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Robie House

The Frederick C. Robie House is a historic house designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1908-09 and constructed in 1909-10. It is located in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, on the campus of the University of Chicago. Robie House is regarded as a high point of the Prairie Style and marks the end of Wright’s Oak Park years, an incredibly creative and productive twenty-year period that has been called his first golden age.

Robie House has received city, state, national, and international recognition for its architectural significance as one of the great buildings of the twentieth century. In 1963, Robie House was designated a National Historic Landmark, the first in the city of Chicago and the first to be selected based on architectural merit alone. In 1966, Robie House was listed on the first National Register of Historic Places. In 1971, Robie House was declared a Chicago Landmark, the first building to receive such recognition from the newly formed Commission on Chicago Landmarks. In 1980, the house was designated an Illinois Historic Landmark. Most recently, in 2019, Robie House was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site together with seven other significant works by Frank Lloyd Wright under the group listing "The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright."

Robie House is owned by the University of Chicago and is regularly open to the public as a historic house museum operated and maintained by the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust.

History
Wright designed the Robie House in his studio in Oak Park, Illinois between 1908 and 1909. The design precedent for the Robie House was the Ferdinand F. Tomek House in Riverside, Illinois, designed by Wright in 1907–08. At the time that he commissioned Wright to design his home, Robie was only 28 years old and the assistant manager of the Excelsior Supply Company, a company on the South Side of Chicago owned and managed by his father. Although later drawings of the Robie House show a date of 1906, Wright could not have started the design for the building earlier than the spring of 1908 because Robie purchased the property only in May of that year. He and his wife, Lora Hieronymus Robie, a 1900 graduate of the University of Chicago, had selected the property at 5757 South Woodlawn Avenue in order to remain close to the campus and the social life of the university. The property was a typical urban lot in Hyde Park, measuring 60 ft by 180 ft.

The contractor for the project, H.B. Barnard Co. of Chicago, began construction on April 15, 1909. Wright did not supervise the construction of the house except in the earliest stages. He closed his Oak Park studio in the fall of 1909 and left for Europe to undertake the work that led to the publication of the Wasmuth Portfolio. He turned over his existing commissions to Hermann von Holst, who retained Marion Mahony, a draughtswoman in Wright's office, and George Mann Niedecken, an interior designer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin who had worked with Wright on the Susan Lawrence Dana House in Springfield, Illinois, the Avery Coonley House in Riverside, Illinois, and the Meyer May House in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to continue their work on the project. Niedecken's influence can be seen in the design of some of the furnishings for the house as well as the carpets in the entrance hall, the living room, and the dining room.

The Robie family—Frederick, Laura, and their two children, Frederick Jr. and Lorraine—moved into the home in May 1910, although all of the final details, including rugs and furniture, were not completed until January 1911. The final cost of the home was $58,500: $13,500 for the land, $35,000 for the design and construction of the building, and $10,000 for the furnishings. (Simple inflation adjusted equivalents of $58,500 in 1910 hover around $1.5 million in 2015, although other ways of comparing price and value over time could place that figure as high as $10 million without accounting for any potential premium as a result of the historical fame of the house.) Robie's original budget had been $60,000.

Robie's tenure in his home was short-lived. As a result of financial problems incurred by the death of his father in July 1908, who was plagued by gambling debts that Robie unknowingly inherited (allegedly totaling roughly $1 million, or the equivalent of $27 million today) and the deterioration of his marriage, Robie was forced to sell the house after living in it for only fourteen months. David Lee Taylor, president of Taylor-Critchfield Company, an advertising agency, bought the house and all of its Wright-designed contents in December 1911. Taylor died less than a year later, and his widow, Ellen Taylor, sold the house and most of its contents to Marshall D. Wilber, treasurer of the Wilber Mercantile Agency, in November 1912. The Wilbers were the last family to occupy the house, living there for fourteen years.

