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Zagros Mountains

The Zagros Mountains (جبال زاغروس; چیاکانی زاگرۆس; Zagros Dağları; Luri: Kûya Zagrus کویا زاگرس or کوه یل زاگرس) are a long mountain range in Iran, northern Iraq, and southeastern Turkey. The mountain range has a total length of 1600 km. The Zagros range begins in northwestern Iran and roughly follows Iran's western border while covering much of southeastern Turkey and northeastern Iraq. From this border region, the range continues southeast under also the waters of the Persian Gulf. It spans the southern parts of the Armenian highlands, the whole length of the western and southwestern Iranian plateau, ending at the Strait of Hormuz. The highest point is Mount Dena, at 4409 m.

Geology

The Zagros fold and thrust belt was mainly formed by the collision of two tectonic plates, the Eurasian Plate and the Arabian Plate. This collision mainly happened during the Miocene (about 25–5 million years ago or mya) and folded the entirety of the rocks that had been deposited from the Paleozoic (541–242 mya) to the Cenozoic (66 mya – present) in the passive continental margin on the Arabian Plate. However, the obduction of Neotethys oceanic crust during the Cretaceous (145–66 mya), and the continental arc collision in the Eocene (56–34 mya) both had major effects on uplifts in the northeastern parts of the belt.

The process of collision continues to the present, and as the Arabian Plate is being pushed against the Eurasian Plate, the Zagros Mountains and the Iranian plateau are getting higher and higher. Recent GPS measurements in Iran have shown that this collision is still active and the resulting deformation is distributed non-uniformly in the country, mainly taken up in the major mountain belts like Alborz and Zagros. A relatively dense GPS network which covered the Iranian Zagros also proves a high rate of deformation within the Zagros. The GPS results show that the current rate of shortening in the southeast Zagros is ~10 mm/yr, dropping to ~5 mm/yr in the northwest Zagros. The north–south Kazerun strike-slip fault divides the Zagros into two distinct zones of deformation. The GPS results also show different shortening directions along the belt, normal shortening in the southeast, and oblique shortening in the northwest Zagros. The Zagros mountains were created around the time of the second ice age, which caused the tectonic collision, leading to its uniqueness.

The sedimentary cover in the SE Zagros is deforming above a layer of rock salt (acting as a ductile decollement with a low basal friction), whereas in the NW Zagros the salt layer is missing or is very thin. This different basal friction is partly responsible for the different topographies on either side of the Kazerun fault. Higher topography and narrower zone of deformation in the NW Zagros is observed whereas in the SE, deformation was spread more and a wider zone of deformation with lower topography was formed. Stresses induced in the Earth's crust by the collision caused extensive folding of the preexisting layered sedimentary rocks. Subsequent erosion removed softer rocks, such as mudstone (rock formed by consolidated mud) and siltstone (a slightly coarser-grained mudstone) while leaving harder rocks, such as limestone (calcium-rich rock consisting of the remains of marine organisms) and dolomite (rocks similar to limestone containing calcium and magnesium). This differential erosion formed the linear ridges of the Zagros Mountains.

The depositional environment and tectonic history of the rocks were conducive to the formation and trapping of petroleum, and the Zagros region is an important area for oil production. Salt domes and salt glaciers are a common feature of the Zagros Mountains. Salt domes are an important target for petroleum exploration, as the impermeable salt frequently traps petroleum beneath other rock layers. There is also much water-soluble gypsum in the region.

Type and age of rock

The mountains are completely of sedimentary origin and are made primarily of limestone. In the Elevated Zagros or the Higher Zagros, the Paleozoic rocks can be found mainly in the upper and higher sections of the peaks of the Zagros Mountains, along the Zagros main fault. On both sides of this fault, there are Mesozoic rocks, a combination of Triassic (252–201 mya) and Jurassic (201–145 mya) rocks that are surrounded by Cretaceous rocks on both sides. The Folded Zagros (the mountains south of the Elevated Zagros and almost parallel to the main Zagros fault) is formed mainly of Tertiary rocks, with the Paleogene (66–23 mya) rocks south of the Cretaceous rocks and then the Neogene (23–2.6 mya) rocks south of the Paleogene rocks. The mountains are divided into many parallel sub-ranges (up to 10 or wide), and orogenically have the same age as the Alps.

Iran's main oilfields lie in the western central foothills of the Zagros mountain range. The southern ranges of the Fars Province have somewhat lower summits, reaching 4000 m. They contain some limestone rocks showing abundant marine fossils.

Highest peaks
The peaks that are at least 3800 meters high and have a topographic prominence of at least 300 meters:

History
The Zagros Mountains have significant ancient history. They were occupied by early humans since the Lower Paleolithic Period. The earliest human fossils discovered in Zagros belongs to Neanderthals and come from Shanidar Cave, Bisitun Cave, and Wezmeh Cave. The remains of ten Neanderthals, dating from around 65,000–35,000 years ago, have been found in the Shanidar Cave. The cave also contains two later "proto-Neolithic" cemeteries, one of which dates back about 10,600 years and contains 35 individuals. Evidence from later Upper Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic occupations come from Yafteh Cave, Kaldar Cave near Khoramabad, and Warwasi, Malaverd near Kermanshah, Kenacheh Cave in Kurdistan, Boof Cave in Fars and a number of other caves and rock shelters. Signs of early agriculture date back as far as 9000 BC in the foothills of the mountains. Some settlements later grew into cities, eventually named Anshan and Susa; Jarmo is one archaeological site in this area. Some of the earliest evidence of wine production has been discovered in the mountains; both the settlements of Hajji Firuz Tepe and Godin Tepe have given evidence of wine storage dating between 3500 and 5400 BC.

A human metatarsal bone fragment from Wezmeh Cave has been analyzed and dated to the Neolithic period. The DNA from this bone fragment shows that it is from a distinct genetic group, which was not known to scientists before. He belongs to the Y-DNA haplogroup G2b, specifically its branch G-Y37100, and mitochondrial haplogroup J1d6. He had brown eyes, relatively dark skin, and black hair, although Neolithic Iranians carried reduced pigmentation-associated alleles in several genes and derived alleles at 7 of the 12 loci, showing the strongest signatures of selection in ancient Eurasians. He did not contribute to the genetic makeup of early European farmers or modern Europeans. Instead, he was the most genetically similar to modern Iranian Zoroastrians, followed by Fars, Balochi, Brahui, Kalash and Georgians. Gallego-Llorente et al. (2016) believes that the Zagros Mountain was a plausible source of Eurasian ancestry in Central and South Asia, along with Kotias, which was inhabited by Caucasu Hunter-Gatherers. He cites archaeological evidence of eastward Neolithic expansions from the Near East.

During early ancient times, the Zagros was the home of peoples such as the Hurrians, Guti, Kassites, Elamites and Mitanni, who periodically invaded the Sumerian and/or Akkadian cities of Mesopotamia. The mountains create a geographic barrier between the Mesopotamian Plain, which is in Iraq, and the Iranian plateau. A small archive of clay tablets detailing the complex interactions of these groups in the early second millennium BC has been found at Tell Shemshara along the Little Zab. Tell Bazmusian, near Shemshara, was occupied between 5000 BCE and 800 CE, although not continuously.

Population
The Zagros mountains have been inhabited by different groups of pastoralists and farmers for thousands of years. Pastoralist groups such as Lurs, Bakhtiari Lurs, Kurds or Qashqais move from their herds from the east slopes in summer (Yeylāgh) to the west slopes in winter (Gheshlāgh). Some major cities are located on the foothills of the Zagros mountains, including Sulaymaniyah, Kermanshah, Khorramabad, and Shiraz.

Lurs
The Lurs are an Iranic tribe, primarily inhabiting the Central, Western, and Southern Zagros. Cities inhibited by Lurs include Khorramabad, Borujerd, Malayer, Izeh, Shahr-e Kord, Yasuj. Lurs speak Luri and span across many provinces in Iran including Lorestan, Khuzestan, Chaharmahal and Bakthiari, Ilam, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, and Hamedan.

Bakhtiari Lurs
The Bakhtiaris are a Lur tribe from Iran, primarily inhabiting the Central and South Zagros. Major cities inhabited by Bakhtiaris include Masjed Soleyman, Izeh and Shahr-e Kord. A significant number of Bakhtiari still practice nomadic pastoralism.

Kurds

Kurds are aborigines from the northwestern and the eastern Zagros Taurus mountain ranges, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northern Syria. The high altitude of the Zagros mountains produces a series of choke points and valleys perfect for agriculture and human development. It has also long defended the Kurds in times of war by acting as a natural barrier.

Qashqai
Qashqai people are a tribal confederation in Iran mostly of Turkic origin. Significant populations can be found in Central and South Zagros, especially around the city of Shiraz in the Fars province.

Climate
The mountains contain several ecosystems. Prominent among them are the forest and forest steppe areas with a semi-arid climate. As defined by the World Wildlife Fund and used in their Wildfinder, the particular terrestrial ecoregion of the mid to high mountain area is Zagros Mountains forest steppe (PA0446). The annual precipitation ranges from 400 - 800 mm and falls mostly in winter and spring. Winters are severe, with low temperatures often below -25 °C. The region exemplifies the continental variation of the Mediterranean climate pattern, with a snowy winter and mild, rainy spring, followed by a dry summer and autumn.

Glaciation
The mountains of the East-Zagros, the Kuh-i-Jupar (4135 m), Kuh-i-Lalezar (4,374 m) and Kuh-i-Hezar (4,469 m) do not currently have glaciers. Only at Zard Kuh and Dena some glaciers still survive. However, before the Last Glacial Period they had been glaciated to a depth in excess of 1,900 m, and during the Last Glacial Period to a depth in excess of 2,160 m. Evidence exists of a 20 km wide glacier fed along a 17 km long valley dropping approximately 1600 m along its length on the north side of Kuh-i-Jupar with a thickness of 350 - 550 m. Under conditions of precipitation comparable to current climatic record-keeping, this size of glacier could be expected to form where the annual average temperature was between 10.5 and 11.2 °C, but since conditions are expected to have been dryer during the period in which this glacier was formed, the temperature must have been lower.

