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Lee de Forest

Lee de Forest (August 26, 1873 – June 30, 1961) was an American inventor, electrical engineer and an early pioneer in electronics of fundamental importance. He invented the first practical electronic amplifier, the three-element "Audion" triode vacuum tube in 1906. This helped start the Electronic Age, and enabled the development of the electronic oscillator. These made radio broadcasting and long distance telephone lines possible, and led to the development of talking motion pictures, among countless other applications.

He had over 300 patents worldwide, but also a tumultuous career – he boasted that he made, then lost, four fortunes. He was also involved in several major patent lawsuits, spent a substantial part of his income on legal bills, and was even tried (and acquitted) for mail fraud.

Despite this, he was recognised for his pioneering work with the 1922 IEEE Medal of Honor, the 1923 Franklin Institute Elliott Cresson Medal and the 1946 American Institute of Electrical Engineers Edison Medal.

Early life
Lee de Forest was born in 1873 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the son of Anna Margaret ( Robbins) and Henry Swift DeForest. He was a direct descendant of Jessé de Forest, the leader of a group of Walloon Huguenots who fled Europe in the 17th century due to religious persecution.

De Forest's father was a Congregational Church minister who hoped his son would also become a pastor. In 1879 the elder de Forest became president of the American Missionary Association's Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama, a school "open to all of either sex, without regard to sect, race, or color", and which educated primarily African-Americans. Many of the local white citizens resented the school and its mission, and Lee spent most of his youth in Talladega isolated from the white community, with several close friends among the black children of the town.

De Forest prepared for college by attending Mount Hermon Boys' School in Gill, Massachusetts, for two years, beginning in 1891. In 1893, he enrolled in a three-year course of studies at Yale University's Sheffield Scientific School in New Haven, Connecticut, on a $300 per year scholarship that had been established for relatives of David de Forest. Convinced that he was destined to become a famous—and rich—inventor, and perpetually short of funds, he sought to interest companies with a series of devices and puzzles he created, and expectantly submitted essays in prize competitions, all with little success.

After completing his undergraduate studies, in September 1896 de Forest began three years of postgraduate work. However, his electrical experiments had a tendency to blow fuses, causing building-wide blackouts. Even after being warned to be more careful, he managed to douse the lights during an important lecture by Professor Charles S. Hastings, who responded by having de Forest expelled from Sheffield.

With the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in 1898, de Forest enrolled in the Connecticut Volunteer Militia Battery as a bugler, but the war ended and he was mustered out without ever leaving the state. He then completed his studies at Yale's Sloane Physics Laboratory, earning a Doctorate in 1899 with a dissertation on the "Reflection of Hertzian Waves from the Ends of Parallel Wires", supervised by theoretical physicist Willard Gibbs.

Early radio work
Reflecting his pioneering work, de Forest has sometimes been credited as the "Father of Radio",  an honorific which he adopted as the title of his 1950 autobiography. In the late 1800s he became convinced there was a great future in radiotelegraphic communication (then known as "wireless telegraphy"), but Italian Guglielmo Marconi, who received his first patent in 1896, was already making impressive progress in both Europe and the United States. One drawback of Marconi's approach was his use of a coherer as a receiver, which, while providing for permanent records, was also slow (after each received Morse code dot or dash, it had to be tapped to restore operation), insensitive, and not very reliable. De Forest was determined to devise a better system, including a self-restoring detector that could receive transmissions by ear, thus making it capable of receiving weaker signals and also allowing faster Morse code sending speeds.

After making unsuccessful inquiries about employment with Nikola Tesla and Marconi, de Forest struck out on his own. His first job after leaving Yale was with the Western Electric Company's telephone lab in Chicago, Illinois. While there he developed his first receiver, which was based on findings by two German scientists, Drs. A. Neugschwender and Emil Aschkinass. Their original design consisted of a mirror in which a narrow, moistened slit had been cut through the silvered back. Attaching a battery and telephone receiver, they could hear sound changes in response to radio signal impulses. De Forest, along with Ed Smythe, a co-worker who provided financial and technical help, developed variations they called "responders".

A series of short-term positions followed, including three unproductive months with Professor Warren S. Johnson's American Wireless Telegraph Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and work as an assistant editor of the Western Electrician in Chicago. With radio research his main priority, de Forest next took a night teaching position at the Lewis Institute, which freed him to conduct experiments at the Armour Institute. By 1900, using a spark-coil transmitter and his responder receiver, de Forest expanded his transmitting range to about seven kilometers (four miles). Professor Clarence Freeman of the Armour Institute became interested in de Forest's work and developed a new type of spark transmitter.

De Forest soon felt that Smythe and Freeman were holding him back, so in the fall of 1901 he made the bold decision to go to New York to compete directly with Marconi in transmitting race results for the International Yacht races. Marconi had already made arrangements to provide reports for the Associated Press, which he had successfully done for the 1899 contest. De Forest contracted to do the same for the smaller Publishers' Press Association.

The race effort turned out to be an almost total failure. The Freeman transmitter broke down—in a fit of rage, de Forest threw it overboard—and had to be replaced by an ordinary spark coil. Even worse, the American Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company, which claimed its ownership of Amos Dolbear's 1886 patent for wireless communication meant it held a monopoly for all wireless communication in the United States, had also set up a powerful transmitter. None of these companies had effective tuning for their transmitters, so only one could transmit at a time without causing mutual interference. Although an attempt was made to have the three systems avoid conflicts by rotating operations over five-minute intervals, the agreement broke down, resulting in chaos as the simultaneous transmissions clashed with each other. De Forest ruefully noted that under these conditions the only successful "wireless" communication was done by visual semaphore "wig-wag" flags. (The 1903 International Yacht races would be a repeat of 1901—Marconi worked for the Associated Press, de Forest for the Publishers' Press Association, and the unaffiliated International Wireless Company (successor to 1901's American Wireless Telephone and Telegraph) operated a high-powered transmitter that was used primarily to drown out the other two.)

American De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company

Despite this setback, de Forest remained in the New York City area, in order to raise interest in his ideas and capital to replace the small working companies that had been formed to promote his work thus far. In January 1902 he met a promoter, Abraham White, who would become de Forest's main sponsor for the next five years. White envisioned bold and expansive plans that enticed the inventor—however, he was also dishonest and much of the new enterprise would be built on wild exaggeration and stock fraud. To back de Forest's efforts, White incorporated the American DeForest Wireless Telegraph Company, with himself as the company's president, and de Forest the Scientific Director. The company claimed as its goal the development of "world-wide wireless".

The original "responder" receiver (also known as the "goo anti-coherer") proved to be too crude to be commercialized, and de Forest struggled to develop a non-infringing device for receiving radio signals. In 1903, Reginald Fessenden demonstrated an electrolytic detector, and de Forest developed a variation, which he called the "spade detector", claiming it did not infringe on Fessenden's patents. Fessenden, and the U.S. courts, did not agree, and court injunctions enjoined American De Forest from using the device.

Meanwhile, White set in motion a series of highly visible promotions for American DeForest: "Wireless Auto No.1" was positioned on Wall Street to "send stock quotes" using an unmuffled spark transmitter to loudly draw the attention of potential investors, in early 1904 two stations were established at Wei-hai-Wei on the Chinese mainland and aboard the Chinese steamer SS Haimun, which allowed war correspondent Captain Lionel James of The Times of London to report on the brewing Russo-Japanese War, and later that year a tower, with "DEFOREST" arrayed in lights, was erected on the grounds of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis, Missouri, where the company won a gold medal for its radiotelegraph demonstrations. (Marconi withdrew from the Exposition when he learned de Forest would be there).

The company's most important early contract was the construction, in 1905–1906, of five high-powered radiotelegraph stations for the U.S. Navy, located in Panama, Pensacola and Key West, Florida, Guantanamo, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. It also installed shore stations along the Atlantic Coast and Great Lakes, and equipped shipboard stations. But the main focus was selling stock at ever more inflated prices, spurred by the construction of promotional inland stations. Most of these inland stations had no practical use and were abandoned once the local stock sales slowed.

De Forest eventually came into conflict with his company's management. His main complaint was the limited support he got for conducting research, while company officials were upset with de Forest's inability to develop a practical receiver free of patent infringement. (This problem was finally resolved with the invention of the carborundum crystal detector by another company employee, General Henry Harrison Chase Dunwoody). On November 28, 1906, in exchange for $1000 (half of which was claimed by an attorney) and the rights to some early Audion detector patents, de Forest turned in his stock and resigned from the company that bore his name. American DeForest was then reorganized as the United Wireless Telegraph Company, and would be the dominant U.S. radio communications firm, albeit propped up by massive stock fraud, until its bankruptcy in 1912.

Radio Telephone Company
De Forest moved quickly to re-establish himself as an independent inventor, working in his own laboratory in the Parker Building in New York City. The Radio Telephone Company was incorporated in order to promote his inventions, with James Dunlop Smith, a former American DeForest salesman, as president, and de Forest the vice president (De Forest preferred the term radio, which up to now had been primarily used in Europe, over wireless).

Arc radiotelephone development

At the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, Valdemar Poulsen had presented a paper on an arc transmitter, which unlike the discontinuous pulses produced by spark transmitters, created steady "continuous wave" signals that could be used for amplitude modulated (AM) audio transmissions. Although Poulsen had patented his invention, de Forest claimed to have come up with a variation that allowed him to avoid infringing on Poulsen's work. Using his "sparkless" arc transmitter, de Forest first transmitted audio across a lab room on December 31, 1906, and by February was making experimental transmissions, including music produced by Thaddeus Cahill's telharmonium, that were heard throughout the city.

