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John S. Mosby

John Singleton Mosby (December 6, 1833 – May 30, 1916), also known by his nickname "Gray Ghost", was an American military officer who was a Confederate army cavalry battalion commander in the American Civil War. His command, the 43rd Battalion, Virginia Cavalry, known as Mosby's Rangers or Mosby's Raiders, was a partisan ranger unit noted for its lightning-quick raids and its ability to elude Union Army pursuers and disappear, blending in with local farmers and townsmen. The area of northern central Virginia in which Mosby operated with impunity became known as Mosby's Confederacy.

After the Civil War, Mosby became a Republican and worked as an attorney, supporting his former enemy's commander, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant. He also served as the American consul to Hong Kong and in the U.S. Department of Justice.

Early life and education
Mosby was born in Powhatan County, Virginia, on December 6, 1833, to Virginia McLaurine Mosby and Alfred Daniel Mosby, a graduate of Hampden–Sydney College. His father was a member of an old Virginia family of English origin whose ancestor, Richard Mosby, was born in England in 1600 and settled in Charles City, Virginia in the early 17th century. Mosby was named after his maternal grandfather, John Singleton, who was ethnically Irish.

Mosby began his education at a school called Murrell's Shop (Elma, Nelson County). When his family moved to Albemarle County, Virginia, near Charlottesville, in about 1840, John attended school in Fry's Woods before transferring to a Charlottesville school at the age of ten years. Because of his small stature and frail health, Mosby was the victim of bullies throughout his school career. Instead of becoming withdrawn and lacking in self-confidence, the boy responded by fighting back. The editor of his memoirs recounted a statement Mosby made that he never won any fight in which he was engaged. The only time he did not lose a fight was when an adult stepped in and broke it up.

In 1847, Mosby enrolled at Hampden–Sydney College, where his father was an alumnus. Unable to keep up with his mathematics class, Mosby left the college after two years. On October 3, 1850,  he entered the University of Virginia, taking Classical Studies and joining the Washington Literary Society and Debating Union. He was far above average in Latin, Greek, and literature (all of which he enjoyed), but mathematics was still a problem for him. In his third year, a quarrel erupted between Mosby and a notorious bully, George R. Turpin, a tavern keeper's son who was robust and physically impressive. When Mosby heard from a friend that Turpin had insulted him, Mosby sent Turpin a letter asking for an explanation—one of the rituals in the code of honor to which Southern gentlemen adhered. Turpin became enraged and declared that on their next meeting, he would "eat him up raw!" Mosby decided he had to meet Turpin despite the risk; to run away would be dishonorable.

On March 29 the two met, Mosby having brought with him a small pepper-box pistol in the hope of dissuading Turpin from an attack. When the two met and Mosby said, "I hear you have been making assertions ..." Turpin put his head down and charged. At that point, Mosby pulled out the pistol and shot his adversary in the neck. The distraught 19-year-old Mosby went home to await his fate. He was arrested and arraigned on two charges: unlawful shooting (a misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of one year in jail and a $500 fine) and malicious shooting (a felony with a maximum sentence of 10 years in the penitentiary). After a trial that almost resulted in a hung jury, Mosby was convicted of the lesser offense, but received the maximum sentence. Mosby later discovered that he had been expelled from the university before he was brought to trial.

While serving time, Mosby won the friendship of his prosecutor, attorney William J. Robertson. When Mosby expressed his desire to study law, Robertson offered the use of his law library. Mosby studied law for the rest of his incarceration. Friends and family used political influence in an attempt to obtain a pardon. Gov. Joseph Johnson reviewed the evidence and pardoned Mosby on December 23, 1853, as a Christmas present, and the state legislature rescinded the $500 (~$ in ) fine at its next session. The incident, trial, and imprisonment so traumatized Mosby that he never wrote about it in his memoirs.

After studying for months in Robertson's law office, Mosby was admitted to the bar and established his own practice in nearby Howardsville.

Family life
About this time, Mosby met Pauline Clarke (March 30, 1837 – May 10, 1876), who was visiting from Kentucky. Although he was Protestant (nominally Methodist or agnostic) and she was Catholic, courtship ensued. Her father was Beverly L. Clarke. They were married in a Nashville hotel on December 30, 1857. After living for a year with Mosby's parents, the couple settled in Bristol, Virginia, which was near a road connecting into Tennessee and Kentucky over the Cumberland Gap.

The Mosbys had two children before the Civil War (May and Beverley). John Singleton Mosby Jr., who like his father became a lawyer, and later worked for mining companies in the west, was born in 1863 during the war. By 1870, the family included five children (adding Lincoln Mosby, 1865–1923, and Victoria Stuart Mosby Coleman, 1866–1946), and lived in Warrenton, Virginia. The Catholic Church established a mission in Warrenton by 1874, which is now known as St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church.

Mosby was dedicated to his family and paid to have them educated at the best Catholic schools in Washington, D.C., when he moved there after his wife's death in 1876. Their sons served as altar boys and Mosby's youngest sister, Florie, not only converted to Catholicism, but became a Catholic nun. Two more daughters also survived their parents, Pauline V. Mosby (1869–1951) and Ada B. Mosby (1871–1937), but the Mosbys also lost two sons in the turbulent aftermath of the Panic of 1873, George Prentiss Mosby (1873–1874) and Alfred McLaurine Mosby (1876–1876).

1861
Mosby spoke out against secession, but joined the Confederate army as a private at the outbreak of the war. He first served in William "Grumble" Jones's Washington Mounted Rifles. Jones became a Major and was instructed to form a more collective "Virginia Volunteers", which he created with two mounted companies and eight companies of infantry and riflemen, including the Washington Mounted Rifles. Mosby thought the Virginia Volunteers lacked congeniality, and he wrote to the governor requesting to be transferred. However, his request was not granted. The Virginia Volunteers participated in the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas) in July 1861.

1862
In April 1862, the Confederate Congress passed the Partisan Ranger Act which "provides that such partisan rangers, after being regularly received into service, shall be entitled to the same pay, rations, and quarters, during their term of service, and be subject to the same regulations, as other soldiers." By June 1862, Mosby was scouting for J.E.B. Stuart during the Peninsular Campaign, including supporting Stuart's "Ride around McClellan". He was captured on July 20 by Union cavalry while waiting for a train at the Beaverdam Depot in Hanover County, Virginia. Mosby was imprisoned in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C., for ten days before being exchanged as part of the war's first prisoner exchange. Even as a prisoner Mosby spied on his enemy. During a brief stopover at Fort Monroe he detected an unusual buildup of shipping in Hampton Roads and learned they were carrying thousands of troops under Ambrose Burnside from North Carolina on their way to reinforce John Pope in the Northern Virginia Campaign. When he was released, Mosby walked to the army headquarters outside Richmond and personally related his findings to Robert E. Lee.

After the Battle of Fredericksburg, in December 1862, Mosby and his senior officer J.E.B. Stuart led raids behind Union lines in Prince William, Fairfax and Loudoun counties, seeking to disrupt federal communications and supplies between Washington, D.C., and Fredericksburg, Virginia, and provision their own forces. As the year ended, at Oakham Farm in Loudoun County, Virginia, Mosby gathered with various horsemen from Middleburg, Virginia who decided to form what became known as Mosby's Rangers.

1863
In January 1863, Stuart, with Lee's concurrence, authorized Mosby to form and take command of the 43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry. This was later expanded into Mosby's Command, a regimental-sized unit of partisan rangers operating in Northern Virginia. The 43rd Battalion operated officially as a unit of the Army of Northern Virginia, subject to the commands of Lee and Stuart, but its men (1,900 of whom served from January 1863 through April 1865) lived outside of the norms of regular army cavalrymen. The Confederate government certified special rules to govern the conduct of partisan rangers. These included sharing in the disposition of spoils of war. They had no camp duties and lived scattered among the civilian population. Mosby required proof from any volunteer that he had not deserted from the regular service, and only about 10% of his men had served previously in the Confederate Army.

In March 1863, Mosby conducted a daring raid far inside Union lines near the Fairfax County courthouse. He was helped, according to his own account, by a deserter from the 5th New York Cavalry regiment named James Ames, who served under Mosby until he was killed in 1864. He and his men captured three Union officers, including Brig. Gen. Edwin H. Stoughton. Mosby wrote in his memoirs that he found Stoughton in bed and roused him with a "spank on his bare back." Upon being so rudely awakened the general indignantly asked what this meant. Mosby quickly asked if he had ever heard of "Mosby". The general replied, "Yes, have you caught him?" "I am Mosby," the Confederate ranger said. "Stuart's cavalry has possession of the Court House; be quick and dress." Mosby and his 29 men had captured a Union general, two captains, 30 enlisted men, and 58 horses without firing a shot. Mosby was formally promoted to the rank of captain two days later, on March 15, 1863, and major on March 26, 1863.

On May 3, 1863, Mosby attacked and captured supply depot Warrenton Junction, Virginia guarded by about 80 men of the 1st West Virginia Volunteer Cavalry Regiment; Mosby's losses were 1 killed and 20 wounded/and or captured; Union losses were 6 officers and 14 privates killed and wounded. On May 29, 1863, Mosby with 40 men led a raid in Greenwich, Virginia derailing a supply train; a battle occurred between Mosby's forces and the Union Cavalry under Colonel Mann who commanded the 1st Vermont Cavalry; 5th New York Cavalry; 7th Michigan Cavalry; Mosby was obliged to retreat losing 6 killed; 20 wounded and 10 men and 1 howitzer captured; Union losses were 4 killed and 15 wounded. On June 10, 1863, Mosby led 100 men on a raid across the Potomac River to attack the Union camp at Seneca, Maryland. After routing a company of the Sixth Michigan Cavalry and burning their camp, Mosby reported the success to J.E.B. Stuart. This drew Stuart's attention to Rowser's Ford. Mosby had crossed the Potomac there, and during the night of June 27 Stuart's forces would use the same crossing while separated from Lee's army, and thus didn't arrive at Gettysburg until the afternoon of the second day of the battle. Thus, some analysts claim Lee stumbled into the battle without his cavalry, partly because of Mosby's successful skirmish at Seneca three weeks earlier.