Flora
Although currently degraded through overgrazing and deforestation, the Zagros region is home to a rich and complex flora. Remnants of the originally widespread oak-dominated woodland can still be found, as can the park-like pistachio/almond steppelands. The ancestors of many familiar foods, including wheat, barley, lentil, almond, walnut, pistachio, apricot, plum, pomegranate and grape can be found growing wild throughout the mountains. Quercus brantii (covering more than 50% of the Zagros forest area) is the most important tree species of the Zagros in Iran.

Other floral endemics found within the mountain range include: Allium iranicum, Astragalus crenophila, Bellevalia kurdistanica, Cousinia carduchorum, Cousinia odontolepis, Echinops rectangularis, Erysimum boissieri, Iris barnumiae, Ornithogalum iraqense, Scrophularia atroglandulosa, Scorzonera kurdistanica, Tragopogon rechingeri, and Tulipa kurdica.

Fauna
The Zagros are home to many threatened and endangered species, including the Zagros Mountains mouse-like hamster (Calomyscus bailwardi), the Basra reed-warbler (Acrocephalus griseldis) and the striped hyena (Hyena hyena). The Persian fallow deer (Dama dama mesopotamica), an ancient domesticate once thought extinct, was rediscovered in the late 20th century in Khuzestan Province, in the southern Zagros. Also, wild goats can be found almost all over the Zagros mountain range. In the late 19th century, the Asiatic lion (Panthera leo persica) inhabited the southwestern part of the mountains. It is now extinct in this region.

The Luristan newt (Neurergus kaiseri) is a salamander endemic to a small section of the central Zagros Mountains in Iran. It lives in highland streams and is primarily aquatic. This newt is considered vulnerable to extinction due to poaching for the pet trade and habitat destruction. Climate change is predicted to strongly impact this species.

Religion
The entrance to the ancient Mesopotamian underworld was believed to be located in the Zagros Mountains in the far east. A staircase led down to the gates of the underworld. The underworld itself is usually located even deeper below ground than the Abzu, the body of freshwater which the ancient Mesopotamians believed lay deep beneath the earth.

Parts of the Zagros Mountains

 * Gardaneh ye Kuli Kash, mountain pass
 * Mount Alvand
 * Mount Arbaba
 * Mount Derak
 * Nalishkêne
 * Qaleh gorikhteh

Other

 * Alborz Mountains
 * Al-Hajar Mountains, technically a continuation of the Zagros in the Arabian Peninsula
 * Armenian highlands
 * Battle of the Persian Gate
 * Caucasus Mountains
 * Corduene / Kurdistan
 * Geography of Iran
 * Geography of Iraq
 * Geography of Turkey
 * Iranian plateau
 * Mountains of Ararat
 * Mount Judi
 * Silakhor Plain
 * Tigris–Euphrates river system

title: Zagros Mountains


text:
Talk:Very-large-scale integration

Integrated circuit#VLSI and Very-large-scale integration
Why do we have both Integrated circuit and Very-large-scale integration? Noel 16:13, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Integrated circuit explains the basic differences and advances in IC technology, whereas their individual pages (VLSI, SoC) go into more detail than would be appropriate in their section of Integrated circuit. This is a fairly common practice on Wikipedia. Boffy b 12:18, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

 * The Integrated circuit should be a short summary of the Very-large-scale integration article. For more details on this practice, see the Summary style guideline. --DavidCary (talk) 15:47, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

tools
Could someone put a list of popular layout software tools? Thanks. 66.75.49.213 23:06, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Some tools are listed near the end of the electronic design automation article. Should this VLSI article mention that that article has the tools? --75.37.227.177 14:26, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

 * one such tool, open source, HERB, is in development by Alliance VLSI project, may not be usable, but its a start. HERB --Gartral (talk) 06:06, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

problems
Came from the Quantum tunnelling page and was surprised there was nothing about it or any other potentional exteriors (heat, arcs)

poda patti

vlsi
Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistor-based circuits into a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when complex semiconductor and communication technologies were being developed.

The first semiconductor chips held one transistor each. Subsequent advances added more and more transistors, and as a consequence more individual functions or systems were integrated over time. The microprocessor is a VLSI device.

The first "generation" of computers relied on vacuum tubes. Then came discrete semiconductor devices, followed by integrated circuits. The first Small-Scale Integration (SSI) ICs had small numbers of devices on a single chip — diodes, transistors, resistors and capacitors (no inductors though), making it possible to fabricate one or more logic gates on a single device. The fourth generation consisted of Large-Scale Integration (LSI), i.e. systems with at least a thousand logic gates. The natural successor to LSI was VLSI (many tens of thousands of gates on a single chip). Current technology has moved far past this mark and today's microprocessors have many millions of gates and hundreds of millions of individual transistors.

As of mid-2006, billion-transistor processors are just on the horizon, with the first being Intel's Montecito Itanium Server. This is expected to become more commonplace as semiconductor fabrication moves from the current generation of 90 nanometer (90 nm) processes to the next 65 nm and 45 nm generations.

At one time, there was an effort to name and calibrate various levels of large-scale integration above VLSI. Terms like Ultra-large-scale Integration (ULSI) were used. But the huge number of gates and transistors available on common devices has rendered such fine distinctions moot. Terms suggesting more-than-VLSI levels of integration are no longer in widespread use. Even VLSI is now somewhat quaint, given the common assumption that all microprocessors are VLSI or better.

merge
The VHSIC article currently claims "VHSIC" is another, less common, name for "VLSI". So I think they should all be in the same article, like Puma and Mountain Lion are both in the same article. --75.37.227.177 14:16, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

 * No, that's not what it claims. VHSIC is a much more narrow term referring to a specific US government program.  There's probably enough info out there to write an adequate article on it, but it should not be attempted as part of the VLSI article. Dicklyon 15:37, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * See for example this book, or this. Dicklyon 15:40, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Note
Articles for deletion/Custom Integrated Circuit Conference WLU (talk) 22:20, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Challenges
I've added a section for the challenges faced by current VLSI designers. If someone can tidy up and elaborate on this, it'd be great. Fire (talk) 20:05, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

LSI
Article says: Now known retrospectively as "small-scale integration" (SSI), improvements in technique led to devices with hundreds of logic gates, known as large-scale integration (LSI), i.e. systems with at least a thousand logic gates. Pretty bad sentence. To fix it, need to know which is LSI: hundreds of gates or thousands? 60.240.207.146 (talk) 02:47, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

 * Indeed, that's AFU. The version from a few years ago had it a bit better (LSI = thousands). Here is the diff where it got mangled by User:Maury Markowitz. Dicklyon (talk) 05:30, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

KARL
In the Structured Design section, the name of hardware description language mentioned, KARL, had been a link. However, it linked to the page KARL, which appears to be a radio station. I removed the link, but I don't know enough about the topic to know if KARL is the wrong name, or if there's a place on Wikipedia that this should link to. Someone might want to look at. --129.2.218.250 (talk) 03:59, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

wiring by abutment
The article linked for abutment primarily discusses this term in reference to civil engineering and architecture (possibly dentistry?), making it potentially unclear at first glance as to the meaning in an electrical engineering context. 208.85.190.19 (talk) 00:50, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

criticism
As frequent in many wikipedia articles, the above plugs several products and never once describes the thing of it's topic.

VLSI (very large scale integration) was the very next step after LSI, with no in-betweens. A worker in a U.S.A. chip factory, with no college degree or formal study (though a self studied factory worker, as many were at the time), invented VLSI (excuse me i cannot remember his name).

He worked on the factory floor where part of his job was to to skip a pool of hot liquid silicon with a bar or rod (much like iron factory practice do).

He knew by company information the limit of the number of transisitors on the chip (LSI) was directly related to the purity of the silicon. LSI allowed perhaps a few thousand of transistors at best. His discovery was that if sinusoidal waves "wave tank" were made in the hot liquid tank of silicon that impurities would gradually be trasported (and removable). Impurities impossible for a rude instrument dragged across the top to remove, impurities impossible to see. He had learned this trick from working in another factory where he learned the technique was used in an unrelated non-metal product - and was smart enough to realize it applied to liquid silicon - and infact it did.

Almost immediately the company was able to put millions of transistors on this newly pure silicon and it was dubbed "VLSI" (compared to only a few thousand for LSI, a major notable leap). There was not any articles at the time which did not mention this man or his invention as the beginning of VLSI. One might see old Harvard vector VLSI circuit software whose README (documentation) mention it passingly, one might see an article on it on a BBS; it was pervasive knowlege at the time.

Because he was employed by the company, the company owned the patent, though he did receive appluad and some benefits for the discovery. Apparently not in wikipedia historic rewrites, not yet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.219.202.186 (talk) 17:37, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

information was deleted from article
The leap to VLSI was by an "un-educated" floor worker in the VLI factory (Texax). From experience in another factory (molten metal work) he realized that producing waves in the alreayd molten Silicon tank, and skimming, removes move contaminants than skimming alone. The purity gained allowed many times the transistors as previous

the above was common knowlege in the 80's - people talked allot about VLSI back then when it was new

another source, publicized TV with images of the factory floor worker was on:

"James Burke - How The Universe Changed" (tail of the series). now so you know i'm not pulling this out of a hat let me explain the series and why the above was in the series...

the series surveys major inventions man relies on (ie, nylon), when and who did it: often citing that who created it discovered one of the most "necessary" inventions by luck (and *realized* it), while most of the rest were discovered by scientists who were looking for something and found it by mistake. The series end by an investigation into how deeply man is dependant upon "chips and software" for survival of the masses and caps off the series with a foreboding warning about reliance upon something which may be attacked or fail. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.219.204.96 (talk) 23:02, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

deletion of ...
previously i added a short note about VLSI and that it was a floor worker who caused the great leap from LSI to VLSI (a several time the transitor factor jump and sorely needed at the time) (he was not well compensated, as he was employed when he found it, company kept the discovery)

