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Davenport Locomotive Works

The Davenport Locomotive Works, of Davenport, Iowa, USA was formed as the W W Whitehead Company in 1901. In 1902 the company commenced building light locomotives. The Company was renamed the Davenport Locomotive Works in 1904.

In late 1930 Davenport was licensed to assemble and market R G LeTourneau Inc products under the Davenport-LeTourneau brand. The agreement is believed to have ended in 1935 when LeTourneau moved to Peoria, Illinois. Davenport also sold Davenport-Winchell three-wheel roller conversions of industrial wheel tractors, Davenport-Frink snow plows, which were built in license from Frink Sno-Plows Inc, and Reynolds patented Mov-Mor rotary scrapers.

In 1933 the company was again restructured and renamed the Davenport-Besler Corporation which continued in business until 1956. William George Besler was a Director at the time of the restructuring. The company acquired the locomotive business of H. K. Porter, Inc in 1950 and from then on produced Porter designs as well as its own. The Canadian Locomotive Company acquired Davenport-Besler in 1955, closing it the following year.

The company had built small steam locomotives early on; its first gasoline-fueled internal combustion engined locomotive was built in 1924 and first diesel locomotive in 1927, a 30 ST diesel-electric for the Northern Illinois Coal Company of Boonville, Indiana.

An extensive range of diesel locomotives in all industrial sizes followed, utilizing either mechanical torque converter or electric transmission, the former for the smaller locomotives. Most were used by a variety of industrial customers, but some railroads also bought Davenport locomotives, particularly the 44 ST size: being the largest locomotive then allowed by union rules to be operated by one person. Railroad buyers included the Rock Island, Milwaukee Road, Santa Fe, Frisco, and Missouri Pacific. In 1963, that rule was relaxed and railroads ceased buying industrial-sized locomotives for light switching.

Davenport built a number of locomotives for the United States Army including World War I trench railways, the USATC S100 Class 0-6-0 of World War II, and eighteen larger switcher locomotives during the 1950s, two of which were adjustable in gauge: One could operate on broad gauges up to, and one on narrow gauges—the latter operating for a period on the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad.

Three Davenport 500 HP locomotives (built 1952) of the State Railway of Thailand are still in service as of March 2023.

Various Davenport locomotives are preserved in the US as well as in other parts of the world.

Preservation

 * Davenport #1597 Kiama an Locomotive of 1917 at the Illawarra Light Railway Museum
 * Davenport-Besler #2245 - a 30 ton gauge 0-4-0 Diesel switcher of 1937 at the Colorado Railroad Museum
 * Davenport #2240 30 ton 0-6-0 Switcher, 1936, used on the US Construction Railroad during the construction of the Hoover Dam and kept at the Nevada State Railroad Museum, Boulder City, Nevada
 * Davenport Locomotive Narrow Gauge (painted Wayne County Roads No 7) is on display at the John D. Dingell Transit Center in Dearborn, Michigan.
 * Davenport #5240 - a First world war trench engine in  gauge. Restored to working order in Arroyo Grande, CA

title: Davenport Locomotive Works


text:
Talk:Kelly Osbourne

Married?
Did she get married the other day? Was at Electric Picnic over the weekend and some of the bands were congratulating her, can't remember who she supposedly married though...

The View Controversy
I recently added the controversy from Osbourne's statements on The View to the article, without seeing that this had previously been removed per WP:NOTNEWS. However, given the lasting coverage of the incident and its virality (as noted by MULTIPLE reliable sources) it still warrants inclusion in the article as a notable incident. Thoughts? Coalah (talk) 14:27, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Kelly Osbourne


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Appleton

Appleton may refer to:

People and fictional characters

 * Appleton (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters
 * Appleton family, an American political, religious and mercantile family
 * Appleton P. Clark Jr. (1865–1955), American architect
 * Victor Appleton, house pseudonym used by authors of the Tom Swift book series

Australia

 * Appleton Dock

Canada

 * Appleton, Newfoundland and Labrador
 * Appleton, Ontario

United Kingdom

 * Appleton, a deserted medieval village site in the parish of Flitcham with Appleton, Norfolk, England
 * Appleton, Oxfordshire, England
 * Appleton Laboratory, Ditton Park, now Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell, England
 * Appleton-le-Moors, Yorkshire, England
 * Appleton Thorn, Warrington, Cheshire, England
 * Appleton, Warrington, Cheshire, England
 * Appleton, a northern area of Widnes, Cheshire, England
 * Appleton railway station, a closed station in northern Widnes, England
 * Appleton Wiske, North Yorkshire, England
 * East Appleton, North Yorkshire, England

United States

 * Appleton, Arkansas
 * Appleton, Illinois
 * Appleton, Maine
 * Appleton, Maryland
 * Appleton Farms, Ipswich, Massachusetts
 * Appleton, Minnesota
 * Appleton, New York
 * Appleton, Ohio
 * Appleton, South Carolina
 * Appleton, Tennessee
 * Appleton, Washington
 * Appleton, Wisconsin
 * Old Appleton, Missouri
 * Appleton City, Missouri
 * Appleton Township (disambiguation)

Other uses

 * Appleton, Indiana, a fictional town from Jason Robert Brown's musical 13
 * Appleton (crater), a lunar crater
 * Appleton (music duo), a musical duo comprising All Saints members Natalie and Nicole Appleton
 * Appleton Cattle Company, an Australian beef producer which bought several large properties from S. Kidman %26 Co in 2023
 * Appleton International Airport, outside Appleton, Wisconsin, United States
 * Appleton spotlight, specialized moveable automobile spotlights (used especially for delivery or police vehicles)
 * D. Appleton & Company, a former publisher of books and textbooks, based in New York and Boston

title: Appleton


text:
List of airports in Poland

This is a list of airports in Poland, sorted by location, IATA and ICAO airport codes, passenger traffic and runway surface.

An additional airport, slated to open in 2028, is planned for greater Warsaw. Warsaw Solidarity Airport, also known as Central Communication Port/Centralny Port Komunikacyjny Airport, will be 25 miles southwest of the national capital in Baranów.

Airports with commercial passenger service
Source:

Defunct passenger airports
Airports that served commercial passenger traffic in the past.

title: List of airports in Poland


text:
List of New Hampshire state prisons

This is a list of state prisons in New Hampshire overseen by the state Department of Corrections. It does not include federal prisons or county jails located in the state of New Hampshire.

 * Lakes Region Facility (closed 2009)
 * New Hampshire State Prison for Men
 * New Hampshire State Prison for Women
 * Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility
 * Shea Farm Halfway House

title: List of New Hampshire state prisons


text:
Middleville

Middleville is the name of some places in Canada & the United States of America:

 * Middleville, Ontario
 * Middleville, Michigan
 * Middleville, New York
 * Middleville Township, Minnesota

title: Middleville


text:
River Clwyd

The River Clwyd (Afon Clwyd, ) is a river in Wales that rises in the Clocaenog Forest 5 mi northwest of Corwen. Its total length is 35 mi.

It flows due south until, at Melin-y-wig, it veers north-eastwards due to the Vale of Clwyd Fault and passes through Derwen, Llanelidan, Pwllglas and Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd to Ruthin. Here it leaves the relatively narrow valley and enters a broad agricultural vale, the Vale of Clwyd (Welsh: Dyffryn Clwyd). Just south of Denbigh, it is joined by the River Clywedog. This substantial tributary also has its source in the Clocaenog Forest but drains out to the east and north of the forest and passes through Cyffylliog, Bontuchel and Rhewl before its confluence with the main river.

Then the Clwyd meanders northwards through the fertile Clwyd valley. Around 1.5 mi north of St Asaph, the river is joined by a tributary as large as the main river, the River Elwy. In normal flows at low tide, the waters of these two rivers can be seen flowing side by side down the river with little mixing.

The River Elwy has its source a long way to the west on the flanks of Moel Seisiog south-east of Llanrwst. It also has a tributary the River Aled with its source in the upland lake Llyn Aled. The Elwy flows principally eastwards to join the Clwyd passing through few villages. At the confluence of the Elwy and the Clwyd, the river becomes tidal and enters a narrow estuary with much wildlife before meeting the Irish Sea at Rhyl.

In 1277, King Edward I sited a castle next to the Clwyd at Rhuddlan. In order for his supply barges to reach the castle, he employed 968 men to work on what was called 'The Great Ditch'. He straightened the 3 mi stretch of river that ran from the castle to the sea. This was an enormous feat of engineering, compared even to today's modern standards, and it is still possible to make out the original loops and turns of the Clwyd using satellite imagery.

The former county of Clwyd, consisting of the modern-day principal areas of Denbighshire, Flintshire, Wrexham and most of Conwy, was named after the river, when it was created as a two-tier county in 1974.

