3800. It was a CDC3600 with the CDC6000 memory modules. These modules took 5 cabinets for 4K of memory. Each memory location was 52 bits long, i.e. 48 data bits with 4 parity bits and took a 1 ton refrigeration unit to keep the modules cool. I went to school on them at the Los Angeles CDI school in 1967. I was then transferred to another city in California where the military had 6 of them along with about 10 CDC 160A computers.

I was in the last class CDI taught on this computer. Even CDI in Minneapolis did not teach it any longer.

The mainframe of this computer was made from "discrete" components, i.e., no integrated circuits as was the CDC 160A. Since CDI no longer taught it and we needed people trained, I developed a component level course on this computer. It was 6 weeks long, 8 hours per day and 5 days per week.

I knew of only one CDC3800 that was not owned by the military. This one was owned by a company named "Interaccess". I had to work on their system one time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by BikerLen (talk • contribs) 23:19, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

 * One 3800 on display at the NASM Annex at Dulles outside Washington DC. 00:25, 28 January 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.123.51.237 (talk)

Cyber 18 and minicomputers made by CDC
I worked with a Cyber 18 minicomputer in the 1979-1981 timeframe. I do not know much of its characteristics other than it had a 16 bit processor and around 256kilobytes of RAM. I worked with two installations, one at the University of Georgia that was used for FORTRAN programming classes and one for the UN World Meteorological Organization in Saudia Arabia where it was used as a message switch as part of the WMO weather data collection network. The Cyber 18s I worked with came with assembler, FORTRAN and RPG II programming languages. It had a multi-tasking/multi-user operating system and supported several simultaneous users with VT100 type terminals.

The one I used in the university had a small card reader, a tape drive, and two disk drives that were of the old stacked platters discs that were removable. The actual drives looked a lot like small top loading washing machines and the platter stacks were stored in what looked like cake carriers when they were not in the drive itself. http://www.eits.uga.edu/50years/

At the university some of the student employees were interested in C programming language and the UNIX operating system at the time and added the RATFOR preprocessor for FORTRAN to the Cyber 18 installation.

Several articles mentions the Cyber 18
 * http://en.allexperts.com/e/c/cd/cdc_cyber.htm
 * http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/CDC_Cyber#encyclopedia
 * http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/CDC-Cyber

Here is something about the disk packs http://www.mfarris.com/pack/cdc_cyber.html

I kind of wonder if the Cyber 18 was basically CDC just redeploying one of the periperal processors used in the CDC mainframes in order to get into the minicomputer market as quickly as possible. I don't very many were sold. Richardelainechambers (talk) 17:48, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

info about Magnetic Peripherals Inc.
I have some info for you on Magnetic Peripherals Inc. (aka: MPI) I thought perhaps you might want to add some of this info to create a page for MPI, linked to the CDC page. This should help with expanding the MPI info and the products they handled.

I used to work there in 1980 and 1981 in Oklahoma City. I still have my ID if I need to verify it to someone in charge. I was a technician back then and troubleshot and repaired most of the peripherals we handled.

I worked on the 14 inch cartridge disk, break boards, controller cards, etc, which we troubleshot using a very large diagnostic station called a "Genrad." I rewrote one of the diagnostic software programs to improve the Genrad diagnostics. Genrad is a contraction for "General Radio", a Massachusetts electronics firm well-known for quality test equipment over several decades.

I also did troubleshooting and repair on the 8" Shugart floppy drives and control boards which were typically found in IBM systems such as the PDP series... if I remember correctly, a couple of those systems were the PDP 1128 and 1133... but I'm not positive on the numbers. but I worked on those systems which had the shugart drives for a prior employer.

I also worked on the Winchester drives and control boards and phoenix control boards.

I was there when the new Tandy 5 1/4 floppy drives were introduced and started coming into the repair dept. These were our first sandwiched drives with a double layer of circuit boards so the drive could be physically smaller. I believe these were the very first 5 1/4 floppy drives made in the industry at the time. No one had ever seen a drive that small before.

We had quite a problem with CMOS chips .... especially on the Winchester drives until they learned about static damage. I had called the upper managers in 1983 after I moved and explained how the static was damaging the chips and sent them info and photos I had from JPL on this problem I had special training in after moving. MPI implemented a new program on preventing static damage.

I also remember the Teledyne test station... I knew the person handling those boards but did not use it myself.

I also remember seeing the 10" stacked platter drives there but did not work on those.

I also have a very nice, large photo of the entire staff management and technical crew in the repair dept from that time... it it a high angle photo so it shows almost the entire repair dept and was signed by the crew when I moved. I would be willing to make the photo available for the page when I find it. I also had smaller photos of various members of the crew, etc.

Last I heard, their name was changed to Seagate. I may have some other info squirreled away somewhere. Let me know what you need. I will defer to someone else who wants to add this to the appropriate pages since I'm not familiar with the page publishing rules.

ExecPE (talk) 10:09, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Shark award
The article contains mention of a Shark Award for salesmen. It doesn't seem to be in an appropriate section and it's not clear to me that it's appropriate for the article. Thoughts?

--UnicornTapestry (talk) 22:47, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

 * Since there were no objections and the Shark sales award appeared to have nothing to do with the topic of super-computing, I removed that paragraph.

 * --UnicornTapestry (talk) 15:41, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

"Card punch" link incorrect
The link "Card punch" redirects to "Keypunch", which is not the same thing at all. This probably affects a lot of computer-related articles. There doesn't seem to be a relevant wiki article for card punch. The "card reader" article at least lists "punched card reader" (should that be "punched-card reader?", although it doesn't describe one. Peter Flass (talk) 14:03, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

 * Peter, you're absolutely right. I created a card punch stub.