LSI is NOT the same as VLSI they are several factors of transistors apart, and the "discovery" was years apart and not by the same person — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.219.204.96 (talk) 23:08, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 18 October 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved. Only objection appears to be soundly refuted. (non-admin closure) В²C ☎ 17:26, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Very-large-scale integration → Very Large Scale Integration – Wiki title should be consistent with IEEE naming conventions and professionally published articles, see https://www.ieee.org/content/dam/ieee-org/ieee/web/org/conferences/style_references_manual.pdf for example of naming conventions. Boopkid (talk) 23:38, 18 October 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 13:08, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
 * This idea would break the adherence to Manual of Style, which recognizes that it is tiring to read capitalized titles. The article titles have the same capitalization as their appearance in the encyclopedia articles, which are meant to be extensively cross-linked. Try reading a document from the Pentagon to see what I mean. The documents become a thicket of UpPeR CAsE lEtTers. --Ancheta Wis   (talk  | contribs) 10:04, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * MOS: does not contain the word tiring (or tired, or tire, or exhausting). Perhaps you meant MOS:CAPS? That page does not contain those words, either. Perhaps  you were thinking of all caps, in which case I might agree with you about the "tiring", but that does not pertain here.  What MOS:CAPS does say, however, is that phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia, and based on the data, that argues in favor of the move. Mathglot (talk) 23:50, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

 * support move – per MOS:CAPS and the data showing that the majority of English sources prefer the initial-caps version by about 2–1. Mathglot (talk) 23:50, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 01:06, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Diopsis.jpg

Outdated Term?
A lot of new engineers consider 'VLSI' to be an outdated term because the techniques it refers to are now for methods of stacking SMALLER groups of transistors than maximally allowed with other tech. Should there be a section about that? CessnaMan1989 (talk) 15:54, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Very-large-scale integration


text:
Inflatable boat

An inflatable boat is a lightweight boat constructed with its sides and bow made of flexible tubes containing pressurised gas. For smaller boats, the floor and hull are often flexible, while for boats longer than 3 m, the floor typically consists of three to five rigid plywood or aluminium sheets fixed between the tubes, but not joined rigidly together. Often the transom is rigid, providing a location and structure for mounting an outboard motor.

Some inflatable boats can be disassembled and packed into a small volume, so that they can be easily stored and transported. The boat, when inflated, is kept rigid cross-ways by a foldable removable thwart. This feature makes these boats suitable for liferafts for larger boats or aircraft, and for travel or recreational purposes.

Early attempts
There are ancient carved images of animal skins filled with air being used as one-man floats to cross rivers. These floats were inflated by mouth.

The discovery of the process to vulcanize rubber was made by Charles Goodyear in 1838, and was granted a US patent in 1844. Vulcanization stabilized the rubber, making it durable and flexible. In late 1843, Thomas Hancock filed for a UK patent, which was also granted in 1844, after the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company patent had been granted. In 1852, while traveling in England, Charles Goodyear discovered that Thomas Hancock's company was producing vulcanized rubber and sued. Thomas Hancock had been shown a sample of Goodyear's rubber in 1842, but had not been told the process that made it—and Hancock said he had developed his process independently. The last of the suits were settled in 1855. Shortly thereafter, several people expanded on experimentation of rubber coated fabrics.

In 1839 the Duke of Wellington tested the first inflatable pontoons. In 1840, the English scientist Thomas Hancock designed inflatable craft using his new methods of rubber vulcanization and described his achievements in The Origin and Progress of India Rubber Manufacture in England published a few years later.

In 1844–1845, British naval officer Lieutenant Peter Halkett developed two types of inflatable boats intended for use by Arctic explorers. Both were made of rubber-impregnated "Mackintosh cloth." In the Halkett boat, the "boat cloak" served as a waterproof poncho or cloak until inflated, when it became a one-man boat. A special pocket held bellows for inflation, and a blade to turn a walking stick into a paddle. A special umbrella could double as a sail. Halkett later developed a two-man boat carried in a knapsack. When inflated, it could carry two men paddling on either side, and when deflated it served as a waterproof blanket for camping on wet ground. The Admiralty was sceptical about potential uses for Halkett's designs; on 8 May 1845, Lord Herbert, First Secretary to the Admiralty, wrote to Halkett that "My Lords are of an opinion that your invention is extremely clever and ingenious, and that it might be useful in Exploring and Surveying Expeditions, but they do not consider that it would be made applicable for general purposes in the Naval Service".

The Admiralty saw no use for Halkett's designs in general naval service, but explorers liked this larger design. John Franklin bought one for the ill-fated 1845 expedition, in which the entire expedition party of 129 men and two ships vanished.

In his explorations along the Oregon Trail, and the tributaries and forks of the Platte River in 1842 and 1843, John C. Frémont recorded what may have been the first use of an inflatable rubber boat for travel down rivers and rapids in the Rocky Mountains. In his account of the expedition he described his boat:

"Among the useful things which formed a portion of our equipage, was an India-rubber boat, 18 feet long, made somewhat in the form of a bark canoe of the northern lakes. The sides were formed by two airtight cylinders, eighteen inches in diameter, connected with others forming the bow and stern. To lessen the danger of accidents to the boat, these were divided into four different compartments, and the interior was sufficiently large to contain five or six persons, and a considerable weight of baggage."

In 1848, General George Cullum, the US Army Corps of Engineers, introduced a rubber coated fabric inflatable bridge pontoon, which was used in the Mexican–American War and later on to a limited extent during the American Civil War.

In 1866, four men crossed the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Britain on a three-tube raft called Nonpareil.

From 1900 to 1910, the development of rubber manufacturing enabled attempts at producing circular rubber inflatable boats, similar to modern coracles. These were only usable as rafts, and could only be propelled by paddling. In addition, they tended to crack at seams and folds due to the imperfect manufacturing process of the rubber.

Modern inflatable boat
In the early 20th century, independent production of inflatable boats began with the airship manufacturing company RFD in England and the Zodiac company in France. This was brought about by the development of rubber-coated fabrics for the airship industry.

Reginald Foster Dagnall, English designer and founder of RFD, switched in 1919 to the development of inflatable boats, using the coated fabric from hydrogen airships. The Air Ministry was impressed with trials of his boat on a lake near Guildford and began to give his firm contracts for the production of life-saving equipment.

Meanwhile, in France a similar pattern emerged. The airship company Zodiac began to develop inflatable rubber boats, and in 1934, invented the inflatable kayak and catamaran. These led to the modern Zodiac inflatable boat. The company became Zodiac Nautic in 2015.

Development continued after World War II with the discovery of new synthetic materials, such as neoprene and new adhesives, which allowed the boats to become sturdier and less prone to damage.

World War II
Submarine warfare in the Battle of the Atlantic led to casualties among warships and merchant ships. In the military, inflatable boats were used to transport torpedoes and other cargo. They also helped troops land in shallow water, and their compact size made overland transport possible. The US had two standard boats the LCRL and LCRS.

The Marine Raiders were originally trained to carry out raids and landings from Landing Craft Rubber Large (LCRL) inflatable boats carried by high speed transports. In August 1942 the submarines USS Argonaut (SM-1) and USS Nautilus (SS-168) carried elements of the 2nd Raider Battalion who carried out the Makin Island raid from LCRL inflatable boats. Invasions of the Battle of Arawe by the 112th Cavalry Regiment and parts of the Battle of Tarawa involved amphibious landings in inflatable boats against heavy enemy resistance.

One of the models, the Zodiac brand inflatable boat, became popular with the military, and contributed significantly to the rise of the civilian inflatable boat industry in Europe and in the United States. After World War II, governments sold surplus inflatable boats to the public.

Post-war inflatables
Inflatable liferafts were also used successfully to save crews of aircraft that ditched in the sea; bombing, naval and anti-submarine aircraft flying long distances over water being much more common from the start of WWII. In the 1950s, the French Navy officer and biologist Alain Bombard was the first to combine the outboard engine, a rigid floor and a boat shaped inflatable. The former airplane-manufacturer Zodiac built that boat and a friend of Bombard, the diver Jacques-Yves Cousteau began to use it, after Bombard sailed across the Atlantic Ocean with his inflatable in 1952. Cousteau was convinced by the shallow draught and good performance of this type of boat and used it as tenders on his expeditions.

The inflatable boat was so successful that Zodiac lacked the manufacturing capacity to satisfy demand. In the early 1960s, Zodiac licensed production to a dozen companies in other countries. In the 1960s, the British company Humber was the first to build Zodiac brand inflatable boats in the United Kingdom.

Some inflatables have inflated keels whose V-shape help the hull move through waves reducing the slamming effect caused by the flat hull landing back on the water surface after passing over the top of a wave at speed.

Types

Contemporary inflatable boats are manufactured using supported fabric. They are made of rubberized synthetic fabrics, PVC and polyurethane, providing light-weight and airtight sponsons. Depending on fabric choice, the fabric panels are assembled using either hot or cold manufacturing processes. Different styles of one-way valves are used to add or remove air, and some brands include inter-communicating valves that reduce the effect of a puncture.

Inflatable boats with transoms have an inflatable keel that creates a slight V-bottom along the line of the hull to improve the hull's seakeeping and directional stability. These vessels are very light, so if powered with an engine, it is best to put weight in the bow area to keep the bow from rising while the boat is going up on plane.

People increasingly use inflatables for personal recreational use on lakes, rivers, and oceans—and for white water rafting and kayaking, and for scuba divers to reach dive sites. Users can deflate, fold, and store fabric bottom inflatable boats in compact bags, making them ideal for limited storage and quick, easy access.

Sail rigs are available for inflatable dinghies, kayaks, and catamarans. In keeping with the portability of the inflatable hull, sail attachments fold or disassemble to fit in a compact bundle. Leeboards on the sides perform the same function as a centerboard, so users can tack these boats into the wind.

Rigid inflatable boat

The modern rigid inflatable boat (RIB) is a development of the inflatable boat, which has a rigid floor and solid hull. The external shape of the hull lets it cut through waves more easily giving a more comfortable ride when traveling fast in rough conditions. The structure of the hull is capable of supporting a more powerful transom mounted outboard engine or even an inboard engine.

Soft inflatable boat
A soft inflatable boat (SIB) lacks the solid hull of a RIB and often has a removable slatted floor, so the boat can be deflated and transported in a car or other vehicle. Such boats have a low draft and are therefore useful for traveling across shallow water and beaching in places without landing facilities.

Some SIBs have a rigid transom that can support an outboard engine. Inflatable boats with transoms have an inflatable keel that creates a slight V-bottom along the line of the hull to improve the hull's seakeeping and directional stability. These vessels are very light, so if powered with an engine, it is best to put weight in the bow area to keep the bow from rising while the boat is going up on plane.

Soft inflatable boats are available with several floor choices:
 * Roll up slat floor
 * Hard floor made of fiberglass, aluminum or wood panels
 * Ribbed air floor (on inflatable rafts)
 * High pressure air floor

Uses
Inflatables are commonly between 2 and 7 m long and are propelled by outboard motors of 2.3 to 300 hp. Due to their speed, portability, and weight, inflatable boats are used in diverse roles:

Inflatable and rigid-hulled inflatable boats are often used for short scuba diving excursions.

The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea publishes recommended regulations for inflatable boats used in rescue operations. Some life rafts also contain additional inflatable sections to ensure that the raft self-rights in heavy seas.

Inflatable life rafts have also been used since the 1930s on military aircraft that operate over water.

These boats are often used by special-operations units of the armed forces of several nations, for such purposes as landing on beaches. Because inflatable craft can be stored compactly they can also be transported on midget submarines such as those operated by the Advanced SEAL Delivery System. They have also been used by other forces without government sponsorship, such as guerrillas and pirates.

Lifeguards use inflatable boats or jet skis to reduce the time to reach a swimmer in distress. Inflatables are also used in conjunction with larger rescue craft, such as the Y class lifeboat used with the Tamar and Severn class lifeboats.

They are used in a number of sporting events and for recreational purposes, such as whitewater rafting, inflatable rescue boat racing, water skiing and fishing.

Transportation
An inflatable boat can be transported in various ways:

Deflated and Packed: The most significant advantage of inflatable boats is their ability to be deflated, folded, and packed into a compact size. Once deflated, they can be stored in a carry bag and transported in the trunk of a car or the bed of a truck.

On a Trailer: If the inflatable boat is larger or if it has a hard bottom (like a RIB), it might be more convenient to transport it on a trailer. This is especially useful if the boat has an outboard motor attached.

On Roof Racks: Some individuals use roof racks on their vehicles to transport inflatable boats. The boat is either deflated and packed or partially inflated and secured on top of the car.

Using a Boat Dolly: For short distances, like moving the boat from a parking area to the water’s edge, a boat dolly or hand cart can be useful. These are especially handy for heavier inflatables or those with motors.

title: Inflatable boat


text:
Carl Stumpf

Carl Stumpf (21 April 1848 – 25 December 1936) was a German philosopher, psychologist and musicologist. He is noted for founding the Berlin School of experimental psychology.

He studied with Franz Brentano at the University of Würzburg before receiving his doctorate at the University of Göttingen in 1868. He also tutored the modernist literature writer Robert Musil at the University of Berlin, and worked with Hermann Lotze, who is famous for his work in perception, at Göttingen. Stumpf is known for his work on the psychology of tones. He had an important influence on his students Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka who were instrumental in the founding of Gestalt psychology as well as Kurt Lewin, who was also a part of the Gestalt group and was key in the establishment of experimental social psychology in America.

Stumpf is considered one of the pioneers of comparative musicology and ethnomusicology, as documented in his study of the origins of human musical cognition The Origins of Music (1911). He held positions in the philosophy departments at the Universities of Göttingen, Würzburg, Prague, Munich and Halle, before obtaining a professorship at the University of Berlin.

Early life
Carl Stumpf was born in Wiesentheid, Franconia, in the Kingdom of Bavaria, to a prominent family. His father was the country court physician, and his immediate family included scientists and academicians, like his grandfather, who studied eighteenth century French literature and the philosophers Kant and Schelling. Stumpf showed precocious musical talent as a child, learning the violin by the age of 7. By age 10, he had learned five other instruments and wrote his first musical composition.

Education
Stumpf was sickly as a child so his early education was conducted at home with his grandfather as his tutor. Stumpf attended the local Gymnasium, where he developed a passion for philosophy, especially the works of Plato, before enrolling at the University of Würzburg at the age of 17. He spent one semester studying aesthetics and one studying law. Then, in his third semester, he met Franz Brentano, who taught Stumpf to think logically and empirically. Brentano's lectures were also attended by Anton Marty, Carl van Endert, Ernst Commer, Ludwig Schütz, and Hermann Schell. Brentano also encouraged Stumpf to take courses on the natural sciences because he considered both the substance and methods of science important to philosophy. After two semesters of studying with Brentano and with encouragement from his mentor, he transferred to the University of Göttingen to study under Hermann Lotze, a German perceptual theorist. There he was awarded a doctorate in 1868.

In 1869, he entered a seminary, intending to be a Catholic priest. However, he disagreed with the dogma of the papal infallibility so he returned to the University of Göttingen for his doctorate. He was awarded venia legendi for philosophy in 1870 after completing his thesis on mathematical axioms, which he wrote in Latin.

Academic career
Soon after, Stumpf was granted a position as an instructor at the University of Göttingen in the Department of Philosophy. There Stumpf met Ernst Weber and Gustav Fechner, and served as an observer in their psychological experiments. Their careful approach to a problem of aesthetics, specifically the visual appeal of rectangles of different proportions, appealed to Stumpf and reinforced the notion learned from Brentano that psychological acts or functions can be studied empirically.

In 1873, Stumpf returned to the University of Würzburg as a professor in the Department of Philosophy. Although he was forced to teach all of the philosophy and psychology courses due to Brentano's forced departure from the university, Stumpf completed his first major psychological work, an examination of visual perception, particularly depth perception. He proposed a nativist explanation for depth perception, and his book has been cited as an outstanding early contribution to the debate between the nativist and empiricist views of perception. He disputed the Kantian notion of space as an "a priori form of intuition" in his book, On the Psychological Origin of the Presentation of Space (1873). He argued that the status of space is Teilvorstellung or a "partial presentation", one that must be experienced as part of a broader presentation.

In 1894, Stumpf was appointed to the chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin. At Berlin, he also held an adjunct appointment as director of the Institute of Experimental Psychology at Berlin. The Institute originally occupied three dark rooms, but by 1920, had moved to twenty-five rooms in the former Imperial Palace. In 1896, Stumpf presided over the Third International Congress of Psychology, and delivered the inaugural address on the relation between mind and body; he advocated an interactionalist position that opposed the popular notion of psychophysical parallelism. Finally, from 1907 to 1908, Stump served as the rector of the University of Berlin.

Phenomenology
Stumpf began his work on the sensation and perception of tones, called Tonpsychologie (Tone Psychology), in 1875. Originally meant to be a four volume set, the first two volumes were published in 1883 and 1890, but the majority of the third volume was published as Konsonanz und Dissonanz. Considered his greatest contribution to psychology, the study employs a combination of theoretical analysis and empirical observations. He discusses intervals and series of tones, along with single tones. He distinguished between phenomena and mental functions, suggesting that phenomena such as tones, colors, and images are either sensory or imaginary. Stumpf termed the study of such phenomena as phenomenology. He did a wide range of studies of the phenomenological characteristics of the sounds of different instruments, the determinants of melody, tonal fusion, and the consonance and dissonance of tones. This research was made possible by the excellent collection of acoustic devices at the Institute of Physics. Stumpf's work on phenomenology influenced Edmund Husserl, who is considered the father of the school of phenomenology.

Sensational phenomena
In 1903 and 1904, Stumpf was involved in two well-publicized debunking episodes related to sensational phenomena. First, an engineer from Prague claimed to have invented a machine that could change photographs of sound waves into sound. Stumpf, after attending a demonstration, wrote an article challenging its legitimacy, causing it to never be heard about again. However, the case of Clever Hans, an apparently brilliant horse owned by Wilhelm von Osten, was even more sensational.

Later years
The majority of Stumpf's later work did not include sensational or interesting research, like that of Clever Hans. With the outbreak of World War I, many students left the Institute of Experimental Psychology to fight in the war. Furthermore, the war between Germany and the allied nations disrupted many professional relationships he had with other psychologists. Stumpf retired from the University of Berlin in 1921 and was succeeded as director of the psychological institute by his former student, Wolfgang Köhler.

Works in translation

 * Stumpf, C.: 'The Origins of Music', ed. and trans. David Trippett. Oxford University Press, 2012.
 * Stumpf, C.: 'Tone Psychology: Volume I', ed. and trans. Robin D. Rollinger. Routledge, 2019.

title: Carl Stumpf


text:
List of rivers of Maine

List of rivers in Maine (U.S. state).

The list is organized by tributary structure, from north to south along the coast.

Saint John River
Note: Higher part of Saint John River is recuperating water from tributaries of Southeast Quebec

Left bank of Saint John River (Maine)

 * Saint John River
 * Southwest Branch Saint John River, Quebec and Maine
 * Little Southwest Branch Saint John River
 * Baker Branch Saint John River
 * Northwest Branch Saint John River
 * Daaquam River, Quebec and Maine
 * Big Black River in Maine (Grande rivière Noire in Québec)
 * Depot River
 * Brown River, Quebec and Maine
 * Gobeil River, Quebec and Maine
 * Shields Branch in Maine (rivière du Rochu in Quebec)
 * Fivemile Brook in Maine (Rivière des Cinq Milles in Quebec)
 * Twomile Brook in Maine (Rivière des Deux Milles in Quebec)
 * Little Saint Roch River
 * Chimenticook River, Maine
 * East Lake (Kamouraska), Quebec and Maine
 * Pocwock River, Quebec and Maine
 * Pocwock River West Branch, Quebec and Maine
 * Pocwock River East Branch, Maine
 * Little Black River in Maine (Rivière Noire in Quebec)
 * West Branch Little Black River, Quebec and Maine
 * Campbell Branch Little Black River, Quebec and Maine
 * St. Francis River in Maine (rivière Saint-François in Quebec)

Right bank of Saint John River (Maine)

 * Saint John River
 * Allagash River
 * Musquacook Stream
 * Fish River
 * Red River
 * Birch River
 * North Branch Birch River
 * South Branch Birch River
 * Little River
 * Aroostook River
 * St. Croix Stream
 * Blackwater River
 * North Branch Blackwater River
 * South Branch Blackwater River
 * Machias River
 * South Branch Machias River
 * Little Machias River
 * Little Madawaska River
 * River De Chute
 * Meduxnekeag River
 * South Branch Meduxnekeag River
 * North Branch Meduxnekeag River

Down East

 * St. Croix River
 * Little River (Big Lake)
 * Little River (Passamaquoddy Bay)
 * Pennamaquan River
 * Hardscrabble River
 * Dennys River
 * Orange River
 * Machias River
 * West Branch Machias River
 * Crooked River
 * Middle River
 * East Machias River
 * Maine River
 * Englishman River
 * Chandler River
 * East Branch Chandler River
 * Sandy River
 * Indian River
 * Southwest Branch Indian River
 * West River
 * Pleasant River
 * Western Little River
 * Little River
 * West Branch Pleasant River
 * Harrington River
 * Mill River
 * Narraguagus River
 * West Branch Narraguagus River (Hancock County, Maine)
 * Little Narraguagus River
 * West Branch Narraguagus River (Cherryfield, Maine)
 * Spring River
 * Skillings River
 * Jordan River
 * Union River
 * East Branch Union River
 * Bog River
 * Middle Branch Union River
 * West Branch Union River
 * Webb Brook
 * Webb Pond
 * Mill Brook
 * Little Bog River
 * Benjamin River

Penobscot Bay

 * Bagaduce River
 * Penobscot River
 * East Branch Penobscot River
 * Seboeis River
 * Little Seboeis River
 * West Branch Penobscot River
 * North Branch Penobscot River
 * South Branch Penobscot River
 * Mattawamkeag River
 * East Branch Mattawamkeag River
 * West Branch Mattawamkeag River
 * Molunkus Stream
 * Piscataquis River
 * East Branch Piscataquis River
 * West Branch Piscataquis River
 * Sebec River
 * Pleasant River
 * East Branch Pleasant River
 * Middle Branch Pleasant River
 * West Branch Pleasant River
 * Passadumkeag River
 * East Branch Passadumkeag River
 * West Branch Passadumkeag River
 * Stillwater River
 * Kenduskeag Stream
 * North Branch Marsh River
 * Marsh Stream
 * South Branch Marsh River
 * Orland River
 * Narramissic River
 * Dead River
 * Goose River (Belfast Bay)
 * Passagassawakeag River
 * Little River
 * Ducktrap River
 * Megunticook River
 * Goose River (Rockport Harbor)

Mid Coast

 * Weskeag River
 * Saint George River
 * Dead River
 * Back River (Saint George River tributary)
 * Oyster River
 * West Branch Oyster River
 * East Branch Oyster River
 * Mill River
 * Meduncook River
 * Back River (Meduncook River tributary)
 * Medomak River
 * Back River (Medomak River tributary)
 * Goose River
 * Pemaquid River
 * Johns River
 * Eastern Branch Johns River
 * North Branch Johns River
 * Damariscotta River
 * Little River (Damariscotta River tributary)
 * Sheepscot River
 * West Branch Sheepscot River
 * Dyer River
 * Marsh River
 * Cross River
 * Back River (Boothbay, Maine)
 * Sasanoa River – connects to Kennebec River
 * Little Sheepscot River
 * Little River (Georgetown, Maine)

Kennebec River

 * Kennebec River
 * Moose River
 * South Branch Moose River
 * East Branch Moose River
 * West Branch Moose River
 * Roach River
 * Moxie Stream
 * Dead River – also called West Branch
 * North Branch Dead River
 * South Branch Dead River
 * Carrabassett River
 * South Branch Carrabassett River
 * West Branch Carrabassett River
 * Sandy River
 * South Branch Sandy River
 * Lemon Stream
 * Temple Stream
 * Sebasticook River
 * East Branch Sebasticook River
 * Little River
 * Eastern River
 * East Branch Eastern River
 * West Branch Eastern River
 * Abagadasset River
 * Androscoggin River
 * Rapid River
 * Cupsuptic River
 * East Branch Cupsuptic River
 * Little East Branch Cupsuptic River
 * Kennebago River
 * Rangeley River
 * Magalloway River
 * West Branch Magalloway River
 * Third East Branch Magalloway River
 * Second East Branch Magalloway River
 * First East Branch Magalloway River
 * Little Magalloway River
 * Middle Branch Little Magalloway River
 * West Branch Little Magalloway River
 * Dead Cambridge River
 * Swift Cambridge River
 * Wild River
 * Pleasant River
 * East Branch Pleasant River
 * West Branch Pleasant River
 * Alder River
 * Sunday River
 * South Branch Sunday River
 * Bear River
 * Ellis River
 * West Branch Ellis River
 * Concord River
 * Swift River
 * West Branch Swift River
 * East Branch Swift River
 * Webb River
 * Dead River (Androscoggin River tributary)
 * Nezinscot River
 * East Branch Nezinscot River
 * West Branch Nezinscot River
 * Little Androscoggin River
 * Sanborn River
 * Sabattus River
 * Dead River (Sabattus River tributary)
 * Little River
 * Muddy River
 * Cathance River
 * Sasanoa River – connects to Sheepscot River
 * Back River (Kennebec River tributary) (connects to Sheepscot River tributary)

Southern Maine

 * Morse River
 * Sprague River
 * New Meadows River
 * Little River
 * Harraseeket River
 * Royal River
 * Cousins River
 * Presumpscot River
 * Tenny River
 * Songo River
 * Bear River
 * Chute River
 * Crooked River
 * Muddy River
 * Northwest River
 * Sticky River
 * Pleasant River
 * Little River
 * North Branch Little River
 * Piscataqua River
 * East Branch Piscataqua River
 * Fore River
 * Stroudwater River
 * South Branch Stroudwater River
 * Spurwink River
 * Scarborough River
 * Dunstan River
 * Nonesuch River
 * Libby River
 * Saco River
 * Old Course Saco River
 * Charles River
 * Cold River
 * Mad River
 * Middle Branch Mad River
 * South Branch Mad River
 * Little Cold River
 * Kezar River
 * Little Saco River
 * Shepards River
 * Tenmile River
 * West Branch Tenmile River
 * Hancock Brook
 * Ossipee River
 * South River
 * Little River (Ossipee River tributary)
 * Little Ossipee River
 * Little River (Goosefare Bay)
 * Batson River
 * Kennebunk River
 * Mousam River
 * Middle Branch Mousam River
 * Littlefield River
 * Little River (Drakes Island, Maine)
 * Merriland River
 * Webhannet River
 * Ogunquit River
 * Josias River
 * Cape Neddick River
 * Little River (York, Maine)
 * York River
 * Piscataqua River
 * Salmon Falls River – also called Newichawannock by the Abenaki
 * Little River (Salmon Falls River tributary)
 * Great Works River
 * Neoutaquet River

title: List of rivers of Maine


text:
Tropicana Field

Tropicana Field (commonly known as the Trop) is a multi-purpose domed stadium located in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. The stadium has been the ballpark of Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays since the team's inaugural season in 1998. The stadium is also used for college football, and from December 2008 to December 2017 was the home of the St. Petersburg Bowl, an annual postseason bowl game. The venue is the only non-retractable domed stadium in Major League Baseball, making it the only year-round indoor venue in MLB. Tropicana Field is the smallest MLB stadium by seating capacity when obstructed-view rows in the uppermost sections are covered with tarps as they are for most Rays games.

Tropicana Field opened in 1990 and was originally known as the Florida Suncoast Dome. In 1993, the Tampa Bay Lightning moved to the facility and its name was changed to the ThunderDome until the team moved to their new home in downtown Tampa in 1996. In October 1996, Tropicana Products, a fruit juice company then based in nearby Bradenton, signed a 30-year naming rights deal.

Tropicana Field's location and design (especially the ceiling catwalks) have been widely criticized. Along with Oakland Coliseum, it is often cited as one of the worst ballparks in Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball has cited the need to replace Oakland Coliseum and Tropicana Field as one of the primary obstacles to future MLB expansion.

In 2023, the Tampa Bay Rays announced a deal with local politicians to build a new stadium near Tropicana Field at an expected cost of $1.2 billion, half of which would fall on taxpayers. The St. Petersburg City Council blocked a proposal to allow St. Petersburg citizens to express their view on the stadium subsidy in an advisory referendum.

History
After Tampa was awarded the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Tampa Bay Rowdies in the 1970s, St. Petersburg decided it wanted a share of the professional sports scene in Tampa Bay. City officials decided early on that the city would attempt to attract Major League Baseball. Possible designs for a baseball park or multi-purpose stadium were proposed as early as 1983. One such design, in the same location where Tropicana Field would ultimately be built, called for an open-air stadium with a circus tent-like covering. It took several design cues from Kauffman Stadium, including fountains beyond the outfield wall.

Ultimately, city officials decided that a stadium with a fixed permanent dome was necessary for a prospective major league team to be viable in the area, due to its hot, humid summers and frequent thunderstorms. Ballpark construction began in 1986 in the hope that it would lure a Major League Baseball team to the facility.

The stadium, built originally as the Florida Suncoast Dome, was first used in an attempt to entice the Chicago White Sox to relocate if a new ballpark was not built to replace the aging Comiskey Park. The governments of Chicago and Illinois eventually agreed to build a new Comiskey Park (now Guaranteed Rate Field) in 1989.

1990s
The stadium was finished in 1990. It hosted the 1990 Davis Cup Finals that autumn, as well as several rock concerts, but still had no tenants. The venue helped make St. Petersburg a finalist in the MLB expansion for 1993, but it lost out to Miami and Denver. There were rumors of the Seattle Mariners moving in the early part of the 1990s, and the San Francisco Giants came close to moving to the area, with Tampa Bay investors announcing their purchase of the team and its relocation in a press conference in 1992. However, the sale and move were blocked by National League owners, who voted against the deal in November 1992 under pressure from San Francisco officials and the then-owner of the Florida Marlins, Blockbuster Video Chairman H. Wayne Huizenga. A local boycott of Blockbuster Video stores occurred for several years thereafter.

The Suncoast Dome finally got a regular tenant in 1991, when the Arena Football League's Tampa Bay Storm made their debut. Two years later, the National Hockey League's Tampa Bay Lightning made the stadium their home for three seasons. In the process, the Suncoast Dome was renamed the ThunderDome. Because of the large capacity of what was basically a park built for baseball, several NHL and AFL attendance records were set during the Lightning and Storm's tenures there.

Finally, in 1995, the ThunderDome received a baseball team when MLB expanded to the Tampa Bay area. Changes were made to the stadium and its naming rights were sold to Tropicana Products, who renamed it Tropicana Field in 1996. The completion of what is now Amalie Arena in downtown Tampa permitted "The Trop" to be vacated for preparation for its intended purpose, as the Lightning and Storm moved into that facility. A US$70 million renovation then took place—to upgrade a stadium that had cost $130 million to complete only eight years earlier. Ebbets Field was the model for the renovations, which included a replica of the famous rotunda that greeted Dodger fans for many years. The first regular season baseball game took place at the park on March 31, 1998, when the Devil Rays faced the Detroit Tigers, losing 11–6. Luis Gonzalez of the Tigers hit the first home run at the stadium during the game, and Wade Boggs hit the first Devil Rays home run later in the game. Boggs would also hit a home run for his 3,000th hit at Tropicana Field in 1999. Boggs' two home runs are commemorated with golden seats and plaques at the spots where the balls landed in the right field seats.

Although Tropicana was purchased by PepsiCo in 1998, PepsiCo did not elect to make any changes to Tropicana's naming rights, as the Tropicana brand is popular among the local fanbase.

2000s
The park was initially built with an AstroTurf surface, but it was replaced in 2000 by softer FieldTurf. A new version of FieldTurf, FieldTurf Duo, was installed prior to the 2007 season. It has always featured a traditional "full dirt" infield, instead of the "sliding pits" design that was common during the 1970s and 1980s, making it the first artificial turf field with a full dirt infield since Busch Stadium II in 1976. Since Tropicana Field does not need to convert between baseball and football, sliding pits, designed to save re-configuration time, were unnecessary. Tropicana has hosted football games, but never during baseball season. On August 6, 2007, the AstroTurf warning track was replaced by brown-colored stone filled FieldTurf Duo.

Tropicana Field underwent a further $25 million facelift prior to the 2006 season. Another $10 million in improvements were added during the season. In 2006, the Devil Rays added a live Cownose ray tank to Tropicana Field. The tank is located just behind the center field wall, in clear view of the play on the field. People can go up to the tank to touch the creatures. Further improvements prior to the 2007 offseason, in addition to the new FieldTurf, include additional family features in the right field area, the creation of a new premium club, and several new video boards including a new 35 x Daktronics LED main video board that is four times larger than the original video board. The 2007 renovation also added built-in HDTV capabilities to the ballpark, with Fox Sports Florida and WXPX airing at least a quarter of the schedule in HD in 2007 and accommodating the new video board's 16x9 aspect ratio.

On September 3, 2008, in a game between the Rays and the New York Yankees, Tropicana Field saw the first official use of instant replay in the history of Major League Baseball. The disputed play involved a home run hit above the left field foul pole by Yankee Alex Rodriguez. The ball was called a home run on the field, but was close enough that the umpires opted to view the replay to verify the call. Later, the Trop saw the first case of a call being overturned by instant replay, when a fly ball by Carlos Peña originally ruled a ground-rule double due to fan interference, was overturned and made a home run on September 19. The umpires determined that the fan in question, originally believed to have reached over the right field wall, did not reach over the wall.

In October 2008, Tropicana Field hosted its first ever baseball postseason games as the Rays met the Chicago White Sox in the American League Division Series, the Boston Red Sox in the American League Championship Series, and the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series. It hosted the on-field trophy presentations for the Rays when they became the American League Champions on October 19, following Game 7 of the ALCS. Chase Utley hit the first ever World Series home run at Tropicana Field during the first inning of Game 1 of the 2008 World Series. The Rays ended up losing the game 3–2 and eventually the World Series to the Phillies 4 games to 1.

Since 2008, the top ⅓ of the upper deck seating has been tarped over, artificially reducing the stadium's capacity to 36,048 for the 2008 regular season. It was further reduced to 35,041 for the 2008 postseason, since the 300-level Party Deck had been reserved by Major League Baseball as an auxiliary press area. On October 14, 2008, the Rays announced that the upper deck tarps would be removed for the remainder of the postseason, starting with a Game 6 of the 2008 American League Championship Series. This increased the capacity of the stadium to nearly 41,000, depending on standing-room-only tickets sold.

2010s
The first no-hitter pitched at Tropicana Field took place on June 25, 2010, thrown by Edwin Jackson of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who had been a member of the Rays from 2006 to 2008.

About one month after Jackson's no-hitter on July 26, 2010, Tropicana Field was the site of the first no-hitter in Rays' history when pitcher Matt Garza achieved the feat. Garza faced the minimum 27 batters, as the only opponent to reach base (on a walk) was erased by a double play hit by the following batter.

On June 24, 2013, in a game against the Toronto Blue Jays, three Rays players – James Loney, Wil Myers, and Sam Fuld – hit consecutive home runs, a first at Tropicana Field.

Because of rioting in Baltimore, a series between the Rays and Baltimore Orioles in May 2015 was moved from Oriole Park at Camden Yards to Tropicana Field. The games were played with the Orioles serving as the home team and the Rays serving as the visiting team.

Due to severe flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey in the Houston area, the Houston Astros played one "home" series at Tropicana Field in August 2017 against the Texas Rangers while the Rays were away on a previously scheduled road trip. This was only the fourth time games were moved to a neutral location due to weather. Coincidentally, in advance of Hurricane Irma arriving in the Tampa Bay area two weeks later, the Rays' home series against the New York Yankees was moved to Citi Field, the home stadium of the Yankees' crosstown rivals, the New York Mets.

In July 2018, a proposal was unveiled to replace the facility with Ybor Stadium. However, later that year at the MLB Winter Owners Meeting, it was announced by Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg that the Ybor stadium plan would not go forward. The current stadium lease between the Rays and the City of St. Petersburg runs through 2027. The city granted the Rays until December 31, 2018, to continue negotiations with Hillsborough County officials. Although MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has stated his support for "the ballpark effort and [his] desire to be [help] in assisting all parties in finding a way to keep the Rays in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area", he also went on to say that the Rays should "explore a path that is in the best interests of his Club and Major League Baseball".

In addition, the relocation announcement sparked a flurry of redevelopment proposals submitted to the City of St. Petersburg. There are proposals to eliminate the structure completely, but efforts have been made to include the public in the debate using several community meetings.

For the 2019 season, Tropicana Field closed its upper decks, as part of efforts and renovations to "create a more intimate, entertaining and appealing experience for our fans". This reduced the stadium's capacity to around 25,000–the lowest in the league. The team's average attendance in the 2018 season was only just over 14,000.

2020s
From December 2020 to April 2021, the stadium hosted the professional wrestling promotion WWE, broadcasting its shows from a behind closed doors set called the WWE ThunderDome. Due to the start of the 2021 Tampa Bay Rays season, the promotion relocated to Yuengling Center in Tampa.

On January 26, 2021, seven different proposals to redevelop the Tropicana Field site were unveiled, both with and without a new stadium.

The Gas Plant Stadium project is the latest proposal to replace Tropicana Field starting in the 2028 MLB season. If approved and constructed, it would serve as the new home of the Rays.

Architectural

The most recognizable exterior feature of Tropicana Field is the slanted roof. It was designed at an angle to reduce the interior volume in order to reduce cooling costs, and to better protect the stadium from hurricanes. The dome is supported by a tensegrity structure and is lit up with orange lights after the Rays win a home game. When the Minnesota Twins vacated the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome following the 2009 season and moved into Target Field in 2010, Tropicana Field became the only active Major League Baseball stadium with a fixed (i.e., not retractable) roof. The catwalks attached to the non-retractable roof have been rare but occasional obstructions in the way of batted balls.

The main rotunda, on the east end of the stadium, resembles the Ebbets Field rotunda on the interior. The walkway to the main entrance of the park featured, until the 2020 season, a 900 ft long ceramic tile mosaic, made of 1,849,091 one-inch-square tiles. It was the largest outdoor tile mosaic in Florida, and the fifth-largest in the United States. It was sponsored by Florida Power Corporation, which is now a part of Duke Energy.

The primary 100-level concourse is at street level, with elevators, escalators and stairs separating the outfield and infield sections, since the ground is at different grades on either side. The 200-level loge box concourse is further separated, and is carpeted, as it includes the entrances to most of the luxury suites. The 300-level concourse is the highest of the concourses.

Gates
There are seven gate entrances/exits to Tropicana Field, numbered in a clockwise fashion. Gate 1 is the main entrance, known as the Rotunda, on the right-field side of the stadium. Gate 4 is a VIP-only entrance, while Gate 7 is for stadium and team personnel only.

Dining and amenities
Seating at Tropicana Field is arranged with odd sections on the third base side and even sections on the first base side. The hallway behind sections 133–149 is nicknamed "Left Field Street." The hallway behind sections 136–150 is nicknamed "Right Field Street." The 100-level seating wraps around the entire field with a 360° walkway. Behind the stadium's batter's eye is a center field common area, known as The Porch, which provides fans with open seating and standing room to watch games. The Porch, along with other facility improvements, was part of a multimillion-dollar renovation project that was completed before the start of the 2014 season. Loge boxes are featured along the infield of the 100-level from foul pole to foul pole. 200-level seating features 20 sections along the foul lines, broken by the press box behind home plate, with the luxury boxes directly behind and above them. 300-level seating wraps around the infield along the lines, and also features the "Party Deck", a small-capacity seating area above the left field outfield seats with separate concessions inside; initially sponsored by tbt*, the Party Deck has been sponsored by GTE Financial since the 2019 season. Rows are lettered starting closest to home plate and rise further away. Seats are numbered starting at the left side of the section.

There are a total of 70 luxury suites. 48 are accessible from the 200-level, while the other 15 are located on the 100-level.

There are a total of 2,776 club seats at Tropicana Field. The Dex Imaging Home Plate Club features its own entrance, recliner seats, and a premium buffet with in-seat service. The second club section, the Rays Club, is along the first-base side on the 100-level at the Loge Box level. It features its own premium buffet and premium seating.

MacDillville is a section located on the right field line, behind the Rays' bullpen. The section is reserved for the 24 tickets that the Rays provide to personnel returning from deployment, families of deployed personnel and staff assigned to MacDill Air Force Base.

Field-level party sections were installed in the corners in 2006. The left field party section is available for groups of 75-136 people and named "162 Landing", in reference to Evan Longoria's walk-off home run in the 162nd and final regular season game of the season that landed in that section, which clinched the American League wild card for the Rays. In 2017 the section was renamed after the Tampa sports bar, "Ducky's" that is featured in The Porch, and co-owned by Evan Longoria; the Ducky's branding was removed following the trade of Longoria to the San Francisco Giants before the 2018 season, and 162 Landing has been sponsored by Hard Rock Café since the 2018 season. The right field party section is the "Papa John's Bullpen Box" and is available for groups of 50–85. When the right field corner was sponsored by the fast food chain Checkers, tickets to the "Checkers Bullpen Cafe" included a free meal at the Checkers kiosk immediately adjacent to the section. As of 2008, both party sections feature all-you-can-eat buffets.

In 2008, the Rays also set aside a section of the press boxes on the right field side, named "Press Level Party Area", as an all-you-can-eat buffet section with typical ballpark fare. It is usually available for group parties of at least 35, but it is available for individual ticketing on select dates.

In 2019, the Rays introduced the Left Field Ledge, a party section above the section of the 360 walkway behind left field, offering tables for groups of eight and patio boxes for groups of 12 to 24.

The St. Anthony's Fan Care Clinic is located between Gates 3 and 4 on the 100 level, section 102 (behind home plate). St. Anthony's Health Medical Team staffs the clinic and offers first aid services to fans. A Baby Care Suite is located on the 300 level near section 300. It features baby changing stations and private nursing suites.

Located throughout the first floor walkway are multiple apparel and gear stores, and interactive experiences for fans.

One of the team's two main apparel stores is located in the stadium, near gate 1. The other main store, The Tampa Pro Shop & Ticket Outlet, is located in Tampa. Many specialty, smaller, stores are located throughout the stadium, including a "Game-Used Merchandise" store located in Center Field Street.

Interactive experiences include:
 * Grand Slam Alley: an arcade-style area sponsored by GameTime, located behind section 133, free on Sundays
 * Topps: fans can have their picture put on a Rays baseball card, located in Left Field, free on Sundays
 * Home Run Derby / Speed Pitch: a hitting and pitching simulator, located behind section 134, free on Sundays
 * Raymond's Art Studio: An art studio featuring either coloring pages or crafts, and a blackboard wall (for fans 14 and under), located in Right Field Street near Gate 1 (Free)
 * Interactive Playground: A virtual interactive que of games that cycle every three minutes, located between Raymond's Art Studio and the Rays Touch Tank (Free)

The Rays Touch Tank
Just over the right-center field fence is the Rays Touch Tank. This 35 foot, 10,000 USgal tank is filled with three different species of rays, including cownose rays that were taken from Tampa Bay waters. The tank is one of the 10 biggest in the nation. Admission to the tank area is free for all fans attending home games, but there is a limit of 40 people in the area at any given time. The tank is open to fans about twenty minutes after the gates open and closes to the public two hours after the first pitch. Fans get to see the rays up close and get to learn educational info about them.

The tank and rays are sponsored and maintained by the Florida Aquarium, and educates people about rays and other aquatic life.

For every ball hit into the tank during a game by a Rays player, the Rays would donate $5,000 to charity with $2,500 going to the Florida Aquarium and $2,500 going to that player's charity of choice. To date, only seven players have hit a home run that landed in the tank:

* Denotes walk-off home run.

As of the 2021 season, the netting over the tank was extended to fully enclose the area, removing the possibility of a home run ball entering the tank.

Concessions
Behind center field on the stadium's ground level near the main rotunda entrance is a two-story full-service restaurant and recreational area called BallPark & Rec, opened in 2018. The restaurant's second floor features an outdoor area with lawn games, as well as an indoor arcade area. This restaurant took over the location previously occupied by Everglades Brewhouse, which served several craft beers in addition to having a full liquor bar and opened two hours before first pitch. A "Fan vs. Food" challenge at Everglades was introduced in 2014, which consists of eating a 4 lbs burger and a pound of french fries in under 30 minutes to win two future Rays game tickets and a T-shirt.

The Cuesta-Rey Cigar Bar was located upstairs from Everglades Brewhouse, accessible by escalator, and across from The Porch in center field, prior to BallPark & Rec's expansion. It offered a large selection of cigars, many produced by a company founded in Tampa. The lounge also featured a regular bar, open seating with leather upholstery, and a large screen T.V. It was the only indoor location at Tropicana Field where smoking is permitted.

Various other concession stands are located behind center field and along the outer rim of the stadium along the base lines, collected in three concourses named Center Field Street, First Base Food Hall, and Third Base Food Hall. These stands frequently change from season to season, are often named after or maintained by stadium sponsors, or are themed after notable Rays figures, such as the Rocco Ball Deli, themed after former Rays player and coach Rocco Baldelli, which was open for the 2018 season until Baldelli was hired by the Minnesota Twins in 2019. Current and former concessions include the Taco Bus, the Wine Cellar, The Carvery, Pipo's, Papa John's Pizza, Fish Shack, Everglades BBQ, a full service liquor bar, Bay Grill and the Craft Beer Corner featuring many local craft brewery's including Big Storm Brewing, Cigar City, Green Bench, Sea Dog and 3 Daughters. Green Bench Brewing offers a special edition brew just for the Rays called 2-Seam Blonde Ale.

In addition to these concessions, Tropicana Field previously hosted a concession stand for Outback Steakhouse. Outback is a Tampa Bay-based establishment. To compete with established stadiums' hot dog traditions, the Trop introduced the "Sting 'Em" Dog in 2007. This consists of a regular hot dog topped with chili and cheese. It was renamed "The Heater" in 2008.

Ted Williams Museum/Hitters Hall of Fame
For a list of inductees and recipients of various awards, see footnote

The Ted Williams Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame opened in February 1994, in Hernando, Florida, in Citrus County—just a few blocks from the place where Williams lived in his later years.

In 2006, the museum and hall of fame were moved to Tropicana Field after its original facility in Hernando went bankrupt. A new 7000 sqft upstairs wing was opened in 2007, which now houses the exhibits on Ted Williams's careers with the Boston Red Sox and with the United States Marine Corps during World War II and the Korean War, as well as the monuments to the members of the Hitters Hall of Fame complete with memorabilia, with donated authentic memorabilia wherever possible and many of Williams's own personal mementos from his career and post-playing life. Williams did not induct himself into his own Hitters Hall of Fame, and was inducted in 2003 only after he died.

The museum also includes a "Pitching Wall of Great Achievement", the Negro leagues wing —including an exhibit about John Jordan "Buck" O'Neil (a "son" of Sarasota) —the "500 Homerun Club" exhibit, and exhibits about other topics, including the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and the Tampa Bay Rays. The museum often hosts autograph signings and charity auctions during or before games.

The museum is open during game days, opening at the same time as the park and closing after the 7th inning with the concession stands. Admission is free, and the museum is open to all ticketholders. In 2012, the museum is open until the 9th inning, but still open only on game days. As of the last week of the 2012 season the museum was back to closing by the 7th inning (beginning of, not after the 7th inning) and the open only on game days policy is still in effect.

Basketball
In 1998, Tropicana Field was a regional final site for the NCAA men's basketball tournament. A year later the stadium played host to the 1999 Final Four which saw the Connecticut Huskies beat the Duke Blue Devils 77–74 for the championship. Subsequently, no other NCAA men's basketball game has been played at Tropicana Field.

Football
ArenaBowl IX was held at the venue in 1995.

In 2008, the NCAA announced that Tropicana Field would be host to a postseason college bowl game, bringing football to the dome. The game, which eventually took on the name Gasparilla Bowl, was played inside Tropicana Field until 2017, after which the bowl organizers moved the annual contest to Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.

The Trop returned to a football configuration on October 30, 2009, to host one of the three home games of the Florida Tuskers of the United Football League, which the Rays had invested in.

The East–West Shrine Game, a postseason college football all-star game played annually since 1925, was played at Tropicana Field from 2012 until 2019.

Hockey
Tropicana Field, then known as the ThunderDome, holds the record for the highest attendance for a Stanley Cup playoffs game, set on April 23, 1996, with 28,183 fans. At the time this was the largest-ever crowd at an NHL game, which stood until the 2003 Heritage Classic. This still stands the attendance record for a game played at a teams' regular home stadium, as all NHL games with a higher attendance were part of the NHL's Winter Classic, Heritage Classic, or Stadium Series.

Motorsports
The World of Outlaws Sprint Cars raced at the Suncoast Dome on February 7–9, 1992 as a part of Florida Speedweeks with several tracks hosting events during the month.

An SCCA Trans-Am Series race was held from 1996 to 1997 on a temporary course encompassing the parking lot and surrounding streets.

Concerts
Tropicana Field has hosted many concerts over the years; one of the first large events upon its completion was a concert by Don Henley on June 29, 1990. Many well-known artists have held concerts at the venue, including Eric Clapton (twice), David Bowie, Janet Jackson (twice), Steely Dan, AC/DC (twice), Guns N' Roses, Billy Joel (twice), Robert Plant, Rush (twice), R.E.M., the Eagles, Depeche Mode, Rod Stewart, Kiss, and Van Halen (twice), among others. The venue's largest concert attendance was for the boy band New Kids on the Block in August 1990.

The number of large concerts at Tropicana Field has decreased considerably since the (Devil) Rays were established in 1998, as the club's 81-game home schedule makes scheduling difficult, especially during the summer concert season. Also, the development in nearby Tampa of Amalie Arena (opened in 1996) and the MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre (opened in 2004) into busy concert venues has further curtailed the concert slate at Tropicana Field.

Rays Summer Concert Series
Beginning in 2007, the Rays organized a "Summer Concert Series" in which a mix of major and lesser-known performers of many different musical genres performed after select home games for no extra charge beyond the price of the game ticket. The concerts were usually scheduled after Friday or Saturday night games, with more kid-oriented acts performing after Sunday afternoon games. The usual procedure was for a portable stage to be rolled out onto centerfield immediately after the final out of the ballgame, with the music starting soon thereafter. For most shows, fans were allowed to come down onto the playing field to watch the performance up close.

The first after-baseball concert featured nostalgia act Sha Na Na in June 2007. The event was so successful that the Rays booked a series of shows for the following season, usually increasing attendance for those games. Participating artists have included The Beach Boys, Los Lobos, LL Cool J, Sister Hazel, Kacey Musgraves, The Jacksons, REO Speedwagon, ZZ Top, Weezer, Kenny Loggins, Avril Lavigne, Joan Jett, and The Wiggles among many others, totaling over 80 shows in all.

In some seasons, the number of post-game concerts was as high as a dozen. The number dwindled to two in 2017, and before the 2018 season, the Rays announced that they would discontinue the concert series due to "stress on the artificial turf".

On April 27, 2023, the Rays announced that the Summer Concert Series would return to celebrate their 25th anniversary season. The first artist announced was AJR, who would perform after the Friday, May 19 game against the Milwaukee Brewers. The concert proved to be a success, and the team soon announced two more acts, Lee Brice on Friday, August 11, and the "I Love The 90's" Tour, featuring Vanilla Ice, Rob Base, Montell Jordan, and Tone Loc, on Friday, April 8.

Professional wrestling
On December 11, 2020, professional wrestling promotion WWE began broadcasting its weekly shows, Raw, SmackDown, and Main Event, and their associated pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming events from Tropicana Field in a residency. The programs were filmed behind closed doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic in a bio-secure bubble called the WWE ThunderDome, which had been relocated from Orlando's Amway Center due to the start of the 2020–21 ECHL and NBA seasons as the Amway Center is the shared home of the Orlando Solar Bears and the Orlando Magic.

Through the arrangement, Tropicana Field hosted the pay-per-views TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs, Royal Rumble, Elimination Chamber, and Fastlane—the final PPV before WrestleMania 37 (hosted by Raymond James Stadium in nearby Tampa)—as well as the 2021 WWE Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and WWE Superstar Spectacle (a WWE Network event produced primarily for the Indian market). As the 2021 MLB season approached, on March 24, 2021, WWE announced that the ThunderDome would be relocated to the Yuengling Center in Tampa, beginning with the April 12 episode of Raw, the night after WrestleMania 37. WWE's final show filmed at Tropicana Field was the April 9 episode of SmackDown, which was taped the week prior on April 2.

WWE would return to Tropicana Field for the 2024 Royal Rumble event, which set an attendance record of a reported 48,044 fans.

Location
Tropicana Field sits on 66 acre in the Midtown community of St. Petersburg, Florida. The land the stadium and its parking lots now occupy was occupied by the Gas Plant neighborhood from the late 1800s until 1986.

In the late 1800s St. Petersburg began a large recruitment initiative to attract people to help build the city's infrastructures and fill lower-income service jobs. African Americans began to move to St. Petersburg from across the south looking to fill these jobs. The influx of African Americans in the area brought the formation of many black communities including the Gas Plant district. The area housed nearly 800 people, many African American-owned small businesses and three African American churches. The district's name came from the two fuel tanks that originally stood where Tropicana Field now stands.

In 1979, the St. Petersburg City Council voted to refurbish the neighborhood, as it had "seen better days." This plan promised to create new, modern, affordable housing and an industrial park that would bring many new jobs to the area. By 1982 developers offered no proposals for the refurbishment of the district to the city council, even after the council specifically requested the proposals. A group of Pinellas County business people offered a plan to the council that entailed building a baseball stadium, in hopes of attracting a major league baseball team to the area. That year, the council voted unanimously to follow through with the baseball hopes and lease the land to the sports authority for $1 a year.

Most African Americans who used to live or work in the neighborhood felt betrayed by the city and bitter over the baseball development. The city had offered, and followed through with, many reparation programs for the residents and businesses of the Gas Plant district when the district was originally to be refurbished, including financial relocation help. But these programs were welcomed only on the basis that the area would be once again a functional community. When that stipulation changed residents were angered and new reparation plans were rumored but never came to fruition. As for the churches of the area, relocation offers extended to them from the City Council were "generous" according to one of the churches pastors. This is believed to be because of the political power that the churches held.

The destruction of the Gas Plant district and the city's shortcomings in securing economic and employment opportunities for the displaced African American community have left a jagged relationship between city officials and the aforementioned African American community. The destruction of the Gas Plant district financially crippled and killed many African American-owned small businesses and is often referred to as the main reason that only 10% of St. Petersburg's small businesses are African American-owned today.

The dome was built on the former site of a coal gasification plant and, in 1987, hazardous chemicals were found in the soil around the construction site. The city spent millions of dollars to remove the chemicals from the area.

It is often criticized as being located away from the Tampa Bay area's largest population base in Tampa.

Catwalks
Among the most cited criticisms about the stadium are the four catwalks that hang from the ceiling. The catwalks are part of the dome's support structure. The stadium was built with cable-stayed technology similar to that of the defunct Georgia Dome. It also supports the lighting and speaker systems. Because the dome is tilted toward the outfield, the catwalks are lower in the outfield.

The catwalks are lettered, with the highest inner ring being the A Ring, out to the farthest and lowest, the D Ring. The A Ring is entirely in play, while the B, C, and D Rings have yellow posts bolted to them to delineate the relative position of the foul lines. Any ball touching the A Ring, or the in-play portion of the B Ring, can drop for a hit or be caught for an out. The C and D Rings are out of play; if they are struck between the foul poles, then the ball is ruled a home run.

On August 5, 2010, Jason Kubel of the Minnesota Twins hit a sky-high infield pop-up that would have ended the inning in a 6–6 game if caught, but the ball struck the A ring and fell safely onto the infield allowing the Twins to score the go-ahead run and extend the inning in a controversial 8–6 win. As a result, on October 4, 2010, Major League Baseball approved a change in the ground rules for the A and B rings, making it so that a batted ball striking either of the two rings was automatically ruled a dead ball, regardless of whether the ball strikes in fair or foul territory. The rules pertaining to the C and D rings remained the same. This change lasted for just the 2010 postseason.

On the other hand, several potential hits have been lost as a result of the catwalks. For example, on May 12, 2006, Devil Rays outfielder Jonny Gomes hit a long fly ball against the Toronto Blue Jays that seemed destined to be a home run before it hit the B ring, got stuck momentarily, and then rolled off and was caught by Toronto shortstop John McDonald as Gomes was headed for home plate. Although Rays manager Joe Maddon tried to argue that it should have been at least a ground rule double since it stayed in the B Ring for a while before coming loose, umpires eventually ruled against the Rays and called Gomes out.

On May 26, 2008, Carlos Peña hit a pop-fly to center field that likely would have been caught by Texas Rangers center fielder Josh Hamilton. The ball instead hit the B ring catwalk and did not come down. Peña was mistakenly given a home run, but after deliberation, the umpires awarded him a ground rule double. This was the second time this had happened, as José Canseco hit a ball that stuck in the same catwalk on May 2, 1999.

Many players have hit the C and D rings for home runs. The first player ever to hit the rings for a home run was Edgar Martínez of the Seattle Mariners on May 29, 1998. Martinez's home run went off the D ring. Three players before him hit balls that went into the C ring. However, at the time, balls hitting the C ring were not ruled home runs. Two days prior to Martinez's home run, the ground rules were changed so that if a ball hit the C ring, it would be called a home run. The first player to hit the rings for a home run in postseason play was Rays third baseman Evan Longoria, who hit the C ring off Javier Vázquez of the Chicago White Sox on October 2, 2008, in the 3rd inning of Game 1 of the 2008 American League Division Series.

On July 17, 2011, against the Red Sox, Rays batter Sean Rodriguez hit a high foul popup that shattered a lightbulb on a catwalk. Pieces of the broken bulb fell to the turf near the third base coach's box. After a quick cleaning delay in which the Tropicana Field PA system played the theme to The Natural (a 1984 film that prominently features a hit baseball striking and shattering a stadium light fixture), the game resumed.

Another ceiling-related incident came in June 2018, when New York Yankees outfielder Clint Frazier's 9th-inning fly ball bounced off a speaker hanging from the B ring and was caught by Rays shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria for an out. Some suggest that the ball would have traveled far enough for a home run, which would have broken a 6–6 tie. The Rays won the game in extra innings with a walk-off home run.

Bullpens
The bullpens are located along (and close to) the left and right field foul lines and there are no barriers that separate them from the field of play. In fact, fly balls hit into the bullpens are in play. The bullpen players and the pitching mounds are obstacles for fielders chasing fly balls into the pen. Teams have to station a batboy behind the catchers in the bullpens to prevent them from being hit by foul balls from behind. This style of bullpen used to be common in the Major Leagues, but is currently in use only at Tropicana Field and the Oakland Coliseum.

Interior
Another criticism of the stadium is the drab interior environment, especially early in the (Devil) Rays' existence, when the stark concrete interior was compared to a large warehouse. However, since it was designed specifically for baseball, it is somewhat smaller and the sightlines are better than in most domed stadiums, which are often built to accommodate other sports as well.

The current Rays' Stuart Sternberg-led ownership group has invested several million dollars over the past decade to make the venue more fan friendly. New or improved features include a larger scoreboard, video wall, catwalk sleeves, an outfield touch-tank featuring cownose rays, a walk-around that circles the entire field, two concession and gathering areas in the outfield, and many other additions and upgrades designed to improve the fan experience.

title: Tropicana Field