Fish in the river include sea trout (sewin), as well as Atlantic salmon. In the 2017 season there were reported catches of wild brown trout, most of which were returned unharmed on a voluntary catch and release system. Rhyl and St Asaph Angling Association controls 20 mi of fishing on the River Clwyd and its tributaries the River Elwy and River Aled.

title: River Clwyd


text:
Alfred Valenzuela

MG Alfred A. Valenzuela is a retired United States Army major general who commanded United States Army South (USARSO) at Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico and San Antonio, Texas. Served as Deputy Commanding General DCINC ) US Southern Command, Panama/Miami.

Served in Kuwait with 3d Infantry Division.

Awards and decorations
His decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Army Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit (with three Oak Leaf Clusters), Soldier's Medal for Heroism, Bronze Star with "V" device, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal (with two Oak Leaf Clusters), Joint Service Commendation Medal, Army Commendation Medal (with Oak Leaf Cluster), Joint Service Achievement Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, Humanitarian Service Medal and the Joint Meritorious Unit Award (3rd award).

Served in Haiti, Colombia, Korea, Peru, Turkey, Germany, Kuwait, Grenada, Puerto Rico, Panama, El Salvador, Somalia & numerous Joint & InterAgency assignments. served in 6 Infantry Divisions & 3 Combat Corps
 * Defense Distinguished Service Medal ribbon.svg Defense Distinguished Service Medal
 * Distinguished Service Medal ribbon.svg Army Distinguished Service Medal
 * US Defense Superior Service Medal ribbon.svg Defense Superior Service Medal
 * Legion of Merit ribbon.svg Legion of Merit with three oak leaf clusters
 * Soldier's Medal ribbon.svg Soldier's Medal for Heroism.
 * Bronze Star ribbon.svg Bronze Star with Valor Device for Valor in combat.
 * Defense Meritorious Service Medal ribbon.svg Defense Meritorious Service Medal
 * Meritorious Service Medal ribbon.svg Meritorious Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters
 * Joint Service Commendation ribbon.svg Joint Service Commendation Medal
 * Army Commendation Medal ribbon.svg Army Commendation Medal with oak leaf cluster
 * Us jointservachiev rib.svg Joint Service Achievement Medal
 * Army Achievement Medal ribbon.svg Army Achievement Medal
 * Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal ribbon.svg Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal
 * Humanitarian Service ribbon.svg Humanitarian Service Medal
 * Joint Meritorious Unit Award-3d.svg Joint Meritorious Unit Award with two oak leaf clusters

Civilian career
He is a Senior Consultant for the Center of Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University School of Law.

He wrote the book No Greater Love: The Lives & Times of Hispanic Soldiers with Jason Lemons.

Major contributor to the book entitled " Right Before Our Eyes: Latinos Past, Present & Future"

He is the Senior Military Advisor to the Warrior Defense Project, part of the St. Mary's Law School

He wrote: The Essence and Variation of Soldiers in Politics: A Dimensional Typology of Latin American Leadership and Regimes

He is an Advisor to the Military Health Institute, University of Texas Health Science Center

Recently appointed by the Texas Supreme Court to the Texas Access Judicial Commission: co-chair of Veterans committee

Personal life
Valenzuela is married to Esther Valenzuela and they have two children. Lori Valenzuela is a Justice of the 4th Court of Appeals. Served as Criminal District Court Judge for 10 years & was the co founder of the Veterans Felony Treatment Court. Alfred II is a Senior Program manager in the Edicational arena.

Other Awards

 * Eagle Scout
 * Hall of Fame: Thomas Jefferson High School
 * Distinguished Alumni St. Mary's University
 * Hall of Fame of the Boy's & Girls Club of America
 * Named "One of the Most 100 Influential Hispanics" by Hispanic Business Magazine.

Philanthropy and civic engagement
Appointed by the US President, He is currently serving as a commissioner for The World War One Centennial Commission. He is serving as the Co-Chair of the Military Advisory Council of America 250. They are the military arm of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Congressional Commission.

Has an Educational Foundation that gives scholarships to Soldiers children that he buried from the Iraq/Afghanistan wars.

title: Alfred Valenzuela


text:
USB flash drive

A flash drive (also thumb drive [US], memory stick [UK], and pen drive/pendrive elsewhere) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. A typical USB drive is removable, rewritable, and smaller than an optical disc, and usually weighs less than 1 oz. Since first offered for sale in late 2000, the storage capacities of USB drives range from 8 megabytes to 256 gigabytes (GB), 512 GB and 1 terabyte (TB). As of 2023, 2 TB flash drives were the largest currently in production. Some allow up to 100,000 write/erase cycles, depending on the exact type of memory chip used, and are thought to physically last between 10 and 100 years under normal circumstances (shelf storage time).

Common uses of USB flash drives are for storage, supplementary back-ups, and transferring of computer files. Compared with floppy disks or CDs, they are smaller, faster, have significantly more capacity, and are more durable due to a lack of moving parts. Additionally, they are less vulnerable to electromagnetic interference than floppy disks, and are unharmed by surface scratches (unlike CDs). However, as with any flash storage, data loss from bit leaking due to prolonged lack of electrical power and the possibility of spontaneous controller failure due to poor manufacturing could make it unsuitable for long-term archiving of data. The ability to retain data is affected by the controller's firmware, internal data redundancy, and error correction algorithms.

Until about 2005, most desktop and laptop computers were supplied with floppy disk drives in addition to USB ports, but floppy disk drives became obsolete after widespread adoption of USB ports and the larger USB drive capacity compared to the "1.44 megabyte" (1440 kilobyte) 3.5-inch floppy disk.

USB flash drives use the USB mass storage device class standard, supported natively by modern operating systems such as Windows, Linux, macOS and other Unix-like systems, as well as many BIOS boot ROMs. USB drives with USB 2.0 support can store more data and transfer faster than much larger optical disc drives like CD-RW or DVD-RW drives and can be read by many other systems such as the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, DVD players, automobile entertainment systems, and in a number of handheld devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, though the electronically similar SD card is better suited for those devices, due to their standardized form factor, which allows the card to be housed inside a device without protruding.

A flash drive consists of a small printed circuit board carrying the circuit elements and a USB connector, insulated electrically and protected inside a plastic, metal, or rubberized case, which can be carried in a pocket or on a key chain, for example. Some are equipped with an I/O indication LED that lights up or blinks upon access. The USB connector may be protected by a removable cap or by retracting into the body of the drive, although it is not likely to be damaged if unprotected. Most flash drives use a standard type-A USB connection allowing connection with a port on a personal computer, but drives for other interfaces also exist (e.g. micro-USB and USB-C ports). USB flash drives draw power from the computer via the USB connection. Some devices combine the functionality of a portable media player with USB flash storage; they require a battery only when used to play music on the go.

History
The basis for USB flash drives is flash memory, a type of floating-gate semiconductor memory invented by Fujio Masuoka in the early 1980s. Flash memory uses floating-gate MOSFET transistors as memory cells.

Multiple individuals have staked a claim to having invented the USB flash drive. On April 5, 1999, Amir Ban, Dov Moran, and Oron Ogdan of M-Systems, an Israeli company, filed a patent application entitled "Architecture for a Universal Serial Bus-Based PC Flash Disk". The patent was subsequently granted on November 14, 2000 and these individuals have often been recognized as the inventors of the USB flash drive. Also in 1999, Shimon Shmueli, an engineer at IBM, submitted an invention disclosure asserting that he had invented the USB flash drive. A Singaporean company named Trek 2000 International is the first company known to have sold a USB flash drive, and has also maintained that it is the original inventor of the device. Finally Pua Khein-Seng, a Malaysian engineer, has also been recognized by some as a possible inventor of the device.

Given these competing inventor claims, patent disputes involving the USB flash drive have arisen over the years. Both Trek 2000 International and Netac Technology have accused others of infringing their patents on the USB flash drive. However, despite these lawsuits, the question of who was the first to invent the USB flash drive has not been definitively settled and multiple claims persist.

Technology improvements
Flash drives are often measured by the rate at which they transfer data. Transfer rates may be given in megabytes per second (MB/s), megabits per second (Mbit/s), or in optical drive multipliers such as "180X" (180 times 150 KiB/s). File transfer rates vary considerably among devices. Second generation flash drives have claimed to read at up to 30 MB/s and write at about half that rate, which was about 20 times faster than the theoretical transfer rate achievable by the previous model, USB 1.1, which is limited to 12 Mbit/s (1.5 MB/s) with accounted overhead. The effective transfer rate of a device is significantly affected by the data access pattern.

By 2002, USB flash drives had USB 2.0 connectivity, which has 480 Mbit/s as the transfer rate upper bound; after accounting for the protocol overhead That same year, Intel sparked widespread use of second generation USB by including them within its laptops.

By 2010, the maximum available storage capacity for the devices had reached upwards of 128 GB. USB 3.0 was slow to appear in laptops. Through 2010, the majority of laptop models still contained only USB 2.0.

In January 2013, tech company Kingston, released a flash drive with 1 TB of storage. The first USB 3.1 type-C flash drives, with read/write speeds of around 530 MB/s, were announced in March 2015. By July 2016, flash drives with 8 to 256 GB capacity were sold more frequently than those with capacities between 512 GB and 1 TB. In 2017, Kingston Technology announced the release of a 2-TB flash drive. In 2018, SanDisk announced a 1 TB USB-C flash drive, the smallest of its kind.

On a USB flash drive, one end of the device is fitted with a single Standard-A USB plug; some flash drives additionally offer a micro USB or USB-C plug, facilitating data transfers between different devices.

Technology

On a USB flash drive, one end of the device is fitted with a single USB plug; some flash drives additionally offer a micro USB plug, facilitating data transfers between different devices.

Inside the casing is a small printed circuit board, which has some power circuitry and a small number of surface-mounted integrated circuits (ICs). Typically, one of these ICs provides an interface between the USB connector and the onboard memory, while the other is the flash memory. Drives typically use the USB mass storage device class to communicate with the host.

Flash memory
Flash memory combines a number of older technologies, with lower cost, lower power consumption and small size made possible by advances in semiconductor device fabrication technology. The memory storage is based on earlier EPROM and EEPROM technologies. These had limited capacity, were slow for both reading and writing, required complex high-voltage drive circuitry, and could be re-written only after erasing the entire contents of the chip.

Hardware designers later developed EEPROMs with the erasure region broken up into smaller "fields" that could be erased individually without affecting the others. Altering the contents of a particular memory location involved copying the entire field into an off-chip buffer memory, erasing the field, modifying the data as required in the buffer, and re-writing it into the same field. This required considerable computer support, and PC-based EEPROM flash memory systems often carried their own dedicated microprocessor system. Flash drives are more or less a miniaturized version of this.

The development of high-speed serial data interfaces such as USB made semiconductor memory systems with serially accessed storage viable, and the simultaneous development of small, high-speed, low-power microprocessor systems allowed this to be incorporated into extremely compact systems. Serial access requires far fewer electrical connections for the memory chips than parallel access, simplifying the manufacture of multi-gigabyte drives.

Computers access flash memory systems very much like hard disk drives, where the controller system has full control over where information is actually stored. The actual EEPROM writing and erasure processes are, however, still very similar to the earlier systems described above.

Many low-cost MP3 players simply add extra software and a battery to a standard flash memory control microprocessor so it can also serve as a music playback decoder. Most of these players can also be used as a conventional flash drive, for storing files of any type.

Essential components

There are typically five parts to a flash drive:

 * USB plug – provides a physical interface to the host computer. Some USB flash drives use USB plug that does not protect the contacts, with the possibility of plugging it into the USB port in the wrong orientation, if the connector type is not symmetrical.
 * USB mass storage controller – a small microcontroller with a small amount of on-chip ROM and RAM.
 * NAND flash memory chip(s) – stores data (NAND flash is typically also used in digital cameras).
 * Crystal oscillator – produces the device's main clock signal and controls the device's data output through a phase-locked loop.
 * Cover – typically made of plastic or metal, protecting the electronics against mechanical stress and even possible short circuits.

Additional components
The typical device may also include:

 * Jumpers and test pins – for testing during the flash drive's manufacturing or loading code into its microcontroller.
 * LEDs – indicate data transfers or data reads and writes.
 * Write-protect switches – Enable or disable writing of data into memory.
 * Unpopulated space – provides space to include a second memory chip. Having this second space allows the manufacturer to use a single printed circuit board for more than one storage size device.
 * USB connector cover or cap – reduces the risk of damage, prevents the entry of dirt or other contaminants, and improves overall device appearance. Some flash drives use retractable USB connectors instead. Others have a swivel arrangement so that the connector can be protected without removing anything.
 * Transport aid – the cap or the body often contains a hole suitable for connection to a key chain or lanyard. Connecting the cap, rather than the body, can allow the drive itself to be lost.
 * Some drives offer expandable storage via an internal memory card slot, much like a memory card reader.

Size and style of packaging

Most USB flash drives weigh less than 1 oz. While some manufacturers are competing for the smallest size, with the biggest memory, offering drives only a few millimeters larger than the USB plug itself, some manufacturers differentiate their products by using elaborate housings, which are often bulky and make the drive difficult to connect to the USB port. Because the USB port connectors on a computer housing are often closely spaced, plugging a flash drive into a USB port may block an adjacent port. Such devices may carry the USB logo only if sold with a separate extension cable. Such cables are USB-compatible but do not conform to the USB standard.

USB flash drives have been integrated into other commonly carried items, such as watches, pens, laser pointers, and even the Swiss Army Knife; others have been fitted with novelty cases such as toy cars or Lego bricks. USB flash drives with images of dragons, cats or aliens are very popular in Asia. The small size, robustness and cheapness of USB flash drives make them an increasingly popular peripheral for case modding.

File system
Most flash drives ship preformatted with the FAT32, or exFAT file systems. The ubiquity of the FAT32 file system allows the drive to be accessed on virtually any host device with USB support. Also, standard FAT maintenance utilities (e.g., ScanDisk) can be used to repair or retrieve corrupted data. However, because a flash drive appears as a USB-connected hard drive to the host system, the drive can be reformatted to any file system supported by the host operating system.

Defragmenting
Flash drives can be defragmented. There is a widespread opinion that defragmenting brings little advantage (as there is no mechanical head that moves from fragment to fragment), and that defragmenting shortens the life of the drive by making many unnecessary writes. However, some sources claim that defragmenting a flash drive can improve performance (mostly due to improved caching of the clustered data), and the additional wear on flash drives may not be significant.

Even distribution
Some file systems are designed to distribute usage over an entire memory device without concentrating usage on any part (e.g., for a directory) to prolong the life of simple flash memory devices. Some USB flash drives have this 'wear leveling' feature built into the software controller to prolong device life, while others do not, so it is not necessarily helpful to install one of these file systems.

Hard disk drive
Sectors are 512 bytes long, for compatibility with hard disk drives, and the first sector can contain a master boot record and a partition table. Therefore, USB flash units can be partitioned just like hard disk drives.

Longevity
The memory in flash drives was commonly engineered with multi-level cell (MLC) based memory that is good for around 3,000-5,000 program-erase cycles. Nowadays Triple-level Cell (TLC) is also often used, which has up to 500 write cycles per physical sector, while some high-end flash drives have single-level cell (SLC) based memory that is good for around 30,000 writes. There is virtually no limit to the number of reads from such flash memory, so a well-worn USB drive may be write-protected to help ensure the life of individual cells.

Estimation of flash memory endurance is a challenging subject that depends on the SLC/MLC/TLC memory type, size of the flash memory chips, and actual usage pattern. As a result, a USB flash drive can last from a few days to several hundred years.

Regardless of the endurance of the memory itself, the USB connector hardware is specified to withstand only around 1,500 insert-removal cycles.

Counterfeit products
Counterfeit USB flash drives are sometimes sold with claims of having higher capacities than they actually possess. These are typically low-capacity USB drives with modified flash memory controller firmware that emulates larger capacity drives (for example, a 2 GB drive being marketed as a 64 GB drive). When plugged into a computer, they report being the larger capacity they were sold as, but when data is written to them, either the write fails, the drive freezes up, or it overwrites existing data. Software tools exist to check and detect fake USB drives, and in some cases it is possible to repair these devices to remove the false capacity information and use its real storage limit.

File transfer speeds
Transfer speeds are technically determined by the slowest of three factors: the USB version used, the speed in which the USB controller device can read and write data onto the flash memory, and the speed of the hardware bus, especially in the case of add-on USB ports.

USB flash drives usually specify their read and write speeds in megabytes per second (MB/s); read speed is usually faster. These speeds are for optimal conditions; real-world speeds are usually slower. In particular, circumstances that often lead to speeds much lower than advertised are transfer (particularly writing) of many small files rather than a few very large ones, and mixed reading and writing to the same device.

In a typical well-conducted review of a number of high-performance USB 3.0 drives, a drive that could read large files at 68 MB/s and write at 46 MB/s, could only manage 14 MB/s and 0.3 MB/s with many small files. When combining streaming reads and writes the speed of another drive, the drive could read at 92 MB/s and write at 70 MB/s, was 8 MB/s. These differences differ radically from one drive to another; some could write small files 10% faster than for large ones. The examples given are chosen to illustrate extremes.

Personal data transport
The most common use of flash drives is to transport and store personal files, such as documents, pictures and videos. Individuals also store medical information on flash drives for emergencies and disaster preparation.