 * --UnicornTapestry (talk) 15:28, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Challenging Author's Performance Assertions
As a technical person who was active in the business in the 60s, I'm struck by the naivety reflected in this treatise, and I doubt that some of the comparisons are accurate. When talking about computer performance, we first have to answer the question, "Doing what kind of work?." Real customers at the time (the 60s) were complaining about machines that were overly optimized for commercial work (character machines) or scientific work (floating point, or "word" machines. The author makes the unsupported statement that the CDC 6600 (1964) was 10 times as fast as its competition.  Doing what kind of work?  Even limiting the comparison to Fortran-only workloads (i.e., predominately floating point) the 6600 made about 3 mflops (1 to 9 mflops, depending on which source you cite) and IBM's System 360/Model 91 (1966) at 5.5 mflops [ref: http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP2091.html].

The fact that neither machine could really be considered a commercial success because of their high cost and limited sales volume is particularly telling. It was for this reason that IBM had decided earlier on to shelve its high-performance program (ACS, or system 8000) in favor of System 360. It became clear early on that designing a very fast machine could be accomplished if the design could be carefully tailored to the workload, and then, to what end? In fact, CDC recognized this even during the 6600 era, opting, instead, to focus its sales activities on the much less costly 6400 which used far fewer specialized components. For the System 360 program, IBM diverted more of less all of its development resources with the goal of a complete line of compatible machines, suitable for both commercial or scientific (engineering) work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atraveler1 (talk • contribs) 20:53, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Current owners of KRONOS/NOS and NOS/VE code
I tried locating who are the current owners of the old OSes but it seems no one really knows. Tried mailing to the maintainer of the "dtcyber" simulator site, but there is still no reply. If someone knows whether it is BT or Ceridian or any other entity who owns the rights (and has) the binaries on tapes and/or the code, I think it would be of interest to add this as well.

 * As far as I know BT was indeed the last owner of the old CDC OSes (that was circa 2004?). I think they even licensed the OSes for hobbyist use at the time.
 * Maybe try the cctalk@classiccmp.org mailing list. Also the guys at cray-cyber.org have a couple of operational Cybers maybe they can help you as well.
 * Bitsavers has some Cyber18 stuff but nothing for CDC mainframes.

 * --Jside (talk) 12:33, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Need Discussion of Plato and Norris's foray into Educational Computing -- Anyone
have any history? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.174.119.216 (talk) 12:45, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system) doesn't suffice? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.252.11.61 (talk) 12:50, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 12:14, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Control Data Corporation


text:
Ebenezer Learned

Ebenezer Learned (April 18, 1728 – April 1, 1801) was a brigadier general in the American Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

Early life and career
He was the son of Ebenezer and Deborah Haynes Learned, and was born at Oxford, Massachusetts, and lived his entire life in the area. On October 5, 1749, he married Jerusha Baker (1732–1799) and they had nine children. When his grandfather died in 1750, he inherited 200 acres (0.8 km2) known as Prospect Hill, and built his home there.

Learned was an active member of the local militia, and raised and drilled a company at Oxford during the French and Indian War. In the summer of 1756 he led his company to Fort Edward at Lake George. There is little record of his service, except that he served sporadically from then until 1763. He fell ill with smallpox in 1757 and was hospitalized for a month.

After that war, he remained at home for several years, farming and operating a tavern at Oxford. He was prominent in both church and community, and served as a town selectman for 25 of the years between 1758 and 1794.

American Revolution
He remained active in the militia, and led his own and a neighboring company of minutemen to Boston, where he received the news of the Battle of Lexington on April 19, 1775. On April 24, the Massachusetts committee of safety named him a colonel and authorized him to organize a regiment that was known as Learned's Regiment. His regiment was adopted into the Continental Army in June. In 1776 those who re-enlisted were augmented by men from Danielson's Regiment to form the 3rd Continental Regiment.

By the end of the Siege of Boston, General Washington had given Learned command of the important Dorchester Heights position. When the British evacuated Boston on March 17, 1776, Colonel Learned was the first to enter the city. He led a battalion of 500 specially selected men, to clean out the traps, abatis, caltrops, and garbage left by the British. He and the men were selected because they had all had survived smallpox or had been inoculated.

Learned resigned in May 1776 due to ill health, but returned to duty on April 2, 1777. He was named a brigadier general and assigned to the Northern Department. In the first phase of the Battle of Saratoga, the Battle of Freeman's Farm, his brigade was not very effective. Working forward in the center of the line, they mainly got lost in the woods, and exchanged light fire near the end of the battle.

At the Battle of Bemis Heights his brigade was in the center of the left division, fighting alongside Daniel Morgan and Enoch Poor. They were commanded by General Benjamin Lincoln. Learned's own brigade (the 2nd, 8th, and 9th Massachusetts line), was expanded by James Livingston's 1st Canadian Regiment and 2 regiments of New Hampshire Militia the 2nd and 4th. The attack on the American far left was turned by Daniel Morgan's men, but the enemy's center was held by Hessian troops. Benedict Arnold came onto the field and encouraged the men. Arnold and Learned led a joint charge on the Hessian positions, and, even though Arnold fell wounded, Learned and his men carried through and broke the enemy lines. Burgoyne's forces had to retreat to their starting fortifications around Freeman's Farm. When their charge carried the first bunker, Burgoyne's forces withdrew to the positions they had held before the Freeman's Farm battle.

After Saratoga, his was the first unit to guard and escort the surrendered Convention Army on its trek to the south. In 1777–78, he commanded a brigade of Massachusetts troops in Major General deKalb's division at Valley Forge. On March 24, 1778, his continuing health problems led to his final resignation.

Later life and activities
Ebenezer returned home to Oxford. He served as the Chairman of the Massachusetts Convention of 1779 that adopted a new constitution for the state. He served as a Judge of Common Pleas for Worcester County, Massachusetts. In 1783 he was elected to the Massachusetts General Court (the state's House of Representatives).

He died at home in Oxford in 1801.

title: Ebenezer Learned


text:
David Lyndsay

Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount (c. 1486 – c. 1555; surname sometimes transcribed as Lindsay) was a Scottish knight, poet, and herald who gained the highest heraldic office of Lyon King of Arms. He remains a well regarded poet whose works reflect the spirit of the Renaissance, specifically as a makar.

Biography
He was the son of David Lyndsay – second of the Mount (Fife), and of Garmylton (Haddingtonshire) – who died circa 1503. Lyndsay the younger's place of birth and early education are unknown, but he may have attended the University of St Andrews, on the books of which appears an entry "Da Lindesay" for the session 1508–1509. He was engaged as a courtier in the Royal Household; first as an equerry, then as an usher (assistant to a head-tutor) to the future King James V of Scotland. His poems mention that he was involved in the education of James V and some contain advice for the young king.

The Treasurer's Accounts are missing from September 1518 to June 1522. When they recommence, they record a “Jenet Dowglas, spous to David Lindsay maister Ischare to the King” who was a seamstress at court. Thus, it may be inferred that Lyndsay married, in or around 1522, Janet Douglas, a court seamstress.

His first heraldic appointment was as Snowdon Herald and in 1529 he was appointed Lord Lyon King of Arms, and knighted. (Some sources cite 1542 as the year of his knighthood.) He was engaged in diplomatic business (twice abroad in the Netherlands and France), and was, in virtue of his heraldic office, a general master of ceremonies. He was involved in organising the ceremonies and celebrations welcoming the French brides of James V, Madeleine of Valois in 1537, and Mary of Guise in 1539.

Lyndsay signed the only surviving letter from this time, "Dauid Lyndsay". His handwriting shows no trace of the italic forms used by those Scots who had finished their education abroad.

After the death of James V, in 1542, Lyndsay continued to sit in Parliament of Scotland as commissioner for Cupar, Fife. In 1548, he was member of a mission to Denmark which obtained certain privileges for Scottish merchants. There is reason to believe that he died in or about 1555.

Heraldic works
In 1542, he produced a Scottish roll of arms known today as the Lindsay of the Mount Roll. It contains 400 Scottish coats of arms, some of which were added later in the 16th century, and forms the basis of the official Scots heraldic registry in use today. A facsimile comprising accurate redrawing of his own drawings was published in Edinburgh in 1878.

Literary works
Most of Lyndsay's literary work, by which he secured great reputation in his own day and by which he still lives, was written during the period of prosperity at court. In this respect he is different from Gavin Douglas, who abandoned literature to become a politician. The difference is due partly to the fact that Lyndsay's muse was more occasional and satirical, and that the time was suitable to the exercise of his special gifts. It is more difficult to explain how he enjoyed such unparalleled freedom of speech. He chastised all classes, from his royal master to the most simple. There is no evidence that he abjured Catholicism; yet his leading purpose was the exposure of its errors and abuses. His aid was readily accepted by the reforming party, and by their use of his work he shared with their leaders throughout many generations.

Lyndsay, the Makar, is not behind his fellow-poets in acknowledgment to Geoffrey Chaucer. As piously as they, he reproduces the master's forms; but in him the sentiment and outlook have suffered change. His nearest approach to Chaucer is in The Historie and Testament of Squyer Meldrum, which recalls the sketch of the "young squire"; but the reminiscence is verbal rather than spiritual. Elsewhere his memory serves him less happily, as when he describes the array of the lamented Queen Magdalene in the words which Chaucer had applied to the eyes of his wanton Friar. So too, in the Dreme, the allegorical tradition survives only in the form. "Remembrance" conducts the poet over the old-world itinerary, but only to lead him to speculation on Scotland's woes and to an "Exhortatioun to the Kingis Grace" to bring relief. The tenor is well expressed in the motto from the Vulgate – "Prophetias nolite spernere. Omnia autem probate: quod bonum est tenete."

This didactic habit is freely exercised in the long poem Ane Dialog betwixt Experience and ane Courteor (sometimes called the Monarchie), a universal history of the medieval type, in which the falls of princes by corruption supply an object lesson to the unreformed church of his day. Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis is more direct in its attack on ecclesiastical abuse; and its dramatic form permits more lively treatment. This piece is of great historical interest, being the only extant example of a complete Scottish morality. It is in respect of literary quality Lyndsay's best work, and in dramatic construction and delineation of character it holds a high place in this genre. The farcical interludes (in places too coarse for modern taste) supply many touches of genuine comedy; and throughout the play there are passages, as in the speeches of Veritie in the First Part and of Dame Chastitie in the "Interlude of the Sowtar and the Taylor," in which word and line are happily conceived.

The Testament of the Papyngo (parrot), drawn in the familiar medieval manner, is another tract for the time, full of admonition to court and clergy. Of his shorter pieces, The Complaynt and Publict Confessions of the Kingis Auld Hound, callit Bagsche, directit to Bawtie, the Kingis best belovit Dog, and his companyconis, and the Answer to the Kingis Flyting have a like pulpit resonance. The former is interesting as a forerunner of Burns's device in the "Twa Dogs".

The Deploratioun of the Death of Queen Magdalene is in the extravagant style of commemoration illustrated in Dunbar's Elegy on the Lord Aubigny. The Justing betwix James Watsoun and Jhone Barbour is a contribution to the popular taste for boisterous fun, in spirit, if not in form, akin to the Christis Kirk on the Grene series; and indirectly, with Dunbar's Turnament and Of ane Blak-Moir, a burlesque of the courtly tourney. Lyndsay approaches Dunbar in his satire The Supplicatioun in contemptioun of syde taillis ("wide" trains of the ladies), which recalls the older poet's realistic lines on the filthy condition of the city streets. In Lyndsay's Descriptioun of Pedder Coffeis (pedlars) we have an early example of the studies in vulgar life which are so plentiful in later Scottish literature. In Kitteis Confessioun he returns, but in more sprightly mood, to his attack on the church.

Critical literature
A complete edition of Lyndsay's poetical works was published by David Laing in 3 vols. in 1879. The E.E.T.S. issued the first part of a complete edition in 1865 (ed. F. Hall). Five parts have appeared, four edited by F. Hall, the fifth by J.A.H. Murray. For the bibliography see Laing's 3 vol. edition, u.s. iii. pp. 222 et seq., and the E.E.T.S. edition passim. The Association for Scottish Literary Studies issued Janet Hadley Williams, David Lyndsay, Selected Poems, (2000) freshly establishing texts with detailed notes. See also the editions by Pinkerton (1792), Sibbald (1803), and George Chalmers (1806); and the critical accounts in Henderson's Scottish Vernacular Literature (1898), Gregory Smith's Transition Period (1900), and J.H. Millar's Literary History of Scotland (1903).

A professional work prepared by Lyndsay in the Lyon Office, entitled the Register of Scottish Arms (now preserved in manuscript in the Advocates' Library), was printed in 1821 and reprinted in 1878. It remains the most authoritative document on Scottish heraldry. The Rothesay Herald offered to show the Armorial to the English diplomat Thomas Randolph in October 1561, "wherein are all the arms of all the noblemen and barons both new and old that are in Scotland."

Mission of June 1531
As Snowdon Herald, Lyndsay was sent to the Emperor Charles V at the end of June 1531. He was to conclude their Treaty of Perpetual Peace for a duration of 100 years. This would succeed a treaty made 100 years previously. Other business included the long-standing issue of Robert Barton of Over Barnton's ship the Black Bark, seized by Spanish pirates off England in 1519.

In his Latin letters to Charles V, James V refers to Lyndsay as "chief herald" or "first of our order." Lyndsay stayed 7 weeks at court with the Emperor and Queen of Hungary at Brussels.

Mission of March 1532
Lyndsay was set to go to France as a herald accompanying Thomas Erskine of Haltoun and the Bishop of Ross in January 1532. This Scottish embassy was delayed till March 1532. The ambassadors were to contract with Francis I of France the marriage of James V to Madeleine of Valois.

England 1535
Lyndsay as Lion King of Arms accompanied Lord Erskine with Robert Hart, Rothesay Herald, to Windsor Castle, where they acted as proxy for the installation of James V as a Knight of the Order of the Garter. After travelling to meet Henry VIII at Thornbury Castle, they returned to London, where a servant of Thomas Cromwell gave Lindsay £20.

Edinburgh 1540
Lyndsay conducted the visit of the English ambassador Ralph Sadler at Holyroodhouse in February 1540 with his assistant Rothesay Herald. They met Sadler, and brought him to James V at the Chapel Royal in the Palace then returned him to his lodgings and dined with him. Later, Lindsay arranged Sadler's meeting with Margaret Tudor, and brought him to meet her again in Chapel on the following Sunday.

England 1543
After the death of James V, Lyndsay was sent by Regent Arran to England to return the late King's collar, garter, and statutes of the Order of the Garter to Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, the prelate of the Order. Henry VIII wrote to Arran that Lindsay had fulfilled his office "right discreetly."

Longer poems

 * The Dreme (1134 lines)
 * The Testament and Complaynt of the Papyngo (1190 lines)
 * The Historie and Testament of Squyer Meldrum (1848 lines)
 * Ane Dialog betwix Experience and ane Courteour of the Miserabyll Estait of the World (6333 lines)
 * Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (over 4000 lines).

Other literature
Lyndsay of the Mount appears as the sympathetic major character in Nigel Tranter's well-researched James V trilogy: The Riven Realm (1984), James by the Grace of God (1985), and Rough Wooing (1987).

Lyndsay's description of the Tower of Babel in his Dialog ("The shadow of that hyddeous strength [the Tower of Babel], sax myle and more it is of length") is used as the motto of the novel That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis, and the book's name is also derived from it.

Lyndsay appears as a character in Sir Walter Scott's epic poem Marmion. He is depicted amongst the sixteen Scottish writers and poets on the lower section of the Scott Monument on Princes Street in Edinburgh. He is shown on the left side of the southern face.

Lyndsay of the Mount is a major character in John Arden's play Armstrong's Last Goodnight set in 16th-century Scotland.

External links and editions

 * Works of David Lindsay, Edinburgh (1776)
 * Pinkerton, John, Scottish Poems: Lindsay's Eight interludes from the Bannatyne Manuscript, vol.2, London (1792)
 * Chalmers, George, ed., The poetical works of Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount: Lion king at arms, under James V, vol.1, London (1806)
 * Chalmers, George, ed., The poetical works of Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount: Lion king at arms, under James V, vol.2, London (1806)
 * Chalmers, George, ed., The poetical works of Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount: Lion king at arms, under James V, vol.3, London (1806)
 * Laing, David, ed., Poetical Works of David Lyndsay, vol.1, Edinburgh (1879)
 * Laing, David, ed., Poetical Works of David Lyndsay, vol.2, Edinburgh (1879)
 * Laing, David, ed., Poetical Works of David Lyndsay, vol.3, Edinburgh (1879)
 * Full text of The Dreme in Scottish Poetry of the Sixteenth Century at archive.org

Early English Text Society edition

 * Hall, Fitzedward, ed., Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, (1602), Trübner / EETS
 * Murray, J.A.H., ed., The Minor Poems of Lyndesay, Trübner / EETS (1871)
 * Hall, Fitzedward, ed., Historie and Testament of Meldrum, Trübner / EETS (1868)

title: David Lyndsay


text:
Charles Upham

Captain Charles Hazlitt Upham (21 September 1908 – 22 November 1994) was a New Zealand soldier decorated for actions during World War II.

Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, he attended Christ's College and later the Canterbury Agricultural College, where he earned a diploma in agriculture. Before the outbreak of the war, Upham worked as a sheep farmer and a manager of a high country station and later at the Government Valuation Department. In 1939, with the advent of World War II, he enlisted in the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force, where he quickly rose through the ranks.

Upham's first Victoria Cross was awarded for his actions in the Battle of Crete in May 1941, where he displayed remarkable courage and leadership under fire. Despite being wounded, he led multiple attacks against enemy positions and helped evacuate wounded soldiers. His second Victoria Cross came from his actions during the First Battle of El Alamein in July 1942, where once again he demonstrated bravery and resilience in the face of intense enemy fire, despite being severely wounded. Upham is one of three people to be awarded a Victoria Cross twice, the others being Arthur Martin-Leake and Noel Godfrey Chavasse.

After the war, Upham returned to New Zealand, where he continued to farm and became involved in veterans' affairs. He famously rejected offers of financial assistance, preferring to live a quiet life dedicated to his family and community. He passed away on 22 November 1994 at the age of 86. His funeral in the Christchurch Cathedral was conducted with full military honours and was buried in the graveyard of St Paul's Anglican Church.

Early life
Upham was born in Christchurch on 21 September 1908, the son of John Hazlitt Upham, a lawyer, and his wife, Agatha Mary Coates. His father was a great-grandson of artist John Hazlitt, while his mother was a granddaughter of pioneer colonist Guise Brittan. He grew up a quiet, shy boy, very gentlemanly and courteous, and "no trouble at all". He wasn't a strong child physically, as well as having a slightly shorter leg than the other, leading to a doctor suspecting Upham of having a mild case of poliomyelitis. He boarded at Waihi School, near Winchester, South Canterbury, between 1917 and 1922 and boarded at Christ's College, Christchurch, from 1923 to 1927.

"[Upham] was quiet and unassuming, despite his nickname of "Puggie". Rather shy, not a very good mixer, he would walk over to school with a group of boys, not talking and chaffing with them, but head down and brow furrowed, completely wrapped up in his own thoughts. He took things more seriously than others. He was a lone ranger. Though normally placid, now and then he showed he was capable of a deep fierce temper if he were aroused. But you could rely on him implicitly. I would risk anything on his word – and once having given his word, nothing would budge him."

- Mr. H. E. Solomon, Upham's housemaster at Christ's College

Upham's father was disappointed when his only son elected not to study law and join his father's practice. But Charles said, "I'd always be jealous of my friends on farms". So Upham's father enrolled Charles at Canterbury Agricultural College (now known as Lincoln University), where the practical and theoretical sciences of farming are taught at the university level, joining in 1928.

Upham rapidly found himself enthralled with the work. He plunged into the farm and study courses with an enthusiasm that convinced his parents that, after all, it was the right choice. For two years he was first in agriculture and gained firsts also in veterinary science and economics. With a Diploma of Agriculture, Upham left Canterbury Agricultural College in 1930 to begin life on the land. For the next six years, he learnt his craft in the hills, gullies, and plains of Canterbury. He worked as shepherd, musterer and farm manager.

In 1935, at Riccarton Park Racecourse, he met Molly McTamney, who was a distant relative of Noel Godfrey Chavasse. She was a dietitian working at Christchurch Hospital, after four years of hospital nursing. She was described as "brunette, pretty, and gay". They danced together that evening, and the next day Upham was waiting as she came off duty. He had an armful of red roses for her and he proposed marriage, but she declined, although they both continued in a relationship.

In March 1937, he joined the Government Valuation Department, firstly under supervision, then alone, Upham quickly assimilated the techniques of land valuation. He was aided by the scientific knowledge gained at Canterbury Agricultural College, but much more by his extensive experience of Canterbury land during his six years' work in the province. The following year, he became engaged to McTamney. In February 1939, granted leave from the Valuation Department, Upham returned to Canterbury Agricultural College to take a course in valuation and farm management.

Now somewhat of an elder statesman, by virtue of his earlier days at the college and his wide farming experience, Upham became a popular favourite of his fellow students. He helped them liberally with their own studies, he played football with just as much vigour as before. The course he took was restricted to men of wide practical backgrounds and was designed primarily to train men for managerial posts in government departments. At the end of the year, he had no trouble with the necessary exams, obtaining his Diploma in Valuation and Farm Management. But the darkening months of 1939 saw Upham thinking more and more deeply about events on the other side of the world.

Second World War
With the call for volunteers in September 1939, after the outbreak of the Second World War, he enlisted in the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force (2NZEF) at the age of 30, and was posted to the 20th Canterbury-Otago Battalion, part of the New Zealand 2nd Division.

Although he already had five years' experience in the New Zealand Army Territorial Force, in which he held the rank of sergeant, he signed on as a private. He was soon promoted to temporary lance corporal, but initially declined a place in an Officer Cadet Training Unit (OCTU). In December, he was promoted to sergeant and six days later sailed for Egypt. In July 1940, Charles Upham was persuaded to attend the Officer Cadet Training Unit in Egypt. Successfully completing the course, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant on 2 November and given command of a platoon in 20th Battalion. Upham quickly won the respect of his men as a capable officer who was greatly concerned for their safety and comfort.

Battle of Greece and Crete
In March 1941, the New Zealand Expeditionary Force was deployed to Greece as part of the Allied attempt to counter the German-Italian invasion there. In a short-lived campaign, the Axis forces swept through Greece, resulting in 50,000 Allied troops having to be evacuated by the Royal Navy. Just over a third of their force was now deployed on the Greek island of Crete. The day after a German landing, Upham's company were part of a counter-attack, the goal of which was to retake the airfield at Malimi. Upham led the 20th and the 28th (Māori) Battalion in an attack on several German machine gun posts. Advancing 3,000 yards under fire with no artillery support, Upham's men took out the first machine gun using grenades and pistols. Upham himself then crept up to a house where another machine gun was based and tossed in some grenades to end their resistance. A further machine gun now opened up on the New Zealanders. Once more, their officer took it upon himself to crawl to within 15 yards of the Germans, lobbing some grenades into the enemy position. However, despite Upham's successes, the Allied counter-attack failed due to German air superiority. They were forced to withdraw. As they retreated under German fire, Upham carried a wounded man back to safety and then encouraged several of his men to do likewise. While Upham got his platoon out, it now transpired that one company had not received the order to withdraw and was now isolated behind the advancing German lines. Upham, accompanied by a corporal, now ran 600 yards through the German lines, killing two Germans en route and successfully bringing the company back to safety.

The Allies fought a desperate retreat towards the south of the island in the hope of yet another evacuation. During the following two days his platoon occupied an exposed position on forward slopes and was continuously under fire. Upham was blown over by one mortar shell and painfully wounded by a piece of shrapnel behind the left shoulder by another. He disregarded the wound and remained on duty. He also received a bullet in the foot which he later removed in Egypt. On 25 May at Galatas, Upham's platoon stopped under cover of a ridge, observed the enemy, and brought the platoon forward when the Germans advanced. They killed over forty with fire and grenades and forced the remainder to fall back.

Each time the Allies tried to hold a line, the Germans broke through. On one occasion, in this fast-moving situation, Upham left his platoon to retreat under his sergeant, while he went forward to warn another company that was about to be left behind. Suddenly he ran into two Germans who opened fire. Falling to the ground, Upham pretended to be dead. And while feigning death, he managed to rest his gun on the fork of a tree trunk and as the Germans came close, he opened fire, killing both of them. The second German was so close that as he fell, he fell onto the muzzle of Upham's rifle.

On 30 May at Sfakia his platoon was ordered to deal with a party of the enemy which had advanced down a ravine near Force Headquarters. Though in an exhausted condition, he climbed the steep hill to the west of the ravine, placed his men in positions on the slope overlooking the ravine and himself went to the top with a Bren gun and two riflemen. By clever tactics, he induced the enemy party to expose itself and then at a range of 500 yards shot twenty-two and caused the remainder to disperse in panic. During the whole of the operations he suffered from diarrhoea and was able to eat very little, in addition to being wounded and bruised. For his actions in the Battle of Crete, his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Howard Kippenberger, recommended Upham for the Victoria Cross. Charles Upham was totally against the award, modestly feeling that it was undeserved. Eventually, his commanding officer convinced him that it was for his bravery and the service of the whole unit. He was gazetted for the VC in October 1941.

First VC
Citation "War Office, 14th October, 1941.

The KING has been graciously pleased to approve of awards of the Victoria Cross to the undermentioned: —

Second Lieutenant Charles Hazlitt Upham (8077), New Zealand Military Forces.

During the operations in Crete this officer performed a series of remarkable exploits, showing outstanding leadership, tactical skill and utter indifference to danger. He commanded a forward platoon in the attack on Maleme on 22nd May and fought his way forward for over 3,000 yards unsupported by any other arms and against a defence strongly organised in depth. During this operation his platoon destroyed numerous enemy posts but on three occasions sections were temporarily held up. In the first case, under a heavy fire from a machine gun nest he advanced to close quarters with pistol and grenades, so demoralizing the occupants that his section was able to 'mop up' with ease. Another of his sections was then held up by two machine guns in a house. He went in and placed a grenade through a window, destroying the crew of one machine gun and several others, the other machine gun being silenced by the fire of his sections. In the third case he crawled to within 15 yards of an M.G. post and killed the gunners with a grenade. When his Company withdrew from Maleme he helped to carry a wounded man out under fire, and together with another officer rallied more men together to carry other wounded men out. He was then sent to bring in a company which had become isolated. With a Corporal he went through enemy territory over 600 yards, killing two Germans on the way, found the company, and brought it back to the Battalion's new position. But for this action it would have been completely cut off. During the following two days his platoon occupied an exposed position on forward slopes and was continuously under fire. Second Lieutenant Upham was blown over by one mortar shell, and painfully wounded by a piece of shrapnel behind the left shoulder, by another. He disregarded this wound and remained on duty. He also received a bullet in the foot which he later removed in Egypt. At Galatas on 25th May his platoon was heavily engaged and came under severe mortar and machine-gun fire. While his platoon stopped under cover of a ridge Second-Lieutenant Upham went forward, observed the enemy and brought the platoon forward when the Germans advanced. They killed over 40 with fire and grenades and forced the remainder to fall back. When his platoon was ordered to retire he sent it back under the platoon Sergeant and he went back to warn other troops that they were being cut off. When he came out himself he was fired on by two Germans. He fell and shammed dead, then crawled into a position and having the use of only one arm rested his rifle in the fork of a tree and as the Germans came forward he killed them both. The second to fall actually hit the muzzle of the rifle as he fell. On 30th May at Sphakia his platoon was ordered to deal with a party of the enemy which had advanced down a ravine to near Force Headquarters. Though in an exhausted condition he climbed the steep hill to the west of the ravine, placed his men in positions on the slope overlooking the ravine and himself went to the top with a Bren Gun and two riflemen. By clever tactics he induced the enemy party to expose itself and then at a range of 500 yards shot 22 and caused the remainder to disperse in panic. During the whole of the operations he suffered from dysentery and was able to eat very little, in addition to being wounded and bruised. He showed superb coolness, great skill and dash and complete disregard of danger. His conduct and leadership inspired his whole platoon to fight magnificently throughout, and in fact was an inspiration to the Battalion."

General Sir Claude Auchinleck presented Upham with his VC ribbon at a ceremonial parade by 4 Brigade on 4 November 1941.

North African campaign
In November 1941 he was annoyed when his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel H. K. Kippenberger, decided to leave him out of the second Libyan campaign. Kippenberger believed that Upham "was fretting for more action" and "would get himself killed too quickly". The battalion suffered heavy losses in the campaign and Upham helped rebuild it as commander of C Company. He was promoted to lieutenant at the time. Upham and the rest of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force now formed part of the British Eighth Army, based in Egypt. Upham would stay in the Eighth Army until the end of the war, first in North Africa. In late 1941 and early 1942, the Eighth Army were on the defensive, being pushed back by Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps.

In late June 1942, the New Zealanders were in danger of being completely cut off as Rommel swept into Egypt. On the night of 27 June, they desperately made a break for British lines. The ensuing battle saw Captain Upham's company participate in fierce hand-to-hand fighting with the Germans. Upham was using grenades to lethal effect. In fact, he was throwing them at such short range that he was injured in both arms by shrapnel from his own grenades. The breakout was a success and the New Zealand Division was moved into the defensive line centred on the small railway town of El Alamein.

The New Zealanders were positioned to the south of the town and ordered to take the high ground at the El Ruasat Ridge. The attack began at 11 pm on 14 July. Along the ridge, they met fierce resistance from the Germans. Upham's own company found themselves facing four machine gun nests and several tanks holding the high ground. Once more, Upham inspired his men to press home their attack. And once more, grenades were key to their assault. Upham was credited with personally destroying several machine gun posts and a tank as they stormed the ridge. In the process, he was shot in the elbow by one of the machine guns. Refusing to leave the battlefield, he got his wounds dressed as best they could at a regimental aid post and then he went back to his men.

The following day, the Germans and their Italian allies launched a ferocious counterattack, during which Upham was hit in the leg by shrapnel. Unable to move, he and the remaining six men of his company were captured, along with about a thousand fellow New Zealanders. He became a prisoner of war on 15 July 1942.

Prisoner of war
After being taken prisoner of war (POW), he was sent to an Italian hospital where an Italian doctor recommended his wounded arm be amputated, but Upham refused due to lack of anaesthesia, as he had seen other patients die as well as be in severe pain. He later had the wound dressed by an Allied POW doctor. After recovering enough to be moved, Upham was transferred to Campo P.G. 47 in Modena, Italy in March 1943. This camp, like many others, was harsh and strictly monitored. Upham made his first serious escape attempt here. His cell had one weakness – they had plaster board ceilings. Moving his bed vertically, he smashed it into the ceiling, but a secondary ceiling wired together prevented him from escaping. He was caught soon after.

In September 1943, following the Italian Armistice, many POWs in Italy were moved to German camps. While Upham was being transported in a truck, he jumped in a bend and managed to get 400 yards (370 m) away before being recaptured. He also broke his ankle in the process.

Upham arrived at Weinsberg Camp (Oflag Va). On one occasion, he tried to escape the camp by climbing its fences in broad daylight. He became entangled in barbed wire when he fell between the two fences. When a guard pointed a pistol at his head and threatened to shoot, Upham calmly ignored him and lit a cigarette. This scene was photographed by the Germans as evidence.

Due to his persistent escape attempts, Upham was eventually transferred to Oflag IV-C at Colditz Castle in late 1943, a fortress renowned for housing persistent and high-profile Allied escapees. On the trip to Colditz, Upham tried to escape while on a train. During his transfer on the civilian train, while guarded by two Germans, Upham made his final escape attempt. Upham was only allowed to visit the toilet when the train was travelling at high speed to prevent him from jumping through a window. Nevertheless, Upham prised open the toilet window and jumped onto the tracks, knocking himself unconscious. After awakening, he escaped into a nearby orchard, but the even rows of trees and lack of undergrowth provided poor cover and was soon recaptured.

As the war drew to a close in 1945, Colditz Castle was liberated by the advancing Allied forces. Upham, along with the other prisoners, was freed, bringing an end to his nearly three-year ordeal as a POW. He headed for the headquarters of the American unit that had captured the town. Upham selected the goods he had come for. He changed into the American combat uniform, fitted on the boots and the U.S. helmet. Then the arms – the Tommy gun, the revolver, two grenades, compass. He prepared to go into action with the Americans. For four days Charles stayed with the U.S. forces in the Colditz area, clothed and equipped as one of them, waiting for the call forward. The pressure of higher orders finally caught him up. "Under no circumstances are released P.O.W.s to be permitted to join active service units, unofficially or otherwise. P.O.W.s are to be evacuated without exception." He couldn't beat that order, so reluctantly he left the Americans and was soon travelling to England.

In England, he was reunited with McTamney, who was then serving as a nurse. They were married at Barton on Sea, Hampshire, on 20 June 1945. He returned to New Zealand in early September, and she followed him in December.

VC presentation
King George VI invested Upham with his Victoria Cross at Buckingham Palace on 11 May 1945. In their exchange, King Geroge said "Well, Captain Upham, I believe this is not your only award. I'm told you've just received a mentioned in dispatches for your attempts to escape. Congratulations for that, too. Tell me, though, what have you been doing since you arrived in London?". "Mostly eating, sir" Upham replied. They later walked through St James's Park together.

Bar to VC
Citation

"War Office, 26th September, 1945.

The KING has been graciously pleased to approve the award of a Bar to the VICTORIA CROSS to: —

Captain Charles Hazlitt UPHAM, V.C. (8077), New Zealand Military Forces.

Captain C. H. Upham, V.C., was commanding a Company of New Zealand troops in the Western Desert during the operations which culminated in the attack on El Ruweisat Ridge on the night of 14th–15th July, 1942.

In spite of being twice wounded, once when crossing open ground swept by enemy fire to inspect his forward sections guarding our mine-fields and again when he completely destroyed an entire truck load of German soldiers with hand grenades, Captain Upham insisted on remaining with his men to take part in the final assault.

During the opening stages of the attack on the ridge Captain Upham's Company formed part of the reserve battalion, but, when communications with the forward troops broke down and he was instructed to send up an officer to report on the progress of the attack, he went out himself armed with a Spandau gun and, after several sharp encounters with enemy machine gun posts, succeeded in bringing back the required information.

Just before dawn the reserve battalion was ordered forward, but, when it had almost reached its objective, very heavy fire was encountered from a strongly defended enemy locality, consisting of four machine gun posts and a number of tanks.

Captain Upham, without hesitation, at once led his Company in a determined attack on the two nearest strongpoints on the left flank of the sector. His voice could be heard above the din of battle cheering on his men and, in spite of the fierce resistance of the enemy and the heavy casualties on both sides, the objective was captured.

Captain Upham, during the engagement, himself destroyed a German tank and several guns and vehicles with grenades and although he was shot through the elbow by a machine gun bullet and had his arm broken, he went on again to a forward position and brought back some of his men who had become isolated. He continued to dominate the situation until his men had beaten off a violent enemy counter-attack and consolidated the vital position which they had won under his inspiring leadership.

Exhausted by pain from his wound and weak from loss of blood Captain Upham was then removed to the Regimental Aid Post but immediately his wound had been dressed he returned to his men, remaining with them all day long under heavy enemy artillery and mortar fire, until he was again severely wounded and being now unable to move fell into the hands of the enemy when, his gallant Company having been reduced to only six survivors, his position was finally overrun by superior enemy forces, in spite of the outstanding gallantry and magnificent leadership shown by Captain Upham.

The Victoria Cross was conferred on Captain Upham for conspicuous bravery during the operations in Crete in May, 1941, and the award was announced in the London Gazette dated 14th October, 1941." When the recommendation was made for a second VC, the King remarked to Major-General Howard Kippenberger that a bar to the cross would be "very unusual indeed" and enquired firmly, "Does he deserve it?" Kippenberger replied, "In my respectful opinion, sir, Upham won the VC several times over."

Colonel Burrows approached Kippenberger after the Minqar Qaim action and was already mooting the nomination for a second VC even before the battle at Ruweisat Ridge and Upham's capture. General Lindsay Inglis received citations for both Minqar Qaim and Ruweisat that each individually suggested Upham merited the VC for either occasion independently, but because of the excessive rarity of multiple VC awards, he opted to combine the citations into a single one forwarded to the King.

With this award, Upham became the third man to be awarded a Bar to the VC. The previous recipients were Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Martin-Leake and Captain Noel Godfrey Chavasse, both doctors serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Martin-Leake received his VC for rescuing wounded under fire in the Second Boer War, and the Bar for similar actions in the First World War. Chavasse was similarly decorated for two such actions in the First World War, subsequently dying of wounds received during his second action. Neither of these men were combatants, so Upham remains the only fighting soldier to have been decorated with the VC and Bar.

Post-war

After the war, Upham returned to New Zealand, and the community raised £10,000 to buy him a farm. However, he declined and the money went into the C. H. Upham Scholarship for children of ex-servicemen to study at Canterbury Agricultural College or Canterbury College.

He obtained a war rehabilitation loan and bought a farm on Conway Flat, Hundalee, North Canterbury.

Although somewhat hampered by his injuries, he became a successful farmer and served on the board of governors of Christ's College for nearly 20 years. He and Molly had three daughters, and lived on their farm until January 1994, when Upham's poor health forced them to retire to Christchurch.

Upham was surprised with an appearance on This Is Your Life in 1985.

He died in Canterbury on 22November 1994, surrounded by his wife and daughters. His funeral in the Christ Church Cathedral was conducted with full military honours. The streets of Christchurch were lined by over 5,000 people. Upham is buried in the graveyard of St Paul's Church in Papanui. His death was also marked by a memorial service on 5 May 1995 in London's St Martin-in-the-Fields Church, attended by representatives for the Royal Family; senior New Zealand government and political figures; senior members of the British and New Zealand armed forces; Valerian Freyberg, 3rd Baron Freyberg, grandson of VC holder Lord Freyberg, the commander of Allied forces in Crete and 7th Governor-General of New Zealand; representatives of veterans' organisations; and other VC and George Cross holders.

Victoria Cross and Bar
In November 2006, Upham's VC and Bar were purchased from his daughters by the Imperial War Museum for an undisclosed sum, however Minister of Defence at the time Phil Goff, announced a price of 3.3 million that the family had quoted the Government for a potential purchase of the medal. New Zealand legislation prohibits the export of such historical items, so the Imperial War Museum agreed to a permanent loan of the medals to the National Army Museum at Waiouru. On 2 December 2007, Upham's VC was among nine stolen from locked, reinforced glass cabinets at the museum. On 16 February 2008, the New Zealand Police announced all the medals had been recovered as a result of a NZ$300,000 reward offered by Michael Ashcroft and Tom Sturgess.

Legacy
In 1953, Upham was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal. In 1992, he was presented with the Order of Honour by the Government of Greece, in recognition of his service in the Battles of Greece and Crete.

HMNZS Charles Upham, a Royal New Zealand Navy ship, was commissioned in 1995, and decommissioned in 2001.

A bronze statue stands outside the Hurunui District Council buildings in Amberley, North Canterbury, depicting Charles Upham "the observer".

A street in suburban Christchurch is named Charles Upham Avenue, and there is an Upham Terrace in Palmerston North, and an Upham Crescent in Taradale, Napier. There is also an Upham Street in Havelock North, Hawke's Bay, near streets named after fellow VC recipients Elliott, Grant, Crichton and Ngarimu.

A Jetconnect Boeing 737-800 was named Charles Upham in August 2011.

title: Charles Upham