In June 1926, the Wilbers sold the house and its contents to the Chicago Theological Seminary, which used the house as a dormitory and dining hall, though it was primarily interested in the site for purposes of future expansion. Consequently, Robie House suffered major interior damage, including the destruction of nearly all the characteristic gold wall sconces. (A janitor discovered Wright's handcrafted rocking chair discarded in a trash heap and saved it. Years later, the janitor contacted the University of Chicago when the museum opened and gifted the chair to Robie House, where it is currently on display in one of the bedrooms.) In 1941, a graduate student at the Illinois Institute of Technology accidentally discovered that the Seminary was moving ahead with a plan to demolish the house and informed his instructors, including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The threat of demolition aroused a storm of protest. Although the Seminary's plans were subsequently postponed, the crisis was averted more by the onset of World War II than by acquiescence of the property's owner. The most serious threat to the Robie House arose 16 years later. On March 1, 1957, the Seminary announced plans to demolish the house on September 15 in order to begin the construction of a dormitory for its students. This time an international outcry arose, and Wright himself, then almost 90 years old, returned to the Robie House on March 18, accompanied by the media, students and neighborhood organizers to protest the intended demolition of the house. Commenting on the threatened demolition, Wright quipped, "It all goes to show the danger of entrusting anything spiritual to the clergy." Two fraternities at the University of Chicago provided the Seminary with a realistic alternative to its plans of demolition. During his very brief tenure as a student at the University of Wisconsin, Wright had been a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. The University of Chicago's Phi Delt chapter house was located two doors north of the Robie House at 5737 Woodlawn Avenue, and the Seminary was already the owner of the lot between the two properties. The Phi Delts offered to vacate their house, and the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, located next to the Phi Delt house, offered to vacate their house as well. These offers were a turning point in the effort to save the Robie House, since the three properties provided the Seminary with sufficient land for the dormitory they sought to build.

In August 1958, William Zeckendorf, a friend of Wright's and a New York real estate developer then involved in several development projects on Chicago's south side, at Wright's urging acquired the Robie House from the Seminary through his development company Webb and Knapp. In February 1963, Zeckendorf donated the building to the University of Chicago. The University used Robie House as the Adlai E. Stevenson Institute of International Affairs, and later the building served as the headquarters for the University's Alumni Association. On September 15, 1971, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, with the support of Mayor Richard J. Daley, declared the Robie House a Chicago landmark.

In January 1997 the University moved their offices out and turned over tours, operations, fundraising and restoration to the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust on February 1. In 2002, the Trust began restoration of the house to its original 1910 appearance, when construction completed and the house best reflected the design intent of the architect and client. Harboe Architects, a firm experienced in historic preservation, conducted an assessment, prepared plans for restoration, and led the interior restoration. The Trust follows guidelines developed by the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. The restoration was completed in 2019, costing over 11 million dollars. After major structural steel restoration, exterior brick work, and installation of modern mechanical systems, the restoration focused on the interiors elements, such as woodwork, glass, and furniture.

Architecture

The Robie House is one of the best known examples of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie style of architecture. The term was coined by architectural critics and historians (not by Wright), who noticed how the buildings and their various components owed their design influence to the landscape and plant life of the Midwest prairie of the United States. See, e.g., "The Meaning of Architecture," Pond, Irving K., Boston, 1918, p. 174 (stating that "[i]n imitation of a certain broad and horizontal disposition of lines individually employed, a school of design has sprung up, for which its authors claim the title 'American.' The horizontal lines of the new expression appeal to the disciples of this school as echoing the spirit of the prairies of the great Middle West, which to them embodies the essence of democracy.") Although Wright used the term "Prairie School" in writings as early as 1936 (see Architects' Journal, London, 1936, reprinted in The Natural House, New York, 1954, p. 27), he referred to his work and that of other similarly inspired architects at the time as "The New School of the Middle West" in his noted article "In the Cause of Architecture," The Architectural Record, March 1908. Wright believed that the American Midwest, rather than the East Coast, was the appropriate breeding ground for an indigenous American architecture because residents of the East Coast were too suspectible to the influences of the Old World styles of Europe. Instead, "[t]he real American spirit, capable of judging an issue for itself upon its merits, lies in the West and Middle West, where breadth of view, independent thought, and a tendency to take common sense into the realm of art, as in life, are more characteristic. ... The people themselves are part and parcel and helpful in producing the organic thing. They can comprehend it and make it theirs, and it is thus the only form art expression to be considered for a democracy, and I will go so far as to say, the truest of all forms." "Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright," Wright, Frank Lloyd, Ernst Wasmuth, Berlin, 1910. For a discussion of Wright's conception of the New School of the Middle West, see generally "Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life and His Architecture," Twombly, Robert C., John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1979, pp. 106–109, 145–148, 158-163. For a discussion of the development and use of the term "Prairie School," see "The Prairie School: Frank Lloyd Wright and His Midwest Contemporaries," Brooks, H. Allen, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1972, pp. 9-13. Typical of Wright's Prairie houses, he designed not only the house, but all of the interiors, the windows, lighting, rugs, furniture and textiles. As Wright wrote in 1910, "it is quite impossible to consider the building one thing and its furnishings another. ... They are all mere structural details of its character and completeness."