Secure storage of data, application and software files
With wide deployment of flash drives in various environments (secured or otherwise), data and information security remain critical issues. Biometrics and encryption are becoming the norm as data security needs increase; on-the-fly encryption systems are particularly useful in this regard, as they can transparently encrypt large amounts of data. In some cases, a secure USB drive may use a hardware-based encryption mechanism that uses a hardware module instead of software for strongly encrypting data. IEEE 1667 is an attempt to create a generic authentication platform for USB drives. It is supported in Windows 7 and Windows Vista (Service Pack 2 with a hotfix).

Computer forensics and law enforcement
A recent development for the use of a USB Flash Drive as an application carrier is to carry the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE) application developed by Microsoft. COFEE is a set of applications designed to search for and extract digital evidence on computers confiscated from suspects. Forensic software is required not to alter in any way the information stored on the computer being examined. Other forensic suites run from CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, but cannot store data on the media they are run from (although they can write to other attached devices, such as external drives or memory sticks).

Updating motherboard firmware
Motherboard firmware (including BIOS and UEFI) can be updated using USB flash drives. Usually, new firmware is downloaded and placed onto a FAT16- or FAT32-formatted USB flash drive connected to a system which is to be updated, and the path to the new firmware image is selected within the update component of system's firmware. Some motherboard manufacturers also allow such updates without the need to enter the system's firmware update component, making it possible to easily recover systems with corrupted firmware.

In addition, HP has introduced a USB floppy drive key, an ordinary USB flash drive with the capacity to emulate floppy drives, allowing it to be used for updating system firmware where direct use of USB flash drives is not supported. The desired mode of operation, regular USB mass storage device or floppy drive emulation, is selected via a sliding a switch on the device's housing.

Booting operating systems
Most current PC firmware permits booting from a USB drive, allowing the launch of an operating system from a bootable flash drive. Such a configuration is known as a Live USB.

Original flash memory designs had very limited estimated lifetimes. The failure mechanism for flash memory cells is analogous to a metal fatigue mode; the device fails by refusing to write new data to specific cells that have been subject to many read-write cycles over the device's lifetime. Premature failure of a "live USB" could be circumvented by using a flash drive with a write-lock switch as a WORM device, identical to a live CD. Originally, this potential failure mode limited the use of "live USB" system to special-purpose applications or temporary tasks, such as:

 * Loading a minimal, hardened kernel for embedded applications (e.g., network router, firewall).
 * Bootstrapping an operating system install or disk cloning operation, often across a network.
 * Maintenance tasks, such as virus scanning or low-level data repair, without the primary host operating system loaded.

, newer flash memory designs have much higher estimated lifetimes. Several manufacturers are now offering warranties of 5 years or more. Such warranties should make the device more attractive for more applications. By reducing the probability of the device's premature failure, flash memory devices can now be considered for use where a magnetic disk would normally have been required. Flash drives have also experienced an exponential growth in their storage capacity over time (following the Moore's Law growth curve). As of 2013, single-packaged devices with capacities of 1 TB are readily available, and devices with 16 GB capacity are very economical. Storage capacities in this range have traditionally been considered to offer adequate space, because they allow enough space for both the operating system software and some free space for the user's data.

Operating system installation media
Installers of some operating systems can be stored to a flash drive instead of a CD or DVD, including various Linux distributions, Windows 7 and newer versions, and macOS. In particular, Mac OS X 10.7 is distributed only online, through the Mac App Store, or on flash drives; for a MacBook Air with Boot Camp and no external optical drive, a flash drive can be used to run installation of Windows or Linux from USB. A process that can be automated via the use of tools like the Universal USB Installer or Rufus.

However, for installation of Windows 7 and later versions, using USB flash drive with hard disk drive emulation as detected in PC's firmware is recommended in order to boot from it. Transcend is the only manufacturer of USB flash drives containing such a feature.

Furthermore, for installation of Windows XP, using a USB flash drive with a storage limit of at most 2 GB is recommended in order to boot from it.

Windows ReadyBoost
In Windows Vista and later versions, ReadyBoost feature allows flash drives (from 4 GB in case of Windows Vista) to augment operating system memory.

Application carriers
Flash drives are used to carry applications that run on the host computer without requiring installation. While any standalone application can in principle be used this way, many programs store data, configuration information, etc. on the hard drive and registry of the host computer.

The U3 company works with drive makers (parent company SanDisk as well as others) to deliver custom versions of applications designed for Microsoft Windows from a special flash drive; U3-compatible devices are designed to autoload a menu when plugged into a computer running Windows. Applications must be modified for the U3 platform not to leave any data on the host machine. U3 also provides a software framework for independent software vendors interested in their platform.

Ceedo is an alternative product that does not require Windows applications to be modified in order for them to be carried and run on the drive.

Similarly, other application virtualization solutions and portable application creators, such as VMware ThinApp (for Windows) or RUNZ (for Linux) can be used to run software from a flash drive without installation.

In October 2010, Apple Inc. released their newest iteration of the MacBook Air, which had the system's restore files contained on a USB hard drive rather than the traditional install CDs, because the Air did not include an optical drive.

A wide range of portable applications, which are all free of charge, and able to run off a computer running Windows without storing anything on the host computer's drives or registry, can be found in the list of portable software.

Backup
Some value-added resellers are now using a flash drive as part of small-business turnkey solutions (e.g., point-of-sale systems). The drive is used as a backup medium: at the close of business each night, the drive is inserted, and a database backup is saved to the drive. Alternatively, the drive can be left inserted through the business day, and data regularly updated. In either case, the drive is removed at night and taken offsite.

 * This is simple for the end-user, and more likely to be done.
 * The drive is small and convenient, and more likely to be carried off-site for safety.
 * The drives are less fragile mechanically and magnetically than tapes.
 * The capacity is often large enough for several backup images of critical data.
 * Flash drives are cheaper than many other backup systems.

Flash drives also have disadvantages. They are easy to lose and facilitate unauthorized backups. A lesser setback for flash drives is that they have only one tenth the capacity of hard drives manufactured around their time of distribution.

Password Reset Disk
Password Reset Disk is a feature of the Windows operating system. If a user sets up a Password Reset Disk, it can be used to reset the password on the computer it was set up on.

Audio players
Many companies make small solid-state digital audio players, essentially producing flash drives with sound output and a simple user interface. Examples include the Creative MuVo, Philips GoGear and the first generation iPod shuffle. Some of these players are true USB flash drives as well as music players; others do not support general-purpose data storage. Other applications requiring storage, such as digital voice or sound recording, can also be combined with flash drive functionality.

Many of the smallest players are powered by a permanently fitted rechargeable battery, charged from the USB interface. Fancier devices that function as a digital audio player have a USB host port (type A female typically).

Media storage and marketing
Digital audio files can be transported from one computer to another like any other file, and played on a compatible media player (with caveats for DRM-locked files). In addition, many home Hi-Fi and car stereo head units are now equipped with a USB port. This allows a USB flash drive containing media files in a variety of formats to be played directly on devices which support the format. Some LCD monitors for consumer HDTV viewing have a dedicated USB port through which music and video files can also be played without use of a personal computer.

Artists have sold or given away USB flash drives, with the first instance believed to be in 2004 when the German punk band Wizo released the Stick EP, only as a USB drive. In addition to five high-bitrate MP3s, it also included a video, pictures, lyrics, and guitar tablature. Subsequently, artists including Nine Inch Nails and Kylie Minogue have released music and promotional material on USB flash drives. The first USB album to be released in the UK was Kiss Does... Rave, a compilation album released by the Kiss Network in April 2007.

Brand and product promotion

The availability of inexpensive flash drives has enabled them to be used for promotional and marketing purposes, particularly within technical and computer-industry circles (e.g., technology trade shows). They may be given away for free, sold at less than wholesale price, or included as a bonus with another purchased product.

Usually, such drives will be custom-stamped with a company's logo, as a form of advertising. The drive may be blank, or preloaded with graphics, documentation, web links, Flash animation or other multimedia, and free or demonstration software. Some preloaded drives are read-only, while others are configured with both read-only and user-writable segments. Such dual-partition drives are more expensive.

Flash drives can be set up to automatically launch stored presentations, websites, articles, and any other software immediately on insertion of the drive using the Microsoft Windows AutoRun feature. Autorunning software this way does not work on all computers, and it is normally disabled by security-conscious users.

Arcades
In the arcade game In the Groove and more commonly In The Groove 2, flash drives are used to transfer high scores, screenshots, dance edits, and combos throughout sessions. As of software revision 21 (R21), players can also store custom songs and play them on any machine on which this feature is enabled. While use of flash drives is common, the drive must be Linux compatible.

In the arcade games Pump it Up NX2 and Pump it Up NXA, a specially produced flash drive is used as a "save file" for unlocked songs, as well as for progressing in the WorldMax and Brain Shower sections of the game.

In the arcade game Dance Dance Revolution X, an exclusive USB flash drive was made by Konami for the purpose of the link feature from its Sony PlayStation 2 counterpart. However, any USB flash drive can be used in this arcade game.