Mosby endured his first serious wound of the war on August 24, 1863, during a skirmish near Annandale, Virginia, when a bullet hit him through his thigh and side. He retired from the field with his troops and returned to action a month later.

1864
The partisan rangers proved controversial among Confederate army regulars, who thought they encouraged desertion as well as morale problems in the countryside as potential soldiers would favor sleeping in their own (or friendly) beds and capturing booty to the hardships and privations of traditional military campaigns. Mosby was thus enrolled in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States and soon promoted to lieutenant colonel on January 21, 1864, and to colonel, December 7, 1864. Mosby carefully screened potential recruits, and required each to bring his own horse.

The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant tell of an incident near Warrenton, Virginia on about May 1, 1864, when Mosby unknowingly missed by only a few minutes a chance to kill or capture Grant, who was traveling unguarded on a special train from Washington back to his headquarters to launch the Overland Campaign.

Mosby endured a second serious wound on September 14, 1864, while taunting a Union regiment by riding back and forth in front of it. A Union bullet shattered the handle of his revolver before entering his groin. Barely staying on his horse to make his escape, he resorted to crutches during a quick recovery and returned to command three weeks later.

Mosby's successful disruption of supply lines, attrition of Union couriers, and disappearance in the disguise of civilians caused Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to tell Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan:

"The families of most of Mosby's men are know[n] and can be collected. I think they should be taken and kept at Fort McHenry or some secure place as hostages for good conduct of Mosby and his men. When any of them are caught with nothing to designate what they are hang them without trial."

On September 22, 1864, Union forces executed six of Mosby's men who had been captured out of uniform (i.e. as spies) in Front Royal, Virginia; a seventh (captured, according to Mosby's subsequent letter to Sheridan, "by a Colonel Powell on a plundering expedition into Rappahannock") was reported by Mosby to have suffered a similar fate. William Thomas Overby was one of the men selected for execution on the hill in Front Royal. His captors offered to spare him if he would reveal Mosby's location, but he refused. According to reports at the time, his last words were, "My last moments are sweetened by the reflection that for every man you murder this day Mosby will take a tenfold vengeance." After the executions a Union soldier pinned a piece of paper to one of the bodies that read: "This shall be the fate of all Mosby's men."

After informing General Robert E. Lee and Confederate Secretary of War James A. Seddon of his intention to respond in kind, Mosby ordered seven Union prisoners, chosen by lot, to be executed in retaliation on November 6, 1864, at Rectortown, Virginia. Although seven men were duly chosen in the original "death lottery," in the end just three men were actually executed. One numbered lot fell to a drummer boy who was excused because of his age, and Mosby's men held a second drawing for a man to take his place. Then, on the way to the place of execution a prisoner recognized Masonic regalia on the uniform of Confederate Captain Montjoy, a recently inducted Freemason then returning from a raid. The condemned captive gave him a secret Masonic distress signal. Captain Montjoy substituted one of his own prisoners for his fellow Mason (though one source speaks of two Masons being substituted). Mosby upbraided Montjoy, stating that his command was "not a Masonic lodge". The soldiers charged with carrying out the executions of the revised group of seven successfully hanged three men. They shot two more in the head and left them for dead (remarkably, both survived). The other two condemned men managed to escape separately.

On November 11, 1864, Mosby wrote to Philip Sheridan, the commander of Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley, requesting that both sides resume treating prisoners with humanity. He pointed out that he and his men had captured and returned far more of Sheridan's men than they had lost. The Union side complied. With both camps treating prisoners as "prisoners of war" for the duration, there were no more executions.

On November 18, 1864, Mosby's command defeated Blazer's Scouts at the Battle of Kabletown.

Mosby had his closest brush with death on December 21, 1864, near Rector's Crossroads in Virginia. While dining with a local family, Mosby was fired on through a window, and the ball entered his abdomen two inches below the navel. He managed to stagger into the bedroom and hide his coat, which had his only insignia of rank. The commander of the Union detachment, Maj. Douglas Frazar of the 13th New York Cavalry, entered the house and—not knowing Mosby's identity—inspected the wound and pronounced it mortal. Although left for dead, Mosby recovered and returned to the war effort once again two months later.

1865
Several weeks after General Robert E. Lee's surrender, Mosby's status was uncertain, as some posters above the signature of Gen. Winfield S. Hancock stated that marauding bands would be destroyed, and specifically named Mosby as a guerrilla chief who was not included in the parole. However, Mosby received a copy of the poster on April 12 at a letter drop in the Valley along with a letter from Hancock's chief of staff, Gen. C.H. Morgan, calling on Mosby to surrender and promising the same terms as were extended to General Lee. Further negotiations followed at Winchester and Millwood. Finally, on April 21, 1865, in Salem, Virginia, Mosby disbanded the rangers, and on the following day many former rangers rode their worst horses to Winchester to surrender, receive paroles and return to their homes.

Rather than following his men to Winchester, Mosby instead rode south with several officers, planning to fight on with General Joseph E. Johnston's army in North Carolina. However, before he reached his fellow Confederates, he read a newspaper article about Johnston's surrender. Some proposed that they return to Richmond and capture the Union officers who were occupying the White House of the Confederacy, but Mosby rejected the plan, telling them, "Too late! It would be murder and highway robbery now. We are soldiers, not highwaymen." By early May, Mosby confirmed the $5,000 bounty on his head, but still managed to evade capture, including at a raid near Lynchburg, Virginia which terrified his mother. When Mosby finally confirmed the arrest order had been rescinded, he surrendered on June 17, one of the last Confederate officers to do so.

Later legal career
When the Civil War ended, Mosby was just 31, and would live another five decades. He resumed his law practice in Warrenton, and by December 1865 was prosecuting the internal revenue collector in Prince William County for mule-stealing. Nonetheless, during the year after receiving his parole, Mosby often found himself harassed by occupying Union forces, arrested on petty or trumped-up charges, until his wife and young son Revardy, after being rebuffed by President Andrew Johnson despite their mutual kinship ties, met General Grant in January 1866 and secured a handwritten exemption from arrest and guarantee of safe conduct.

Virginia politics
On May 8, 1872, as covered by the Washington Star, Mosby personally thanked then-U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant for that document. Mosby also told Grant he believed vehemently that election of Horace Greeley (a long-time editor of the New York Tribune detested in the South) would be worse for the South because the men surrounding him were worse than those surrounding his old benefactor Grant. A few days later, Massachusetts Congressman Benjamin Butler presented an amnesty bill for former Confederates, as Mosby had suggested in that meeting, and soon President Grant signed it into law. After Greeley became the Democratic party's nominee in July, Mosby became Grant's campaign manager in Virginia, and an active Republican, although he also made sure the Republicans would not run a candidate against his friend and fellow Warrenton attorney Eppa Hunton, who campaigned and won as a Democrat. In his autobiography Grant stated, "Since the close of the war, I have come to know Colonel Mosby personally and somewhat intimately. He is a different man entirely from what I supposed. ... He is able and thoroughly honest and truthful."

Soon, Mosby had become one of Grant's favorites and was bringing federal patronage jobs to local Virginians, although initially he did not hold any federal job. He tried to make a rapprochement between President Grant and Virginia Governor James L. Kemper, a Confederate Major General and Conservative elected the following year and whom Mosby also supported. However, that failed. His Republican political activity diminished Mosby's popularity in Warrenton; many considered him a turncoat. Many Southerners still considered Grant "the enemy". Mosby received death threats, his boyhood home was burned down, and at least one attempt was made to assassinate him. Later reflecting on the animosity shown to him by his fellow Virginians, Mosby stated in a May 1907 letter that "There was more vindictiveness shown to me by the Virginia people for my voting for Grant than the North showed to me for fighting four years against him."

After the deaths of his wife Pauline and infant son Alfred in mid-1876, Mosby decided to move his family to Washington, D.C., but had difficulty finding enough legal business to support them. He thus spent much time campaigning for the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes. Scandals had rocked the Grant Administration as it ended, but Hayes became the next President, and Mosby hoped for a patronage appointment. He also courted powerful Ohio Congressman James Garfield, telling him his desire for a government position, preferably in the Justice Department. He was instead offered a position as trade representative to Canton, but ultimately was confirmed by the Senate as United States consul to Hong Kong (a position he held from 1878 to 1885).

Mosby had to leave his children in the care of relatives, but this proved to be the first in a series of other federal government jobs and postings, many fighting rampant fraud in politically volatile situations. President McKinley appointed Mosby's daughter May the postmistress in Warrenton, which became very important after her husband Robert Campbell died in August 1889, leaving her to raise her young children alone (although her sons John Mosby Campbell and Alexander Spottswood Campbell received many letters and some money from their overseas grandfather, as to a lesser extent did Jack Russell, son of his late sister Lucie).

Consul in Hong Kong
Upon arriving in Hong Kong, Mosby found discrepancies in his predecessor's recordkeeping, and believed David H. Bailey had colluded with his vice-consul Loring (whom Mosby fired), to bilk the government of thousands of dollars in fees. Bailey had pocketed fees charged Chinese emigrants sailing to the U.S. on foreign-flag ships (certifying that they emigrated voluntarily and were not part of notorious "coolie traffic"), and claimed "expenses" for shipboard examinations (by the illiterate proprietor of a local boardinghouse frequented by sailors) of those emigrating on U.S.-flag ships equal to the fees charged. Mosby thought Bailey had almost doubled his salary over the previous eight years by embezzlement and kickbacks, and stopped charging for shipboard examinations (which he personally conducted).

However, Bailey had recently been nominated to become consul at Shanghai because George Seward, previous consul since 1863, had been nominated to become the ambassador to China. Seward's replacement in Shanghai, John C. Myers of Reading, Pennsylvania, had reported to State Department superiors that George Seward and his vice-consul Oliver Bradford had been engaging in land and capital speculation in China that seemed to violate the Burlingame Treaty of 1868, but had been suspended, as had his successor Wiley Wells, ex-Congressman from Mississippi. Wells and Myers then sought redress from Congress, which was considering impeaching George Seward, but Bailey traveled to Washington to defend his crony.

Mosby's initial letter to his superior (Frederick W. Seward, son of the former secretary of state and who had been wounded by Mosby's ex-subordinate while defending his father from an assassination attempt on the night of President Lincoln's assassination) languished. However, Special Treasury Department Inspector DeB. Randolph Keim made a whirlwind inspection of Far East consulates and found many similar bookkeeping irregularities. Eventually, in March 1879, Mosby wrote to General Thomas C. H. Smith, a friend of President Hayes, about a similar embezzlement scheme operated by David B. Sickels (U.S. Consul at Bangkok) and his vice-consul Torrey (a Hong Kong native whose correspondence to the fired Loring Mosby accepted and read). Mosby also learned that Bailey had charged (and pocketed) $10,000 per year for shipments of opium to the United States from Macao, although Mosby proposed to issue the required certificate for the legal export for just $2.50.

Meanwhile, consul Mosby was occupied entertaining his old friend President Grant, who spent the two years after his retirement touring the world as a semi-private citizen. Mosby received Grant on April 30. During the nearly week-long visit, Grant told Mosby he had heard more reports about the problems in Bangkok and advised Mosby to go directly to President Hayes (as Mosby had just done) and promised to talk to Hayes personally. However, Bailey was confirmed as consul in Shanghai before Grant's return home, and newspapers had begun publishing stories about Mosby's inappropriate attire, the start of a campaign to minimize him as a "crackpot." Moreover, the new State Department investigator was General Julius Stahel, who had fought Mosby in Virginia and had been consul at Hyogo, Japan.

Nonetheless, Stahel verified Mosby's complaints, and former Union Cavalry Major William H. Forbes (who had once stabbed Col. Mosby's coat during an engagement) who now headed Russell and Co. (major traders in the Far East, including of opium) also supported Mosby against Bailey, Seward and their newspaper friends. Alexander McClure of the Philadelphia Times agitated to clean up the consular service. Fred Seward, amidst charges that he was shielding the rascals, resigned by October 1879, and was replaced by John Hay. By January 1880, Grant and journalist John R. Young (who would become consul at Shanghai two years later) briefed Secretary of State William M. Evarts about Sickels and Torrey. George Seward resigned well before the 1880 election, followed by Bailey and Sickels as the President "at last swept the China coast".

Nonetheless, Mosby was unhappy, despite the electoral victory of his friend Garfield in November and his son Beverley joining him as vice-consul. His repeated requests for leave to return home and visit the rest of his family kept being denied, as were most requests for supplies or funds, and one relative was removed from the Lighthouse Board. In addition to the press and bureaucratic sniping, Mosby found his salary insufficient to support socialization among the local merchant class. Still, as 1880 began, Mosby won a slander lawsuit brought against him in Hong Kong by Peter Smith, the sailors' boardinghouse keeper associated with ex-consul Bailey, reporting that he defended himself to the applause of jury and spectators, as well as laughter of the distinguished judge. By the time Mosby received notice that his U.S. leave had been approved, President Garfield had been shot and was hanging on to life. Garfield died on September 20, and President Chester Arthur considered promoting Mosby to the similar post at Shanghai (with higher living expenses), but Mosby wanted to either return home or remain in Hong Kong. Thus he remained in exile and dealt with the implications of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the growing opium trade and the brewing war between France and China. Mosby left China after the election of Democrat Grover Cleveland led to a change in administrations. He was replaced by fellow Virginian Robert E. Withers, whom Mosby had long despised.

Railroad lawyer
Before leaving China, Mosby had written Grant seeking help in finding another position. Grant responded (as he was dying) with a letter recommending Mosby to Senator Leland Stanford, a former California railroad magnate. Mosby then spent about 16 years in California, working as a lawyer for the Southern Pacific Railroad until the death of his mentor Collis Huntington. Much of what he did remains unknown, due to a fire which destroyed the company's records of that era. Although Mosby hated the desk work, he twice returned to Washington, D.C., to argue before the United States Supreme Court—once based on the consul fees he had remitted to the Treasury (and which the claims court found him entitled to) and once for the railroad. Mosby also wrote articles for Eastern newspapers about his escapades during the Civil War, and traveled to New England on a speaking tour where he met Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. & Sr. (father and son). He also befriended the Patton family and spent time at their ranch with their young son, George S. Patton, recreating Civil War battles, with Mosby playing himself and George playing Robert E. Lee.

In 1898, Mosby tried to secure an officer's commission, for the Spanish–American War, but was blocked by Secretary of War Russell A. Alger (see: Russell A. Alger § Vendetta against John S. Mosby). Mosby trained an Oakland, California cavalry troop, dubbed Mosby’s Hussars, but the War ended, and they never left for Cuba or the Philippines.

Government attorney
When Mosby returned to Washington in 1901, during the second term of the McKinley administration (wary during the first term because of McKinley's service in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War, as well as being perceived as just another office-seeker), he again sought a job in the Justice Department. After McKinley's assassination, President Theodore Roosevelt instead sent Mosby west as a special agent of the Department of the Interior. There, Mosby dealt with illegal fencing of range land by cattle barons in Colorado and Nebraska, who often used fake homestead claims by military widows as well as violated the Van Wyck Fence Law of 1885. When witnesses refused to come forward to testify about illegal fencing for fear of retaliation, Mosby upheld the law by first sending notices to the affected landowner. The Pawnee Cattle Company capitulated in Colorado, so Mosby moved on to western Nebraska, where he learned the land agent actually lived in Iowa and failed to supervise the range.

Mosby's Colorado methods failed, however, since the Omaha grand jury refused to authorize an indictment against Bartlett Richards or anyone but nonresident agent W.R. Lesser. Mosby was recalled to Washington to appease Nebraska's Senators, and then sent to halt timber trespassers in Alabama forests. However, other attorneys were sent out, who secured indictments. Richards and his English brother in law William G. Comstock were convicted in 1905 despite their argument that the government land hadn't been surveyed. The local judge sentenced them to $300 fine apiece and six hours in custody, which they spent celebrating at the Omaha Cattlemen's Club, and which led President Roosevelt to fire both the U.S. attorney and U.S. Marshal. The next year Richards and Comstock were indicted on a new charge of conspiracy to deprive the government of public land, convicted and fined $1,500 fines as well as sentenced to a year in jail. After three years of appeals, the convictions and sentences were upheld, so they were sent to prison in Hastings, Nebraska for a year beginning in 1901, and Richards died in a hospital a month before the sentence would end.

Mosby finally got the Department of Justice post he wanted as Philander Knox ended his term as attorney general. It was not with the trust-busting unit, however, but with the Bureau of Insular and Territorial affairs, where Mosby worked (at a low salary of $2,400/year) under his brother-in-law Charles W. Russell Jr. from 1904 to 1910. In 1905 President Roosevelt again sent him to Alabama to troubleshoot allegations of irregularities at the Port of Mobile. Next, he was sent to Oklahoma to investigate charges against U.S. Marshal (and former Rough Rider) Benjamin Colbert. He also secured an indictment of McAlester attorneys George Mansfield, John F. McMurray and Melvin Cornish for misappropriation of Indian Trust funds, but his superior Russell thought the evidence insufficient and ultimately dropped the charges two years later. Meanwhile, Mosby went back to investigate charges of land frauds against Indian minors, and on his return found little to do.

Memoirist of the Civil War
Mosby was forced to retire from his U.S. Department of Justice post at age 76, under the William Howard Taft administration. Blind in one eye and cantankerous, he spent his final years in Washington, D.C., living in a boardinghouse and watched over by his remaining daughters to the extent he would let them or others.

Mosby also continued writing about his wartime exploits, as he had been in 1887  Mosby's War Reminiscences and Stuart's Cavalry Campaigns, which had defended the reputation of J.E.B. Stuart, who some partisans of the "Lost Cause" blamed for the Confederacy's defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg. Mosby had served under Stuart and was fiercely loyal to the late general, writing, "He made me all that I was in the war. ... But for his friendship I would never have been heard of." He lectured in New England in connection with that first book and wrote numerous articles for popular publications. He published a book length treatise in 1908, a work that relied on his skills as a lawyer to refute categorically all of the claims laid against Stuart. A recent comprehensive study of the Stuart controversy, written by Eric J. Wittenberg and J. David Petruzzi, called Mosby's work a "tour de force".

He attended only one reunion of his Rangers, in Alexandria, Virginia, in January 1895, noticing with bemusement how many had become clergymen but preferring to look forward not back. During the war, he had kept a slave, Aaron Burton, to whom he occasionally sent money in Brooklyn, New York after the war and with whom he kept in contact into the 1890s. In 1894, Mosby wrote to a former comrade regarding the cause of the war, stating: "I've always understood that we went to war on account of the thing we quarreled with the North about. I've never heard of any other cause than slavery."

In June 1907, Mosby wrote a letter to Samuel "Sam" Chapman, in which he expressed his displeasure over people, namely George Christian, downplaying and denying the importance of slavery in its causing the American Civil War. In the letter, Mosby explained his reasons as to why he fought for the Confederacy, despite personally disapproving of slavery. Although he admitted that the Confederate states had seceded to protect and defend their institution of slavery, he had felt it was his patriotic duty as a Virginian to fight on behalf of the Confederacy, stating that, "I am not ashamed of having fought on the side of slavery—a soldier fights for his country—right or wrong—he is not responsible for the political merits of the course he fights in" and that, "The South was my country."

Death and Legacy
In January 1915, the University of Virginia awarded Mosby a medal and written tribute, which touched him deeply. Throughout his life, Mosby remained loyal to those he believed fair-minded, such as Stuart and Grant, but refused to cater to Southern sympathies. He proclaimed that there was "no man in the Confederate Army who had less of the spirit of knight-errantry in him, or took a more practical view of war than I did." He died of complications after throat surgery in a Washington, D.C., hospital on May 30, 1916, noting at the end that it was Memorial Day. He is buried at Warrenton Cemetery in Warrenton, Virginia.
 * The area around Middleburg, from where Mosby launched most of his behind-the-lines activities, was called "Mosby's Confederacy", even in the Northern press. The Virginia Piedmont Heritage Area Association, formerly called the Mosby Heritage Area Association and headquartered in Middleburg, is actively involved in preserving the history, culture, and scenery of this historic area.
 * The John Singleton Mosby Museum was located in Warrenton, Virginia, at the historic Brentmoor estate where Mosby lived from 1875 to 1877. After it closed many of the artifacts moved to the Old Fauquier County Jail museum.
 * There are 35 monuments and markers in Northern Virginia dedicated to actions and events related to Mosby's Rangers.
 * John Mosby Highway, a section of US Route 50 between Dulles Airport and Winchester, Virginia, is named for Colonel Mosby.
 * Mosby Woods Elementary School in the Fairfax County Public Schools system was originally named in his honor. The name of the school was changed to Mosaic Elementary School by the Fairfax County School Board in February 2021; effective at the start the 2021–2022 academic year.
 * The segregation academy John S. Mosby Academy operated in Front Royal, Virginia from 1959 to 1969.
 * Mosby Woods subdivision in Fairfax City is also named in his honor.
 * The Mosby Woods Pool, located in the Mosby Woods subdivision, is named in his honor as is its swim team, the Mosby Woods Mustangs (formerly Mosby Woods Raiders), who compete in the Northern Virginia Swim League.
 * The post office branch for zip code 22042 (in Northern Virginia's Falls Church area) is referred to by the USPS as the Mosby branch.
 * Mosby Court, located in the Hillwood Estates subdivision of Round Hill, Virginia, remains named in his honor after residents there, in 2022, rejected Loudoun County's proposal to rename the cul-de-sac along with several other streets in the neighborhood (Early Avenue, Hampton Road, Jackson Avenue, Lee Drive, Longstreet Avenue, and Pickett Road) that were named or renamed after Confederate generals in the early 1960s.
 * The World War II Liberty Ship SS John S. Mosby was named in his honor.
 * The U.S. Army Reserve Center located on Fort Belvoir, VA was previously named in his honor. The center was rededicated in honor of U.S. Army Reserve Staff Sergeant Richard S. Eaton Jr. in 2024.

In popular culture

 * Herman Melville's poem "The Scout Toward Aldie" was about the terror a Union brigade felt upon facing Mosby and his men. In part, the poem was based on Melville's experiences in the field with the 13th New York Cavalry and several of its officers who were alumni of Rutgers College.
 * A 1913 film entitled The Pride of the South, starred actor Joseph King as John Mosby.
 * In 1924 Carrie Stevens of Maine created one of the most famous streamers for fly fishing which she called the Gray Ghost.
 * Virgil Carrington Jones published Ranger Mosby (1944), and Gray Ghosts and Rebel Raiders (1956). He also wrote the late-1950s television program, The Gray Ghost.
 * Science fiction author H. Beam Piper wrote a popular account of Mosby's life which was published in 1950 under the title "Rebel Raider".
 * CBS Television produced The Gray Ghost during the 1957–58 television season. The show aired in syndication and starred Tod Andrews as Mosby during his Civil War exploits.
 * The 1967 Disney television movie Mosby's Marauders starred Kurt Russell as a young Confederate serving under Mosby, portrayed by Jack Ging.
 * In the 1988 alternate history novel Gray Victory author Robert Skimin depicts Mosby as the head of military intelligence after the Confederacy wins the Civil War. He defends his friend, J.E.B. Stuart, from a court of inquiry investigating Stuart's actions in the battle of Gettysburg. In the novel, Skimin portrays Mosby as more pro-slavery than was the case historically.
 * Mosby was the namesake of "The Gray Ghost (aka Simon Trent)", a character introduced in the 1992 Batman: The Animated Series, episode "Beware the Gray Ghost," and voiced by Adam West. The character also took inspiration from the 1950s show about his war career, as well The Spirit, The Shadow, and other pulp adventurers.
 * There is a computer game based on Mosby's Civil War activities, by Tilted Mill, called "Mosby's Confederacy". (2008)

title: John S. Mosby


text:
User talk:Madewokherd

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title: User talk:Madewokherd


text:
Hughenden Manor

Hughenden Manor, Hughenden, Buckinghamshire, England, is a Victorian mansion, with earlier origins, that served as the country house of the Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield. It is now owned by the National Trust and open to the public. It sits on the brow of the hill to the west of the main A4128 road that links Hughenden to High Wycombe.

History
The manor of Hughenden is first recorded in 1086, as part of Queen Edith's lands, and held by William, son of Oger the Bishop of Bayeux, and was assessed for tax at 10 hides. After his forfeiture, the lands were held by the Crown, until King Henry I of England gave the lands to his chamberlain and treasurer, Geoffrey de Clinton. Clinton, whose main home was in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, had the lands tenanted by Geoffrey de Sancto Roerio, who resultantly changed his surname to the Anglicised Hughenden. After passing through that family, with successive Kings having to confirm the gift of the lands, the manor returned to the Crown in the 14th century. In 1539, the Crown granted the manor and lands to Sir Robert Dormer, and it passed through his family until 1737 when it was sold by the 4th Earl of Chesterfield to Charles Savage.

After passing through his extended family following a series of deaths and resultant devises by will, by 1816 the manor and lands were owned by John Norris, a distinguished antiquary and scholar. Isaac D'Israeli, the father of Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1868 and 1874–1880, and Earl of Beaconsfield 1876), had for some time rented the nearby Bradenham Manor and, following Norris's death in 1845, bought the manor and lands from his executors in 1847. The purchase was supported with the help of a loan of £25,000 (equivalent to almost £1,500,000 today) from Lord Henry Bentinck and Lord Titchfield. This was because at the time, as Disraeli was the leader of the Conservative Party, "it was essential to represent a county," and county members had to be landowners. Taking ownership of the manor on the death of his father in 1848, Disraeli and his wife Mary Anne, alternated between Hughenden and several homes in London.

Lady Beaconsfield died in 1872, and Disraeli in 1881; both were buried in a vault adjacent in the churchyard of St Michael and All Angels Church which is situated downhill from the main house to the east. The church contains a memorial to the Earl erected by Queen Victoria: the only instance of a reigning British monarch ever erecting a memorial to a subject.

Disraeli had no children; he left Hughenden to his nephew, Coningsby Disraeli. However, as Coningsby was only 14 at the time, his trustees rented out the property until he came into his inheritance in 1888. When Coningsby died in 1936, his widow left Hughenden, and the following year Disraeli's niece sold the house to W H Abbey, who vested it, with the remaining contents and 189 acre, in the Disraelian Society.

During the Second World War, the basement at Hughenden Manor was used as a secret intelligence base code named "Hillside". The UK Air Ministry staff at the manor analysed aerial photography of Germany and created maps for bombing missions, including the "Dambusters" raid.

In 1947, the Abbey family and the Disraelian Society made Hughenden over to the National Trust. In 1955, it was designated a Grade I listed building. The gardens are also listed as Grade II on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. It is decorated as it might have been at the time it was occupied by Disraeli. It contains a collection of memorabilia including family portraits, Disraeli's own furnishings, a library including a collection of Disraeli's novels and one written and signed by Queen Victoria along with many of the books he inherited from his father, Isaac D'Israeli.

The park and woodlands total almost 1500 acre. The formal garden which was designed by Lady Beaconsfield (Queen Victoria created Mary Anne a Viscountess in her own right in 1868), has been restored to a similar condition to when occupied by the Disraelis. The long terrace at the rear of the house is decorated with Florentine vases. A monument on a nearby hill, visible from the house, was erected by Mary Anne in 1862 in memory of her father-in-law.

Architecture and description
The present house was built towards the end of the 18th century and was of a stuccoed and unassuming design. However, in 1862 the Disraelis had the house remodelled by the architect Edward Buckton Lamb. Lamb has been described as "one of the most perverse and original of mid-Victorian architects". Architecturally, he had a strong interest in the eclectic; this interest is very apparent in his work at Hughenden. Under Lamb's hand, classical Georgian features were swept away as he "dramatised" the house. Lamb worked in a hybrid baronial form of Gothic architecture, with exposed and angular juxtaposing brickwork surmounted by stepped battlements with diagonal pinnacles. The uppermost windows of the thirteen-bayed garden facade were given unusual pediments – appearing almost as machicolations. The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner, in his highly critical appraisal of Lamb's work at Hughenden, labels these "window-heads" as "indescribable" and Lamb's overall Hughenden work as "excruciating".

Pevsner clearly failed to appreciate what the delighted Disraeli described as the "romance he had been many years realising" while going to say that he imagined it was now "restored to what it was before the civil war". As the house was not originally constructed until the middle of the 18th century, almost a century after the Civil War, that scenario would have been difficult.

The house is of three floors. The reception rooms are all on the ground floor, most with large plate glass windows (a Victorian innovation) giving onto the south-facing terrace overlooking a grassy parterre with views over the Hughenden Valley.

The west wing was built in 1910, long after Disraeli's death, when the house was in the ownership of his nephew, the politician Coningsby Disraeli.

title: Hughenden Manor


text:
Jean Augustine

Jean Augustine (born September 9, 1937) is a Grenada-born Canadian politician. She was the first Black Canadian woman to serve as a federal Minister of the Crown and Member of Parliament.

Prior to entering politics in 1993, Jean Augustine had a career in education. She enrolled in Toronto Teachers’ College, graduating with an Ontario teaching certificate in 1963. She went on to work as a teacher in the Toronto Catholic District School Board, eventually becoming a school principal.

From 1993 to 2006, Jean Augustine was elected as the Liberal Party of Canada's member of the House of Commons of Canada for the riding (Federal Electoral District) of Etobicoke—Lakeshore in Toronto, Ontario. Ms. Augustine was the Parliamentary Secretary to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien from 1994 to 1996. She subsequently served as the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women in the Cabinet of Canada from 2002 to 2004.

Following her retirement from politics, she has served as the patron of several non-profit organizations across Canada. From 2007 to 2015, Ms. Augustine served as the first Fairness Commissioner of Ontario.

Early life and education
Augustine was born on September 9th, 1937, in St. George's, Grenada, and immigrated to Canada in 1960 under the West Indian Domestic Scheme, which ran from 1955 to 1966. She attended Toronto Teachers’ College before earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto, and later, a Master of Education (1980), also from the University of Toronto while working as an elementary school teacher. Augustine was later promoted to principal, then Supervisory Officer.

In addition to her teaching career with the Catholic School board(Metropolitan Separate School Board) in Toronto, Augustine was also actively involved in Toronto's Caribbean community, sitting on the first committee to organize the Caribana Festival in 1967.

As a social activist, Augustine volunteered and worked with many social justice and educational organizations. They included service with the National Black Coalition of Canada, the Urban Alliance on Race Relations (UARR). She was appointed as chair of the Metro Toronto Housing Authority. She was also named national president of the Congress of Black Women of Canada in 1987.

Augustine served on various boards during this period, including York University's Board of Governors, The Hospital for Sick Children, the Stephen Lewis Foundation and Toronto's Harbourfront Corporation.

In 1988, Augustine was appointed as chair of the Metro Toronto Housing Authority, a multi-million dollar social housing authority serving 300,000 residents in rent-geared to income housing.

Political career (1993-2005)
In 1993, Jean Augustine became the first African-Canadian woman elected to Canada’s House of Commons, as the Member of Parliament from the Greater Toronto Area constituency of Etobicoke-Lakeshore. She served as a Liberal Member of Parliament for four consecutive terms, being re-elected three times.

Augustine held many portfolios and positions during her time as an elected member of Canada's federal government, including as Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Jean Chrétien); Minister of Multiculturalism and the Status of Women; Chair of the Foreign Affairs and International Trade committee; Chair of the Human Rights Committee, three-time Chair of the National Women’s Caucus. In 2004, she was elected Assistant Deputy Speaker by her fellow parliamentarians.

Augustine's parliamentarian achievements include legislation to protect disadvantaged low-income individuals including single mothers raising children; securing unanimous legislative support to pass a motion designating February as Black History Month in Canada; securing unanimous legislative support to pass a motion to erect the Famous Five Monument on Parliament Hill.

Later life
In 2007, the Government of Ontario appointed Augustine as the first Fairness Commissioner, a position created to advocate for Canadians with foreign professional credentials. Augustine retired from the position in March 2015.

In 2007, Augustine donated her personal papers and memorabilia to the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections at York University. The collection is known as the Jean Augustine Fonds. "Pushing buttons, pushing stories" is a digital exhibit of Augustine's personal political buttons.

In 2008, the Jean Augustine Chair in Education in the New Urban Environment was established as an endowed chair at York University, with Prof. Nombuso Dlamini appointed the first chair (2010-15). The chair was renamed as the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora York University. In 2016, the present chair holder, Faculty of Education professor and Distinguished Research Professor, Carl E. James, was appointed for a five-year term, which was renewed. In 2023 the Jean Augustine Chair received funding from the federal government of Canada, making it a fully-funded endowed chair.

Augustine serves as the patron, visitor or honorary chair of a number of organizations, including the NATO Association of Canada.

Personal life
In 1968, Augustine married Winston Augustine, but they subsequently divorced in 1981. They have two daughters. Augustine is Catholic.

Selected Writing in Academic and Grey Literature
Augustine, J. (2021). Multiculturalism@ 50: the experience of Black Canadians. Canadian Issues Fall/Winter, 65-69.

Augustine, J. (2020). Being the Messenger and the Message. Canadian Issues, Fall/Winter, 27-30.

Augustine, H. J. (2015). Employment match rates in the regulated professions: trends and policy implications. Canadian Public Policy, 41(Supplement 1), S28-S47.

Augustine, J. (2007). A message from Dr, Jean Augustine, Chair, Ontario Bicentenary Commemorative Committee on the abolition of the slave trade. Ontario History, 99(1), IV.

Honours and awards

 * In 2022, a film that recapped Jean Augustine's life and achievements was premiered in Toronto and Ottawa with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as special guest. The creative team behind the team includes documentary filmmakers Fahim Ali, Ali Umair and John Challinor III.
 * In 2021, Augustine was given the Lifetime Achievement Award from Maclean's Magazine, as part of its 12th annual Parliamentarians of the Year awards.
 * Augustine was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws from her alma mater, University of Toronto. In 2009, she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws from McGill University. In 2017, she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws from Trent University.
 * She has received the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award, the Kay Livingstone Award, the Ontario Volunteer Award, an African Canadian Achievement Award (Pride News Magazine), the Rubena Willis Special Recognition Award, and the Toronto Lions' Club Onyx Award.
 * In 2009, she was made a Member of the Order of Canada "for her distinguished career as an educator, politician and advocate for social justice in Canada".
 * She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to education and politics in Grenada, from which she had emigrated 54 years previously.
 * The Jean Augustine Scholarship Fund was named for her, which she helps support with fundraising. It assists single mothers to undertake post-secondary study at George Brown College.
 * Jean Augustine Secondary School in Brampton, Ontario is named for her.
 * Toronto District School Board (TDSB) Girls’ Leadership Academy.
 * In 2011 Augustine was one of the Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Award winners.

title: Jean Augustine


text:
Daliburgh

Daliburgh (Dalabrog) is a crofting township on South Uist, in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. Daliburgh is situated 1+1/2 mi west from Lochboisdale, has the second largest population of any township in South Uist, and is also in the parish of South Uist. Daliburgh is situated at the junction of the A865 and the B888. Like Lochboisdale, Daliburgh has undergone major changes in recent years.

Ranald Macdonald, younger brother of Donald Macdonald 4th of Kinlochmoidart, was granted the tack of Daliburgh from the chief of Clanranald in 1730.

Community
The South End Community Hall on the northern edge of Daliburgh includes a fitness suite and indoor sports facilities.

Adjacent to the Borrodale Hotel a memorial commemorates the life and verse of Donald Allan MacDonald, a Gaelic bàrd (i.e. poet) and important figure in modern Scottish Gaelic literature who lived at Daliburgh during the mid 20th century.

School
Daliburgh School lost its first-year secondary class in 2009, and now offers primary schooling for ages 5 to 12, with an independent cròileagan (nursery/after-school club) next door

Daliburgh is well known for its annual summer music school, Ceòlas, which runs for one week every July in the local school and includes classes for both adults and children. Ceòlas also runs youth music classes throughout the year, and has a small office adjacent to the school itself.

Churches
The Church of Scotland has a large traditional 19th century church building, with attached hall and manse, at the junction by the Borrodale Hotel. Along the road to the west - strictly in the township of Cille Pheadair is the Roman Catholic Church of Saint Peter, with a public hall opposite used for a wide variety of functions, including public ceilidhs and dances, sales, private parties and so on.

Economy
Businesses located within the township include the Post Office, the Co-op supermarket, Borrodale Hotel (public internet access available), Scottish Hydro Electric shop, Burnside Fish and Chips and filling station, and the thrift shop (charity shop), which sells tea, coffee and food.

The Uist Travel Lodge and Bunkhouse opened in 2010, incorporating a cafe and gift shop in Uist House. The building was constructed in the 1970s, and was previously a care home.

A commercial office development, financed by Western Isles Enterprise, remained unoccupied for nearly ten years. Finally, in 2010, it was announced that the development would become the offices for Stòras Uibhist, the community-owned landlord of South Uist, Eriskay and much of Benbecula. The business had relocated from the old manse in Bornish.

Services
According to John Lorne Campbell, Sacred Heart hospital in Daliburgh was built in 1894 with money donated by philanthropist John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, at the request of two South Uist Roman Catholic priests; important Gaelic Bard Fr. Allan MacDonald, alias ("Maighstir Ailein"), of St Peter's Church in Daliburgh and Fr John Mackintosh, alias "The Big Priest of the Horses" (Sagart Mòr nan Each), of St. Mary's Church in Bornish.

The hospital was closed in 2000 and replaced by the newly built Uist and Barra Hospital in Benbecula. The old hospital has been converted into a care home for the elderly, now known as Taigh a' Chridhe Uile Naomh, retaining the original hospital as a part of the new. The building is a significant user of renewable energy, with ground source heat pumps and three 6 kW wind turbines.

Near to Taigh a' Chridhe Uile Naomh is the South Uist Medical Centre, offering doctors consultations, practice nurses and pharmacy.

Also in Daliburgh there is a fire and rescue service station, which is manned by volunteers, and a small territorial army centre.

title: Daliburgh


text:
Sydney Dobell

Sydney Thompson Dobell (5 April 1824 – 22 August 1874) was an English poet and critic, and a member of the so-called Spasmodic school.

Biography
Dobell was born at Cranbrook, Kent. His father, John Dobell, was a wine merchant and his mother Julietta was a daughter of Samuel Thompson (1766–1837), a London political reformer. He was an older brother of the surgeon Horace Dobell. The family moved to Cheltenham when Dobell was twelve years old. He was educated privately, and never attended either school or university. He refers to this in some lines on Cheltenham College in imitation of Chaucer, written in his eighteenth year. After a five-year engagement he married, in 1844, Emily Fordham, a lady of good family. Acquaintance with James Stansfeld (subsequently Sir James Stansfeld) and with the Birmingham preacher-politician George Dawson fed the young enthusiast's ardour for the liberalism of the day, and later led to the foundation of the Society of the Friends of Italy.

Meanwhile, Dobell wrote a number of minor poems, infused with a passionate desire for political reform. The Roman appeared in 1850, under the pen name of Sydney Yendys. Next year he travelled through Switzerland with his wife; and after his return he formed friendships with Robert Browning, Philip Bailey, George MacDonald, Emanuel Deutsch, Lord Houghton, Ruskin, Holman Hunt, Mazzini, Tennyson and Carlyle. His second long poem, Balder, appeared in 1854. The three following years were spent in Scotland. Dobell also wrote The Ballad of Keith of Ravelston and Tommy's Dead.

Perhaps his closest friend at this time was Alexander Smith. Together they published, in 1855, a number of sonnets on the Crimean War, which were followed by a volume on England in Time of War. Although by no means a rich man he was always ready to help needy men of letters, and it was through his exertions that David Gray's poems were published. In 1869 a horse, which he was riding, fell and rolled over with him. His health, which had for several years necessitated his wintering abroad, was seriously affected by this accident, and he was from this time more or less of an invalid until his death in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire.

Poetry
As a poet Dobell belongs to the Spasmodic school of poetry, as it was named by Professor Aytoun, who parodied its style in Firmilian: A Spasmodic Tragedy. The epithet, however, was first applied by Carlyle to Byron. The school includes George Gilfillan, Philip James Bailey, John Stanyan Bigg, Dobell, Alexander Smith, and, according to some critics, Gerald Massey. It was characterized by an under-current of discontent with the mystery of existence, by vain effort, unrewarded struggle, sceptical unrest, and an uneasy straining after the unattainable. It thus faithfully reflected a certain phase of 19th-century thought.

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition: "the productions of the school are marked by an excess of metaphor and a general extravagance of language. On the other hand, they exhibit freshness and originality often lacking in more conventional writings. Dobell's 1850 poem, The Roman, dedicated to the interests of political liberty in Italy, is marked by pathos, energy and passionate love of freedom, but it is overlaid with monologue, which is carried to excess in Balder, relieved though the latter is by fine descriptive passages, and by some touching songs. Dobell's suggestive, but too ornate prose writings were collected and edited with an introductory note by John Nichol (Thoughts on Art, Philosophy and Religion) in 1875 or 1876. The standard edition includes a memoir."

Religious and political views
In his religious views, Dobell was a Christian of the broad church type; and socially he was one of the most amiable and true-hearted of men. Dobell also believed that religion was a personal struggle between a person and the spirituality that existed deep within their own psyche. His early interest in the cause of oppressed nationalities, shown in his friendship with Kossuth, Emanuel Deutsch and others, never lessened, although his views of home politics underwent some change from the radical opinions of his youth. In Gloucestershire, Dobell was well known as an advocate of social reform, and he was a pioneer in the application of the co-operative system of private enterprise.

Deerhounds
Sydney Dobell was also famous as an early breeder of deerhounds. One was given to him by Mr Ronald McDonald of Skye. She was supposed to be descended from the deerhounds of Cher Foreman McDonald. Later generations of his deerhounds were painted by Sydney Dobell's brother-in-law, Briton Rivière, notably in The empty chair, which was first exhibited at the Dudley Gallery, London, in 1869. It was bought for a great deal of money by Howard Dobell, his uncle. It was owned in 1924 by Ralph Dobell, Brooklands, Cheltenham who lent it to an exhibition at Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum.

title: Sydney Dobell


text:
Gerald Massey

Gerald Massey (29 May 1828 – 29 October 1907) was an English poet and writer on Spiritualism and Ancient Egypt.

Early life
Massey was born near Tring, Hertfordshire in England to poor parents. When little more than a child, he was made to work hard in a silk factory, which he afterward deserted for the equally laborious occupation of straw plaiting. These early years were rendered gloomy by much distress and deprivation, against which the young man strove with increasing spirit and virility, educating himself in his spare time, and gradually cultivating his innate taste for literary work. He was attracted by the movement known as Christian socialism, into which he threw himself with whole-hearted vigour, and so became associated with Frederick Denison Maurice and Charles Kingsley.

Later life
From about 1870 onwards, Massey became increasingly interested in Egyptology and the similarities that exist between ancient Egyptian mythology and the Gospel stories. He studied the extensive Egyptian records housed in the Assyrian and Egyptology section of the British Museum in London where he worked closely with the curator, Dr. Samuel Birch, and other leading Egyptologists of his day, even learning hieroglyphics at the time the Temple of Horus at Edfu was first being excavated.

Writing career
Massey's first public appearance as a writer was in connection with a journal called the Spirit of Freedom, of which he became editor, and he was only twenty-two when he published his first volume of poems, Voices of Freedom and Lyrics of Love (1850). These he followed in rapid succession with The Ballad of Babe Christabel (1854), War Waits (1855), Havelock's March (1860), and A Tale of Eternity (1869).

In 1889, Massey published a two-volume collection of his poems called My Lyrical Life. He also published works dealing with Spiritualism, the study of Shakespeare's sonnets (1872 and 1890), and theological speculation. It is generally understood that he was the original of George Eliot's Felix Holt.

Massey's poetry has a certain rough and vigorous element of sincerity and strength which easily accounts for its popularity at the time of its production. He treated the theme of Sir Richard Grenville before Tennyson thought of using it, with much force and vitality. Indeed, Tennyson's own praise of Massey's work is still its best eulogy, for the Laureate found in him a poet of fine lyrical impulse, and of a rich half-Oriental imagination. The inspiration of his poetry is a combination of his vast knowledge based on travels, research and experiences; he was a patriotic humanist to the core. His poem "The Merry, Merry May" was set to music in 1894 by the composer Cyril Rootham and then in a popular song by composer Christabel Baxendale.

Massey was a believer in spiritual evolution; he opined that Darwin's theory of evolution was incomplete without spiritualism:"The theory contains only one half the explanation of man's origins and needs spiritualism to carry it through and complete it. For while this ascent on the physical side has been progressing through myriads of ages, the Divine descent has also been going on – man being spiritually an incarnation from the Divine as well as a human development from the animal creation. The cause of the development is spiritual. Mr. Darwin's theory does not in the least militate against ours – we think it necessitates it; he simply does not deal with our side of the subject. He can not go lower than the dust of the earth for the matter of life; and for us, the main interest of our origin must lie in the spiritual domain."

In regard to Ancient Egypt, Massey first published The Book of the Beginnings, followed by The Natural Genesis. His most important work is Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World, published shortly before his death.

Like Godfrey Higgins a half-century earlier, Massey believed that Western religions had Egyptian roots. Massey wrote,"The human mind has long suffered an eclipse and been darkened and dwarfed in the shadow of ideas the real meaning of which has been lost to moderns. Myths and allegories whose significance was once unfolded in the Mysteries have been adopted in ignorance and reissued as real truths directly and divinely vouchsafed to humanity for the first and only time! The early religions had their myths interpreted. We have ours misinterpreted. And a great deal of what has been imposed on us as God’s own true and sole revelation to us is a mass of inverted myths."

One of the more important aspects of Massey's writings were his assertions that there were parallels between Jesus and the Egyptian god Horus, primarily contained in the book The Natural Genesis first published in 1883. Massey, for example, argued in the book his belief that: both Horus and Jesus were born of virgins on 25 December, raised men from the dead (Massey speculates that the biblical Lazarus, raised from the dead by Jesus, has a parallel in El-Asar-Us, a title of Osiris), died by crucifixion and were resurrected three days later. These assertions have influenced various later writers such as Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Tom Harpur, Yosef Ben-Jochannan, and Dorothy M. Murdock. "Christian ignorance notwithstanding, the Gnostic Jesus is the Egyptian Horus who was continued by the various sects of gnostics under both the names of Horus and of Jesus. In the gnostic iconography of the Roman Catacombs child-Horus reappears as the mummy-babe who wears the solar disc. The royal Horus is represented in the cloak of royalty, and the phallic emblem found there witnesses to Jesus being Horus of the resurrection."

Criticism
Christian theologian W. Ward Gasque, a PhD from Harvard and Manchester University, sent emails to twenty Egyptologists that he considered leaders of the field – including Kenneth Kitchen of the University of Liverpool and Ron Leprohon of the University of Toronto – in Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia, Germany and Austria to verify academic support for some of these assertions. His primary targets were Tom Harpur, Alvin Boyd Kuhn and the Christ myth theory, and only indirectly Massey. Ten out of twenty responded, but most were not named. According to Gasque, Massey's work, which draws comparisons between the Judeo-Christian religion and the Egyptian religion, is not considered significant in the field of modern Egyptology and is not mentioned in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt or similar reference works of modern Egyptology. Gasque reports that those who responded were unanimous in dismissing the proposed etymologies for Jesus and Christ, and one unspecified Egyptologist referred to Alvin Boyd Kuhn's comparison as "fringe nonsense." However, Harpur's response to Gasque quotes leading contemporary Egyptologist Erik Hornung that there are parallels between Christianity and ancient Egypt, as do the writings of biblical expert Thomas L. Thompson.

Theologian Stanley E. Porter has pointed out that Massey's analogies include a number of errors. For example, Massey stated that 25 December as the date of birth of Jesus was selected based on the birth of Horus, but the New Testament does not include any reference to the date or season of the birth of Jesus. The earliest known source recognizing 25 December as the date of birth of Jesus is by Hippolytus of Rome, written around the beginning of the 3rd century, based on the assumption that the conception of Jesus took place at the Spring equinox. Hippolytus placed the equinox on 25 March and then added 9 months to get 25 December, thus establishing the date for festivals. The Roman Chronography of 354 then included an early reference to the celebration of a Nativity feast in December, as of the fourth century. Porter states that Massey's serious historical errors often render his works nonsensical. For example, Massey states that the biblical references to Herod the Great were based on the myth of "Herrut" the evil hydra serpent, while the existence of Herod the Great can be well established without reliance on Christian sources.

title: Gerald Massey


text:
History of computing

The history of computing is longer than the history of computing hardware and modern computing technology and includes the history of methods intended for pen and paper or for chalk and slate, with or without the aid of tables.

Concrete devices
Digital computing is intimately tied to the representation of numbers. But long before abstractions like the number arose, there were mathematical concepts to serve the purposes of civilization. These concepts are implicit in concrete practices such as:
 * One-to-one correspondence, a rule to count how many items, e.g. on a tally stick, eventually abstracted into numbers.
 * Comparison to a standard, a method for assuming reproducibility in a measurement, for example, the number of coins.
 * The 3-4-5 right triangle was a device for assuring a right angle, using ropes with 12 evenly spaced knots, for example.

Numbers
Eventually, the concept of numbers became concrete and familiar enough for counting to arise, at times with sing-song mnemonics to teach sequences to others. All known human languages, except the Piraha language, have words for at least the numerals "one" and "two", and even some animals like the blackbird can distinguish a surprising number of items.

Advances in the numeral system and mathematical notation eventually led to the discovery of mathematical operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, squaring, square root, and so forth. Eventually, the operations were formalized, and concepts about the operations became understood well enough to be stated formally, and even proven. See, for example, Euclid's algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor of two numbers.

By the High Middle Ages, the positional Hindu–Arabic numeral system had reached Europe, which allowed for the systematic computation of numbers. During this period, the representation of a calculation on paper allowed the calculation of mathematical expressions, and the tabulation of mathematical functions such as the square root and the common logarithm (for use in multiplication and division), and the trigonometric functions. By the time of Isaac Newton's research, paper or vellum was an important computing resource, and even in our present time, researchers like Enrico Fermi would cover random scraps of paper with calculation, to satisfy their curiosity about an equation. Even into the period of programmable calculators, Richard Feynman would unhesitatingly compute any steps that overflowed the memory of the calculators, by hand, just to learn the answer; by 1976 Feynman had purchased an HP-25 calculator with a 49 program-step capacity; if a differential equation required more than 49 steps to solve, he could just continue his computation by hand.

Early computation
Mathematical statements need not be abstract only; when a statement can be illustrated with actual numbers, the numbers can be communicated and a community can arise. This allows the repeatable, verifiable statements which are the hallmark of mathematics and science. These kinds of statements have existed for thousands of years, and across multiple civilizations, as shown below:

The earliest known tool for use in computation is the Sumerian abacus, and it was thought to have been invented in Babylon c. 2700–2300 BC. Its original style of usage was by lines drawn in sand with pebbles.

In c. 1050–771 BC, the south-pointing chariot was invented in ancient China. It was the first known geared mechanism to use a differential gear, which was later used in analog computers. The Chinese also invented a more sophisticated abacus from around the 2nd century BC known as the Chinese abacus.

In the 3rd century BC, Archimedes used the mechanical principle of balance (see ) to calculate mathematical problems, such as the number of grains of sand in the universe (The sand reckoner), which also required a recursive notation for numbers (e.g., the myriad myriad).

The Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest known geared computing device. It was designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to circa 100 BC.

According to Simon Singh, Muslim mathematicians also made important advances in cryptography, such as the development of cryptanalysis and frequency analysis by Alkindus. Programmable machines were also invented by Muslim engineers, such as the automatic flute player by the Banū Mūsā brothers.

During the Middle Ages, several European philosophers made attempts to produce analog computer devices. Influenced by the Arabs and Scholasticism, Majorcan philosopher Ramon Llull (1232–1315) devoted a great part of his life to defining and designing several logical machines that, by combining simple and undeniable philosophical truths, could produce all possible knowledge. These machines were never actually built, as they were more of a thought experiment to produce new knowledge in systematic ways; although they could make simple logical operations, they still needed a human being for the interpretation of results. Moreover, they lacked a versatile architecture, each machine serving only very concrete purposes. Despite this, Llull's work had a strong influence on Gottfried Leibniz (early 18th century), who developed his ideas further and built several calculating tools using them.

The apex of this early era of mechanical computing can be seen in the Difference Engine and its successor the Analytical Engine both by Charles Babbage. Babbage never completed constructing either engine, but in 2002 Doron Swade and a group of other engineers at the Science Museum in London completed Babbage's Difference Engine using only materials that would have been available in the 1840s. By following Babbage's detailed design they were able to build a functioning engine, allowing historians to say, with some confidence, that if Babbage would have been able to complete his Difference Engine it would have worked. The additionally advanced Analytical Engine combined concepts from his previous work and that of others to create a device that, if constructed as designed, would have possessed many properties of a modern electronic computer, such as an internal "scratch memory" equivalent to RAM, multiple forms of output including a bell, a graph-plotter, and simple printer, and a programmable input-output "hard" memory of punch cards which it could modify as well as read. The key advancement that Babbage's devices possessed beyond those created before him was that each component of the device was independent of the rest of the machine, much like the components of a modern electronic computer. This was a fundamental shift in thought; previous computational devices served only a single purpose but had to be at best disassembled and reconfigured to solve a new problem. Babbage's devices could be reprogrammed to solve new problems by the entry of new data and act upon previous calculations within the same series of instructions. Ada Lovelace took this concept one step further, by creating a program for the Analytical Engine to calculate Bernoulli numbers, a complex calculation requiring a recursive algorithm. This is considered to be the first example of a true computer program, a series of instructions that act upon data not known in full until the program is run.

Following Babbage, although unaware of his earlier work, Percy Ludgate in 1909 published the 2nd of the only two designs for mechanical analytical engines in history. Two other inventors, Leonardo Torres Quevedo and Vannevar Bush, also did follow-on research based on Babbage's work. In his Essays on Automatics (1914) Torres presented the design of an electromechanical calculating machine and introduced the idea of Floating-point arithmetic. In 1920, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the invention of the arithmometer, Torres presented in Paris the Electromechanical Arithmometer, an arithmetic unit connected to a remote typewriter, on which commands could be typed and the results printed automatically. Bush's paper Instrumental Analysis (1936) discussed using existing IBM punch card machines to implement Babbage's design. In the same year, he started the Rapid Arithmetical Machine project to investigate the problems of constructing an electronic digital computer.

Several examples of analog computation survived into recent times. A planimeter is a device that does integrals, using distance as the analog quantity. Until the 1980s, HVAC systems used air both as the analog quantity and the controlling element. Unlike modern digital computers, analog computers are not very flexible and need to be reconfigured (i.e., reprogrammed) manually to switch them from working on one problem to another. Analog computers had an advantage over early digital computers in that they could be used to solve complex problems using behavioral analogues while the earliest attempts at digital computers were quite limited.

Since computers were rare in this era, the solutions were often hard-coded into paper forms such as nomograms, which could then produce analog solutions to these problems, such as the distribution of pressures and temperatures in a heating system.

Digital electronic computers
"The 'brain' [computer] may one day come down to our level [of the common people] and help with our income-tax and book-keeping calculations. But this is speculation and there is no sign of it so far."

In an 1886 letter, Charles Sanders Peirce described how logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits. During 1880-81 he showed that NOR gates alone (or NAND gates alone) can be used to reproduce the functions of all the other logic gates, but this work on it was unpublished until 1933. The first published proof was by Henry M. Sheffer in 1913, so the NAND logical operation is sometimes called Sheffer stroke; the logical NOR is sometimes called Peirce's arrow. Consequently, these gates are sometimes called universal logic gates.

Eventually, vacuum tubes replaced relays for logic operations. Lee De Forest's modification, in 1907, of the Fleming valve can be used as a logic gate. Ludwig Wittgenstein introduced a version of the 16-row truth table as proposition 5.101 of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921). Walther Bothe, inventor of the coincidence circuit, got part of the 1954 Nobel Prize in physics, for the first modern electronic AND gate in 1924. Konrad Zuse designed and built electromechanical logic gates for his computer Z1 (from 1935 to 1938).

The first recorded idea of using digital electronics for computing was the 1931 paper "The Use of Thyratrons for High Speed Automatic Counting of Physical Phenomena" by C. E. Wynn-Williams. From 1934 to 1936, NEC engineer Akira Nakashima, Claude Shannon, and Victor Shestakov published papers introducing switching circuit theory, using digital electronics for Boolean algebraic operations.

In 1936 Alan Turing published his seminal paper On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem in which he modeled computation in terms of a one-dimensional storage tape, leading to the idea of the Universal Turing machine and Turing-complete systems.

The first digital electronic computer was developed in the period April 1936 - June 1939, in the IBM Patent Department, Endicott, New York by Arthur Halsey Dickinson. In this computer IBM introduced, a calculating device with a keyboard, processor and electronic output (display). The competitor to IBM was the digital electronic computer NCR3566, developed in NCR, Dayton, Ohio by Joseph Desch and Robert Mumma in the period April 1939 - August 1939. The IBM and NCR machines were decimal, executing addition and subtraction in binary position code.

In December 1939 John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry completed their experimental model to prove the concept of the Atanasoff–Berry computer (ABC) which began development in 1937. This experimental model is binary, executed addition and subtraction in octal binary code and is the first binary digital electronic computing device. The Atanasoff–Berry computer was intended to solve systems of linear equations, though it was not programmable. The computer was never truly completed due to Atanasoff's departure from Iowa State University in 1942 to work for the United States Navy. Many people credit ABC with many of the ideas used in later developments during the age of early electronic computing.

The Z3 computer, built by German inventor Konrad Zuse in 1941, was the first programmable, fully automatic computing machine, but it was not electronic.

During World War II, ballistics computing was done by women, who were hired as "computers." The term computer remained one that referred to mostly women (now seen as "operator") until 1945, after which it took on the modern definition of machinery it presently holds.

The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the first electronic general-purpose computer, announced to the public in 1946. It was Turing-complete, digital, and capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems. Women implemented the programming for machines like the ENIAC, and men created the hardware.

The Manchester Baby was the first electronic stored-program computer. It was built at the Victoria University of Manchester by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program on 21 June 1948.

William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at Bell Labs invented the first working transistor, the point-contact transistor, in 1947, followed by the bipolar junction transistor in 1948. At the University of Manchester in 1953, a team under the leadership of Tom Kilburn designed and built the first transistorized computer, called the Transistor Computer, a machine using the newly developed transistors instead of valves. The first stored-program transistor computer was the ETL Mark III, developed by Japan's Electrotechnical Laboratory from 1954 to 1956. However, early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on a mass-production basis, which limited them to a number of specialized applications.

In 1954, 95% of computers in service were being used for engineering and scientific purposes.

Personal computers
The metal–oxide–silicon field-effect transistor (MOSFET), also known as the MOS transistor, was invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959. It was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range of uses. The MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuit chips. The MOSFET is the most widely used transistor in computers, and is the fundamental building block of digital electronics.

The silicon-gate MOS integrated circuit was developed by Federico Faggin at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968. This led to the development of the first single-chip microprocessor, the Intel 4004. The Intel 4004 was developed as a single-chip microprocessor from 1969 to 1970, led by Intel's Federico Faggin, Marcian Hoff, and Stanley Mazor, and Busicom's Masatoshi Shima. The chip was mainly designed and realized by Faggin, with his silicon-gate MOS technology. The microprocessor led to the microcomputer revolution, with the development of the microcomputer, which would later be called the personal computer (PC).

Most early microprocessors, such as the Intel 8008 and Intel 8080, were 8-bit. Texas Instruments released the first fully 16-bit microprocessor, the TMS9900 processor, in June 1976. They used the microprocessor in the TI-99/4 and TI-99/4A computers.

The 1980s brought about significant advances with microprocessors that greatly impacted the fields of engineering and other sciences. The Motorola 68000 microprocessor had a processing speed that was far superior to the other microprocessors being used at the time. Because of this, having a newer, faster microprocessor allowed for the newer microcomputers that came along after to be more efficient in the amount of computing they were able to do. This was evident in the 1983 release of the Apple Lisa. The Lisa was one of the first personal computers with a graphical user interface (GUI) that was sold commercially. It ran on the Motorola 68000 CPU and used both dual floppy disk drives and a 5 MB hard drive for storage. The machine also had 1MB of RAM used for running software from disk without rereading the disk persistently. After the failure of the Lisa in terms of sales, Apple released its first Macintosh computer, still running on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, but with only 128KB of RAM, one floppy drive, and no hard drive to lower the price.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, computers became more useful for personal and work purposes, such as word processing. In 1989, Apple released the Macintosh Portable, it weighed 7.3 kg and was extremely expensive, costing US$7,300. At launch, it was one of the most powerful laptops available, but due to the price and weight, it was not met with great success and was discontinued only two years later. That same year Intel introduced the Touchstone Delta supercomputer, which had 512 microprocessors. This technological advancement was very significant, as it was used as a model for some of the fastest multi-processor systems in the world. It was even used as a prototype for Caltech researchers, who used the model for projects like real-time processing of satellite images and simulating molecular models for various fields of research.

Supercomputers
In terms of supercomputing, the first widely acknowledged supercomputer was the Control Data Corporation (CDC) 6600 built in 1964 by Seymour Cray. Its maximum speed was 40 MHz or 3 million floating point operations per second (FLOPS). The CDC 6600 was replaced by the CDC 7600 in 1969; although its normal clock speed was not faster than the 6600, the 7600 was still faster due to its peak clock speed, which was approximately 30 times faster than that of the 6600. Although CDC was a leader in supercomputers, their relationship with Seymour Cray (which had already been deteriorating) completely collapsed. In 1972, Cray left CDC and began his own company, Cray Research Inc. With support from investors in Wall Street, an industry fueled by the Cold War, and without the restrictions he had within CDC, he created the Cray-1 supercomputer. With a clock speed of 80 MHz or 136 megaFLOPS, Cray developed a name for himself in the computing world. By 1982, Cray Research produced the Cray X-MP equipped with multiprocessing and in 1985 released the Cray-2, which continued with the trend of multiprocessing and clocked at 1.9 gigaFLOPS. Cray Research developed the Cray Y-MP in 1988, however afterward struggled to continue to produce supercomputers. This was largely because the Cold War had ended, and the demand for cutting-edge computing by colleges and the government declined drastically and the demand for microprocessing units increased.

In 1998, David Bader developed the first Linux supercomputer using commodity parts. While at the University of New Mexico, Bader sought to build a supercomputer running Linux using consumer off-the-shelf parts and a high-speed low-latency interconnection network. The prototype utilized an Alta Technologies "AltaCluster" of eight dual, 333 MHz, Intel Pentium II computers running a modified Linux kernel. Bader ported a significant amount of software to provide Linux support for necessary components as well as code from members of the National Computational Science Alliance (NCSA) to ensure interoperability, as none of it had been run on Linux previously. Using the successful prototype design, he led the development of "RoadRunner," the first Linux supercomputer for open use by the national science and engineering community via the National Science Foundation's National Technology Grid. RoadRunner was put into production use in April 1999. At the time of its deployment, it was considered one of the 100 fastest supercomputers in the world. Though Linux-based clusters using consumer-grade parts, such as Beowulf, existed before the development of Bader's prototype and RoadRunner, they lacked the scalability, bandwidth, and parallel computing capabilities to be considered "true" supercomputers.

Today, supercomputers are still used by the governments of the world and educational institutions for computations such as simulations of natural disasters, genetic variant searches within a population relating to disease, and more. , the fastest supercomputer is Frontier.

Navigation and astronomy
Starting with known special cases, the calculation of logarithms and trigonometric functions can be performed by looking up numbers in a mathematical table, and interpolating between known cases. For small enough differences, this linear operation was accurate enough for use in navigation and astronomy in the Age of Exploration. The uses of interpolation have thrived in the past 500 years: by the twentieth century Leslie Comrie and W.J. Eckert systematized the use of interpolation in tables of numbers for punch card calculation.

Weather prediction
The numerical solution of differential equations, notably the Navier-Stokes equations was an important stimulus to computing, with Lewis Fry Richardson's numerical approach to solving differential equations. The first computerized weather forecast was performed in 1950 by a team composed of American meteorologists Jule Charney, Philip Duncan Thompson, Larry Gates, and Norwegian meteorologist Ragnar Fjørtoft, applied mathematician John von Neumann, and ENIAC programmer Klara Dan von Neumann. To this day, some of the most powerful computer systems on Earth are used for weather forecasts.

Symbolic computations
By the late 1960s, computer systems could perform symbolic algebraic manipulations well enough to pass college-level calculus courses.

Important women and their contributions
Women are often underrepresented in STEM fields when compared to their male counterparts. In the modern era before the 1960s, computing was widely seen as "women's work" since it was associated with the operation of tabulating machines and other mechanical office work. The accuracy of this association varied from place to place. In America, Margaret Hamilton recalled an environment dominated by men, while Elsie Shutt recalled surprise at seeing even half of the computer operators at Raytheon were men. Machine operators in Britain were mostly women into the early 1970s. As these perceptions changed and computing became a high-status career, the field became more dominated by men. Professor Janet Abbate, in her book Recoding Gender, writes: Yet women were a significant presence in the early decades of computing. They made up the majority of the first computer programmers during World War II; they held positions of responsibility and influence in the early computer industry; and they were employed in numbers that, while a small minority of the total, compared favorably with women's representation in many other areas of science and engineering. Some female programmers of the 1950s and 1960s would have scoffed at the notion that programming would ever be considered a masculine occupation, yet these women’s experiences and contributions were forgotten all too quickly.

Some notable examples of women in the history of computing are:
 * Ada Lovelace: wrote the addendum to Babbage's Analytical Machine. Detailing, in poetic style, the first computer algorithm; a description of exactly how The Analytical Machine should have worked based on its design.
 * Grace Murray Hopper: a pioneer of computing. She worked alongside Howard H. Aiken on IBM's Mark I. Hopper and also came up with the term "debugging."
 * Hedy Lamarr: invented a "frequency hopping" technology that the Navy used during World War II to control torpedoes via radio signals. This same technology is also used today in creating Bluetooth and Wi-Fi signals.
 * Frances Elizabeth "Betty" Holberton: invented "breakpoints" which are mini pauses put into lines of computer code to help programmers easily detect, troubleshoot, and solve problems.
 * The women who originally programmed the ENIAC: Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Marlyn Meltzer, Fran Bilas, Ruth Lichterman, and Betty Holberton (see above.)
 * Jean E. Sammet: co-designed COBOL, a widely used programming language.
 * Frances Allen: computer scientist and pioneer in the field of optimizing compilers, first woman to win the Turing Award.
 * Karen Spärck Jones: responsible for "inverse document frequency" - a concept that is most commonly used by search engines.
 * Dana Angluin: made fundamental contributions to computational learning theory.
 * Margaret Hamilton: the director of the Software Engineering Division at MIT, which developed on-board flight software for the Apollo's Missions to Space.
 * Barbara Liskov: developed the "Liskov substitution principle."
 * Radia Perlman: invented the "Spanning Tree Protocol", a key network protocol used in Ethernet networks.
 * Stephanie "Steve" Shirley: started F International, a highly successful freelance software company.
 * Sophie Wilson: helped design ARM processor architecture widely used in many products such as smartphones and video games.
 * Ann Hardy: pioneered computer time-sharing systems.
 * Lynn Conway: revolutionised microchip design and production by co-introducing structured VLSI design among other inventions.
 * The women at Bletchley Park: around 8,000 women who worked in numerous capacities with British cryptanalysis during World War II. Many came from the Women's Royal Naval Service (who were called "wrens") as well as the Women's Auxiliary Air Force ("WAAFs.") They were instrumental in cracking the "Enigma" cipher and helping the Allies win the war.

British history links

 * Resurrection Bulletin of the Computer Conservation Society (UK) 1990–2006
 * The story of the Manchester Mark I (archive), 50th Anniversary website at the University of Manchester
 * Richmond Arabian History of Computing Group Linking the Gulf and Europe
 * History of Computing Collection; University of Manchester Library

Historija računarstva Istorija računara

title: History of computing