Exterior
The projecting cantilevered roof eaves, continuous bands of art-glass windows, and the use of Roman brick emphasize the horizontal, which had rich associations for Wright. The horizontal line reminded him of the American prairie and was a line of repose and shelter, appropriate for a house. The exterior walls are double-wythe construction of a Chicago common brick core with a red-orange iron-spotted Roman brick veneer. To further emphasize the horizontal of the bricks, the horizontal joints were filled with a cream-colored mortar and the small vertical joints were filled with brick-colored mortar. From a distance, this complex and expensive tuckpointing creates an impression of continuous lines of horizontal color and minimizes the appearance of individual bricks. The design of the art-glass windows is an abstract pattern of colored and clear glass using 30 and 60-degree angles. Wright used similar designs in tapestries inside the house and for gates surrounding the outdoor spaces and enclosing the garage courtyard. Robie's generous budget allowed Wright to design a house with a largely steel structure, which accounts for the minimal deflection of the eaves. The planter urns, copings, lintels, sills and other exterior trim are of Bedford limestone, while the roof of the building features Ludowici tile.

Interior
In plan, the house is designed as two large rectangles that seem to slide by one another. Mr. Wright referred to the rectangle on the southwest portion of the site, which contains the principal living spaces of the house, as "the major vessel." On the first floor are the "billiards" room (west end) and children's playroom (east end). The billiards room provided access to a large walk-in safe and a storage area built underneath the front porch projection at the west end of the site. The billiards and playroom open into a small passage, and doors near the center of the building to an enclosed garden on the south side of the building. Another door from the playroom opens into the courtyard on the east end of the site. On the second floor are the entry hall at the top of the central stairway, the living room (west end) and the dining room (east end). Built-in inglenook bench cabinetry originally separated the entry hallway from the living room. The living and dining rooms flow into one another along the south side of the building and open through a series of twelve French doors containing art glass panels to an exterior balcony running the length of the south side of the building that overlooks the enclosed garden. The west end of the living room contains a "prow" with art glass windows and two art glass doors that open onto the west porch beneath the cantilevered roof. Wright intended that the users of the building move freely from the interior space to the exterior space.

The rectangle on the northeast portion of the site, called "the minor vessel," contains the more functional and service-related rooms of the house. On the first floor is the main door and entrance hall (west end) from which a stairway leads to the second floor living and dining rooms. A half bath is located on the north side of the entrance hall. Further east are a coat closet and back stairway, the boiler room, laundry room, and coal storage room, followed by a small workshop, half bath, and a three-car garage. The westernmost bay of the garage originally contained a mechanic's pit, and the easternmost bay contained equipment to wash and clean automobiles. On the second floor of the minor vessel is a guest bedroom above the entrance hall and an adjoining full bath. East of the back stairway are the kitchen and butler's pantry, and the servants' sitting room. Two bedrooms and a full bathroom above the garage complete the quarters for the live-in servants.

The third floor overlaps the major and minor vessels in the center of the building. Wright referred to the third floor as the "belvedere," the "place in command of beautiful views." The south side of the third floor contains the master bedroom, dressing area, a full bathroom, and, through a small closet and an art glass door, a balcony facing south and west. Two additional bedrooms and a full bathroom are located on the north side of this floor. All of the windows on this level contain art glass panels. Dresser drawers are built into the walls of the bedrooms underneath the windows, and project into the eave spaces.

The entire building is approximately 9062 sqft.

The chimney mass containing four fireplaces—one in the billiards room, playroom, living room and master bedroom—and the main stairway from the entrance hall to the second floor living and dining rooms rise through the center of the house, from which the rest of the building radiates. The chimney mass is constructed of the same brick and limestone as the exterior.