Conveniences
Flash drives use little power, have no fragile moving parts, and for most capacities are small and light. Data stored on flash drives is impervious to mechanical shock, magnetic fields, scratches and dust. These properties make them suitable for transporting data from place to place and keeping the data readily at hand.

Flash drives also store data densely compared to many removable media. In mid-2009, 256 GB drives became available, with the ability to hold many times more data than a DVD (54 DVDs) or even a Blu-ray (10 BDs).

Flash drives implement the USB mass storage device class so that most modern operating systems can read and write to them without installing device drivers. The flash drives present a simple block-structured logical unit to the host operating system, hiding the individual complex implementation details of the various underlying flash memory devices. The operating system can use any file system or block addressing scheme. Some computers can boot up from flash drives.

Specially manufactured flash drives are available that have a tough rubber or metal casing designed to be waterproof and virtually "unbreakable". These flash drives retain their memory after being submerged in water, and even through a machine wash. Leaving such a flash drive out to dry completely before allowing current to run through it has been known to result in a working drive with no future problems. Channel Five's Gadget Show cooked one of these flash drives with propane, froze it with dry ice, submerged it in various acidic liquids, ran over it with a jeep and fired it against a wall with a mortar. A company specializing in recovering lost data from computer drives managed to recover all the data on the drive. All data on the other removable storage devices tested, using optical or magnetic technologies, were destroyed.

Tape
The applications of current data tape cartridges hardly overlap those of flash drives: on tape, cost per gigabyte is very low for large volumes, but the individual drives and media are expensive. Media have a very high capacity and very fast transfer speeds, but store data sequentially and are very slow for random access of data. While disk-based backup is now the primary medium of choice for most companies, tape backup is still popular for taking data off-site for worst-case scenarios and for very large volumes (more than a few hundreds of TB). See LTO tapes.

Floppy disk
Floppy disk drives are rarely fitted to modern computers and are obsolete for normal purposes, although internal and external drives can be fitted if required. Floppy disks may be the method of choice for transferring data to and from very old computers without USB or booting from floppy disks, and so they are sometimes used to change the firmware on, for example, BIOS chips. Devices with removable storage like older Yamaha music keyboards are also dependent on floppy disks, which require computers to process them. Newer devices are built with USB flash drive support.

Floppy disk hardware emulators exist which effectively utilize the internal connections and physical attributes of a floppy disk drive to utilize a device where a USB flash drive emulates the storage space of a floppy disk in a solid state form, and can be divided into a number of individual virtual floppy disk images using individual data channels.

Optical media
The various writable and re-writable forms of CD and DVD are portable storage media supported by the vast majority of computers as of 2008. CD-R, DVD-R, and DVD+R can be written to only once, RW varieties up to about 1,000 erase/write cycles, while modern NAND-based flash drives often last for 500,000 or more erase/write cycles. DVD-RAM discs are the most suitable optical discs for data storage involving much rewriting.

Optical storage devices are among the cheapest methods of mass data storage after the hard drive. They are slower than their flash-based counterparts. Standard 120 mm optical discs are larger than flash drives and more subject to damage. Smaller optical media do exist, such as business card CD-Rs which have the same dimensions as a credit card, and the slightly less convenient but higher capacity 80 mm recordable MiniCD and Mini DVD. The small discs are more expensive than the standard size, and do not work in all drives.

Universal Disk Format (UDF) version 1.50 and above has facilities to support rewritable discs like sparing tables and virtual allocation tables, spreading usage over the entire surface of a disc and maximising life, but many older operating systems do not support this format. Packet-writing utilities such as DirectCD and InCD are available but produce discs that are not universally readable (although based on the UDF standard). The Mount Rainier standard addresses this shortcoming in CD-RW media by running the older file systems on top of it and performing defect management for those standards, but it requires support from both the CD/DVD burner and the operating system. Many drives made today do not support Mount Rainier, and many older operating systems such as Windows XP and below, and Linux kernels older than 2.6.2, do not support it (later versions do). Essentially CDs/DVDs are a good way to record a great deal of information cheaply and have the advantage of being readable by most standalone players, but they are poor at making ongoing small changes to a large collection of information. Flash drives' ability to do this is their major advantage over optical media.

Flash memory cards
Flash memory cards, e.g., Secure Digital cards, are available in various formats and capacities, and are used by many consumer devices. However, while virtually all PCs have USB ports, allowing the use of USB flash drives, memory card readers are not commonly supplied as standard equipment (particularly with desktop computers). Although inexpensive card readers are available that read many common formats, this results in two pieces of portable equipment (card plus reader) rather than one.

Some manufacturers, aiming at a "best of both worlds" solution, have produced card readers that approach the size and form of USB flash drives (e.g., Kingston MobileLite, SanDisk MobileMate ) These readers are limited to a specific subset of memory card formats (such as SD, microSD, or Memory Stick), and often completely enclose the card, offering durability and portability approaching, if not quite equal to, that of a flash drive. Although the combined cost of a mini-reader and a memory card is usually slightly higher than a USB flash drive of comparable capacity, the reader + card solution offers additional flexibility of use, and virtually "unlimited" capacity. The ubiquity of SD cards is such that, circa 2011, due to economies of scale, their price is now less than an equivalent-capacity USB flash drive, even with the added cost of a USB SD card reader.

An additional advantage of memory cards is that many consumer devices (e.g., digital cameras, portable music players) cannot make use of USB flash drives (even if the device has a USB port), whereas the memory cards used by the devices can be read by PCs with a card reader.

External hard disk
Particularly with the advent of USB, external hard disks have become widely available and inexpensive. External hard disk drives currently cost less per gigabyte than flash drives and are available in larger capacities. Some hard drives support alternative and faster interfaces than USB 2.0 (e.g., Thunderbolt, FireWire and eSATA). For consecutive sector writes and reads (for example, from an unfragmented file), most hard drives can provide a much higher sustained data rate than current NAND flash memory, though mechanical latencies seriously impact hard drive performance.

Unlike solid-state memory, hard drives are susceptible to damage by shock (e.g., a short fall) and vibration, have limitations on use at high altitude, and although shielded by their casings, are vulnerable when exposed to strong magnetic fields. In terms of overall mass, hard drives are usually larger and heavier than flash drives; however, hard disks sometimes weigh less per unit of storage. Like flash drives, hard disks also suffer from file fragmentation, which can reduce access speed.

Obsolete devices
Audio tape cassettes and high-capacity floppy disks (e.g., Imation SuperDisk), and other forms of drives with removable magnetic media, such as the Iomega Zip drive and Jaz drives, are now largely obsolete and rarely used. There are products in today's market that will emulate these legacy drives for both tape and disk (SCSI1/SCSI2, SASI, Magneto optic, Ricoh ZIP, Jaz, IBM3590/ Fujitsu 3490E and Bernoulli for example) in state-of-the-art Compact Flash storage devices – CF2SCSI.

Encryption and security
As highly portable media, USB flash drives are easily lost or stolen. All USB flash drives can have their contents encrypted using third-party disk encryption software, which can often be run directly from the USB drive without installation (for example, FreeOTFE), although some, such as BitLocker, require the user to have administrative rights on every computer it is run on.

Archiving software can achieve a similar result by creating encrypted ZIP or RAR files.

Some manufacturers have produced USB flash drives which use hardware-based encryption as part of the design, removing the need for third-party encryption software. In limited circumstances these drives have been shown to have security problems, and are typically more expensive than software-based systems, which are available for free.

A minority of flash drives support biometric fingerprinting to confirm the user's identity. As of mid-, this was an expensive alternative to standard password protection offered on many new USB flash storage devices. Most fingerprint scanning drives rely upon the host operating system to validate the fingerprint via a software driver, often restricting the drive to Microsoft Windows computers. However, there are USB drives with fingerprint scanners which use controllers that allow access to protected data without any authentication.

Some manufacturers deploy physical authentication tokens in the form of a flash drive. These are used to control access to a sensitive system by containing encryption keys or, more commonly, communicating with security software on the target machine. The system is designed so the target machine will not operate except when the flash drive device is plugged into it. Some of these "PC lock" devices also function as normal flash drives when plugged into other machines.

Failures
Like all flash memory devices, flash drives can sustain only a limited number of write and erase cycles before the drive fails. This should be a consideration when using a flash drive to run application software or an operating system. To address this, as well as space limitations, some developers have produced special versions of operating systems (such as Linux in Live USB) or commonplace applications (such as Mozilla Firefox) designed to run from flash drives. These are typically optimized for size and configured to place temporary or intermediate files in the computer's main RAM rather than store them temporarily on the flash drive.

When used in the same manner as external rotating drives (hard drives, optical drives, or floppy drives), i.e. in ignorance of their technology, USB drives' failure is more likely to be sudden: while rotating drives can fail instantaneously, they more frequently give some indication (noises, slowness) that they are about to fail, often with enough advance warning that data can be removed before total failure. USB drives give little or no advance warning of failure. Furthermore, when internal wear-leveling is applied to prolong life of the flash drive, once failure of even part of the memory occurs it can be difficult or impossible to use the remainder of the drive, which differs from magnetic media, where bad sectors can be marked permanently not to be used.

Most USB flash drives do not include a write protection mechanism. This feature, which gradually became less common, consists of a switch on the housing of the drive itself, that prevents the host computer from writing or modifying data on the drive. For example, write protection makes a device suitable for repairing virus-contaminated host computers without the risk of infecting a USB flash drive itself. In contrast to SD cards, write protection on USB flash drives (when available) is connected to the drive circuitry, and is handled by the drive itself instead of the host (on SD cards handling of the write-protection notch is optional).

A drawback to the small physical size of flash drives is that they are easily misplaced or otherwise lost. This is a particular problem if they contain sensitive data (see data security). As a consequence, some manufacturers have added encryption hardware to their drives, although software encryption systems which can be used in conjunction with any mass storage medium will achieve the same result. Most drives can be attached to keychains or lanyards. The USB plug is usually retractable or fitted with a removable protective cap.

USB killer
Similar in appearance to a USB flash drive, a USB killer is a circuit which charges its capacitors to a high voltage using the power supply pins of a USB port, then discharges that voltage through the data pins. This standalone device can instantly and permanently damage or destroy any host hardware that it is connected to.

"Flash Drives for Freedom"
The New York-based Human Rights Foundation collaborated with Forum 280 and USB Memory Direct to launch the "Flash Drives for Freedom" program. The program was created in 2016 to smuggle flash drives with American and South Korean movies and television shows, as well as a copy of the Korean Wikipedia, into North Korea to spread pro-Western sentiment.

"Handmade" USB drives
"Handmade" USB drives, containing movies and other related content, have also been reported.

Current and future developments

Semiconductor corporations have worked to reduce the cost of the components in a flash drive by integrating various flash drive functions in a single chip, thereby reducing the part-count and overall package-cost.

Flash drive capacities on the market increase continually. High speed has become a standard for modern flash drives. Capacities exceeding 256 GB were available on the market as early as 2009.

Lexar is attempting to introduce a USB FlashCard, which would be a compact USB flash drive intended to replace various kinds of flash memory cards. Pretec introduced a similar card, which also plugs into any USB port, but is just one quarter the thickness of the Lexar model. Until 2008, SanDisk manufactured a product called SD Plus, which was a SecureDigital card with a USB connector.

SanDisk introduced a digital rights management technology called FlashCP that they had purchased in 2005 to control the storage and usage of copyrighted materials on flash drives, primarily for use by students.

title: USB flash drive


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Kenneth More

Kenneth Gilbert More, CBE (20 September 1914 – 12 July 1982) was an English film and stage actor.

Initially achieving fame in the comedy Genevieve (1953), he appeared in many roles as a carefree, happy-go-lucky gent. Films from this period include Doctor in the House (1954), Raising a Riot (1955), The Admirable Crichton (1957), The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958) and Next to No Time (1958). He also played more serious roles as a leading man, beginning with The Deep Blue Sea (1955), Reach for the Sky (1956), A Night to Remember (1958), North West Frontier (1959), The 39 Steps (1959) and Sink the Bismarck (1960).

Although his career declined in the early 1960s, two of his own favourite films date from this time – The Comedy Man (1964) and The Greengage Summer (1961) with Susannah York, "one of the happiest films on which I have ever worked." He also enjoyed a revival in the much-acclaimed TV adaptation of The Forsyte Saga (1967) and the Father Brown series (1974).

Early life
Kenneth More was born at 'Raeden', Vicarage Way, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, the only son of Charles Gilbert More, a Royal Naval Air Service pilot, and Edith Winifred Watkins, the daughter of a Cardiff solicitor. He was educated at Victoria College, Jersey, having spent part of his childhood in the Channel Islands, where his father was general manager of the Jersey Eastern Railway.

After his graduation, More followed the family tradition by training to become a civil engineer. However, he abandoned his training and worked for a while in Sainsbury's on the Strand.

When More was 17 his father died, and he applied to join the Royal Air Force but failed the medical test for equilibrium. He then travelled to Canada, intending to work as a fur trapper, but was sent back to Britain because he lacked immigration documents.

Windmill Theatre
On his return from Canada, a business associate of his father, Vivian Van Damm, agreed to offer him work as a stagehand at the Windmill Theatre, where his job included shifting scenery and helping to get the nude players off stage during its Revudeville variety shows. After a chance moment on stage helping a comic, he realized that he wanted to act and was soon promoted to playing straight man in the Revudeville comedy routines, appearing in his first sketch in August 1935.

He played there for a year, which then led to regular work in repertory, including Newcastle, performing in plays such as Burke and Hare and Dracula's Daughter. Other stage appearances included Do You Remember? (1937), Stage Hands Never Lie (1937) and Distinguished Gathering (1937).

More continued his theatre work until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. He had an occasional small role in films such as Look Up and Laugh (1935).

Second World War
Before the war, More was working as an actor in Wolverhampton at the repertory company and living at 166 Waterloo Road. According to the 1939 register, he was also ambulance driver number 207 in preparation for the outbreak of war. More received a commission as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy and saw active service aboard the cruiser HMS Aurora (12) and the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious (R38).

Resumption of acting career
On demobilisation in 1946 More resumed work at the Wolverhampton repertory company, then appeared on stage in the West End in And No Birds Sing (1946).

More appeared in Paul Vercors' play The Silence of the Sea broadcast on the day British TV recommenced after the war - 7 June 1946, and this was followed by a number of television roles including Badger in an adaptation of Toad of Toad Hall (1946), and a small role in the film School for Secrets (1946). He was seen by Noël Coward playing a small role on stage in Power Without Glory (1947), which led to his casting in Coward's Peace In Our Time (1948) on stage.

More's earliest small roles in films date from before the war, but around this time, he began to appear regularly on the big screen. For a small role in Scott of the Antarctic (1948) as Edward Evans, 1st Baron Mountevans, he was paid £500. He thought this film would launch him more than it did and held off from accepting other roles, which resulted in him "nearly starving". He took minor parts in Man on the Run (1949), Now Barabbas (1949), and Stop Press Girl (1949).

Rising reputation
More achieved a notable stage success in The Way Things Go (1950) with Ronald Squire, from whom More later claimed he learned his stage technique.

He was in demand for minor roles on screen such as Morning Departure (1950) and Chance of a Lifetime (1950). More had a good part as a British agent in The Clouded Yellow (1950) for Ralph Thomas.

He could also be seen in The Franchise Affair (1951) and The Galloping Major (1951). More's first Hollywood-financed film was No Highway in the Sky (1951) where he played a co-pilot. Thomas cast him in another strong support part in Appointment with Venus (1952).

More's name was placed above the title billing for the first time with a low budget comedy, Brandy for the Parson (1952), playing a smuggler.

The Deep Blue Sea
Roland Culver recommended More audition for a part in a new play by Terence Rattigan, The Deep Blue Sea (1952); he was successful and achieved tremendous critical acclaim in the role of Freddie. More later wrote " Critics hailed me almost as an overnight discovery, conveniently forgetting I was already thirty-eight, and that I had been working in the theatre for nearly twenty years."

During the play's run he appeared as a worried parent in a thriller, The Yellow Balloon (1953). He was in another Hollywood-financed film, Never Let Me Go (1953), playing a colleague of Clark Gable.

Film stardom: Genevieve and Doctor in the House
Director Henry Cornelius approached More during the run of The Deep Blue Sea and offered him £3,500 to play one of the four leads in a comedy, Genevieve (1953) (a part turned down by Guy Middleton). More said Cornelius never saw him in the play but cast him on the basis of his work in The Galloping Major. More recalls "the shooting of the picture was hell. Everything went wrong, even the weather." The resulting film was a huge success at the British box office.

More next made Our Girl Friday (1953) and Doctor in the House (1954), the latter for Ralph Thomas. Both films were made before the release of Genevieve so More's fee was relatively small; Our Girl Friday was a commercial disappointment but Doctor in the House was the biggest hit at the 1954 British box office and the most successful film in the history of Rank. More received a BAFTA Award as best newcomer.

More appeared in a TV production of The Deep Blue Sea in 1954, which was seen by an audience of 11 million. More signed a five-year contract with Sir Alexander Korda at £10,000 a year. '

He was now established as one of Britain's biggest stars and Korda announced plans to feature him in two films based on true stories, one, The Alcock and Brown Story about the Transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown in 1919 also featuring Denholm Elliott, and the other Clifton James, the double for Field Marshal Montgomery. The first film was never made and the second (I Was Monty's Double) with another actor. Korda also wanted More to star in a new version of The Four Feathers, Storm Over the Nile (1956) but he turned it down.

However, More did accept Korda's offer to appear in a film adaptation of The Deep Blue Sea (1955) gaining the Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his performance. The film was something of a critical and commercial disappointment (More felt Vivien Leigh was miscast in the lead) but still widely seen. He also did the narration for Korda's The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955).

When The Alcock and Brown Story was cancelled, More was reassigned to another film for Korda, the domestic comedy Raising a Riot (1955), directed by Wendy Toye. This was the eighth most popular movie at the British box office in 1955, and much of the film's success was attributed to More's appeal.

Reach for the Sky
More received an offer from David Lean to play the lead role in an adaptation of The Wind Cannot Read by Richard Mason. More was unsure about whether the public would accept him in such a straightforwardly romantic part and refused it, a decision he later regarded as "the greatest mistake I ever made professionally". Lean dropped the project and was not involved in the eventual 1958 film version, which starred Dirk Bogarde and was directed by Ralph Thomas.

Instead, More played the Royal Air Force fighter ace, Douglas Bader, in Reach for the Sky (1956), a part refused by Richard Burton. It was the most popular British film of the year. By 1956, More's asking price was £25,000 a film. In October 1956, John Davis, managing director of Rank, announced him as one of the actors under contract to Rank that Davis thought would become an international star.

More received offers to go to Hollywood, but refused them, unsure his persona would be effective there. However, he started working with U.S. co-stars and directors more often. In February 1957, he signed a contract with Daniel M. Angel and was to make ten films over five years, seven which would be distributed by Rank and three by 20th Century Fox. In June of that year, he said: "Hollywood has been hitting two extremes – either a Biblical de Mille spectacular or a Baby Doll. Britain does two other kinds of movie as well as anyone – a certain type of high comedy and a kind of semi-documentary. I believe we (the British film industry) should hit these hard." His next film, The Admirable Crichton (1957), was a high comedy, based on the play by J. M. Barrie. It was released by Columbia Pictures. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert who also had made Reach for the Sky and who later said: "I was very fond of Kenny as an actor, although he wasn't particularly versatile. What he could do, he did very well. His strengths were his ability to portray charm; basically he was the officer returning from the war and he was superb in that kind of role. The minute that kind of role went out of existence, he began to go down as a box office star." Regarding his performance in this film, critic David Shipman wrote: "It was not just that he had superb comic timing: one could see absolutely why the family trusted their fates to him. No other British actor had come so close to that dependable, reliable quality of the great Hollywood stars – you would trust him through thick and thin. And he was more humorous than, say, Gary Cooper, more down-to-earth than, say, Cary Grant." The Admirable Crichton was the third most popular movie at the British box office in 1957.

In 1957, More had announced that he would play the lead role of a captain caught up in the Indian Mutiny in Night Runners of Bengal but the film was never made. More refused an offer from Roy Ward Baker to play a German POW in The One That Got Away (1957), but agreed to play the lead role of Charles Lightoller in the Titanic film for the same director, A Night to Remember (1958). This was the first of a seven-year contract with Rank at a fee of £40,000 a film. It was popular though failed to recover its large cost; it was one of More's most critically acclaimed films.

For his next film, More had an American co-star Betsy Drake, Next to No Time (1958) directed by Cornelius. It was a minor success at the box office.

More then made The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958), a Western spoof originally written for Clifton Webb. He had an American director (Raoul Walsh) and co-star (Jayne Mansfield), although the film was shot in Spain. It was the tenth most-popular movie at the British box office in 1958.

In December 1958 More announced he had a contract with Rank to make seven films in five years at a flat salary (of which the first was Night to Remember), plus three films in five years for Dan Angel and 20th Century Fox of which Sheriff was the first. He also said he would no longer make a film without an American co star.

More said he had been offered a production deal of his own releasing through British Lion but did not want to do it saying “I've got what I want, and I’ve never been lucky in business anyway. I think too many actors also try to be their own administrators these days, and I see them walking around with worried faces. Some people have the flair for it, of  course. I don’t.”

More said he would not appear on television. "If I do, it’ll kill the theatre business that night. That’s true of any big actor in Britain today. It was terrible what happened to the theatres the night Laurence Olivier went on. : Nobody went. So people like myself stay off television, though they offer fantastic sums. I was offered £123,000 (about $640,000) to appear in one television series; and most of that money would have been tax-free in one way or another.”

More made another film with Ralph Thomas, a remake of The 39 Steps (1959), with a Hollywood co star (Taina Elg). It was a hit in Britain.

He appeared in a Fox-Rank film set in India, North West Frontier (1959), co-starring Lauren Bacall and directed by J. Lee Thompson. It was another success in Britain but not in the US. He agreed to star in The Angry Silence at a discount fee but pulled out in order to make Sink the Bismarck! (1960), directed by Gilbert, a more lucrative assignment (More's role was played by Richard Attenborough). This film was a hit in Britain and the US.

More was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1959 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the Odeon Cinema, Shepherd's Bush.

Decline in film popularity
In 1960, Rank's Managing Director John Davis gave permission for More to work outside his contract to appear in The Guns of Navarone (1961). More, however, made the mistake of heckling and swearing at Davis at a BAFTA dinner at the Dorchester, losing the role (which went to David Niven).

More went on to make a comedy, 'Man In The Moon' (1960), which flopped at the box office, "his first real flop" since becoming a star, according to Shipman. He returned to the stage directing The Angry Deep in Brighton in 1960.

More and Gilbert were reunited on The Greengage Summer (1961) which remains one of More's favourite films, although Gilbert felt the star was miscast.

He returned to military roles as one of many stars in The Longest Day (1962) playing Beachmaster Captain Colin Maud, and then he played the lead in a comedy produced by Daniel Angel and directed by Wendy Toyes, We Joined the Navy (1962), which was poorly received.

More says he accepted the lead in the low-budget youth film, Some People (1962), because he had no other offers at the time. The movie was profitable.

Some felt More's popularity declined when he left his second wife to live with Angela Douglas who had been in the cast of Some People. Others argued his appeal was simply becoming out of date. Film writer Andrew Spicer thought that "More's persona was so strongly associated with traditional middle class values that his stardom could not survive the shift towards working class iconoclasts" during that decade. Another writer, Christopher Sandford, felt that "as the sixties began and the star of the ironic, postmodernist school rose, More was derided as a ludicrous old fogey with crinkly hair and a tweed jacket."

He returned to television with the lead in Heart to Heart written by Terence Rattigan. More received an offer to star in The Comedy Man directed by Alvin Rakoff, but the film was not released for two years. More then made Collect Your Hand Luggage (1963) for television directed by Ted Kotcheff.

He was going to star in a film about the Cyprus Emergency called The Cyprus Story, playing an intelligence officer who falls in love with Elsa Martinelli who plays the daughter of an EOKA sympathiser. Pre-production was difficult - director Robert Day quit and was replaced by Roy Baker, however filming, which was to start in June 1963 in Cyprus, did not proceed.

More went back to the stage, appearing in Out of the Crocodile (1963) and Our Man Crichton (1964–65), which ran for six months. He also appeared in a small screen version of Simon Raven's The Scapegoat.

He appeared in a 35-minute prologue to The Collector (1965) at the special request of director William Wyler, but it ended up being removed entirely from the final film.

Revival
More's popularity recovered in the 1960s through West End stage performances and television roles, especially following his success in The Forsyte Saga (1967). Critic David Shipman said More's personal notices for his performance on stage in The Secretary Bird (1968) "must be among the best accorded any light comedian during this century".

On screen More had a small role in Dark of the Sun (1968) and a bigger one in Fräulein Doktor (1969). He was one of many names in Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) and Battle of Britain (1969). He took the role of the Ghost of Christmas Present in Scrooge (1970) and had long stage runs with a revival of The Winslow Boy (1970) and Getting On by Alan Bennett (1971).

He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1970 New Year Honours.

Later career
More's later stage appearances included Signs of the Times (1973) and On Approval (1977). He played the title character in ATV's Father Brown (1974) series.

His later film roles included The Slipper and the Rose (1976), Where Time Began (1977), Leopard in the Snow (1978), An Englishman's Castle (1978) and Unidentified Flying Oddball (1979).

Personal life
More was married three times. His first marriage in 1940 to actress Mary Beryl Johnstone (one daughter, Susan Jane, born 1941) ended in divorce in 1946. He married Mabel Edith "Bill" Barkby in 1952 (one daughter, Sarah, born 1954) but left her in 1968 for Angela Douglas, an actress 26 years his junior, causing considerable estrangement from family and friends. He was married to Douglas, whom he nicknamed "Shrimp", from 17 March 1968 until his death in 1982.