On July 18, 1907, de Forest made the first ship-to-shore transmissions by radiotelephone—race reports for the Annual Inter-Lakes Yachting Association (I-LYA) Regatta held on Lake Erie—which were sent from the steam yacht Thelma to his assistant, Frank E. Butler, located in the Fox's Dock Pavilion on South Bass Island. De Forest also interested the U.S. Navy in his radiotelephone, which placed a rush order to have 26 arc sets installed for its Great White Fleet around-the-world voyage that began in late 1907. However, at the conclusion of the circumnavigation the sets were declared to be too unreliable to meet the Navy's needs and removed.

The company set up a network of radiotelephone stations along the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes, for coastal ship navigation. However, the installations proved unprofitable, and by 1911 the parent company and its subsidiaries were on the brink of bankruptcy.

Initial broadcasting experiments
De Forest also used the arc-transmitter to conduct some of the earliest experimental entertainment radio broadcasts. Eugenia Farrar sang "I Love You Truly" in an unpublicized test from his laboratory in 1907, and in 1908, on de Forest's Paris honeymoon, musical selections were broadcast from the Eiffel Tower as a part of demonstrations of the arc-transmitter. In early 1909, in what may have been the first public speech by radio, de Forest's mother-in-law, Harriot Stanton Blatch, made a broadcast supporting women's suffrage.

More ambitious demonstrations followed. A series of tests in conjunction with the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City were conducted to determine whether it was practical to broadcast opera performances live from the stage. Tosca was performed on January 12, 1910, and the next day's test included Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. On February 24, the Manhattan Opera Company's Mme. Mariette Mazarin sang "La Habanera" from Carmen and selections from the controversial "Elektra" over a transmitter located in de Forest's lab. But these tests showed that the idea was not yet technically feasible, and de Forest would not make any additional entertainment broadcasts until late 1916, when more capable vacuum-tube equipment became available.

"Grid" Audion detector
De Forest's most famous invention was the "grid Audion", which was the first successful three-element (triode) vacuum tube, and the first device which could amplify electrical signals. He traced its inspiration to 1900, when, experimenting with a spark-gap transmitter, he briefly thought that the flickering of a nearby gas flame might be in response to electromagnetic pulses. With further tests he soon determined that the cause of the flame fluctuations was due to air pressure changes produced by the loud sound of the spark. Still, he was intrigued by the idea that, properly configured, it might be possible to use a flame or something similar to detect radio signals.

After determining that an open flame was too susceptible to ambient air currents, de Forest investigated whether ionized gases, heated and enclosed in a partially evacuated glass tube, could be used instead. In 1905 to 1906 he developed various configurations of glass-tube devices, which he gave the general name of "Audions". The first Audions had only two electrodes, and on October 25, 1906, de Forest filed a patent for the diode vacuum tube detector, that was granted U.S. patent number 841387 on January 15, 1907. Subsequently, a third "control" electrode was added, originally as a surrounding metal cylinder or a wire coiled around the outside of the glass tube. None of these initial designs worked particularly well. De Forest gave a presentation of his work to date to the October 26, 1906, New York meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, which was reprinted in two parts in late 1907 in the Scientific American Supplement. He was insistent that a small amount of residual gas was necessary for the tubes to operate properly. However, he also admitted that "I have arrived as yet at no completely satisfactory theory as to the exact means by which the high-frequency oscillations affect so markedly the behavior of an ionized gas."

In late 1906, de Forest made a breakthrough when he reconfigured the control electrode, moving it from outside the tube envelope to a position inside the tube between the filament and the plate. He called the intermediate electrode a grid, reportedly due to its similarity to the "gridiron" lines on American football playing fields. Experiments conducted with his assistant, John V. L. Hogan, convinced him that he had discovered an important new radio detector. He quickly prepared a patent application which was filed on January 29, 1907, and received on February 18, 1908. Because the grid-control Audion was the only configuration to become commercially valuable, the earlier versions were forgotten, and the term Audion later became synonymous with just the grid type. It later also became known as the triode.

The grid Audion was the first device to amplify, albeit only slightly, the strength of received radio signals. However, to many observers it appeared that de Forest had done nothing more than add the grid electrode to an existing detector configuration, the Fleming valve, which also consisted of a filament and plate enclosed in an evacuated glass tube. De Forest passionately denied the similarly of the two devices, claiming his invention was a relay that amplified currents, while the Fleming valve was merely a rectifier that converted alternating current to direct current. (For this reason, de Forest objected to his Audion being referred to as "a valve".) The U.S. courts were not convinced, and ruled that the grid Audion did in fact infringe on the Fleming valve patent, now held by Marconi. In contrast, Marconi admitted that the addition of the third electrode was a patentable improvement, and the two sides agreed to license each other so that both could manufacture three-electrode tubes in the United States. (De Forest's European patents had lapsed because he did not have the funds needed to renew them).

Because of its limited uses and the great variability in the quality of individual units, the grid Audion would be rarely used during the first half-decade after its invention. In 1908, John V. L. Hogan reported that "The Audion is capable of being developed into a really efficient detector, but in its present forms is quite unreliable and entirely too complex to be properly handled by the usual wireless operator."

Employment at Federal Telegraph
In May 1910, the Radio Telephone Company and its subsidiaries were reorganized as the North American Wireless Corporation, but financial difficulties meant that the company's activities had nearly come to a halt. De Forest moved to San Francisco, California, and in early 1911 took a research job at the Federal Telegraph Company, which produced long-range radiotelegraph systems using high-powered Poulsen arcs.

Audio frequency amplification
One of de Forest's areas of research at Federal Telegraph was improving the reception of signals, and he came up with the idea of strengthening the audio frequency output from a grid Audion by feeding it into a second tube for additional amplification. He called this a "cascade amplifier", which eventually consisted of chaining together up to three Audions.

At this time the American Telephone and Telegraph Company was researching ways to amplify telephone signals to provide better long-distance service, and it was recognized that de Forest's device had potential as a telephone line repeater. In mid-1912 an associate, John Stone Stone, contacted AT&T to arrange for de Forest to demonstrate his invention. It was found that de Forest's "gassy" version of the Audion could not handle even the relatively low voltages used by telephone lines. (Owing to the way he constructed the tubes, de Forest's Audions would cease to operate with too high a vacuum.) However, careful research by Dr. Harold D. Arnold and his team at AT&T's Western Electric subsidiary determined that improving the tube's design would allow it to be more fully evacuated, and the high vacuum allowed it to operate at telephone-line voltages. With these changes the Audion evolved into a modern electron-discharge vacuum tube, using electron flows rather than ions. (Dr. Irving Langmuir at the General Electric Corporation made similar findings, and both he and Arnold attempted to patent the "high vacuum" construction, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1931 that this modification could not be patented).

After a delay of ten months, in July 1913 AT&T, through a third party who disguised his link to the telephone company, purchased the wire rights to seven Audion patents for $50,000. De Forest had hoped for a higher payment, but was again in bad financial shape and was unable to bargain for more. In 1915, AT&T used the innovation to conduct the first transcontinental telephone calls, in conjunction with the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco.

Reorganized Radio Telephone Company
Radio Telephone Company officials had engaged in some of the same stock selling excesses that had taken place at American DeForest, and as part of the U.S. government's crackdown on stock fraud, in March 1912 de Forest, plus four other company officials, were arrested and charged with "use of the mails to defraud". Their trials took place in late 1913, and while three of the defendants were found guilty, de Forest was acquitted. With the legal problems behind him, de Forest reorganized his company as the DeForest Radio Telephone Company, and established a laboratory at 1391 Sedgewick Avenue in the Highbridge section of the Bronx in New York City. The company's limited finances were boosted by the sale, in October 1914, of the commercial Audion patent rights for radio signalling to AT&T for $90,000, with de Forest retaining the rights for sales for "amateur and experimental use". In October 1915 AT&T conducted test radio transmissions from the Navy's station in Arlington, Virginia that were heard as far away as Paris and Hawaii.

The Radio Telephone Company began selling "Oscillion" power tubes to amateurs, suitable for radio transmissions. The company wanted to keep a tight hold on the tube business, and originally maintained a policy that retailers had to require their customers to return a worn-out tube before they could get a replacement. This style of business encouraged others to make and sell unlicensed vacuum tubes which did not impose a return policy. One of the boldest was Audio Tron Sales Company founded in 1915 by Elmer T. Cunningham of San Francisco, whose Audio Tron tubes cost less but were of equal or higher quality. The de Forest company sued Audio Tron Sales, eventually settling out of court.

In April 1917, the company's remaining commercial radio patent rights were sold to AT&T's Western Electric subsidiary for $250,000. During World War I, the Radio Telephone Company prospered from sales of radio equipment to the military. However, it also became known for the poor quality of its vacuum tubes, especially compared to those produced by major industrial manufacturers such as General Electric and Western Electric.

Regeneration controversy
Beginning in 1912, there was increased investigation of vacuum-tube capabilities, simultaneously by numerous inventors in multiple countries, who identified additional important uses for the device. These overlapping discoveries led to complicated legal disputes over priority, perhaps the most bitter being one in the United States between de Forest and Edwin Howard Armstrong over the discovery of regeneration (also known as the "feedback circuit" and, by de Forest, as the "ultra-audion").

Beginning in 1913 Armstrong prepared papers and gave demonstrations that comprehensively documented how to employ three-element vacuum tubes in circuits that amplified signals to stronger levels than previously thought possible, and that could also generate high-power oscillations usable for radio transmission. In late 1913 Armstrong applied for patents covering the regenerative circuit, and on October 6, 1914 was issued for his discovery.

U.S. patent law included a provision for challenging grants if another inventor could prove prior discovery. With an eye to increasing the value of the patent portfolio that would be sold to Western Electric in 1917, beginning in 1915 de Forest filed a series of patent applications that largely copied Armstrong's claims, in the hopes of having the priority of the competing applications upheld by an interference hearing at the patent office. Based on a notebook entry recorded at the time, de Forest asserted that, while working on the cascade amplifier, he had stumbled on August 6, 1912, across the feedback principle, which was then used in the spring of 1913 to operate a low-powered transmitter for heterodyne reception of Federal Telegraph arc transmissions. However, there was also strong evidence that de Forest was unaware of the full significance of this discovery, as shown by his lack of follow-up and continuing misunderstanding of the physics involved. In particular, it appeared that he was unaware of the potential for further development until he became familiar with Armstrong's research. De Forest was not alone in the interference determination—the patent office identified four competing claimants for its hearings, consisting of Armstrong, de Forest, General Electric's Langmuir, and a German, Alexander Meissner, whose application would be seized by the Office of Alien Property Custodian during World War I.

The subsequent legal proceedings become divided between two groups of court cases. The first court action began in January 1920 when Armstrong, with Westinghouse, which purchased his patent, sued the De Forest Company in district court for infringement of patent 1,113,149. On May 17, 1921, the court ruled that the lack of awareness and understanding on de Forest's part, in addition to the fact that he had made no immediate advances beyond his initial observation, made implausible his attempt to prevail as inventor.

However, a second series of court cases, which were the result of the patent office interference proceeding, had a different outcome. The interference board had also sided with Armstrong, and de Forest appealed its decision to the District of Columbia district court. On May 8, 1924, that court concluded that the evidence, beginning with the 1912 notebook entry, was sufficient to establish de Forest's priority. Now on the defensive, Armstrong's side tried to overturn the decision, but these efforts, which twice went before the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1928 and 1934, were unsuccessful.

This judicial ruling meant that Lee de Forest was now legally recognized in the United States as the inventor of regeneration. However, much of the engineering community continued to consider Armstrong to be the actual developer, with de Forest viewed as someone who skillfully used the patent system to get credit for an invention to which he had barely contributed. Following the 1934 Supreme Court decision, Armstrong attempted to return his Institute of Radio Engineers (present-day Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Medal of Honor, which had been awarded to him in 1917 "in recognition of his work and publications dealing with the action of the oscillating and non-oscillating audion", but the organization's board refused to let him, stating that it "strongly affirms the original award". The practical effect of de Forest's victory was that his company was free to sell products that used regeneration, for during the controversy, which became more a personal feud than a business dispute, Armstrong tried to block the company from even being licensed to sell equipment under his patent.

De Forest regularly responded to articles which he thought exaggerated Armstrong's contributions with animosity that continued even after Armstrong's 1954 suicide. Following the publication of Carl Dreher's "E. H. Armstrong, the Hero as Inventor" in the August 1956 Harper's magazine, de Forest wrote the author, describing Armstrong as "exceedingly arrogant, brow beating, even brutal...", and defending the Supreme Court decision in his favor.

Renewed broadcasting activities
In the summer of 1915, the company received an Experimental license for station 2XG, located at its Highbridge laboratory. In late 1916, de Forest renewed the entertainment broadcasts he had suspended in 1910, now using the superior capabilities of vacuum-tube equipment. 2XG's debut program aired on October 26, 1916, as part of an arrangement with the Columbia Graphophone Company to promote its recordings, which included "announcing the title and 'Columbia Gramophone [sic] Company' with each playing". Beginning November 1, the "Highbridge Station" offered a nightly schedule featuring the Columbia recordings.

These broadcasts were also used to advertise "the products of the DeForest Radio Co., mostly the radio parts, with all the zeal of our catalogue and price list", until comments by Western Electric engineers caused de Forest enough embarrassment to make him decide to eliminate the direct advertising. The station also made the first audio broadcast of election reports—in earlier elections, stations that broadcast results had used Morse code—providing news of the November 1916 Wilson-Hughes presidential election. The New York American installed a private wire and bulletins were sent out every hour. About 2,000 listeners heard The Star-Spangled Banner and other anthems, songs, and hymns.

With the entry of the United States into World War I on April 6, 1917, all civilian radio stations were ordered to shut down, so 2XG was silenced for the duration of the war. The ban on civilian stations was lifted on October 1, 1919, and 2XG soon renewed operation, with the Brunswick-Balke-Collender company now supplying the phonograph records. In early 1920, de Forest moved the station's transmitter from the Bronx to Manhattan, but did not have permission to do so, so district Radio Inspector Arthur Batcheller ordered the station off the air. De Forest's response was to return to San Francisco in March, taking 2XG's transmitter with him. A new station, 6XC, was established as "The California Theater station", which de Forest later stated was the "first radio-telephone station devoted solely" to broadcasting to the public.

Later that year a de Forest associate, Clarence "C.S." Thompson, established Radio News & Music, Inc., in order to lease de Forest radio transmitters to newspapers interested in setting up their own broadcasting stations. In August 1920, The Detroit News began operation of "The Detroit News Radiophone", initially with the callsign 8MK, which later became broadcasting station WWJ.

Phonofilm sound-on-film process
In 1921, de Forest ended most of his radio research in order to concentrate on developing an optical sound-on-film process called Phonofilm. In 1919 he filed the first patent for the new system, which improved upon earlier work by Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt and the German partnership Tri-Ergon. Phonofilm recorded the electrical waveforms produced by a microphone photographically onto film, using parallel lines of variable shades of gray, an approach known as "variable density", in contrast to "variable area" systems used by processes such as RCA Photophone. When the movie film was projected, the recorded information was converted back into sound, in synchronization with the picture.

From October 1921 to September 1922, de Forest lived in Berlin, Germany, meeting the Tri-Ergon developers (German inventors Josef Engl (1893–1942), Hans Vogt (1890–1979), and Joseph Massolle (1889–1957)) and investigating other European sound film systems. In April 1922 he announced that he would soon have a workable sound-on-film system. On March 12, 1923, he demonstrated Phonofilm to the press; this was followed on April 12, 1923, by a private demonstration to electrical engineers at the Engineering Society Building's Auditorium at 33 West 39th Street in New York City.

In November 1922, de Forest established the De Forest Phonofilm Company, located at 314 East 48th Street in New York City. But none of the Hollywood movie studios expressed interest in his invention, and because at this time these studios controlled all the major theater chains, this meant de Forest was limited to showing his experimental films in independent theaters (The Phonofilm Company would file for bankruptcy in September 1926.).

After recording stage performances (such as in vaudeville), speeches, and musical acts, on April 15, 1923, de Forest premiered 18 Phonofilm short films at the independent Rivoli Theater in New York City. Starting in May 1924, Max and Dave Fleischer used the Phonofilm process for their Song Car-Tune series of cartoons—featuring the "Follow the Bouncing Ball" gimmick. However, de Forest's choice of primarily filming short vaudeville acts, instead of full-length features, limited the appeal of Phonofilm to Hollywood studios.

De Forest also worked with Freeman Harrison Owens and Theodore Case, using their work to perfect the Phonofilm system. However, de Forest had a falling out with both men. Due to de Forest's continuing misuse of Theodore Case's inventions and failure to publicly acknowledge Case's contributions, the Case Research Laboratory proceeded to build its own camera. That camera was used by Case and his colleague Earl Sponable to record Calvin Coolidge on August 11, 1924, which was one of the films shown by de Forest and claimed by him to be the product of his inventions.

Believing that de Forest was more concerned with his own fame and recognition than he was with actually creating a workable system of sound film, and because of his continuing attempts to downplay the contributions of the Case Research Laboratory in the creation of Phonofilm, Case severed his ties with de Forest in the fall of 1925. Case successfully negotiated an agreement to use his patents with studio head William Fox, owner of Fox Film Corporation, who marketed the innovation as Fox Movietone. Warner Brothers introduced a competing method for sound film, the Vitaphone sound-on-disc process developed by Western Electric, with the August 6, 1926, release of the John Barrymore film Don Juan.

In 1927 and 1928, Hollywood expanded its use of sound-on-film systems, including Fox Movietone and RCA Photophone. Meanwhile, theater chain owner Isadore Schlesinger purchased the UK rights to Phonofilm and released short films of British music hall performers from September 1926 to May 1929. Almost 200 Phonofilm shorts were made, and many are preserved in the collections of the Library of Congress and the British Film Institute.

Later years and death
In April 1923, the De Forest Radio Telephone & Telegraph Company, which manufactured de Forest's Audions for commercial use, was sold to a group headed by Edward Jewett of Jewett-Paige Motors, which expanded the company's factory to cope with rising demand for radios. The sale also bought the services of de Forest, who was focusing his attention on newer innovations. De Forest's finances were badly hurt by the stock market crash of 1929, and research in mechanical television proved unprofitable. In 1934, he established a small shop to produce diathermy machines, and, in a 1942 interview, still hoped "to make at least one more great invention".

De Forest was a vocal critic of many of the developments in the entertainment side of the radio industry. In 1940 he sent an open letter to the National Association of Broadcasters in which he demanded: "What have you done with my child, the radio broadcast? You have debased this child, dressed him in rags of ragtime, tatters of jive and boogie-woogie." That same year, de Forest and early TV engineer Ulises Armand Sanabria presented the concept of a primitive unmanned combat air vehicle using a television camera and a jam-resistant radio control in a Popular Mechanics issue. In 1950 his autobiography, Father of Radio, was published, although it sold poorly.

De Forest was the guest celebrity on the May 22, 1957, episode of the television show This Is Your Life, where he was introduced as "the father of radio and the grandfather of television". He suffered a severe heart attack in 1958, after which he remained mostly bedridden. He died in Hollywood on June 30, 1961, aged 87, and was interred in San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Los Angeles, California. De Forest died relatively poor, with just $1,250 in his bank account.

Legacy
The grid Audion, which de Forest called "my greatest invention", and the vacuum tubes developed from it, dominated the field of electronics for forty years, making possible long-distance telephone service, radio broadcasting, television, and many other applications. It could also be used as an electronic switching element, and was later used in early digital electronics, including the first electronic computers, although the 1948 invention of the transistor would lead to microchips that eventually supplanted vacuum-tube technology. For this reason de Forest has been called one of the founders of the "electronic age".

According to Donald Beaver, his intense desire to overcome the deficiencies of his childhood account for his independence, self-reliance, and inventiveness. He displayed a strong desire to achieve, to conquer hardship, and to devote himself to a career of invention. "He possessed the qualities of the traditional tinkerer-inventor: visionary faith, self-confidence, perseverance, the capacity for sustained hard work."

De Forest's archives were donated by his widow to the Perham Electronic Foundation, which in 1973 opened the Foothills Electronics Museum at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California. In 1991 the college closed the museum, breaking its contract. The foundation won a lawsuit and was awarded $775,000. The holdings were placed in storage for twelve years, before being acquired in 2003 by History San José and put on display as The Perham Collection of Early Electronics.

Awards and recognition

 * Charter member, in 1912, of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE).
 * Received the 1922 IRE Medal of Honor, in "recognition for his invention of the three-electrode amplifier and his other contributions to radio".
 * Awarded the 1923 Franklin Institute Elliott Cresson Medal for "inventions embodied in the Audion".
 * Received the 1946 American Institute of Electrical Engineers Edison Medal, "For the profound technical and social consequences of the grid-controlled vacuum tube which he had introduced".
 * Honorary Academy Award Oscar presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1960, in recognition of "his pioneering inventions which brought sound to the motion picture".
 * Honored February 8, 1960, with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
 * DeVry University was originally named the De Forest Training School by its founder Dr. Herman A. De Vry, who was a friend and colleague of de Forest.

Marriages
De Forest was married four times, with the first three marriages ending in divorce:
 * Lucille Sheardown in February 1906. Divorced before the end of the year.
 * Nora Stanton Blatch Barney (1883–1971) on February 14, 1908. They had a daughter, Harriet, but were separated by 1909 and divorced in 1912.
 * Mary Mayo White (1891–1957), stage name Mary Mayo, in December 1912. According to census records, in 1920 they were living with their infant daughter, Deena (born c. 1919); divorced October 5, 1930 (per Los Angeles Times). Mayo died December 30, 1957, in a fire in Los Angeles.
 * Marie Mosquini (1899–1983) on October 10, 1930; Mosquini was a silent film actress, and they remained married until his death in 1961.

Politics
De Forest was a conservative Republican and fervent anti-communist and anti-fascist. In 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, he voted for Franklin Roosevelt, but later came to resent him, calling Roosevelt America's "first Fascist president". In 1949, he "sent letters to all members of Congress urging them to vote against socialized medicine, federally subsidized housing, and an excess profits tax". In 1952, he wrote to the newly elected Vice President Richard Nixon, urging him to "prosecute with renewed vigor your valiant fight to put out Communism from every branch of our government". In December 1953, he cancelled his subscription to The Nation, accusing it of being "lousy with Treason, crawling with Communism."

Religious views
Although raised in a strongly religious Protestant household, de Forest later became an agnostic. In his autobiography, he wrote that in the summer of 1894 there was an important shift in his beliefs: "Through that Freshman vacation at Yale I became more of a philosopher than I have ever since. And thus, one by one, were my childhood's firm religious beliefs altered or reluctantly discarded."

Quotes
De Forest was given to expansive predictions, many of which were not borne out, but he also made many correct predictions, including microwave communication and cooking.
 * "I discovered an Invisible Empire of the Air, intangible, yet solid as granite."
 * "I foresee great refinements in the field of short-pulse microwave signaling, whereby several simultaneous programs may occupy the same channel, in sequence, with incredibly swift electronic communication. [...] Short waves will be generally used in the kitchen for roasting and baking, almost instantaneously." – 1952
 * "So I repeat that while theoretically and technically television may be feasible, yet commercially and financially, I consider it an impossibility; a development of which we need not waste little time in dreaming." – 1926
 * "To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth—all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances." – 1957
 * "I do not foresee 'spaceships' to the moon or Mars. Mortals must live and die on Earth or within its atmosphere!" – 1952
 * "As a growing competitor to the tube amplifier comes now the Bell Laboratories’ transistor, a three-electrode germanium crystal of amazing amplification power, of wheat-grain size and low cost. Yet its frequency limitations, a few hundred kilocycles, and its strict power limitations will never permit its general replacement of the Audion amplifier." – 1952
 * "I came, I saw, I invented—it's that simple—no need to sit and think—it's all in your imagination."

Patents
Patent images in TIFF format
 * "Wireless Signaling Device" (directional antenna), filed December 1902, issued January 1904;
 * "Oscillation Responsive Device" (vacuum tube detector diode), filed January 1906, issued June 1906;
 * "Wireless Telegraph System" (separate transmitting and receiving antennas), filed December 1905, issued July 1906;
 * "Wireless Telegraph System," filed January 1906 issued July 1906;
 * "Oscillation Responsive Device" (vacuum tube detector – no grid), filed May 1906, issued November 1906;
 * "Wireless Telegraphy" (tunable vacuum tube detector – no grid), filed August 1906, issued January 1907;
 * "Device for Amplifying Feeble Electrical Currents" (...), filed August 1906, issued January 1907;
 * "Wireless Telegraph Transmitting System" (antenna coupler), filed May 1904, issued January 1908;
 * "Space Telegraphy" (increased sensitivity detector – clearly shows grid), filed January 1907, issued February 18, 1908;
 * "Wireless Telegraphy";
 * "Wireless Telegraph Tuning Device";
 * "Wireless Telegraph Transmitter," filed February 1906, issued July 1909;
 * "Space Telegraphy";
 * "Space Telephony";
 * "Oscillation Responsive Device" (parallel plates in Bunsen flame) filed February 1905, issued December 1910;
 * "Transmission of Music by Electromagnetic Waves";
 * "Wireless Telegraphy" (directional antenna/direction finder), filed June 1906, issued June 1914;
 * "Wireless Telegraphy."

title: Lee de Forest


text:
Barnaby Evans

Barnaby Evans (born 1953 ) is an American artist who works in many media including site-specific sculpture installations, photography, film, garden design, architectural projects, writing and conceptual works. Evans is known for WaterFire, a sculpture that he installed on the three rivers of downtown Providence, Rhode Island.

Work
His original training was in the sciences, but he has been working exclusively as an artist for more than twenty-five years.

In 1994, he created First Fire to celebrate the tenth anniversary of First Night Providence; in June 1996, he created Second Fire for the International Sculpture Conference and the Convergence International Arts Festival in Providence. With hundreds of volunteers and the broad support of the community he established WaterFire as an ongoing installation in 1997. Evans also created WaterFire Houston in 1998 and installed Moving Water for the Institute of Contemporary Art's Vita Brevis Program in Boston in 2001. Among other installation works, Barnaby Evans created Temple to Milk in 1989, Protecting the Flag in 1990, Execution Coda (with artist Irene Lawrence) in 1993, and Solstice Courtyard in 1997. Evans created Rikyu's Second Dream for the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art for the summer of 1999, a related work, 613 Lengths of Bamboo, at the Brattleboro Museum of Art, and Heart of Glass for the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, both in 2001. Evans is currently exploring art installations for a number of other cities including St. Petersburg, Barcelona, and Seoul.

Barnaby Evans is also known for his photography which is included in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Bibliothèque nationale, Paris; the Musee' d'art et d'histoire, Fribourg, Switzerland; the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts; and the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design among others. His photographs have also been nationally and internationally exhibited and published in Camera, Lucerne, Switzerland; Photokina, Cologne, Germany; Photography Annual, New York; and Schweizerische Photorundschau / Revue Suisse de Photographie.

Barnaby Evans received his bachelor's degree in biology and environmental science from Brown University in 1975, where he was a member of the Brown Association for Cooperative Housing. He was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humanities by Brown University and an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts by Rhode Island College, both in 2000. Evans has also received the Aaron Siskind Fellowship in Photography, several fellowships from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, the Silver Prize for Colour Photography at the International Triennial Exhibition (in Switzerland) and Providence's Renaissance Award in 1997. Evans received the 2003 Kevin Lynch Award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and WaterFire was honored with the 2003 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence silver medal from the Bruner Foundation, given to Providence for the renaissance of its downtown. Evans has lectured at many universities including Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design, MIT, Harvard, Cornell, McGill, and the University of Barcelona. Evans was a 2003/2004 Artist in Residence at MIT where he co-taught a course at the Department of Urban Studies with the late Mark Schuster at MIT on the impact of ephemera on the urban environment. In 2008 Evans created a new work on the Boston Common for First Night Boston. Evans was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2011.

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

title: Barnaby Evans


text:
Fulton J. Sheen

Fulton John Sheen (born Peter John Sheen, May 8, 1895 – December 9, 1979) was an American bishop of the Catholic Church known for his preaching and especially his work on television and radio. Ordained a priest of the Diocese of Peoria in Illinois, in 1919, Sheen quickly became a renowned theologian, earning the Cardinal Mercier Prize for International Philosophy in 1923. He went on to teach theology and philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. and served as a parish priest before he was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York in 1951. He held this position until 1966 when he was made bishop of the Diocese of Rochester in New York. He resigned as bishop of Rochester in 1969 as his 75th birthday approached and was made archbishop of the titular see of Newport, Wales.

For 20 years as "Father Sheen", later monsignor, he hosted the night-time radio program The Catholic Hour on NBC (1930–1950) before he moved to television and presented Life Is Worth Living (1952–1957). Sheen's final presenting role was on the syndicated The Fulton Sheen Program (1961–1968) with a format that was very similar to that of the earlier Life Is Worth Living show. For that work, Sheen twice won an Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality, and was featured on the cover of Time magazine. Starting in 2009, his shows were being re-broadcast on the EWTN and the Trinity Broadcasting Network's Church Channel cable networks. His contribution to televised preaching resulted in Sheen often being called one of the first televangelists.

The cause for his canonization was officially opened in 2002. In June 2012, Pope Benedict XVI officially recognized a decree from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints stating that he lived a life of "heroic virtues," a major step towards beatification, and he is now referred to as venerable. On July 5, 2019, Pope Francis approved a reputed miracle that occurred through the intercession of Sheen, clearing the way for his beatification. Sheen was scheduled to be beatified in Peoria on December 21, 2019, but his beatification was postponed after Bishop Salvatore Matano of Rochester expressed concern that Sheen's handling of a 1963 sexual misconduct case against a priest might be cited unfavorably in a forthcoming report from the New York Attorney General. The Diocese of Peoria countered that Sheen's handling of the case had already been "thoroughly examined" and "exonerated" and that Sheen had "never put children in harm's way".

Early life
Fulton Sheen was born on May 8, 1895, in El Paso, Illinois, the oldest of four sons of Newton and Delia Sheen. His parents were of Irish descent, and their own parents were from Croghan, County Roscommon, Connacht. He was known as "Fulton", his mother's maiden name, but he was baptized as "Peter John Sheen". As an infant, Sheen contracted tuberculosis.

After the family had moved to nearby Peoria, Illinois, Sheen's first role in the Catholic Church was as an altar boy at Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Peoria.

Sheen graduated in 1913 from high school at Spalding Institute in Peoria with valedictorian honors. He then entered St. Viator College in Bourbonnais, Illinois. Deciding to become a priest, he started his studies at Saint Paul Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Ordination and further education
Sheen was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Peoria at the Cathedral of Saint Mary in Peoria on September 20, 1919 by Bishop Edmund Dunne. After his 1919 ordination, Sheen continued his studies at the Catholic University of America. He celebrated his first Christmas mass at St. Mark Parish in Peoria His youthful appearance was still evident on one occasion when a local priest asked Sheen to assist as altar boy during the celebration of the mass.

After finishing his studies at Catholic University of America, he entered the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, earning a Doctor of Philosophy degree n 1923. Sheen's thesis was titled "The Spirit of Contemporary Philosophy and the Finite God". At Leuven, he became the first American to win the Cardinal Mercier Prize for the best philosophical treatise. In 1924, Sheen went to Rome to attend the Pontificium Collegium Internationale Angelicum, where he was awarded a Doctor of Sacred Theology degree.

Priestly life
After Sheen returned to Peoria in 1926, Bishop Dunn assigned him as curate at St. Patrick's, a poor parish in Peoria. At that time, both Columbia University in New York and Oxford University in England wanted him to teach philosophy. Sheen took the assignment at St. Patrick's without any complaints and later said that he enjoyed his time there. Nine months later, Dunne summoned Sheen to his office. Dunne told him:"I promised you to Catholic University over a year ago. They told me that with all your traipsing around Europe, you'd be so high hat you couldn't take orders. But Father Cullen says you've been a good boy at St. Patrick's. So run along to Washington."Instead of Catholic University of America, Sheen went to teach theology at St. Edmund's College, Ware, in England where he met Ronald Knox. He also assisted the pastor at St. Patrick's Church in the Soho section of London. In 1928, Sheen finally returned to the Catholic University of America, where he would teach philosophy until 1950.

In 1929, Sheen gave a speech at a meeting of the National Catholic Educational Association in which he encouraged teachers to "educate for a Catholic Renaissance" in the United States. Sheen was hoping that Catholics would become more influential in their country through education, which would help attract others to the faith. He believed that Catholics should "integrate" their faith into the rest of their daily life.

Bishop and archbishop
Sheen was consecrated a bishop on June 11, 1951 and served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York from 1951 to 1966. The principal consecrator was the Discalced Carmelite Cardinal Adeodato Giovanni Piazza, the Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina e Poggio Mirteto and the Secretary of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation (now the Dicastery for Bishops). The co-consecrators were Archbishop Leone Giovanni Battista Nigris, Titular Archbishop of Philippi and the Secretary of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (now the Dicastery for Evangelization); and Archbishop Martin John O'Connor, Titular Archbishop of Laodicea in Syria and President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.

In 1966, Sheen was made the Bishop of Rochester. He served in this position from October 21, 1966, to October 6, 1969, when he resigned and was made the archbishop of the titular see of Newport, Wales.

Ecumenical efforts
In the 1950s and 1960s, Sheen was notable for early efforts seeking common ground with Christians from non-Roman churches, both Eastern and Protestant. He occasionally celebrated Byzantine Divine Liturgy, with papal permission awarding him certain bi-ritual faculties. He often commended Protestant devotion to Bible study: "The first subject of all to be studied is Scripture, and this demands not only the reading of it but the study of commentaries. ... Protestant commentaries, I discovered, were also particularly interesting because Protestants have spent more time on Scripture than most of us." His autobiography summarized his ecumenical outlook: "The combination of travel, the study of world religions and personal encounter with different nationalities and peoples made me see that the fullness of truth is like a complete circle of 360 degrees. Every religion in the world has a segment of that truth."

Radio
A popular instructor, Sheen wrote the first of 73 books in 1925 and in 1930 began a weekly NBC Sunday-night radio broadcast, The Catholic Hour. Sheen called World War II not only a political struggle but also a "theological one". He referred to Adolf Hitler as an example of the "Anti-Christ". Two decades later, the broadcast had a weekly listening audience of four million people. Time referred to him in 1946 as "the golden-voiced Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen, U.S. Catholicism's famed proselytizer", and reported that his radio broadcast received 3,000–6,000 letters weekly from listeners. During the middle of that era, he narrated the first religious service broadcast on the new medium of television and put into motion a new avenue for his religious pursuits.

Television
At the Catholic University of America, Sheen provided voice-over commentary for an Easter Sunday Mass in 1940, one of the first televised religious services. During the sermon, which was telecast on experimental station W2XBS, Sheen remarked, "This is the first religious television in the history of the world. Let therefore its first message be a tribute of thanks to God for giving the minds of our day the inspiration to unravel the secrets of the universe."

On February 12, 1952, he began a weekly television program on the DuMont Television Network, Life Is Worth Living. Filmed at the Adelphi Theatre in New York City, the program consisted of the unpaid Sheen simply speaking in front of a live audience without a script or cue cards and occasionally using a chalkboard.

The show, scheduled in a prime time slot on Tuesday nights at 8:00 p.m., was not expected to challenge the ratings giants Milton Berle and Frank Sinatra but did surprisingly well. Berle, who was known to many early television viewers as "Uncle Miltie" and for using ancient vaudeville material, joked about Sheen, "He uses old material, too." He also observed, "If I'm going to be eased off the top by anyone, it's better that I lose to the One for whom Bishop Sheen is speaking." Sheen responded in jest that maybe people should start calling him "Uncle Fultie". Life and Time magazines ran feature stories on Sheen. The number of stations carrying Life Is Worth Living jumped from three to fifteen in less than two months. There was fan mail that flowed in at a rate of 8,500 letters per week. There were four times as many requests for tickets as could be fulfilled. Admiral, the sponsor, paid the production costs in return for a one-minute commercial at the show's opening and another minute at its close. In 1952, Sheen won an Emmy Award for his efforts and accepted the acknowledgment by saying, "I feel it is time I pay tribute to my four writers – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." When Sheen won the Emmy, Berle quipped, "We both work for 'Sky Chief, a reference to Berle's sponsor, Texaco. Time called him "the first 'televangelist and the Archdiocese of New York could not meet the demand for tickets.

One of his best-remembered presentations came in February 1953, when he forcefully denounced the Soviet regime of Joseph Stalin. Sheen gave a dramatic reading of the burial scene from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar that substituted the names of prominent Soviet leaders Stalin, Lavrenty Beria, Georgy Malenkov, and Andrey Vyshinsky for the original Caesar, Cassius, Marc Antony, and Brutus. He concluded by saying, "Stalin must one day meet his judgment." Days later, the dictator suffered a stroke, and he died within the week.

Indeed, Sheen was often quick to rebuke what he considered wrongful conduct. For example, in his televised sermon "False Compassion", he shouted: "There are sob sisters; there are the social slobberers who insist on compassion being shown to the muggers, to the dope fiends, to the throat slashers, to the beatniks, to the prostitutes, to the homosexuals, to the punks, so that today the decent man is practically off the reservation." He then clarified his criticism and charged his viewers with the responsibility to "hate the sin ... and love the sinner."

The show ran until 1957 and drew as many as 30 million people weekly, mostly non-Catholics. In 1958, Sheen became the national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, serving for eight years before being appointed Bishop of the Diocese of Rochester, New York, on October 26, 1966. He also hosted a nationally-syndicated series, The Fulton Sheen Program, from 1961 to 1968, first in black-and-white and later in color. The format of the series was essentially the same as Life Is Worth Living.