The front door and main entrance is partially hidden on the northwest side of the building beneath an overhanging balcony in order to create a sense of privacy and protection for the family. The entrance hall itself is low-ceilinged and dark, but the stairs to the second floor create a sense of anticipation as the visitor moves upward. Once upstairs, the light filled living and dining rooms create a sharp contrast to the dark entrance hall, making the living and dining rooms seem even more special. These two rooms are separated by the central chimney mass, but the spaces are connected along their south sides, and the chimney mass has an opening above the fireplace through which the rooms are visually connected. These features unite the two spaces, creating an openness of plan which, for Wright, was a metaphor for the openness of American political and social life.

Steel beams in the ceilings and floors carry most of the building's weight to piers at the east and west ends. As a result, the exterior walls have little structural function, and thus are filled with doors and windows containing 174 art glass panels in 29 different designs. Instead of stylized forms from Nature, a favorite Wright motif, geometric forms predominate. The combination of so much glass and lack of internal structural columns resulted in an airy space that appeared larger than it is, accenting the open plan Wright favored.

Throughout the house, Wright-designed wall sconces can be found in the shape of a hemispherical shade suspended beneath a square bronze fixture. On the second floor living and dining rooms, spherical globes within wooden squares are integrated into the ceiling trim, further tying the two spaces together visually. Soffit lighting running the length of the north and south sides of the living and dining rooms, as well as soffit lighting in the prows of the living and dining rooms, are covered with Wright-designed wooden grilles, backed with translucent colored glass diffusers. Because these lights are all independently operable, different effects can be created within these spaces. Finally, a Wright-designed table lamp with an art glass shade stood on a Wright-designed library table in the living room.

Wright designed the furniture, carpets, and textiles for most Prairie houses. However, Wright-designed furniture in the Robie House was only constructed for the entrance hall, the living and dining rooms, guest bedroom, and one bed for the third-floor bedrooms. Some of these pieces are attributed to Wright's interior design collaborator George Mann Niedecken. Robie's financial situation following his father's death may be the explanation for why the entire house was not furnished with furniture of Wright's designs. Most of the original furniture is currently in the collection of the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, although only the dining room table and chairs are on more or less permanent display. One of the most striking pieces of the furniture designed by Wright for the Robie House is a sofa with extended armrests, echoing the cantilevers of the exterior roof of the building, which effectively create side tables on each side of the sofa. The Wright-designed sofa has been on loan since 1982 from the Smart Museum to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and is on display as part of the furnishings in the reconstructed living room of the Francis W. Little House (1915) located in the museum. Miniature cantilevers can also be found in the shelves of the built-in dining room buffet and a food preparation island in the kitchen.

Architectural Significance

The Robie House was one of the last houses Wright designed in his Oak Park, Illinois home and studio and also one of the last of his Prairie School houses. According to the Historic American Buildings Survey, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks stated: "The bold interplay of horizontal planes about the chimney mass, and the structurally expressive piers and windows, established a new form of domestic design." Because the house's components are so well designed and coordinated, it is considered to be a quintessential example of Wright's Prairie School architecture and the "measuring stick" against which all other Prairie School buildings are compared.

The house and the Robie name were immortalized in Ernst Wasmuth's famous 1910 publication Ausgefuhrte Bauten und Entwurfe von Frank Lloyd Wright (Completed Buildings and Projects of Frank Lloyd Wright, a.k.a. "The Wasmuth Portfolio"). This publication featured most of Wright's designs, including those unbuilt, during his Oak Park years and brought them to the attention of students of the Bauhaus school in Germany and the De Stijl school in the Netherlands. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, among other great 20th Century architects, claimed Wright was a major influence on their careers. Mies van der Rohe later visited the Robie House and Wright's home (Taliesin) in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

The architectural significance of the Robie House was probably best stated in a 1957 article in House and Home magazine:

"During the decades of eclecticism's triumph there were also many innovators—less heralded than the fashionable practitioners, but exerting more lasting influence. Of these innovators, none could rival Frank Lloyd Wright. By any standard his Robie house was the House of the 1900s—indeed the House of the Century."

{{blockquote|text=Above all else, the Robie House is a magnificent work of art. But, in addition, the house introduced so many concepts in planning and construction that its full influence cannot be measured accurately for many years to come. Without this house, much of modern architecture as we know it today, might not exist.