More wrote two autobiographies, Happy Go Lucky (1959) and More or Less (1978). In the second book, he related how he had since childhood, a recurrent dream of something akin to a huge wasp descending towards him. During the war, he had experienced a German Stuka dive-bomber descending in just such a manner. After that, he claimed never to have had that dream again. Producer Daniel M. Angel successfully sued More for libel in 1980, over comments made in his second autobiography. More subsequently recounted that the libel suit, which he said had stemmed from "innocently" using "the wrong words to describe an event in my life," had a negative effect on his health and brought him to the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Illness and death
More and Douglas separated for several years during the 1970s, but reunited when he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. This made it increasingly difficult for him to work, although his last role was a sizeable supporting part in a US TV adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities (1980). In 1980, when he was being sued by producer Danny Angel for comments in his memoirs, he told the court he was retired.

In 1981, he wrote: "Doctors and friends ask me how I feel. How can you define 'bloody awful?' My nerves are stretched like a wire; the simplest outing becomes a huge challenge – I have to have Angela's arm to support me most days... my balance or lack of it is probably my biggest problem. My blessings are my memories and we have a few very loyal friends who help us through the bad days... Financially all's well. Thank goodness my wife, who holds nothing of the past over my head, is constantly at my side. Real love never dies. We share a sense of humour which at times is vital. If I have a philosophy it is that life doesn't put everything your way. It takes a little back. I strive to remember the ups rather than the downs. I have a lot of time with my thoughts these days and sometimes they hurt so much I can hardly bear it. However, my friends always associate me with the song: 'When You're Smiling...' lt isn't always easy but I'm trying to live up to it." More died on 12 July 1982, aged 67. It is now believed that he had been suffering from multiple system atrophy (MSA), a belief due in part to the age of onset and the speed at which the condition progressed. He was cremated at Putney Vale Crematorium and a plaque erected at the actors' church St Paul's, Covent Garden, following a memorial attended by family, friends and colleagues.

Legacy
The Kenneth More Theatre, named in honour of the actor, was founded in 1975, in Ilford, east London.

A plaque commemorates More at 27 Rumbold Road, Fulham, his home at the time of his death. Another memorial plaque was installed at the Duchess Theatre in London's West End (where More gave his acclaimed performance as Freddie Page in a production of Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea).

Filmography

 * Look Up and Laugh (1935) (bit part, uncredited)
 * Carry On London (1937) (bit part, uncredited)
 * The Silence of the Sea (1946, TV movie) as The German
 * School for Secrets (1946) as Bomb Aimer (uncredited)
 * Toad of Toad Hall (1946, TV movie) as Mr. Badger
 * Scott of the Antarctic (1948) as Lt. E.G.R.(Teddy) Evans R.N.
 * Man on the Run (1949) as Corp. Newman the Blackmailer
 * Now Barabbas (1949) as Spencer
 * Stop Press Girl (1949) as Police Sgt. 'Bonzo'
 * For Them That Trespass – (1949) – Prison Warder
 * Morning Departure (1950) as Lieut. Cmdr. James
 * Chance of a Lifetime (1950) as Adam
 * The Clouded Yellow (1951) as Willy Shepley
 * The Franchise Affair (1951) as Stanley Peters
 * The Galloping Major (1951) as Rosedale Film Studio Director
 * No Highway in the Sky (1951) Dobson, Co-Pilot (uncredited)
 * Appointment with Venus (1951) as Lionel Fallaize
 * Brandy for the Parson (1952) as Tony Rackhman
 * The Yellow Balloon (1953) as Ted
 * Never Let Me Go (1953) as Steve Quillan
 * Genevieve (1953) as Ambrose Claverhouse
 * Our Girl Friday (1953) as Pat Plunkett
 * Doctor in the House (1954) as Richard Grimsdyke
 * The Deep Blue Sea (1954, BBC, TV movie) as Freddie Page
 * The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955) as Narrator
 * Raising a Riot (1955) as Tony Kent
 * The Deep Blue Sea (1955) as Freddie Page
 * Reach for the Sky (1956) as Douglas Bader
 * The Admirable Crichton (1957) as Bill Crichton
 * A Night to Remember (1958) as Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller
 * Next to No Time (1958) as David Webb
 * The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958) as Jonathan Tibbs
 * The Thirty-Nine Steps (1959) as Richard Hannay
 * North West Frontier (1959) as Captain Scott
 * Sink the Bismarck! (1960) as Captain Shepard
 * Man in the Moon (1960) as William Blood
 * The Greengage Summer (1961) as Eliot
 * Heart to Heart (1962, TV movie) as David Mann
 * Some People (1962) as Mr. Smith
 * The Longest Day (1962) as Captain Colin Maud
 * We Joined the Navy (1962) as Lt. Cmdr. Robert Badger
 * Collect Your Hand Baggage (1963) TV
 * The Comedy Man (1964) as Chick Byrd
 * The Scapegoat (1964) - TV
 * Old Soldiers (1964) - TV
 * The Collector (1965) (uncredited)
 * Lord Raingo (1966, TV movie) as Sam Raingo
 * The Sweet War Man (1966) TV
 * Final Demand (1966)
 * The Forsyte Saga (1967, TV series) as 'Young Jolyon' Forsyte
 * The White Rabbit (1967, TV movie) as Wing Cmdr. Yeo-Thomas
 * Dark of the Sun, also known as The Mercenaries (1968) as Doctor Wreid
 * The Secretary Bird (1969) TV
 * Fräulein Doktor (1969) as Col. Foreman
 * Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) as Kaiser Wilhelm II
 * Battle of Britain (1969) as Group Captain Barker
 * Scrooge (1970) as Ghost of Christmas Present
 * Father Brown (1974, TV series) as Father Brown
 * The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella (1976) as Chamberlain
 * Where Time Began (1977) as Prof. Otto Linderbrock
 * Leopard in the Snow (1978) as Sir Philip James
 * An Englishman's Castle (1978, TV movie) as Peter Ingram
 * The Spaceman and King Arthur (1979) as King Arthur
 * A Tale of Two Cities (1980, TV movie) as Dr. Jarvis Lorry (final film role)

Unfilmed projects

 * Adaptation of Nightrunners of Bengal (1957)
 * The Angry Silence (1960) – turned down role eventually played by Richard Attenborough

Selected theatre credits

 * Windmill Theatre – 1935
 * Do You Remember? – Barry O’Brien Touring Company, August–November 1937
 * Stage Hands Never Lie by Olive Remple – November 1937
 * Stage Distinguished Gathering by James Parish – Wimbledon Theatre, August 1937
 * And No Birds Sing by Rev Arthur Platt – Aldwych Theatre, November 1946
 * Power Without Glory – February–April 1947
 * Peace In Our Time by Noël Coward – Lyric Theatre, July 1948
 * The Way Things Go – Phoenix Theatre, May 1950
 * The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan – Duchess Theatre, March 1952
 * The Angry Deep – Brighton, January 1960 – Brighton – director only
 * Out of the Crocodile – Phoenix Theatre, October 1963
 * Our Man Crichton – Shaftesbury Theatre, December 1964 – ran six months
 * The Secretary Bird – Savoy Theatre, October 1968
 * The Winslow Boy by Terence Rattigan – New Theatre, November 1970 – ran nine months
 * Getting On by Alan Bennett – Queen's Theatre, October 1971 – ran nine months
 * Signs of the Times by Jeremy Kingston – Vaudeville Theatre, June 1973
 * Kenneth More Requests the Pleasure of Your Company – Kenneth More Theatre, April 1977 – an evening of poetry, prose and music
 * On Approval – Vaudeville Theatre, June 1977

Writings

 * Happy Go Lucky (1959)
 * Kindly Leave the Stage (1965)
 * More or Less (1978)

Awards

 * 1953 Nominated as Best British Actor (BAFTA) for Genevieve
 * 1954 Won Best British Actor (BAFTA) for Doctor in the House
 * 1955 Won Best Actor at Venice Film Festival for The Deep Blue Sea
 * 1955 Won Most Promising International Star (Variety Club)
 * 1955 Nominated Best British Actor (BAFTA) for The Deep Blue Sea
 * 1956 Nominated Best British Actor (BAFT) for Reach for the Sky
 * 1956 Won Picturegoer Magazine Best Actor Award for Reach for the Sky
 * 1970 appointed a CBE in the New Year's Honours
 * 1974 Won TV Times Best Actor Award for Father Brown
 * 1975 Recipient of silver heart for 40 Years in Showbusiness (Variety Club)

Box office ranking
British exhibitors regularly voted More one of the most popular stars at the local box office in an annual poll conducted by the Motion Picture Herald:
 * 1954 – 5th most popular British star
 * 1955 – 5th most popular British star
 * 1956 – most popular international star
 * 1957 – 2nd most popular international star (NB another source said he was the most popular )
 * 1958 – 3rd most popular international star
 * 1959 – most popular British star
 * 1960 – most popular international star
 * 1961 – 3rd most popular international star
 * 1962 – 4th most popular international star

title: Kenneth More