International cassette tape ministry
In September 1974, the Archbishop of Washington, Thomas William Lyons, asked Sheen to be the speaker for a retreat for diocesan priests at the Loyola Retreat House in Faulkner, Maryland. It was recorded on reel-to-reel tape, which was then state-of-the-art.

Sheen requested for the recorded talks to be produced for distribution. This was the first production of a worldwide cassette tape ministry called Ministr-O-Media, a nonprofit company that operated on the grounds of St. Joseph's Parish, Pomfret, Maryland. The retreat album was Renewal and Reconciliation and included nine 60-minute audiotapes.

Evangelization
Sheen was credited with helping convert a number of notable figures to the Catholic faith, including the agnostic writer Heywood Broun, politician Clare Boothe Luce, automaker Henry Ford II, ex-communist writer Louis F. Budenz, ex-communist organizer Bella Dodd, theatrical designer Jo Mielziner, violinist and composer Fritz Kreisler, and actress Virginia Mayo. Each conversion process took an average of 25 hours of lessons, and reportedly more than 95% of his students in private instruction were baptized.

Falling-out with Cardinal Spellman
According to the foreword written for a 2008 edition of Sheen's autobiography, Treasure in Clay: The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen, the Catholic journalist Raymond Arroyo wrote why Sheen "retired" from hosting Life Is Worth Living "at the height of its popularity ... [when] an estimated 30 million viewers and listeners tuned in each week." Arroyo wrote that "It is widely believed that Cardinal Spellman drove Sheen off the air."

Arroyo relates: "In the late 1950s, the government donated millions of dollars' worth of powdered milk to the New York Archdiocese. In turn, Cardinal Spellman handed that milk over to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith to distribute to the poor of the world. On at least one occasion, he demanded that the director of the Society, Bishop Sheen, pay the Archdiocese for the donated milk. He wanted millions of dollars. Despite Cardinal Spellman's considerable powers of persuasion and influence in Rome, Sheen refused. These were funds donated by the public to the missions, funds Sheen himself had personally contributed to and raised over the airwaves. He felt an obligation to protect them, even from the itchy fingers of his own Cardinal."

Spellman later took the issue directly to Pope Pius XII by pleading his case with Sheen present. The Pope sided with Sheen. Spellman later confronted Sheen and stated, "I will get even with you. It may take six months or ten years, but everyone will know what you are like." Besides being pressured to leave television, Sheen also "found himself unwelcome in the churches of New York City. Spellman canceled Sheen's annual Good Friday sermons at St. Patrick's Cathedral and discouraged clergy from befriending the Bishop." In 1966, Spellman had Sheen reassigned to Rochester, New York, and caused his leadership at the Society for the Propagation of the Faith to be terminated although it was a position that he had held for 16 years, he had raised hundreds of millions of dollars for it, and he had personally donated $10 million of his earnings to it. On December 2, 1967, Spellman died in New York City.

Sheen never talked about the situation and made only vague references to his "trials both inside and outside the Church". In his autobiography, he even went so far as to praise Spellman.

Later years
While serving in Rochester, he created the Sheen Ecumenical Housing Foundation. He also spent some of his energy on political activities such as his denunciation of the Vietnam War in late July 1967. On Ash Wednesday in 1967, Sheen decided to give St. Bridget's Parish building to the federal Housing and Urban Development program. Sheen wanted to let the government use it for black Americans. There was a protest since Sheen acted on his own accord. The pastor disagreed by saying, "There is enough empty property around without taking down the church and the school." The deal fell through.

On October 15, 1969, one month after celebrating his 50th anniversary as a priest, Sheen resigned from his Rochester position. He was then appointed archbishop of the titular see of Newport, Wales (Neoportus) by Pope Paul VI. The ceremonial position gave him a promotion to archbishop and helped him continue his extensive writing. Sheen wrote 73 books and numerous articles and columns.

On October 2, 1979, two months before Sheen's death, Pope John Paul II visited St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, embraced Sheen, and said, "You have written and spoken well of the Lord Jesus Christ. You are a loyal son of the Church."

Death and legacy
Beginning in 1977, Sheen "underwent a series of surgeries that sapped his strength and even made preaching difficult". Throughout that time, he continued to work on his autobiography, parts of which "were recited from his sickbed as he clutched a crucifix." Soon after an open-heart surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital, Sheen died on December 9, 1979, in his private chapel while praying before the Blessed Sacrament. He was interred in the crypt of St. Patrick's Cathedral near the deceased archbishops of New York, including Spellman. On June 27, 2019, Sheen's remains were transferred to The Cathedral of St. Mary in Peoria, IL, where his cause is being promoted for sainthood.

The official repository of Sheen's papers, television programs, and other materials is at St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry in Rochester, New York.

Joseph Campanella introduced the reruns of Sheen's various programs that are aired on EWTN. Reruns are also aired on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. In addition to his television appearances, Sheen can be heard on Relevant Radio.

The Fulton J. Sheen Museum, which is operated by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Peoria and located in Peoria, Illinois, houses the largest set of Sheen's personal items in five collections. The museum is located one block south of Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception, where Sheen served as an altar boy, had his first communion and confirmation, was ordained and celebrated his first Mass. Another museum is located in Sheen's hometown of El Paso, Illinois. The museum contains various Sheen artifacts but is not connected to the Diocese of Peoria.

The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, along Bleecker Street in Lower Manhattan, is named after him.

The actor Ramón Gerard Antonio Estévez adopted the stage name of Martin Sheen partly in admiration of the bishop.

Sheen did much of his preaching at Saint Agnes Church, in Midtown Manhattan, from 1927 to his death. On October 7, 1980, New York Mayor Ed Koch renamed East 43rd Street in front of the church as "Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Place".

Cause for canonization
The Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation was formed in 1998 by Gregory J. Ladd and Lawrence F. Hickey to make known the archbishop's life. The foundation approached Cardinal John O'Connor of the Archdiocese of New York for permission to commence the process of his cause, which was under the authority of the Diocese of Peoria. In 2002, Sheen's cause for canonization was officially opened by Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, CSC, of the Diocese of Peoria. From then on, Sheen was referred to as a "Servant of God". On February 2, 2008, the archives of Sheen were sealed at a ceremony during a special Mass at the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Peoria, Illinois, where the diocese was sponsoring his canonization. In 2009, the diocesan phase of the investigation came to an end, and the records were sent to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints at the Holy See in Rome.

On June 28, 2012, the Holy See announced officially that it had recognized Sheen's life as one of "heroic virtue", a major step towards eventual beatification. From then on, Sheen has been styled "Venerable Servant of God". According to the Catholic News Service and The Catholic Post (the official newspaper of the Peoria Diocese), the case of a newborn boy who had no discernible pulse for 61 minutes, who was about to be declared dead at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Illinois, as a stillborn infant, and yet lived to be healthy without physical or mental impairment was in the preliminary stages of being investigated as the possible miracle needed for Sheen's potential beatification. If the miracle is approved at the diocesan level and then by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints at the Holy See, by being both medically unexplainable and directly attributable theologically to Sheen's intercession according to expert panels in both subject areas, beatification may proceed. Another such miracle would be required for him to be considered for canonization.

On September 7, 2011, a tribunal of inquiry was sworn in to investigate the alleged healing. During a special Mass at 10:30 am on Sunday, December 11, 2011, at St. Mary's Cathedral in Peoria, the documentation gathered by the tribunal over nearly three months was boxed and sealed. It was then shipped to the Holy See for consideration by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, concluding the diocesan tribunal's work.

On Sunday, September 9, 2012, a Mass of Thanksgiving and banquet was held at St. Mary's Cathedral and the Spalding Pastoral Center in celebration of the advancement of Archbishop Sheen's cause. Attendees included Bishop Jenky, and his predecessor as Bishop of Peoria, Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark, New Jersey, along with many clergy and religious from around the country. Copies of the positio, the book detailing the documentation behind his cause, were presented to Myers, representatives of the Church in other states, a delegate from the Archdiocese of Chicago, and other patrons and supporters of Sheen's cause. According to statements made during the service by clergy connected to the cause, the medical and theological study of the possible miracles needed for his beatification and canonization was well underway. At least one was being seriously considered. New procedures under Pope Benedict XVI stated that beatification should ideally occur in the candidate's home diocese. Therefore, Sheen's beatification would likely take place in Peoria, where it would be the first. If he is beatified and canonized, he would be among a select few natives of the US to hold that distinction.

Transfer of remains
In September 2014, it was announced that the canonization cause would be suspended because of a disagreement with the Archdiocese of New York concerning the return of Sheen's remains to the Diocese of Peoria. In a press release on June 14, 2016, it was announced that Sheen's surviving family petitioned the New York Supreme Court to allow the transfer of Sheen's remains to Peoria. The press release stated that "on several occasions, the Archdiocese [of New York] has declared its desire to cooperate with the wishes of the family."

In an action brought in New York Supreme Court, the trial-level court in New York, on November 16, 2016, Justice Arlene P. Bluth ordered the Archdiocese of New York to grant permission to disinter Sheen's body. The court ruled that the archdiocese's objection that Sheen would not want the disinterment was without factual basis. Given that his elevation to sainthood was being blocked, the court found the family had sufficient justification for moving his body.