In 1956, Archectural Record selected the Robie House as "one of the seven most notable residences ever built in America."

In 1991, the American Institute of Architects named the Robie House among the Top All-Time Work of American Architects.

In 2008, the U.S. National Park Service submitted the Robie House, along with nine other Frank Lloyd Wright properties, to a tentative list for World Heritage Status. The 10 sites have been submitted as one entire site. More recently, in July 2012, then-Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced that he would formally nominate the Robie House and ten other Wright designed buildings as U.S. nominations for World Heritage status. The final decision on inclusion on the list was made by the World Heritage Committee, composed of representatives from 21 nations and advised by the International Council on Monuments and Sites. After revised proposals, the properties were inscribed on the World Heritage List under the title "The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright" in July 2019.

Robie House is the subject of a 2013 PBS documentary and companion book, "10 Buildings that Changed America."

In celebration of the 2018 Illinois Bicentennial, the Robie House was selected as one of the Illinois 200 Great Places by the American Institute of Architects Illinois component, AIA Illinois.

Neighborhood
At the time Robie House was commissioned in 1908, the lots surrounding the house's site were mostly vacant except for the lots immediately to the north on Woodlawn Avenue, which were filled with large homes. To the east of the site and across a municipal service alley, a French Provincial style house for Nobel prize winning physicist Albert A. Michelson was built around 1923. The lots to the south were vacant and afforded uninterrupted views to the Midway Plaisance parkland, one of the sites of the World's Columbian Exposition. To the west, a full block of vacant land separated the site from the growing University of Chicago campus, but by 1930 Rockefeller Chapel (1928), the Chicago Theological Seminary (1928), and the Oriental Institute (1930) buildings had been constructed.

Directly south across 58th Street from Robie House is the Charles M. Harper Center of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Designed by the Uruguayan-born architect Rafael Viñoly and completed in 2004, the building both respects the scale of the Robie House and contains elements that echo Wright's contributions to the vocabulary of modern architecture.

In Popular Culture
Robie House figures prominently in the children's mystery novel The Wright 3, written by Blue Balliett and published by Scholastic Books in 2006. The book is illustrated by Brett Helquist. The fictional story involves three Hyde Park children and their attempt to save Robie House from destruction. The book has introduced numerous young readers to Frank Lloyd Wright and has been the subject of special events and tours at the house.

In 2011, Lego introduced a 2,276-piece model of the Robie House under its Lego Architecture line of products (set number 21010). It was the third Wright building to be featured in the series after Fallingwater and the Guggenheim Museum. The set has since been discontinued and become a collector's item among Lego enthusiasts.

Department 56, a manufacturer of Christmas collectibles and giftware, produced a Robie House model as part of its popular series of Christmas villages. The item was discontinued in 2018.

title: Robie House


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Shtora-1

Shtora-1 (Штора, "curtain") is an electro-optical active protection system or suite for tanks, designed to disrupt the laser designator and laser rangefinders of incoming anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs). The system is mounted on the Russian T-80 and T-90 series tanks and the Ukrainian T-84. The existence of Shtora was revealed in 1980 by spy Adolf Tolkachev.

Description
Shtora-1 is an electro-optical jammer that disrupts semiautomatic command to line of sight (SACLOS) ATGMs, laser rangefinders and target designators. Shtora-1 is a soft kill countermeasure system. The system was shown fitted to a Russian main battle tank during the International Defense Exposition, held in Abu Dhabi in 1995. The first known application of the system is the Russian T-90 main battle tank, which entered service in the Russian Army in 1993. It is also available on the BMP-3M infantry fighting vehicle.

Components
The Shtora-1 has four key components: two electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) "dazzlers" mounted on both turret cheeks, an infrared jammer, a modulator, and a control panel in the fighting compartment.

 * Banks of forward firing grenade launchers on each side of the turret that lay an aerosol smoke screen opaque to IR light.
 * A laser warning system consisting of four angle sensors with two higher precision sensors covering the frontal 90° arc and two lower precision sensors covering the sides and rear.
 * A control system comprising control panel, microprocessor, and manual screen-laying panel. This processes the information from the sensors and activates the aerosol screen-laying system.
 * