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Fountain

A fountain, from the Latin "fons" (genitive "fontis"), meaning source or spring, is a decorative reservoir used for discharging water. It is also a structure that jets water into the air for a decorative or dramatic effect.

Fountains were originally purely functional, connected to springs or aqueducts and used to provide drinking water and water for bathing and washing to the residents of cities, towns and villages. Until the late 19th century most fountains operated by gravity, and needed a source of water higher than the fountain, such as a reservoir or aqueduct, to make the water flow or jet into the air.

In addition to providing drinking water, fountains were used for decoration and to celebrate their builders. Roman fountains were decorated with bronze or stone masks of animals or heroes. In the Middle Ages, Moorish and Muslim garden designers used fountains to create miniature versions of the gardens of paradise. King Louis XIV of France used fountains in the Gardens of Versailles to illustrate his power over nature. The baroque decorative fountains of Rome in the 17th and 18th centuries marked the arrival point of restored Roman aqueducts and glorified the Popes who built them.

By the end of the 19th century, as indoor plumbing became the main source of drinking water, urban fountains became purely decorative. Mechanical pumps replaced gravity and allowed fountains to recycle water and to force it high into the air. The Jet d'Eau in Lake Geneva, built in 1951, shoots water 140 m in the air. The highest such fountain in the world is King Fahd's Fountain in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which spouts water 260 m above the Red Sea.

Fountains are used today to decorate city parks and squares; to honor individuals or events; for recreation and for entertainment. A splash pad or spray pool allows city residents to enter, get wet and cool off in summer. The musical fountain combines moving jets of water, colored lights and recorded music, controlled by a computer, for dramatic effects. Fountains can themselves also be musical instruments played by obstruction of one or more of their water jets. Drinking fountains provide clean drinking water in public buildings, parks and public spaces.

Ancient fountains
Ancient civilizations built stone basins to capture and hold precious drinking water. A carved stone basin, dating to around 700 BC, was discovered in the ruins of the ancient Sumerian city of Lagash in modern Iraq. The ancient Assyrians constructed a series of basins in the gorge of the Comel River, carved in solid rock, connected by small channels, descending to a stream. The lowest basin was decorated with carved reliefs of two lions. The ancient Egyptians had ingenious systems for hoisting water up from the Nile for drinking and irrigation, but without a higher source of water it was not possible to make water flow by gravity, There are lion-shaped fountains in the Temple of Dendera in Qena. The ancient Greeks used aqueducts and gravity-powered fountains to distribute water. According to ancient historians, fountains existed in Athens, Corinth, and other ancient Greek cities in the 6th century BC as the terminating points of aqueducts which brought water from springs and rivers into the cities. In the 6th century BC, the Athenian ruler Peisistratos built the main fountain of Athens, the Enneacrounos, in the Agora, or main square. It had nine large cannons, or spouts, which supplied drinking water to local residents. Greek fountains were made of stone or marble, with water flowing through bronze pipes and emerging from the mouth of a sculpted mask that represented the head of a lion or the muzzle of an animal. Most Greek fountains flowed by simple gravity, but they also discovered how to use principle of a siphon to make water spout, as seen in pictures on Greek vases.

Ancient Roman fountains

The Ancient Romans built an extensive system of aqueducts from mountain rivers and lakes to provide water for the fountains and baths of Rome. The Roman engineers used lead pipes instead of bronze to distribute the water throughout the city. The excavations at Pompeii, which revealed the city as it was when it was destroyed by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, uncovered free-standing fountains and basins placed at intervals along city streets, fed by siphoning water upwards from lead pipes under the street. The excavations of Pompeii also showed that the homes of wealthy Romans often had a small fountain in the atrium, or interior courtyard, with water coming from the city water supply and spouting into a small bowl or basin.

Ancient Rome was a city of fountains. According to Sextus Julius Frontinus, the Roman consul who was named curator aquarum or guardian of the water of Rome in 98 AD, Rome had nine aqueducts which fed 39 monumental fountains and 591 public basins, not counting the water supplied to the Imperial household, baths and owners of private villas. Each of the major fountains was connected to two different aqueducts, in case one was shut down for service.

The Romans were able to make fountains jet water into the air, by using the pressure of water flowing from a distant and higher source of water to create hydraulic head, or force. Illustrations of fountains in gardens spouting water are found on wall paintings in Rome from the 1st century BC, and in the villas of Pompeii. The Villa of Hadrian in Tivoli featured a large swimming basin with jets of water. Pliny the Younger described the banquet room of a Roman villa where a fountain began to jet water when visitors sat on a marble seat. The water flowed into a basin, where the courses of a banquet were served in floating dishes shaped like boats.

Roman engineers built aqueducts and fountains throughout the Roman Empire. Examples can be found today in the ruins of Roman towns in Vaison-la-Romaine and Glanum in France, in Augst, Switzerland, and other sites.

Medieval fountains

In Nepal there were public drinking fountains at least as early as 550 AD. They are called dhunge dharas or hitis. They consist of intricately carved stone spouts through which water flows uninterrupted from underground water sources. They are found extensively in Nepal and some of them are still operational. Construction of water conduits like hitis and dug wells are considered as pious acts in Nepal.

During the Middle Ages, Roman aqueducts were wrecked or fell into decay, and many fountains throughout Europe stopped working, so fountains existed mainly in art and literature, or in secluded monasteries or palace gardens. Fountains in the Middle Ages were associated with the source of life, purity, wisdom, innocence, and the Garden of Eden. In illuminated manuscripts like the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1411–1416), the Garden of Eden was shown with a graceful gothic fountain in the center (see illustration). The Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck, finished in 1432, also shows a fountain as a feature of the adoration of the mystic lamb, a scene apparently set in Paradise.

The cloister of a monastery was supposed to be a replica of the Garden of Eden, protected from the outside world. Simple fountains, called lavabos, were placed inside Medieval monasteries such as Le Thoronet Abbey in Provence and were used for ritual washing before religious services.

Fountains were also found in the enclosed medieval jardins d'amour, "gardens of courtly love" – ornamental gardens used for courtship and relaxation. The medieval romance The Roman de la Rose describes a fountain in the center of an enclosed garden, feeding small streams bordered by flowers and fresh herbs.

Some Medieval fountains, like the cathedrals of their time, illustrated biblical stories, local history and the virtues of their time. The Fontana Maggiore in Perugia, dedicated in 1278, is decorated with stone carvings representing prophets and saints, allegories of the arts, labors of the months, the signs of the zodiac, and scenes from Genesis and Roman history.

Medieval fountains could also provide amusement. The gardens of the Counts of Artois at the Château de Hesdin, built in 1295, contained famous fountains, called Les Merveilles de Hesdin ("The Wonders of Hesdin") which could be triggered to drench surprised visitors.

Fountains of the Islamic World

Shortly after the spread of Islam, the Arabs incorporated into their city planning the famous Islamic gardens. Islamic gardens after the 7th century were traditionally enclosed by walls and were designed to represent paradise. The paradise gardens, were laid out in the form of a cross, with four channels representing the rivers of Paradise, dividing the four parts of the world. Water sometimes spouted from a fountain in the center of the cross, representing the spring or fountain, Salsabil, described in the Qur'an as the source of the rivers of Paradise.

In the 9th century, the Banū Mūsā brothers, a trio of Persian Inventors, were commissioned by the Caliph of Baghdad to summarize the engineering knowledge of the ancient Greek and Roman world. They wrote a book entitled the Book of Ingenious Devices, describing the works of the 1st century Greek Engineer Hero of Alexandria and other engineers, plus many of their own inventions. They described fountains which formed water into different shapes and a wind-powered water pump, but it is not known if any of their fountains were ever actually built.

The Persian rulers of the Middle Ages had elaborate water distribution systems and fountains in their palaces and gardens. Water was carried by a pipe into the palace from a source at a higher elevation. Once inside the palace or garden it came up through a small hole in a marble or stone ornament and poured into a basin or garden channels. The gardens of Pasargades had a system of canals which flowed from basin to basin, both watering the garden and making a pleasant sound. The Persian engineers also used the principle of the syphon (called shotor-gelu in Persian, literally 'neck of the camel) to create fountains which spouted water or made it resemble a bubbling spring. The garden of Fin, near Kashan, used 171 spouts connected to pipes to create a fountain called the Howz-e jush, or "boiling basin".

The 11th century Persian poet Azraqi described a Persian fountain:

 * From a marvelous faucet of gold pours a wave
 * whose clarity is more pure than a soul;
 * The turquoise and silver form ribbons in the basin
 * coming from this faucet of gold ...

Reciprocating motion was first described in 1206 by Arab Muslim engineer and inventor al-Jazari when the kings of the Artuqid dynasty in Turkey commissioned him to manufacture a machine to raise water for their palaces. The finest result was a machine called the double-acting reciprocating piston pump, which translated rotary motion to reciprocating motion via the crankshaft-connecting rod mechanism.

The palaces of Moorish Spain, particularly the Alhambra in Granada, had famous fountains. The patio of the Sultan in the gardens of Generalife in Granada (1319) featured spouts of water pouring into a basin, with channels which irrigated orange and myrtle trees. The garden was modified over the centuries – the jets of water which cross the canal today were added in the 19th century.

The fountain in the Court of the Lions of the Alhambra, built from 1362 to 1391, is a large vasque mounted on twelve stone statues of lions. Water spouts upward in the vasque and pours from the mouths of the lions, filling four channels dividing the courtyard into quadrants. The basin dates to the 14th century, but the lions spouting water are believed to be older, dating to the 11th century.

The design of the Islamic garden spread throughout the Islamic world, from Moorish Spain to the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent. The Shalimar Gardens built by Emperor Shah Jahan in 1641, were said to be ornamented with 410 fountains, which fed into a large basin, canal and marble pools.

In the Ottoman Empire, rulers often built fountains next to mosques so worshippers could do their ritual washing. Examples include the Fountain of Qasim Pasha (1527), Temple Mount, Jerusalem, an ablution and drinking fountain built during the Ottoman reign of Suleiman the Magnificent; the Fountain of Ahmed III (1728) at the Topkapı Palace, Istanbul, another Fountain of Ahmed III in Üsküdar (1729) and Tophane Fountain (1732). Palaces themselves often had small decorated fountains, which provided drinking water, cooled the air, and made a pleasant splashing sound. One surviving example is the Fountain of Tears (1764) at the Bakhchisarai Palace, in Crimea; which was made famous by a poem of Alexander Pushkin. The sebil was a decorated fountain that was often the only source of water for the surrounding neighborhood. It was often commissioned as an act of Islamic piety by a rich person.

Renaissance fountains (15th–17th centuries)

In the 14th century, Italian humanist scholars began to rediscover and translate forgotten Roman texts on architecture by Vitruvius, on hydraulics by Hero of Alexandria, and descriptions of Roman gardens and fountains by Pliny the Younger, Pliny the Elder, and Varro. The treatise on architecture, De re aedificatoria, by Leon Battista Alberti, which described in detail Roman villas, gardens and fountains, became the guidebook for Renaissance builders.

In Rome, Pope Nicholas V (1397–1455), himself a scholar who commissioned hundreds of translations of ancient Greek classics into Latin, decided to embellish the city and make it a worthy capital of the Christian world. In 1453, he began to rebuild the Acqua Vergine, the ruined Roman aqueduct which had brought clean drinking water to the city from eight miles (13 km) away. He also decided to revive the Roman custom of marking the arrival point of an aqueduct with a mostra, a grand commemorative fountain. He commissioned the architect Leon Battista Alberti to build a wall fountain where the Trevi Fountain is now located. The aqueduct he restored, with modifications and extensions, eventually supplied water to the Trevi Fountain and the famous baroque fountains in the Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Navona.

One of the first new fountains to be built in Rome during the Renaissance was the fountain in the piazza in front of the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere (1472), which was placed on the site of an earlier Roman fountain. Its design, based on an earlier Roman model, with a circular vasque on a pedestal pouring water into a basin below, became the model for many other fountains in Rome, and eventually for fountains in other cities, from Paris to London.

In 1503, Pope Julius II decided to recreate a classical pleasure garden in the same place. The new garden, called the Cortile del Belvedere, was designed by Donato Bramante. The garden was decorated with the Pope's famous collection of classical statues, and with fountains. The Venetian Ambassador wrote in 1523, "... On one side of the garden is a most beautiful loggia, at one end of which is a lovely fountain that irrigates the orange trees and the rest of the garden by a little canal in the center of the loggia ... The original garden was split in two by the construction of the Vatican Library in the 16th century, but a new fountain by Carlo Maderno was built in the Cortile del Belvedere, with a jet of water shooting up from a circular stone bowl on an octagonal pedestal in a large basin.

In 1537, in Florence, Cosimo I de' Medici, who had become ruler of the city at the age of only 17, also decided to launch a program of aqueduct and fountain building. The city had previously gotten all its drinking water from wells and reservoirs of rain water, which meant that there was little water or water pressure to run fountains. Cosimo built an aqueduct large enough for the first continually-running fountain in Florence, the Fountain of Neptune in the Piazza della Signoria (1560–1567). This fountain featured an enormous white marble statue of Neptune, resembling Cosimo, by sculptor Bartolomeo Ammannati.

Under the Medicis, fountains were not just sources of water, but advertisements of the power and benevolence of the city's rulers. They became central elements not only of city squares, but of the new Italian Renaissance garden. The great Medici Villa at Castello, built for Cosimo by Benedetto Varchi, featured two monumental fountains on its central axis; one showing with two bronze figures representing Hercules slaying Antaeus, symbolizing the victory of Cosimo over his enemies; and a second fountain, in the middle of a circular labyrinth of cypresses, laurel, myrtle and roses, had a bronze statue by Giambologna which showed the goddess Venus wringing her hair. The planet Venus was governed by Capricorn, which was the emblem of Cosimo; the fountain symbolized that he was the absolute master of Florence.

By the middle Renaissance, fountains had become a form of theater, with cascades and jets of water coming from marble statues of animals and mythological figures. The most famous fountains of this kind were found in the Villa d'Este (1550–1572), at Tivoli near Rome, which featured a hillside of basins, fountains and jets of water, as well as a fountain which produced music by pouring water into a chamber, forcing air into a series of flute-like pipes. The gardens also featured giochi d'acqua, water jokes, hidden fountains which suddenly soaked visitors. Between 1546 and 1549, the merchants of Paris built the first Renaissance-style fountain in Paris, the Fontaine des Innocents, to commemorate the ceremonial entry of the King into the city. The fountain, which originally stood against the wall of the church of the Holy Innocents, as rebuilt several times and now stands in a square near Les Halles. It is the oldest fountain in Paris.

Henry constructed an Italian-style garden with a fountain shooting a vertical jet of water for his favorite mistress, Diane de Poitiers, next to the Château de Chenonceau (1556–1559). At the royal Château de Fontainebleau, he built another fountain with a bronze statue of Diane, goddess of the hunt, modeled after Diane de Poitiers.

Later, after the death of Henry II, his widow, Catherine de Medici, expelled Diane de Poitiers from Chenonceau and built her own fountain and garden there.

King Henry IV of France made an important contribution to French fountains by inviting an Italian hydraulic engineer, Tommaso Francini, who had worked on the fountains of the villa at Pratalino, to make fountains in France. Francini became a French citizen in 1600, built the Medici Fountain, and during the rule of the young King Louis XIII, he was raised to the position of Intendant général des Eaux et Fontaines of the king, a position which was hereditary. His descendants became the royal fountain designers for Louis XIII and for Louis XIV at Versailles.

In 1630, another Medici, Marie de Medici, the widow of Henry IV, built her own monumental fountain in Paris, the Medici Fountain, in the garden of the Palais du Luxembourg. That fountain still exists today, with a long basin of water and statues added in 1866.

Baroque Fountains of Rome

The 17th and 18th centuries were a golden age for fountains in Rome, which began with the reconstruction of ruined Roman aqueducts and the construction by the Popes of mostra, or display fountains, to mark their termini. The new fountains were expressions of the new Baroque art, which was officially promoted by the Catholic Church as a way to win popular support against the Protestant Reformation; the Council of Trent had declared in the 16th century that the Church should counter austere Protestantism with art that was lavish, animated and emotional. The fountains of Rome, like the paintings of Rubens, were examples of the principles of Baroque art. They were crowded with allegorical figures, and filled with emotion and movement. In these fountains, sculpture became the principal element, and the water was used simply to animate and decorate the sculptures. They, like baroque gardens, were "a visual representation of confidence and power."

The first of the Fountains of St. Peter's Square, by Carlo Maderno, (1614) was one of the earliest Baroque fountains in Rome, made to complement the lavish Baroque façade he designed for St. Peter's Basilica behind it. It was fed by water from the Paola aqueduct, restored in 1612, whose source was 266 ft above sea level, which meant it could shoot water twenty feet up from the fountain. Its form, with a large circular vasque on a pedestal pouring water into a basin and an inverted vasque above it spouting water, was imitated two centuries later in the Fountains of the Place de la Concorde in Paris.

The Triton Fountain in the Piazza Barberini (1642), by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, is a masterpiece of Baroque sculpture, representing Triton, half-man and half-fish, blowing his horn to calm the waters, following a text by the Roman poet Ovid in the Metamorphoses. The Triton fountain benefited from its location in a valley, and the fact that it was fed by the Aqua Felice aqueduct, restored in 1587, which arrived in Rome at an elevation of 194 ft above sea level (fasl), a difference of 130 ft in elevation between the source and the fountain, which meant that the water from this fountain jetted sixteen feet straight up into the air from the conch shell of the triton.

The Piazza Navona became a grand theater of water, with three fountains, built in a line on the site of the Stadium of Domitian. The fountains at either end are by Giacomo della Porta; the Neptune fountain to the north, (1572) shows the God of the Sea spearing an octopus, surrounded by tritons, sea horses and mermaids. At the southern end is Il Moro, possibly also a figure of Neptune riding a fish in a conch shell. In the center is the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, (The Fountain of the Four Rivers) (1648–51), a highly theatrical fountain by Bernini, with statues representing rivers from the four continents; the Nile, Danube, Plate River and Ganges. Over the whole structure is a 54 ft Egyptian obelisk, crowned by a cross with the emblem of the Pamphili family, representing Pope Innocent X, whose family palace was on the piazza. The theme of a fountain with statues symbolizing great rivers was later used in the Place de la Concorde (1836–40) and in the Fountain of Neptune in the Alexanderplatz in Berlin (1891). The fountains of Piazza Navona had one drawback - their water came from the Acqua Vergine, which had only a 23 ft drop from the source to the fountains, which meant the water could only fall or trickle downwards, not jet very high upwards.

The Trevi Fountain is the largest and most spectacular of Rome's fountains, designed to glorify the three different Popes who created it. It was built beginning in 1730 at the terminus of the reconstructed Acqua Vergine aqueduct, on the site of Renaissance fountain by Leon Battista Alberti. It was the work of architect Nicola Salvi and the successive project of Pope Clement XII, Pope Benedict XIV and Pope Clement XIII, whose emblems and inscriptions are carried on the attic story, entablature and central niche. The central figure is Oceanus, the personification of all the seas and oceans, in an oyster-shell chariot, surrounded by Tritons and Sea Nymphs.

In fact, the fountain had very little water pressure, because the source of water was, like the source for the Piazza Navona fountains, the Acqua Vergine, with a 23 ft drop. Salvi compensated for this problem by sinking the fountain down into the ground, and by carefully designing the cascade so that the water churned and tumbled, to add movement and drama. Wrote historians Maria Ann Conelli and Marilyn Symmes, "On many levels the Trevi altered the appearance, function and intent of fountains and was a watershed for future designs."

Baroque fountains of Versailles
Beginning in 1662, King Louis XIV of France began to build a new kind of garden, the Garden à la française, or French formal garden, at the Palace of Versailles. In this garden, the fountain played a central role. He used fountains to demonstrate the power of man over nature, and to illustrate the grandeur of his rule. In the Gardens of Versailles, instead of falling naturally into a basin, water was shot into the sky, or formed into the shape of a fan or bouquet. Dancing water was combined with music and fireworks to form a grand spectacle. These fountains were the work of the descendants of Tommaso Francini, the Italian hydraulic engineer who had come to France during the time of Henry IV and built the Medici Fountain and the Fountain of Diana at Fontainebleau.

Two fountains were the centerpieces of the Gardens of Versailles, both taken from the myths about Apollo, the sun god, the emblem of Louis XIV, and both symbolizing his power. The Fontaine Latone (1668–70) designed by André Le Nôtre and sculpted by Gaspard and Balthazar Marsy, represents the story of how the peasants of Lycia tormented Latona and her children, Diana and Apollo, and were punished by being turned into frogs. This was a reminder of how French peasants had abused Louis's mother, Anne of Austria, during the uprising called the Fronde in the 1650s. When the fountain is turned on, sprays of water pour down on the peasants, who are frenzied as they are transformed into creatures.

The other centerpiece of the Gardens, at the intersection of the main axes of the Gardens of Versailles, is the Bassin d'Apollon (1668–71), designed by Charles Le Brun and sculpted by Jean Baptiste Tuby. This statue shows a theme also depicted in the painted decoration in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles: Apollo in his chariot about to rise from the water, announced by Tritons with seashell trumpets. Historians Mary Anne Conelli and Marilyn Symmes wrote, "Designed for dramatic effect and to flatter the king, the fountain is oriented so that the Sun God rises from the west and travels east toward the chateau, in contradiction to nature."

Besides these two monumental fountains, the Gardens over the years contained dozens of other fountains, including thirty-nine animal fountains in the labyrinth depicting the fables of Jean de La Fontaine.

There were so many fountains at Versailles that it was impossible to have them all running at once; when Louis XIV made his promenades, his fountain-tenders turned on the fountains ahead of him and turned off those behind him. Louis built an enormous pumping station, the Machine de Marly, with fourteen water wheels and 253 pumps to raise the water three hundred feet from the River Seine, and even attempted to divert the River Eure to provide water for his fountains, but the water supply was never enough.

Baroque fountains of Peterhof
In Russia, Peter the Great founded a new capital at St. Petersburg in 1703 and built a small Summer Palace and gardens there beside the Neva River. The gardens featured a fountain of two sea monsters spouting water, among the earliest fountains in Russia.

In 1709, he began constructing a larger palace, Peterhof Palace, alongside the Gulf of Finland, Peter visited France in 1717 and saw the gardens and fountains of Louis XIV at Versailles, Marly and Fontainebleau. When he returned he began building a vast Garden à la française with fountains at Peterhof. The central feature of the garden was a water cascade, modeled after the cascade at the Château de Marly of Louis XIV, built in 1684. The gardens included trick fountains designed to drench unsuspecting visitors, a popular feature of the Italian Renaissance garden.,

In 1800–1802 the Emperor Paul I of Russia and his successor, Alexander I of Russia, built a new fountain at the foot of the cascade depicting Samson prying open the mouth of a lion, representing Peter's victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War in 1721. The fountains were fed by reservoirs in the upper garden, while the Samson fountain was fed by a specially-constructed aqueduct four kilometers in length.

19th century fountains
In the early 19th century, London and Paris built aqueducts and new fountains to supply clean drinking water to their exploding populations. Napoleon Bonaparte started construction on the first canals bringing drinking water to Paris, fifteen new fountains, the most famous being the Fontaine du Palmier in the Place du Châtelet, (1896–1808), celebrating his military victories.

He also restored and put back into service some of the city's oldest fountains, such as the Medici Fountain. Two of Napoleon's fountains, the Chateau d'Eau and the fountain in the Place des Vosges, were the first purely decorative fountains in Paris, without water taps for drinking water.

Louis-Philippe (1830–1848) continued Napoleon's work, and added some of Paris's most famous fountains, notably the Fontaines de la Concorde (1836–1840) and the fountains in the Place des Vosges.

Following a deadly cholera epidemic in 1849, Louis Napoleon decided to completely rebuild the Paris water supply system, separating the water supply for fountains from the water supply for drinking. The most famous fountain built by Louis Napoleon was the Fontaine Saint-Michel, part of his grand reconstruction of Paris boulevards. Louis Napoleon relocated and rebuilt several earlier fountains, such as the Medici Fountain and the Fontaine de Leda, when their original sites were destroyed by his construction projects.

In the mid-nineteenth century the first fountains were built in the United States, connected to the first aqueducts bringing drinking water from outside the city. The first fountain in Philadelphia, at Centre Square, opened in 1809, and featured a statue by sculptor William Rush. The first fountain in New York City, in City Hall Park, opened in 1842, and the first fountain in Boston was turned on in 1848. The first famous American decorative fountain was the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park in New York City, opened in 1873.

The 19th century also saw the introduction of new materials in fountain construction; cast iron (the Fontaines de la Concorde); glass (the Crystal Fountain in London (1851)) and even aluminium (the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain in Piccadilly Circus, London, (1897)).

The invention of steam pumps meant that water could be supplied directly to homes, and pumped upward from fountains. The new fountains in Trafalgar Square (1845) used steam pumps from an artesian well. By the end of the 19th century fountains in big cities were no longer used to supply drinking water, and were simply a form of art and urban decoration.

Another fountain innovation of the 19th century was the illuminated fountain: The Bartholdi Fountain at the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876 was illuminated by gas lamps. In 1884 a fountain in Britain featured electric lights shining upward through the water. The Exposition Universelle (1889) which celebrated the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution featured a fountain illuminated by electric lights shining up though the columns of water. The fountains, located in a basin forty meters in diameter, were given color by plates of colored glass inserted over the lamps. The Fountain of Progress gave its show three times each evening, for twenty minutes, with a series of different colors.

20th century fountains
Paris fountains in the 20th century no longer had to supply drinking water - they were purely decorative; and, since their water usually came from the river and not from the city aqueducts, their water was no longer drinkable. Twenty-eight new fountains were built in Paris between 1900 and 1940; nine new fountains between 1900 and 1910; four between 1920 and 1930; and fifteen between 1930 and 1940.

The biggest fountains of the period were those built for the International Expositions of 1900, 1925 and 1937, and for the Colonial Exposition of 1931. Of those, only the fountains from the 1937 exposition at the Palais de Chaillot still exist. (See Fountains of International Expositions).

Only a handful of fountains were built in Paris between 1940 and 1980. The most important ones built during that period were on the edges of the city, on the west, just outside the city limits, at La Défense, and to the east at the Bois de Vincennes.

Between 1981 and 1995, during the terms of President François Mitterrand and Culture Minister Jack Lang, and of Mitterrand's bitter political rival, Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac (Mayor from 1977 until 1995), the city experienced a program of monumental fountain building that exceeded that of Napoleon Bonaparte or Louis Philippe. More than one hundred fountains were built in Paris in the 1980s, mostly in the neighborhoods outside the center of Paris, where there had been few fountains before These included the Fontaine Cristaux, homage to Béla Bartók by Jean-Yves Lechevallier (1980); the Stravinsky Fountain next to the Pompidou Center, by sculptors Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely (1983); the fountain of the Pyramid of the Louvre by I.M. Pei, (1989), the Buren Fountain by sculptor Daniel Buren, Les Sphérades fountain, both in the Palais-Royal, and the fountains of Parc André-Citroën. The Mitterrand-Chirac fountains had no single style or theme. Many of the fountains were designed by famous sculptors or architects, such as Jean Tinguely, I.M. Pei, Claes Oldenburg and Daniel Buren, who had radically different ideas of what a fountain should be. Some were solemn, and others were whimsical. Most made little effort to blend with their surroundings - they were designed to attract attention.

Fountains built in the United States between 1900 and 1950 mostly followed European models and classical styles. The Samuel Francis Dupont Memorial Fountain, in Dupont Circle, Washington D.C., was designed and created by Henry Bacon and Daniel Chester French, the architect and sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial, in 1921, in a pure neoclassical style.

The Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park in Chicago was one of the first American fountains to use powerful modern pumps to shoot water as high as 150 ft into the air. The Fountain of Prometheus, built at the Rockefeller Center in New York City in 1933, was the first American fountain in the Art-Deco style.

After World War II, fountains in the United States became more varied in form. Some, like Ruth Asawa's Andrea (1968) and the Vaillancourt Fountain (1971), both located in San Francisco, were pure works of sculpture. Other fountains, like the Frankin Roosevelt Memorial Waterfall (1997), by architect Lawrence Halprin, were designed as landscapes to illustrate themes. This fountain is part of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington D.C., which has four outdoor "rooms" illustrating his presidency. Each "room" contains a cascade or waterfall; the cascade in the third room illustrates the turbulence of the years of the World War II. Halprin wrote at an early stage of the design; "the whole environment of the memorial becomes sculpture: to touch, feel, hear and contact - with all the senses."

The end of the 20th century the development of high-shooting fountains, beginning with the Jet d'eau in Geneva in 1951, and followed by taller and taller fountains in the United States and the Middle East. The highest fountain today in the King Fahd's Fountain in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

It also saw the increasing popularity of the musical fountain, which combined water, music and light, choreographed by computers. (See Musical fountain below).

Contemporary fountains (2001–present)

The fountain called 'Bit.Fall' by German artist Julius Popp (2005) uses digital technologies to spell out words with water. The fountain is run by a statistical program which selects words at random from news stories on the Internet. It then recodes these words into pictures. Then 320 nozzles inject the water into electromagnetic valves. The program uses rasterization and bitmap technologies to synchronize the valves so drops of water form an image of the words as they fall. According to Popp, the sheet of water is "a metaphor for the constant flow of information from which we cannot escape."

Crown Fountain is an interactive fountain and video sculpture feature in Chicago's Millennium Park. Designed by Catalan artist Jaume Plensa, it opened in July 2004. The fountain is composed of a black granite reflecting pool placed between a pair of glass brick towers. The towers are 50 ft tall, and they use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to display digital videos on their inward faces. Construction and design of the Crown Fountain cost US$17 million. Weather permitting, the water operates from May to October, intermittently cascading down the two towers and spouting through a nozzle on each tower's front face.

Few new fountains have been built in Paris since 2000. The most notable is La Danse de la fontaine emergente (2008), located on Place Augusta-Holmes, rue Paul Klee, in the 13th arrondissement. It was designed by the French-Chinese sculptor Chen Zhen (1955-2000), shortly before his death in 2000, and finished through the efforts of his spouse and collaborator. It shows a dragon, in stainless steel, glass and plastic, emerging and submerging from the pavement of the square. The fountain is in three parts. A bas-relief of the dragon is fixed on the wall of the structure of the water-supply plant, and the dragon seems to be emerging from the wall and plunging underground. This part of the dragon is opaque. The second and third parts depict the arch of the dragon's back coming out of the pavement. These parts of the dragon are transparent, and water under pressure flows visibly within, and is illuminated at night.

Musical fountains
Musical fountains create a theatrical spectacle with music, light and water, usually employing a variety of programmable spouts and water jets controlled by a computer.

Musical fountains were first described in the 1st century AD by the Greek scientist and engineer Hero of Alexandria in his book Pneumatics. Hero described and provided drawings of "A bird made to whistle by flowing water," "A Trumpet sounded by flowing water," and "Birds made to sing and be silent alternately by flowing water." In Hero's descriptions, water pushed air through musical instruments to make sounds. It is not known if Hero made working models of any of his designs.

During the Italian Renaissance, the most famous musical fountains were located in the gardens of the Villa d'Este, in Tivoli. which were created between 1550 and 1572. Following the ideas of Hero of Alexandria, the Fountain of the Owl used a series of bronze pipes like flutes to make the sound of birds. The most famous feature of the garden was the great Organ Fountain. It was described by the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, who visited the garden in 1580: "The music of the Organ Fountain is true music, naturally created ... made by water which falls with great violence into a cave, rounded and vaulted, and agitates the air, which is forced to exit through the pipes of an organ. Other water, passing through a wheel, strikes in a certain order the keyboard of the organ. The organ also imitates the sound of trumpets, the sound of cannon, and the sound of muskets, made by the sudden fall of water ... The Organ Fountain fell into ruins, but it was recently restored and plays music again.

Louis XIV created the idea of the modern musical fountain by staging spectacles in the Gardens of Versailles, using music and fireworks to accompany the flow of the fountains.

The great international expositions held in Philadelphia, London and Paris featured the ancestors of the modern musical fountain. They introduced the first fountains illuminated by gas lights (Philadelphia in 1876); and the first fountains illuminated by electric lights (London in 1884 and Paris in 1889). The Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris featured fountains illuminated by colored lights controlled by a keyboard. The Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931 presented the Théâtre d'eau, or water theater, located in a lake, with performance of dancing water. The Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (1937) had combined arches and columns of water from fountains in the Seine with light, and with music from loudspeakers on eleven rafts anchored in the river, playing the music of the leading composers of the time. (See International Exposition Fountains, above.)

Today some of the best-known musical fountains in the world are at the Bellagio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, (2009); the Dubai Fountain in the United Arab Emirates; the World of Color at Disney California Adventure Park (2010) and Aquanura at the Efteling in the Netherlands (2012).

Splash fountains

A splash fountain or bathing fountain is intended for people to come in and cool off on hot summer days. These fountains are also referred to as interactive fountains. These fountains are designed to allow easy access, and feature nonslip surfaces, and have no standing water, to eliminate possible drowning hazards, so that no lifeguards or supervision is required. These splash pads are often located in public pools, public parks, or public playgrounds (known as "spraygrounds"). In some splash fountains, such as Dundas Square in Toronto, Canada, the water is heated by solar energy captured by the special dark-colored granite slabs. The fountain at Dundas Square features 600 ground nozzles arranged in groups of 30 (3 rows of 10 nozzles). Each group of 30 nozzles is located beneath a stainless steel grille. Twenty such grilles are arranged in two rows of 10, in the middle of the main walkway through Dundas Square.

Drinking fountain
A water fountain or drinking fountain is designed to provide drinking water and has a basin arrangement with either continuously running water or a tap. The drinker bends down to the stream of water and swallows water directly from the stream. Modern indoor drinking fountains may incorporate filters to remove impurities from the water and chillers to reduce its temperature. In some regional dialects, water fountains are called bubblers. Water fountains are usually found in public places, like schools, rest areas, libraries, and grocery stores. Many jurisdictions require water fountains to be wheelchair accessible (by sticking out horizontally from the wall), and to include an additional unit of a lower height for children and short adults. The design that this replaced often had one spout atop a refrigeration unit.

In 1859, The Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association was established to promote the provision of drinking water for people and animals in the United Kingdom and overseas. More recently, in 2010, the FindaFountain campaign was launched in the UK to encourage people to use drinking fountains instead of environmentally damaging bottled water. A map showing the location of UK drinking water fountains is published on the FindaFountain website.

How fountains work

From Roman times until the end of the 19th century, fountains operated by gravity, requiring a source of water higher than the fountain itself to make the water flow. The greater the difference between the elevation of the source of water and the fountain, the higher the water would go upwards from the fountain.

In Roman cities, water for fountains came from lakes and rivers and springs in the hills, brought into city in aqueducts and then distributed to fountains through a system of lead pipes.

From the Middle Ages onwards, fountains in villages or towns were connected to springs, or to channels which brought water from lakes or rivers. In Provence, a typical village fountain consisted of a pipe or underground duct from a spring at a higher elevation than the fountain. The water from the spring flowed down to the fountain, then up a tube into a bulb-shaped stone vessel, like a large vase with a cover on top. The inside of the vase, called the bassin de répartition, was filled with water up to a level just above the mouths of the canons, or spouts, which slanted downwards. The water poured down through the canons, creating a siphon, so that the fountain ran continually.

In cities and towns, residents filled vessels or jars of water jets from the canons of the fountain or paid a water porter to bring the water to their home. Horses and domestic animals could drink the water in the basin below the fountain. The water not used often flowed into a separate series of basins, a lavoir, used for washing and rinsing clothes. After being used for washing, the same water then ran through a channel to the town's kitchen garden. In Provence, since clothes were washed with ashes, the water that flowed into the garden contained potassium, and was valuable as fertilizer.

The most famous fountains of the Renaissance, at the Villa d'Este in Tivoli, were located on a steep slope near a river; the builders ran a channel from the river to a large fountain at top of the garden, which then fed other fountains and basins on the levels below. The fountains of Rome, built from the Renaissance through the 18th century, took their water from rebuilt Roman aqueducts which brought water from lakes and rivers at a higher elevation than the fountains. Those fountains with a high source of water, such as the Triton Fountain, could shoot water 16 ft in air. Fountains with a lower source, such as the Trevi Fountain, could only have water pour downwards. The architect of the Trevi Fountain placed it below street level to make the flow of water seem more dramatic.

The fountains of Versailles depended upon water from reservoirs just above the fountains. As King Louis XIV built more fountains, he was forced to construct an enormous complex of pumps, called the Machine de Marly, with fourteen water wheels and 220 pumps, to raise water 162 meters above the Seine River to the reservoirs to keep his fountains flowing. Even with the Machine de Marly, the fountains used so much water that they could not be all turned on at the same time. Fontainiers watched the progress of the King when he toured the gardens and turned on each fountain just before he arrived.

The architects of the fountains at Versailles designed specially-shaped nozzles, or tuyaux, to form the water into different shapes, such as fans, bouquets, and umbrellas.

In Germany, some courts and palace gardens were situated in flat areas, thus fountains depending on pumped pressurized water were developed at a fairly early point in history. The Great Fountain in Herrenhausen Gardens at Hanover was based on ideas of Gottfried Leibniz conceived in 1694 and was inaugurated in 1719 during the visit of George I. After some improvements, it reached a height of some 35 m in 1721 which made it the highest fountain in European courts. The fountains at the Nymphenburg Palace initially were fed by water pumped to water towers, but as from 1803 were operated by the water powered Nymphenburg Pumping Stations which are still working.

Beginning in the 19th century, fountains ceased to be used for drinking water and became purely ornamental. By the beginning of the 20th century, cities began using steam pumps and later electric pumps to send water to the city fountains. Later in the 20th century, urban fountains began to recycle their water through a closed recirculating system. An electric pump, often placed under the water, pushes the water through the pipes. The water must be regularly topped up to offset water lost to evaporation, and allowance must be made to handle overflow after heavy rain.

In modern fountains a water filter, typically a media filter, removes particles from the water—this filter requires its own pump to force water through it and plumbing to remove the water from the pool to the filter and then back to the pool. The water may need chlorination or anti-algal treatment, or may use biological methods to filter and clean water.

The pumps, filter, electrical switch box and plumbing controls are often housed in a "plant room". Low-voltage lighting, typically 12 volt direct current, is used to minimise electrical hazards. Lighting is often submerged and must be suitably designed. High wattage lighting (incandescent and halogen) either as submerged lighting or accent lighting on waterwall fountains have been implicated in every documented Legionnaires' disease outbreak associated with fountains. This is detailed in the "Guidelines for Control of Legionella in Ornamental Features". Floating fountains are also popular for ponds and lakes; they consist of a float pump nozzle and water chamber.

The tallest fountains in the world

 * King Fahd's Fountain (1985) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The fountain jets water 260 m above the Red Sea and is currently the tallest fountain in the world.
 * The World Cup Fountain in the Han-gang River in Seoul, Korea (2002), advertises a height of 202 m.
 * The Gateway Geyser (1995), next to the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri, shoots water 192 m in the air. It is the tallest fountain in the United States.
 * Port Fountain (2006) in Karachi, Pakistan, rises to height of 190 m making it the fourth tallest fountain.
 * Fountain Park, Fountain Hills, Arizona (1970). Can reach 171 m when all three pumps are operating, but normally runs at 91 m.
 * The Dubai Fountain, opened in 2009 next to Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building. The fountain performs once every half-hour to recorded music, and shoots water to height of 73 m. The fountain also has extreme shooters, not used in every show, which can reach 150 m.
 * The Captain James Cook Memorial Jet in Canberra (1970), 147 m
 * The Jet d'eau, in Geneva (1951), 140 m
 * Magic Fountain of Montjuïc (1929), Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. 170 Feet, Created by Carles Buïgas. Tallest Fountains in the World

title: Fountain


text:
Talk:Optical spectrometer

confusion surrounding the term
The confusion surrounding the term spectrometer is not Wikipedia's fault, but we do need to sort it out.

See , , , , , for some conflicting definitions.

Work in progress. Ultimately, we need to combine several articles and disambiguate others, so all the accepted usages are clearly explained and so readers of all backgrounds can easily get the information they want. Andrewa 20:09, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)

See also for some history and other background:
 * xray spectrometers
 * gamma ray spectroscopy
 * spectrometers for use with accelerators
 * the making of the spectroscope workshop
 * awesome slideshow on history of stellar spectroscopy
 * classical spectroscopy
 * another course in history of spectroscopy
 * product description of spectrometer for measuring thickness

I'll incorporate these links and material as I get time... or feel free! Andrewa 07:00, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * The IUPAC Gold Book gives the following definitions.

spectroscope A device which enables visual observation and evaluation of optical spectra (usually confined to the visible spectral region)

spectrograph A combination of a spectral apparatus and a camera, which enables an image of a spectrum to be recorded. Spectra are recorded by a photographic emulsion or other means, e.g. two-dimensional electronic image sensors.

spectrometer A general term for describing a combination of spectral apparatus with one or more detectors to measure the intensity of one or more spectral bands.
 * These IUPAC definitions are preferable to those provided by dictionaries. If there is another major professional organization that defines these terms differently, then further discussion is warranted.  Most modern instruments are spectrometers, and spectrometers are not really spectroscopes or spectrographs.  A monochromator is not a spectroscope, but it can be part of a spectrometer.  A spectrograph produces spectrographic plates, which are not the same as the intensity/transmission/absorbance vs frequency/wavelength plots that are produced by a spectrometer. Cfn137 (talk) 02:18, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

 * As I was tought in the school the 1970:ies, X-scopes allowed a general view of X, X-meters also had a numeric scale allowing quantitative measurements of X, and X-graphs produced graphs or still images in any way providing the means to read both values, variations and trends. But that was in Sweden, if that makes a difference... ... said: Rursus ( m bork³ ) 18:52, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Blackbody
The article says:

When a material is heated to incandescence it emits light that is characteristic of the atomic makeup of the material.

Shouldn't blackbody radiation be mentioned on this place? --Abdull 5 July 2005 15:14 (UTC)

 * Everything with any non zero temperature emits blackbody radiation. To the first order, blackbody radiation is independent of the material. --150.203.177.218 06:44, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

The article is alluding to atomic emission lines. The energy of an emission line (which has a reciprocal relation to wavelength or color in the visible range) is related to the differences in the quantum energy levels of the electrons that emit the photons in question.

Incandescent objects usually do emit something like a blackbody spectrum, in fact we speak of the color temperature of a source, the temperature of the blackbody that would emit such a spectrum.

So I think that using the term incandescence to describe the origin of the phenomenon confuses the issue, it ought to be changed. The emission lines are real though, and important.

AJim 04:06, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Fraunhofer or Kirchhoff/Bunsen?
The Joseph von Fraunhofer page describes him as the inventor of the spectroscope. A search for spectrosocope redirects to spectrometer which is said to have been invented by Kirchhoff and Bunsen. No doubt relates to the confusion over the term spectrometer as described below by Andrewa.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 59.92.140.254 (talk • contribs). The Spectrometer page says it was invented in 1819, but the Fraunhofer page says he invented it in 1814. I don't know which is right, but they ought to be consistent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.194.140.28 (talk) 19:45, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I've edited the article to try and address this. The references I consulted attribute the invention of the spectroscope, both refractive and diffractive, to Fraunhofer. Kirchhoff and Bunsen improved on the spectroscope in their work but were most notable for linking spectra to chemical analysis. I could not find evidence to support the 1814 date, but I did not have the references on hand that were cited in the Fraunhofer article. It is clear that 1819 is too late since Fraunhofer's first major publication on the topic was in 1817. ronningt (talk) 16:03, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Rearding the first sentence
, please note that a spectrometer is not necessarily a optical device!!. For example, s nuclear spectrometer uses no optics. Someone, other than me, could fix that. :)

 * I agree, and will make the change. Cfn137 (talk) 02:18, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the first paragraph -last sentence
.. radio and audio? audio isn't part of the EM spectrum.. is this true, does it need clarifying?

I agree, I removed it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.233.216.159 (talk) 21:54, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Build Your Own
This is an important article, that many other articles need to refer to -- and it needs a lot of work. We need an article about just optic applications, either this one or some other -- all the acoustic etc other uses need to be separated. We need lots of illustrations, some in color -- let's start with the ones from the Spectroscopy article.

Although the fancy versions of these instruments can cost thousands of dollars, let's also emphasize that any prism or diffraction grating can manifest these behaviors, and they are all around us, even the surface of a CD. Edmund Scientific offers a variety of Spectrometers and Spectroscopes in their Light Analysis category for $1-50. They also offer info on:
 * Build Your Own Grating Spectroscope
 * How Diffraction Gratings Work

These are interesting resources: -69.87.199.97 11:26, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Supplement: Build Yourself a Simple Hand-Held Spectrograph good sample spectra
 * SPECTROSCOPY FOR THE SCHOOL build a simple spectroscope from a CD

"A simple spectrometer can be built from a CD and a box. Cut a slit on one side of the box. Place the CD on the other side with about 60 degree angle. Look down into the openning on the box. The slit should not be too wide, otherwise the spectrum lines will be blurred. It should not be too narrow either, otherwise the spectrum is too dim. I use a 0.2mm wide slit." Spectrographs of common light sources Browning, John (1835-1925) NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT - online full-text download -69.87.204.146 16:17, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
 * How to design a spectroscope
 * A CD spectrometer
 * CD spectrometer CD + cardboard tube or cereal box
 * Great construction photos, razor-blade slit
 * "MiniSpectroscopy displays a visual representation (a "spectroscope view") of a sample spectrum simultaneously with a graphical (intensity vs. wavelength) representation. Students draw or redraw the graph using the computer mouse, and the corresponding "spectroscope view" appears or changes immediately as they draw, changing just as changes are made in the graph. This immediate feedback gives students a kinesthetic connection between making the graph and viewing the spectrum being represented."
 * Mini Spectroscopes "You can make a spectroscope to allow you to separate the colors of light..."
 * How to work with the spectroscope : a manual of practical manipulation with spectroscopes of all kinds 1882;

It is indeed easy to build a simple device, although the CD device described is more like a spectrograph than a spectrometer. The problems begin when you attempt to make quantitative measurements, which is what the term spectrometer implies. It is quite difficult to build an instrument where measurements will obey the Beer-Lambert law over more than a small range of absorbance, for instance, especially when high spectral resolution in needed at the same time. The monochromator article tries to explain some of the difficulties and the range of devices for the optical range. There is an big difference between even a simple .1m single monochromator instrument and a .4m double monochromator instrument for use in analytical chemistry. There is an even bigger difference between these and a 2m double monochromator astronomical instrument. The relative prices of such instruments reflect that difference.

AJim 04:27, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

When one builds a simple CD, DVD, or other cheap diffraction grating/hologram-based device, the usable frequency response is normally limited by the human eye looking at the output, or the ordinary camera recording the picture. But, what are the inherent limits of these simple devices? How flat in the visible? How far into the UV/IR, how flat? And what simple/cheap detectors, multi-element (CCD etc) or single element (mechanically scannable) would have usable response into the UV/IR bands? And is there a simple/cheap way to use film etc to record the bands? This must have been important, decades ago? Links to detailed info about how it was done, and most practical ways to do now?-69.87.203.17 21:15, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

equal-area power graphs?
Standard optical power spectrum plots are spaced equal-nm on the X axis. The Y axis is some unit of power (if one is lucky enough to have calibrated data). Does this result in equal-area power graphs? If not, is there a standard way to distort the X or Y axis to obtain equal-area power graphs, and if so, what are such plots called. (In other words, what we want is a graph that shows visually, vividly, obviously, what portion (half?) of the sun's radiation is in the visible spectrum, for example. Are the plots in the Solar radiation article properly conveying such info?)-69.87.203.17 21:25, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Adding Links to my website
I've noticed that somebody has been adding links to my spectroscopy website and somebody later removes them. For the information of both the adder and remover: When you add a link to my website, include my full name and specifics on what the website is added for. When you remove a link, keep in mind that I am not the one who adds the links. I have published links from my website to certain articles/sections, but I always sign with my name.

This idiocy must stop sometime. Galidakis 16:59, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

White light and rainbows?
I just removed the following line from the beginning of the article:

 * Simply, it turns white light into rainbow and vice versa.

It appears to me to be completely out of context and an outright wrong description (or at best a deceptively gross oversimplification) for most things that could be called a spectrometer (going by this sentence one would think there's no difference between a spectrometer and a simple prism, ignoring the fact that many spectrometers don't even deal with "white light", or even light at all) -- Foogod (talk) 20:40, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Is a spectropolarimeter a spectrometer?
The current introductory paragraph currently states: The variable measured is most often the light's intensity but could also, for instance, be the polarization state. Measuring polarization as a function of wavelength/frequency is spectropolarimetry, and the device used is a spectropolarimeter. I don't think this device should be called a spectrometer, but I don't heavily object either. However this sentence dilutes the introduction, and spectropolarimetry is not mentioned later.

 * If it solely measures the polarization per wavelength, then it is not a spectrometer. ... said: Rursus ( m bork³ ) 18:55, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Wavelength vs Frequency
I'm not sure how one can state a preference for wavelength over frequency with a neutral point of view. Furthermore, the standard independent variable in NMR spectroscopy is chemical shift. It is also disputable whether nanometers is the most common measurement of wavelength, since in the infrared the preferred unit would be micrometers. Angstroms is also commonly used, especially in older literature. It is probably better to focus on energy, frequency, vacuum wavenumber, and temperature as being proportional.

 * It would probably be better to have a separate article that includes this about terms in the scientific community, as this would ameliorate the discrepancies and thus make the information on many pages more accessible intellectually. As a scientist, one gets a sense of scale for these things and an understanding of the relationships therein as part of the reading process, but for non-scientists this is very likely not the case. It would be both a selfish crime and great disservice to the profession to withold this understanding from the public - even if they don't have a fluent working knowledge of the systems, why not elucidate for them?

Wrong wavenumber axis in the first comparison
In the first scale comparison "A comparison of the three abscissa types typically used for visible spectrometers.", the wavenumber scale is obviously wrong, since wavenumber is proportional to energy and inversely proportional to wavelength. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.37.210.122 (talk) 13:52, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

This should be fixed now. I created a new version of the figures, and added into them a THz one too.NathanHagen (talk) 00:00, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

The axis label mev ?milli electron volts) should be MeV. Also wavelengths axis should be μm rather than um — Preceding unsigned comment added by Deeuubee (talk • contribs) 04:50, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Wrong definition, skewed text
Guys, spectrometer now and for at least half a century is usually non-light spectrometer. Time of light spectrometry dominance are far behind. I demand (DEMAND) full definition and coverage of a subject not limited to old-fashioned light spectrometry. Stop hijacking the article! You are wrong, and IUPAC is not an authority in non-chemical field. Stop your light-loving editing! I do not insist my definition of a spectrometer is good, but it is better than nothing (and now there is nothing but light spectrometry: relatively narrow and obscure field in spectrometry). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vniizht (talk • contribs) 20:55, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

 * I doubt anyone would object to you expanding this article. Demanding that other people write things doesn’t really accomplish much though. –jacobolus (t) 03:42, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

 * I agree that spectrometer is commonly used to refer to instrumentation outside of just light spectrometers. Even IUPAC Gold Book, which is specific to chemical applications, also covers mass spectrometry and mass spectrometers, so it seems like we should be using some combination. I will try to find some references to support expanding the definition and that provide the more expansive language. ronningt (talk) 15:34, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

 * By all means expand the article, but please do so using reliable sources and give due weight to the light/"light+other techniques" viewpoints. I agree that IUPAC is not the only reliable source on the definition of spectroscopy/spectrometer, but it is a good starting point. Please provide some reliable sources for the broad definition and we can work toward expanding the article content to include it. --Kkmurray (talk) 23:48, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I believe definition from Britannica is protected by copyright, but it is much better than one in the Wiki, especially after words MORE BROADLY:

“spectrometer, Device for detecting and analyzing wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, commonly used for molecular spectroscopy; more broadly, any of various instruments in which an emission (as of electromagnetic radiation or particles) is spread out according to some property (as energy or mass) into a spectrum and measurements are made at points or regions along the spectrum”

My preference is to start with “Any of various instruments in which emission (or generated signal?)…”. It will be the broadest definition, not restricted to special kind of signal. In this way broadly used mass spectrometry, energy loss electron spectrometry, Auger spectrometry, etc.

Current article should be renamed to “optical spectrometer”, since there is no information about other techniques. Even X-ray spectrometers are not covered. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance is not mentioned (and it do use electromagnetic signal). My suggestion: give the broadest definition of SPECTROMETER, explain spectrum acquisition and analysis, then in subchapters give short explanations of various spectrometers with links to “main articles”. Unfortunately I cannot do it by myself: 1) English is my second language, and 2) in no way I can write an article about all types of spectrometers. For now I suggest to start the article with something like this: “Spectrometer is an instrument which analyses a signal (electromagnetic radiation, elemental particles, atoms and ions) generated by subject of study; it spreads a signal according to some property into spectrum. Historically first spectrometer was an optical spectrometer…” Vniizht (talk) 19:45, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Missing
Are non-optical techniques, like autocorrelator spectrometer, optoacoustical spectrometer, filterbank. Hobbema (talk) 23:55, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

 * If you know about these, please chip in more material! –jacobolus (t) 00:53, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Fiber optic diffraction based spectrometer?
In the comparison of different diffraction based spectrometers the third option depicted is 'fibre optics' - this type is not mentioned anywhere in the article, what's more I'm having a hard time finding anything about the concept using google either. Could somebody elaborate on what the image is depicting with a section? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Norlesh (talk • contribs) 01:35, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Optical spectrometer vs. spectrograph
What is the relationship between the terms "optical spectrometer" and "spectrograph"? In the lead sentence, the term "spectrograph" is implied as a synonym, yet there is a section below on spectrographs, linking to another article called Spectrograph. So are they the same thing and we accidentally ended up with duplicate articles? Or are spectrographs a type of optical spectrometers? Harej (talk) 22:20, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

 * Glrx (talk) 16:24, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Optical spectrometer. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20080926072418/http://gratings.newport.com:80/library/handbook/cover.asp to http://gratings.newport.com/library/handbook/cover.asp

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Merge Spectrograph
The lead of this article (Optical spectrometer) claims to cover Spectrograph. And yet we have a separate Spectrograph article. I am proposing to merge Spectrograph here but reducing the scope of this article would also be an option. Please review past discussion above. ~Kvng (talk) 16:18, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

 * Merged ~Kvng (talk) 14:41, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Optical spectrometer


text:
Michael Penn

Michael Daniel Penn (born August 1, 1958) is an American musician, singer and composer. His 1989 single "No Myth" was a top 20 hit in the US and successful in several other countries.

Early life
Penn was born in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. He is the first son of actor and director Leo Penn and actress Eileen Ryan, and the brother of actors Sean Penn and Chris Penn. He is of Lithuanian-Jewish (paternal) and Irish–Italian (maternal) descent. Penn began playing music in junior high school and attended Santa Monica High School.

Career
Prior to the release of his 1989 debut album March, Penn was a member of the Los Angeles band Doll Congress. Penn was one of two musical guests as a solo artist on Saturday Night Live on the October 24, 1987 episode, with his brother Sean hosting. Penn had also appeared as an extra on a few television series, including St. Elsewhere.

March, particularly the first single, "No Myth", brought Penn attention, as well as the 1990 MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist. Penn's follow-up albums Free-for-All (1992), Resigned (1997), MP4: Days Since a Lost Time Accident (2000), Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947 (2005) and Palms and Runes, Tarot and Tea (2007) weren't able to match the commercial success of March, although critics continued to praise his songcraft.

Penn's second album, Free-for-All, was praised by critics but was not as commercially successful as his debut. Rolling Stone called it "stunning" and CMJ wrote that the album "exhausts any doubts" about whether March was a fluke.

Penn collaborated with surrealist animators The Brothers Quay on "Long Way Down (Look What the Cat Drug In)", which was shown on MTV as well as in film festivals around the country.

He has worked extensively creating original music for film. He scored Paul Thomas Anderson's films Hard Eight (1996) and Boogie Nights (1997); he also appears in the latter in a cameo role as a recording engineer. During the editing of the film, Anderson directed a music video with Penn for "Try" from Resigned, which was filmed in one long shot (the video can be found on the Boogie Nights DVD). Other films scored by Penn include Alan Cumming's first two directorial efforts, The Anniversary Party and Suffering Man's Charity; American Teen, Sunshine Cleaning; the documentary The Comedians of Comedy; and The Last Kiss. In 2003, he was nominated for a DVDX Award for Best Original Score in a DVD Premiere Movie for Melvin Goes to Dinner.

Penn has produced recordings for Aimee Mann, The Wallflowers and Liz Phair.

In August 2005, Penn released Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947 on his own Mimeograph Records label. Its songs are set against the background of post-World War II Los Angeles; Penn said he chose the year because of several notable events that took place then, including the passage of the National Security Act and the invention of the transistor. The album was reissued by Legacy Recordings in April 2007 with bonus tracks from a KCRW session.

The reissue came in conjunction with Legacy's release of Palms and Runes, Tarot and Tea: A Michael Penn Collection, a compilation that includes several alternate versions and previously unreleased songs. Penn said his goal in compiling, ordering tracks for and producing Palms and Runes was to "make it feel like an album" in its own right.

In late 2009, Penn composed the music for the film That Evening Sun. In 2012, Penn began work as the composer for the HBO TV show Girls. In January 2013, the Girls Vol. 1 soundtrack was released on iTunes. The album contained a new song by Michael Penn titled "On Your Way", which was featured in the finale of Season 1.

He also joined the crew of Showtime's Masters of Sex in 2013 as series composer. The show's pilot episode was initially set to be scored by Thomas Newman, but this did not come to fruition and Penn scored both the pilot and the rest of the series.

In 2018, he joined Good Girls on NBC and Here and Now on HBO as a composer. In 2020, Penn released a new single, "A Revival". It was his first non-soundtrack work in 15 years.

Personal life
Penn met fellow singer-songwriter Aimee Mann, and during the recording of her album I'm with Stupid (to which Penn contributed), the two struck up a friendship, which blossomed into romance and their subsequent marriage on December 29, 1997. Together with manager Michael Hausman they formed United Musicians, an independent music collective founded on "the principle that every artist should be able to retain copyright ownership of the work he or she has created and that this ownership is the basis for artistic strength and true independence." Penn and Mann live in Los Angeles.

His niece is actress Dylan Penn.

Compilation albums

 * Cinemascope (collection of film score tracks) (2005)
 * Palms and Runes, Tarot and Tea: A Michael Penn Collection (2007)

With Gabriele Morgan and Doll Congress/Doll Congress

 * Buried Treasure (5-song EP) (1981)
 * Doll Congress 12" (1983)
 * "Give Up Your Ghost" (sung by Morgan) and "I Will Be Around" (sung by Penn) appear on the soundtrack to Welcome to 18 (1986)

Appearances

 * "Retribution" (guitar solo) on Randell Kirsch, LuAnn Olson and Chris Hickey's Show of Hands (1989)
 * "Body and Soul?" (backing vocals) on Thelonious Monster's Beautiful Mess (1992)
 * "Weeds" on the tribute album Sweet Relief: A Benefit for Victoria Williams (1993)
 * "It's Not Safe" (guitar, solo guitar) on Aimee Mann's I'm With Stupid (1995)
 * "Christmastime" with Aimee Mann on Just Say Noël (1996)
 * "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" with Mark Mothersbaugh on The Moog Cookbook's Ye Olde Space Bande (1997)
 * "Macy Day Parade" on Godzilla: The Album (1998)
 * "Reason to Believe" with Aimee Mann on Badlands: A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska (2000)
 * "Wise Up" (produced) on Aimee Mann's Bachelor No. 2 (2000)
 * "How Am I Different", "Susan" (backing vocals) on Aimee Mann's Bachelor No. 2 (2000)
 * "Red Vines" (slide guitar) on Aimee Mann's Bachelor No. 2 (2000)
 * "Satellite" (guitar feedback, backing vocals) on Aimee Mann's Bachelor No. 2 (2000)
 * "Driving Sideways" (electric guitar, backing vocals) on Aimee Mann's Bachelor No. 2 (2000)
 * "Susan" (guitar) on Aimee Mann's Bachelor No. 2 (2000)
 * Co-produced The Wallflowers' (Breach) (2000)
 * "Two of Us" with Aimee Mann on I Am Sam (2001)
 * "It's Sweet", "Little Digger" (produced, recorded by, guitar, bass) on Liz Phair's self-titled fourth album (2003)
 * "Red Light Fever", "Take A Look", "Friend of Mine" (produced, recorded by, guitar) on Liz Phair (2003)

Film scores

 * Tales From The Vienna Woods (1993)
 * Hard Eight (originally titled Sydney), with Jon Brion (1996)
 * Boogie Nights (1997)
 * The Anniversary Party (2001)
 * Melvin Goes to Dinner (2003)
 * The Comedians of Comedy (2005)
 * The Last Kiss (2006)
 * Suffering Man's Charity (2007)
 * American Teen (2008)
 * Sunshine Cleaning (2008)
 * That Evening Sun (2009)
 * Bollywood Hero (2009)
 * Solitary Man (2010)
 * Carrie Pilby (2016)
 * Boundaries (2017)
 * Hollywood Stargirl (2022)
 * Fairyland (2023)
 * I Love You Forever (2024)

Filmography

 * St. Elsewhere (Lab technician, as an extra) (1985)
 * Boogie Nights (Nick, an engineer) (1997)

title: Michael Penn


text:
Alvin M. Strauss

Alvin M. Strauss (1895 – 1958) was an Indiana architect and designer of many landmark buildings in Indiana and Ohio during the early twentieth century. He was born in Kendallville, Indiana, to German immigrants and later apprenticed under prominent architects in Chicago and Fort Wayne, Indiana. Strauss founded his own practice in Fort Wayne in 1918. Among his commissioned works are the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum, the Clyde Theatre, the Lincoln Bank Tower, and the Embassy Theatre and Indiana Hotel in Fort Wayne as well as the Brokaw Theatre in Angola, Indiana.

His works also include the 1930 Art Deco-style showroom and administrative buildings of the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Facility.

His collection is housed in the Drawings and Documents Archive at Ball State University.

title: Alvin M. Strauss


text:
The Sifl and Olly Show

The Sifl and Olly Show is a comedy TV series that incorporates sock puppets, animation, and musical performances. Musicians Liam Lynch and Matt Crocco created and performed the series. The first episode aired on MTV in 1998. The show was cancelled in 1999. The characters, along with new material, currently appear on Liam Lynch's podcast entitled Lynchland.

History
The origins of The Sifl & Olly Show go back to the 1980s. As children, Crocco and Lynch would create and perform funny songs and sketches to entertain themselves. They remained friends through high school and college, even though they saw little of each other while they attended Kent State University. Lynch left Kent State and the duo was separated for a few years, but they reunited in Nashville, Tennessee in the 1990s and recorded the comedy album Camp Sunny Side Up on a 4-Track. During this period they were also constantly recording funny conversations, interviews, sketches, and songs. Soon after, Lynch moved to Liverpool, England to attend the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, but the friends continued to make funny recordings and send them to each other.

In 1995, while Lynch was still in Liverpool, he found some broken 4-Track tapes and repaired them. These tapes contained conversations and material intended for his and Crocco's second comedy album (which they never recorded). He decided to make something using these tapes as a Christmas present for Crocco. Lynch had been inspired by a series of British commercials by Aardman Studios and had hoped to do stop-action clay animation, but he did not have the money or the equipment for it. Instead, he made puppets out of his own socks and a large plastic sunflower and recorded a video of himself acting out their tapes with the puppets. Lynch chose the name for the puppets from a fake commercial Crocco had made for one of their recordings, and Sifl & Olly were born.

Lynch sent copies to MTV and MTV Europe, and although MTV America rejected them, MTV Europe liked them. In 1996, MTV Europe began airing Sifl & Olly clips between music videos as "idents." The popularity of the clips led to MTV America offering a half-hour format called The Sifl & Olly Show in July 1998. The show aired late at night, but later on they were moved to the evenings.

In the first season, clips of Sifl and Olly were mixed with music videos. Whenever the show was aired again, the music videos would be removed, leaving only the comedy clips. The show gained a cult following, but it was cancelled after the second season. A third season was recorded, and MTV promised to release the episodes on the Internet but never did. The lost episodes were eventually released on DVD.

Despite its cancellation, Sifl and Olly still appear along with some other characters in occasional episodes of Liam Lynch's podcast, Lynchland. Most of these appearances are clips from Season 3.

On June 14, 2012, Liam Lynch posted a picture on his Twitter account of a set similar to that used on the show, fueling speculation about the show's return. This was followed by another picture posted on July 25 of a graphic for "Precious Roy's Fruit Chunkies."

As of November 17, 2014, MTV has released two "best of" compilations on Amazon Video.

Premise
The two main characters are a black sock puppet named Sifl and a white sock puppet named Olly. Sifl is the calmer leader of the show, while Olly is more excitable and often breaks into crazed furies. Their assistant, Chester, is a mumbling, often nonsensical character who still claims to be great at everything.

The show was always very simple and low-budget. Most of the show's main characters were puppets, with background images or animations in the background via a chromakey. The two co-hosts often had a microphone in front of them. The show had an unscripted feel with the characters talking to each other in realistic, often meandering styles. Sifl and Olly would sing both original and classic songs throughout the show with an original song at the end. Though it featured puppets, the series was not intended for children. The humor often featured profanity, sexual references, drug innuendo, crude humor, bodily functions, and violence.

Regular segments
Often preceded by familiar intro screen and a short theme song, the segments included:
 * Precious Roy's Home Shopping Netwerk – a parody of the Home Shopping Network with bizarre products like Civil War corpses, CAT scan glasses, chicken flavored air conditioning, and a bottomless swimming pool. The network was run by Precious Roy who would yell random unrelated lines, ending with "...Suckers!". The slogan of Precious Roy was "making lots of suckers out of girls and boys." Sifl and Olly were employed as salesmen for the Network, and Olly inexplicably seemed to go progressively insane during these segments, often yelling crazed accusations at callers, and occasionally showing signs of paranoid schizophrenia.
 * Calls from the Public – Sifl and Olly would take calls from random and often bizarre characters (usually sock puppets) who would call with problems or complaints. The most common calls coming from the pair's landlord, who would complain about one or more of their antics, often involving monkeys.
 * Rock Facts – At commercial breaks, the Rock Facts question would be asked and answered when they returned. The answers were nearly always lies (the only exception being a fact about Queen Latifah) and often involved the singer Björk. This segment was dropped by the second season.
 * Interview Time – Guests interviewed included Death, an atom, and G-spot & Orgasm. Sometimes they would announce a famous person that was going to be interviewed, but it would always turn out that the guest was unable to attend (unless the guest was in fact an inanimate object).
 * S & O News – Sifl and Olly would pretend to report on the (generally surreal) news. Often Olly would sing nonsensical lyrics to accompany the lead in music (much to the chagrin of Sifl). Sifl, however, would break his professionalism during the segment to refer to his girlfriend, Serena Altschul, either by sending her a message or by praising her.
 * A Word with Chester – Sifl and Olly would take a break from other show activities to speak with their friend Chester, who misinterpreted their questions and in general had difficulty focusing on any one subject for any extended period of time. Chester tends to laugh nervously, and sometimes sounds like he's a bit stoned. Olly took point in these segments, because Crocco, who provided the voice for Sifl, also provided the voice of Chester. In the second season, a new segment called "Letters to Chester" was added, which was essentially the same premise (including using the same theme music), with the addition of Olly reading a letter addressed to Chester at the start of the segment.
 * And Now... ROCK – A song is performed by one or more of the characters
 * It's Almost the End of the Show – Every episode ends with a song performed by Sifl and/or Olly, occasionally with vocal assistance by other characters.
 * Kickin' It Old School – Introduced in the second season, a song from the "And Now... ROCK" or "It's Almost the End of the Show" segments is simply re-aired, occasionally with the pre-song banter cut out.

Characters

 * Sifl : Voiced by Matt Crocco. His body is a black sock with yellow, reptilian eyes and hair made out of green, plastic sunflower leaves. Sifl is often portrayed as the calm leader of the show. He is skilled at picking up women and is something of a technological whiz, capable of building and programming robots and somehow performing maintenance on a spacebound satellite without leaving the studio. Although a childhood friend of Olly, he is subtly manipulative and often deceives Olly or uses him as a scapegoat. He is often shown to have wasted the show's budget on mysterious ventures that are never described on screen, resulting in everything from guests canceling to mafia threats. An episode in the second season implies that he was once married to Olly's mom and is, in fact, Olly's father (despite also being a childhood friend of Olly).
 * Olly : Voice by Liam Lynch. His body is a white sock with large, brown eyes and a dog-like nose. His hair is made from clippings of plastic sunflower petal and he wears a sweater, or more specifically, a sweater sleeve. Olly is emotional and prone to fits of violence, and prone to bouts of total insanity during Precious Roy ads. During the Precious Roy ads, Olly's grammar shows characteristics of the Central Pennsylvania dialect. (He mentions both that a suit "never needs ironed" and that "the dog needs walked".) He is easily deceived and has difficulty with women. He has difficulty holding back his laughter at times, especially when he's talking with Chester. Olly originally performs "United States of Whatever," one of the most successful songs from Lynch's Fake Songs CD. The song was performed in response to Sifl bringing several of Olly's ex-girlfriends to the show so they could make fun of Olly.
 * Chester : Voiced by Matt Crocco. Chester was born in Las Vegas, raised by a tap dancing tribe (S1E1). A typical stoner, his head is an inverted rubber mould for a Buddha figurine, his eyelashes are plastic sunflower petals, and a sweater sleeve composes most of his body. This gives him a distinct shape, resulting in a vacant smile and the appearance of innards in his mouth. His eyes are the same as Olly's, with the addition of large, petal-like eyebrows. Chester announces the beginning of the show, though he is not skilled at the task, occasionally referring to Sifl & Olly by the wrong names (such as Starsky and Hutch), or simply refusing to perform the announcement. Usually laughs softly as he talks. Chester considers himself a Don Juan, though the other characters imply that Chester has never been with a woman. He is very forgetful, often forgetting that he lives in the studio, that he is on a television show, or that the fans in the "Letters to Chester" segments aren't in the studio. He is obsessed with cereal, and it is implied that he eats it constantly, though he is rarely seen doing so on screen. He collects water, which he proudly proclaims to possess the entire set of (in the form of ice, steam, and regular water). He occasionally wanders into other skits and often doesn't realize that the skits aren't real (such as thinking that he had wandered into space while entering the set of a Star Wars parody). He is occasionally sold or traded by Olly, such as being sold to a freak show for $20 or used to pay Sifl's debt to the mafia.
 * Precious Roy : Also voiced by Crocco. His body is a green sock with enormous eyes (pointing in different directions) and a pair of wire glasses. The puppeteer's hand is positioned awkwardly within the sock, adding to Precious' bizarre persona. He is the owner of the Precious Roy Home Shopping Netwerk, which Sifl & Olly are spokesmen for. He speaks in non sequiturs, seems unaware of what his products actually are, and punctuates his last sentence of the segment with "suckers!".
 * Cody : Voiced by Liam Lynch. A friend of Sifl and Chester, but not so much Olly. Often Cody will stop by the show to confirm plans with Sifl for later; usually involving hookers or other unseemly behavior.
 * Stealth : Voiced by Liam Lynch. A violent degenerate with a grudge against Olly (Olly drove a golf cart through his bar mitzvah dressed in a beaver costume). Sifl and Olly eventually defeat him by singing Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It", which somehow sends Stealth into space in a spinning square resembling the Phantom Zone in Superman II. Is perpetually smoking a cigarette.
 * Julio : A small child who calls the show, usually to ask for advice. Liam Lynch mentioned on the "sockheads" list that Julio was voiced by a real 3-year-old named Julio.
 * Zafo : Voiced by guitarist/producer "Chris Tench". He spoke in an electronically distorted voice which sounds like a person speaking through a vocoder or a talk box. He is idolized by Sifl and Olly as well as a number of other characters in the show. On more than one occasion the world has been marked for destruction by a creature or object from space that was using the shows "Calls from the Public" forum to announce a final warning, leaving Sifl & Olly with a "big decision to make" when they discovered that Zafo had a show that night.
 * Peto and Flek : The main characters of Sifl and Olly's favorite show from their childhood. Peto is portrayed as being rude and vulgar, while Flek can only speak by saying the sound "guh-guh-guh-guh".
 * Jimmy : Voiced by Mike Taylor. Sifl & Olly's camera man, his dialogue usually cannot be heard clearly and he rarely appears on screen.
 * The Landlord : Voiced by Liam Lynch. The landlord for Sifl & Olly's apartment (some episodes, however, imply that the duo actually live in their studio. It is possible that they simply tape their show in their apartment, but some segments clearly imply that the two are "not home" during taping). He is made out of an opaque brown stocking with grey yarn hair and eyebrows. He also has a tattered white sleeve covering most of his body, giving him a disheveled appearance. This is enhanced by the puppeteer, whose knuckles are positioned prominently in the puppet, increasing its aggressive appearance. The Landlord frequently calls during the "Calls to the Public" segments to yell at Sifl and Olly about something they're doing on his property, such as breeding monkeys or building a water slide. He threatens to kick them out regularly, but the duo has already built a moat around their apartment filled with crocodiles and guarded by archer monkeys.
 * Champs 1 Team : A group of students, led by "John from Ohio University," who won the "Sifl & Olly: Free Access to the Moon" contest, in which they were launched in a space ship to the moon for a three-year mission. However, they weren't given any tasks to perform during their mission, and Sifl & Olly assumed the team would simply enjoy the freedom of being on the moon, such as the fact that there are no police on the moon. Before long all of the crew has died but one member, who eventually dies after the robot chicken pecks at a wrong button and sends the ship into the sun.
 * Grout : Voiced by Matt Crocco. A black and white striped long stocking with round yellow eyes on what look like black pipe cleaners. He is a self-proclaimed space expert who shows up as a guest or as host of his game show, trivia trapezoids.
 * Paul Rogers : Voiced by Matt Crocco. Disgruntled host of 'Functions of the Family', "Your 8000 step plan to better living". Intended as a self-help plan, he apparently went through some bad events recently. As such, his show generally devolves within seconds to him crying about his current situation in life, (specifically "I DON'T HAVE A FAMILY!") and screaming at his unseen announcer, Dale. The typical episode ends with Dale quitting. Paul is one of the few non-sock puppet characters, played by a plastic elf hand puppet.
 * Aesop Jones : A television chef, and another of the few non-sock characters (he is simply a doll dressed like a chef). Aesop's speech is incomprehensible. All his cooking endeavors seem to involve him actually cooking himself, somehow transforming his actual body into whatever it was he was supposed to be cooking (such as covering himself in dough, dipping his head into a vat of lard, and emerging with his head as a perfect, chocolate frosted doughnut). In the second season he has a female assistant (made out of a sock) whom he is romantically involved with.
 * Jargon Scott : A salesperson who often turns up on the "Calls From the Public" portion of the show to try and sell legless dogs to Sifl and Olly. Jargon constantly tries to explain to them the benefits of owning legless dogs, such as: they never run away, you never have to walk them, they're safe around children, etc. When this doesn't convince them to buy, he often enlists the help of a telemarketer named Cindy to use typical telemarketing fast talk and special offers to trick them into buying his "hot, legless dogs." The call usually ends with Jargon interrupting Cindy, exclaiming "You guys don't know what you're missing...I got legless dogs here!"
 * Eddie from Jersey : Frequent caller during the "Calls To The Public" segment of the show. Eddie can be seen wearing a S&M-style mask and always makes it a point to insult Sifl, usually by calling him a variation of the term "egg-ass" (i.e. "Hey Sifl, you're a rotten, slouched-back, egg-ass!"). Once he is reminded that he can be seen, he usually attempts to hide or change his story.
 * Sex Girl : Voiced by Terry Hudson. A female prostitute who occasionally shows up in the Interview section of the show. After a brief talk, usually Sifl and Olly decide to make out with Sex Girl. Sifl usually goes first, making awkward noises and distracting Olly, while Olly always blows his chance with Sex Girl giving lines such as "Everything I'm about to do to you baby, I learned at Seaworld."
 * Deuce Loosely : Voiced by Liam Lynch. An insane caller who wears a panda mask, he is utterly obsessed about pandas whenever he appears.  He seems to think pandas are magical beings, that are unstoppable vicious beasts. He is constantly hated by Sifl and Olly during his appearances, who find him annoying, and despise his blatantly false panda "facts". He has performed two songs about pandas in the show, (one in the first season, and one in the recent revival), and he claims they "will cease at number 820".
 * Cereal Mascots : A collection of rejected cereal mascots allowed to pitch their cereals again in episode 1-06. Includes Modem Mutt of Suger Coated Cyber Flakes (Download a bowl into your stomach today! It's good to the last megabyte and that's free surfing in fiber space!), Bing the Chlorinator of Watertower Nuggets (Great Cereal, a little high chlorine, kinda dangerous, but good though.), Eddie from Rubber Fantasies (Eddie from Jersey, immediately cut off by Sifl), Sugar Bunny of Super Sugar Carrots (They got real sugar!), Breakfast Beaver of Carpenter Crunch (Two scoops of nails in every bag. This cereal comes in a bag), Rascal Rooster of Raisin Hell (A million raisins in every can!)

Fanbase
Fans of the show call themselves "sockheads". There is also an online group of Sifl and Olly video traders that are petitioning MTV to release the entire series on DVD. One group of fans even recorded a tribute CD recreating some of their favorite songs called Banging on Some Pots and Pans. The Sockheads mailing list group also organized a convention in Nashville called Cresvention.

Cartoonist Aaron McGruder is a fan of the show. On one episode of his TV show The Boondocks, Huey exclaims to his grandfather's girlfriend that he is doing "prostitute laundry", which could be a direct reference to Sifl and Olly's song of the same name. A strip published on 4/28/00 also references the show, where character Michael Caesar is seen lamenting its cancellation. Award-winning writer J. Michael Straczynski was also a noted fan of the show, and at one time Lynch and Crocco were planning a sock puppet character voiced by Straczynski until the show was cancelled.

Sifl and Olly Video Game Reviews
In 2012, it was teased by Liam Lynch, via Twitter, that Sifl and Olly may return. On September 2, 2012, a promo appeared on the Machinima YouTube channel for a new show called Sifl & Olly Video Game Reviews. The first episode premiered on September 9, 2012. After the credits of the eighth video game review episode which aired on October 28, 2012, it was announced that Sifl & Olly were being moved to the Nerdist YouTube Channel. One "season," consisting of 5 episodes, was made available on that channel in 2013, ending April 18.

Video game
In July 2018, it was reported that American video game publisher Devolver Digital was in talks with The Sifl and Olly Show intellectual property owner Lynch to create a video game based on the show's license.

title: The Sifl and Olly Show