However, on February 6, 2018, the New York State Appellate Division overturned Bluth's decision and ordered an evidentiary hearing be held as to whether moving Sheen's body would be consistent with his wishes. The court noted that "it is unclear if Archbishop Sheen's direction in his will to be buried in 'Calvary Cemetery, the official cemetery of the Archdiocese of New York' evinces an express intention to remain buried in the Archdiocese of New York, or was merely a descriptive term for Calvary Cemetery." However, after re-examining the case and holding the evidentiary hearing on June 9, 2018, Bluth affirmed her earlier ruling. The archdiocese had allowed Peoria to begin the work on his cause for canonization, which eventually would have required at the least a collection of his relics.

The Archdiocese of New York announced on June 9, 2019 that it was officially giving up the fight to keep Sheen's remains under the altar at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. On June 27, 2019, the remains were transferred to St. Mary's Cathedral in Peoria.

Miracle recognized for beatification
On July 6, 2019, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints promulgated the decree approving Sheen's miracle needed for beatification. The miracle involved the unexplained recovery of James Fulton Engstrom, a boy stillborn in September 2010 to Bonnie and Travis Engstrom of the town of Goodfield, near Peoria. Engstrom's parents prayed for the intercession of Sheen for their son's recovery. Pope Francis approved the miracle, and Sheen was scheduled for beatification on December 21, 2019, at the Cathedral of St. Mary in Peoria.

Postponement of beatification
On December 3, 2019, the Diocese of Peoria announced that the Holy See had decided on December 2 that Sheen's beatification would be "postponed". The postponement was prompted by Salvatore Matano, Bishop of Rochester, who expressed concern that his predecessor's handling of a 1963 sexual misconduct case against a priest might be cited unfavorably in a report from New York State Attorney General Letitia James. The Diocese of Peoria countered that Sheen's handling of the case had already been "thoroughly examined" and "exonerated" and that Sheen had "never put children in harm's way." The Diocese of Peoria continues to promote the beatification of Sheen.

As of August 2023, the Holy See had not announced if or when the beatification would move ahead. As of April 2024, New York State's Rochester investigation was still ongoing.

Selected bibliography

 * God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy (1925, Longmans, Green, and Co.)
 * The Seven Last Words (1933, The Century Co.)
 * Philosophy of Science (1934, Bruce Publishing Co.)
 * The Eternal Galilean (1934, Appleton-Century-Crofts)
 * The Mystical Body of Christ (1935, Sheed and Ward)
 * Calvary and the Mass (1936, P. J. Kenedy & Sons)
 * The Cross and the Beatitudes (1937, P. J. Kenedy & Sons)
 * Seven Words of Jesus and Mary (1945, P. J. Kenedy & Sons)
 * Communism and the Conscience of the West (1948, Bobbs-Merrill)
 * Peace of Soul (1949, McGraw–Hill)
 * Three to Get Married (1951, Appleton-Century-Crofts)
 * The World's First Love (1952, McGraw-Hill)
 * Life Is Worth Living Series 1–5 (1953–1957, McGraw–Hill)
 * Way to Happiness (1953, Maco Magazine)
 * Way to Inner Peace (1955, Garden City Books)
 * Life of Christ (1958, McGraw–Hill)
 * Missions and the World Crisis (1963, Bruce Publishing Co.)
 * The Power of Love (1965, Simon & Schuster)
 * Footprints in a Darkened Forest (1967, Meredith Press)
 * Lenten and Easter Inspirations (1967, Maco Ecumenical Books)
 * Treasure in Clay: The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen (1980, Doubleday & Co.)
 * Finding True Happiness (2014, Dynamic Catholic)
 * Your Life Is Worth Living: 50 Lessons to Deepen Your Faith, Foreword by Bishop Robert Barron (2019, Image Catholic Books)

title: Fulton J. Sheen


text:
Talk:CSS

Colour values
I have a recently-added paragraph from the Declaration block section. This is overly detailed for that section, which describes various kinds of property value in general terms, it should not go into specifics. There are many more values than are given here as examples.

Regarding the weasel-phrase "At some point", that would be [//www.w3.org/TR/css-color-4/ CSS Color Module Level 4], which as of 28 April 2022 is still a W3C Working Draft, and therefore not finalised. Some of the relevant sections are: [//www.w3.org/TR/css-color-4/#hex-notation 5.2. The RGB hexadecimal notations: #RRGGBB]; [//www.w3.org/TR/css-color-4/#serializing-color-values 4.8. Serializing Values]; [//www.w3.org/TR/css-color-4/#rgb-functions 5. sRGB Colors]. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 05:51, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Latest release section
While CSS 3 has been out for a while, the "Latest release" section still only notes CSS 2.1. I see that the release status of CSS3 is complicated, as described in the CSS 3 section, so there's no single "CSS 3 release", but I think there should be some mention of that fact in the section. Otherwise, it looks like an oversight/mistake/error.

Got no idea what the right thing to put in that section is, given its complicated nature, so the best I can do is bring this problem up so someone else can help rectify it. Jordanlees2 (talk) 23:04, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * There is no "CSS 3" specification, and there never will be. The current full CSS spec is CSS 2.1 plus a number of modules, some of which replace parts of CSS 2.1 and are at level 3 or higher; other modules are entirely additional to CSS 2.1, and these are at level 1 or higher. There is no plan to bring everything to the same level, short or long term. See [//www.w3.org/TR/css-2022/ CSS Snapshot 2022]], particularly sections 1. Introduction through to 2.4. CSS Levels inclusive.
 * Browser vendors should implement CSS 2.1 in full, plus any modules that they see fit; but any module that they do implement must also be provided in full. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 05:54, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Change Infobox From File Type To Programming Language
Should the infobox be changed to a programming language infobox to reflect the fact that CSS, when used with HTML, is a Turing complete programming language that can be used to create complex programs? This would allow adding more information, like what programming paradigm it follows. User1042💬✒ 16:57, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

A strange statement
The article states:

''The style sheet with the highest priority controls the content display. Declarations not set in the highest priority source are passed on to a source of lower priority, such as the user agent style.''

I cannot see any sense with the word "not" in the above statement. According to Wikipedia, undefined declarations are passed on to a source of lower priority. Which means that the lack of declarations is passed, then consequently, nothing is passed. Besides, what happens with the declarations that are actually defined? Are they passed on to a source of lower priority or not? The Wikipedia statement suggests that they are not. As a programmer, I use CSS everyday, but if you can enlighten me, please do so. 85.193.240.163 (talk) 11:02, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

User agent styling
Expanding on user agent style sheets could be helpful to better explain the cascade and illustrate where default styling is coming from, especially when pointing to actual user agent style sheets. For example, User Agent Style Sheets: Basics and Samples provides context and style sheets. Although I couldn‘t find an article with more examples, I’m also the owner of this particular one (SME challenge), and therefore like to raise topic and resource here: Could user agent style sheets be worth explaining more? With or without references to sample style sheets? —j9t (talk) 12:06, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:CSS


text:
Presidency of the Council of the European Union

The presidency of the Council of the European Union is responsible for the functioning of the Council of the European Union, which is the co-legislator of the EU legislature alongside the European Parliament. It rotates among the member states of the EU every six months. The presidency is not an individual, but rather the position is held by a national government. It is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the "president of the European Union". The presidency's function is to chair meetings of the council, determine its agendas, set a work program and facilitate dialogue both at Council meetings and with other EU institutions. The presidency is currently, as of July 2024, held by Hungary.

Three successive presidencies are known as presidency trios. The current trio is made up of Spain (July-December 2023), Belgium (January–June 2024), and Hungary (July-December 2024). The 2020 German presidency began the second cycle of presidencies, after the system was introduced in 2007.

History
When the council was established, its work was minimal and the presidency rotated between each of the then six members every six months. However, as the work load of the Council grew and the membership increased, the lack of coordination between each successive six-month presidency hindered the development of long-term priorities for the EU.

In order to rectify the lack of coordination, the idea of trio presidencies was put forward where groups of three successive presidencies cooperated on a common political program. This was implemented in 2007 and formally laid down in the EU treaties in 2009 by the Treaty of Lisbon.

Until 2009, the Presidency had assumed political responsibility in all areas of European integration and it played a vital role in brokering high-level political decisions.

The Treaty of Lisbon reduced the importance of the Presidency significantly by officially separating the European Council from the Council of the European Union. Simultaneously it split the foreign affairs Council configuration from the General Affairs configuration and created the position of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

After the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union in 2016 and its subsequent relinquishment of its scheduled presidency in the Council of the European Union which was due to take place from July to December 2017, the rotation of presidencies was brought six months forward. Estonia was scheduled to take over the UK's six-month slot instead. The presidency is currently (as of July 2024) held by Hungary.

Functioning
The Council meets in various formations where its composition depends on the topic discussed. For example, the Agriculture Council is composed of the national ministers responsible for Agriculture.

The primary responsibility of the Presidency is to organise and chair all meetings of the council, apart from the Foreign Affairs Council which is chaired by the High Representative. So, for instance, the Minister of Agriculture for the state holding the presidency chairs the Agriculture council. This role includes working out compromises capable of resolving difficulties.

Article 16(9) of the Treaty on European Union provides: "The Presidency of Council configurations, other than that of Foreign Affairs, shall be held by Member State representatives in the Council on the basis of equal rotation, in accordance with the conditions established in accordance with Article 236 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union"

Each three successive presidencies cooperate on a "triple-shared presidency" work together over an 18-month period to accomplish a common agenda by the current president simply continuing the work of the previous "lead-president" after the end of his/her term. This ensures more consistency in comparison to a usual single six-month presidency and each three includes a new member state. This allows new member states to hold the presidency sooner and helps old member states pass their experience to the new members.

The role of the rotating Council Presidency includes:
 * agenda-setting powers: in its 6-month programme, it decides on the order to discuss propositions, after they have been submitted by the Commission in its agenda monopoly powers
 * brokering inter-institutional compromise: Formal Trilogue meetings between Commission, Parliament and Council are held to reach early consensus in the codecision legislative procedure; the Presidency takes part to the Conciliation Committee between Parliament and Council in the third stage of the codecision legislative procedure
 * coordinating national policies and brokering compromise between member states in the council ("confessional system")
 * management and administration of the council, external and internal representation

Holding the rotating Council Presidency includes both advantages and disadvantages for member states; The opportunities include:
 * 1) member states have the possibility to show their negotiating skills, as "honest brokers", thus gaining influence and prestige
 * 2) member states gain a privileged access to information: at the end of their term, they know member states' preferences better than anyone else
 * 3) the Council programme may enable member states to focus Council discussion on issues of particular national/regional interest (for example Finland and the Northern Dimension initiative)

The burdens include:
 * 1) lack of administrative capacities and experience, especially for small and new member states; the concept of trio/troika has been introduced to enable member states to share experiences and ensure coherence on an 18-months base
 * 2) expenses in time and money, needed to support the administrative machine
 * 3) not being able to push through their own interests, as the role of Council Presidency is seen as an impartial instance; member states trying to push for initiatives of their own national interest are likely to see them failing in the medium run (for example the French 2008 Presidency and the Union for the Mediterranean project), as they need consensus and do not have enough time to reach it. This element is particularly substantial: holding the presidency may be, on balance, a disadvantage for member states


text:
User talk:Nafnaf~enwiki

Hello, Nafnaf. Welcome to Wikipedia.

A few tips for you to start going. (I'll send more if I see that I can help you :-)

 * Check out Welcome, newcomers + the links in there.
 * Sign your stuff on talk pages with ~ It will convert to your username + the time.
 * If puzzled, put a question on Village pump, or feel free to ask me on my talk page if it's a very general question.
 * Have fun.

-- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 17:51 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Nafnaf. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Nafnaf~enwiki that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name. If you think you might own all of the accounts with this name and this message is in error, please visit Special:MergeAccount to check and attach all of your accounts to prevent them from being renamed.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 02:04, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 16:46, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Nafnaf~enwiki


text:
Wu Bangguo

Wu Bangguo (born 12 July 1941) is a Chinese retired politician who served as the second-ranking member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party from 2002 to 2012, and as Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress from 2003 to 2013.

Wu is an electrical engineer by profession, and rose to political prominence during his work in Shanghai. During the early 1980s, he was in charge of science and technology related work in Shanghai, where he worked with Jiang Zemin, then mayor and later Communist Party secretary of the city, leading Wu to be affiliated with Jiang's political faction. He became Shanghai's party secretary in 1991, succeeding Zhu Rongji, leading him to assume a seat in the CCP Politburo in 1992.

He became the country's third-ranking Vice Premier of the State Council in 1995, with a portfolio including state-owned enterprises and the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. He jointed the Politburo Standing Committee in 2002, and was appointed as the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress in 2003. Serving as one of the highest-ranking officials under Party general secretary Hu Jintao, Wu is generally regarded to have taken more conservative positions towards reforms during his tenure. He stepped down from the Politburo Standing Committee in 2012, and was succeeded by Zhang Dejiang as Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress in 2013.

Early life
Wu was born in Pingba, Guizhou, with ancestral roots in Feidong, Anhui. He entered Tsinghua University in 1960, majoring in electron tube engineering at the Department of Radio Electronics, where he graduated in 1967. He joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1964. After graduation, he was employed as a worker and technician at Shanghai's No. 3 Electronic Tube Factory, and then deputy chief and chief of the technical section from 1976 to 1978. He would eventually go on to lead the factory as its party secretary. In 1978 he was assigned to become the deputy manager of Shanghai Electronic Elements Company, and between 1979 and 1981 the deputy manager of Shanghai Electron Tube Company. Between 1981 and 1983 he worked as the deputy secretary of Shanghai Meters, Instruments and Telecommunications Bureau.

Political career
Wu's work in electronics companies earned him a tenure in the city's upper echelons of power. He became part of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai party committee in 1983, effectively becoming part of Shanghai's political inner circle, and was put in charge of work related to science and technology. During this time, he worked with Jiang Zemin, who was mayor and later the CCP secretary of the city. Between 1985 and 1991, Wu was elevated to CCP deputy secretary of Shanghai, and subsequently as CCP secretary of Shanghai, succeeding Jiang.

As Shanghai's political and economic stature grew due to economic reforms, Wu gained a seat on the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, China's ruling council, in 1992. He was subsequently appointed as the third-ranking vice premier in 1995 under premier Li Peng. During this period, he served in a portfolio dealing with industry and reforming state-owned enterprises, and also oversaw the Three Gorges Dam. He continued as vice premier under Zhu Rongji, and served as the role until 2003.

Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress
At the 16th Party Congress in November 2002, Wu entered the highest power elite in the country, ranking second in the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, only under then general secretary Hu Jintao. In 2003, at the first session of the 10th National People's Congress, he was appointed as the chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. At the first session of the 11th National People's Congress, he was re-elected as Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee on 15 March 2008.

During his tenure, Wu was generally regarded as a member of the Shanghai clique and an associate of Jiang Zemin, generally taking a conservative approach towards reform. He was also described as having a low-key profile during his time in office.

During a speech about the Hong Kong Basic Law in the territory in June 2007, Wu warned that Hong Kong will only have as much authority as granted from Beijing, and that the Special Administrative Region's government is an executive-led model and should not blindly follow Western systems. He also stated that the Central Government supported Hong Kong's development of democracy, so long as it is within the boundaries of the Hong Kong Basic Law. Although the remarks were left open to interpretation, they generated significant controversy in Hong Kong, with pro-democracy politicians calling it a challenge on the autonomy of the territory.

In his capacity as NPCSC chair, Wu delivers an annual address each year at the National People's Congress sessions in March. These speeches have always noted that China will not adopt multiparty democracy, separation of powers, or a federal system. In 2011, Wu said that "[w]e have made a solemn declaration that we will not employ a system of multiple parties holding office in rotation" and also ruled out separation of powers and federalism.

On 16 July 2012, Wu attended the launch ceremony of Shenzhou 9 crewed spacecraft.

Wu retired from the CCP Politburo Standing Committee at the 18th Party Congress in November 2012, and was succeeded as NPCSC chairman by Zhang Dejiang in March 2013.

Post-retirement
Similar to other retired top-ranking officials in China, Wu has largely stopped making public appearances except to attend important events such as the National Day celebration. In March 2015, Wu was pictured visiting a rapeseed farm in Wuyuan, Jiangxi province.

title: Wu Bangguo


text:
Barry Dempster

Barry Edward Dempster (born 17 January 1952) is a Canadian poet, novelist, and editor.

Barry Dempster was born in Toronto, Ontario, and educated in child psychology. He is the author of two novels, a children's book, three volumes of short stories, and sixteen collections of poetry. Dempster's prose was first noticed by renowned Canadian editor and writer, John Metcalf, for his anthology Third Impressions (Oberon Press) in which Metcalf showcased three promising young authors. A contract from Oberon Press soon followed for the publication of two collections of highly praised short stories. Quarry Press came forward with an offer to publish his first novel, The Ascension of Jesse Rapture, which also received excellent reviews.

Dempster has twice been nominated for the Governor General's Award for literature—for his first book, Fables for Isolated Men (Guernica, 1982), and for The Burning Alphabet (Brick Books, 2005), which also won the Canadian Authors Association Jack Chalmers Award for poetry. In 2010 and 2015 he was a finalist for the Ontario Premier's Award of Excellence in the Arts. In 2013, Dempster was a finalist for his second novel, The Outside World, (Pedlar Press, 2013) for Ontario's Trillium Award.

From 1990 to 1997, he was poetry and reviews editor for Poetry Canada, which quickly became one of Canada's most esteemed literary magazines. For over 10 years, he was the mainstay of the publication in the role of reviews editor and then poetry and reviews editor, as it changed ownership and staff. During this time, Dempster became known for his helpful, supportive letters to submitting writers, his astute book reviews and his "New Voice" discoveries of some of Canada's finest poets.

From 1999 to 2018, he was senior acquisitions editor with Brick Books, where he discovered and edited many of Canada's finest emerging and established poets. His editorial successes include a Griffin Prize winner and a Griffin nominee; he has also edited a Governor General's Award winning collection as well as a collection that won the 2005 Trillium Award.

Equally comfortable working in prose and poetry, Dempster also has extensive experience as a creative writing instructor. He has been on the faculty at The Banff Centre as mentor for the Writing Studio, Wired Writing and Writing with Styles programs, and has twice been the writer-in-residence at the Richmond Hill Public Library. He has run hundreds of workshops in Ontario elementary and high schools, as well as teaching at the Upper Canada Writers' Workshop in Kingston, Ontario and Sage Hill, Saskatchewan. He has also offered master classes in Santiago, Chile; Victoria, British Columbia; Mahone Bay and Shelbourne, Nova Scotia; Winnipeg, Manitoba; and in Ottawa, Hamilton, Barrie, Holland Landing and Newmarket in Ontario.

Tread & Other Stories was shortlisted for the 2019 ReLit Award for short fiction.

Dempster was living in York Region with his wife where he ran a very popular film series "Southlake Cinemania," which raised funds to support literacy through the arts. He and his wife are now currently living in Grey Bruce. His website is www.barrydempsterauthor.com.

title: Barry Dempster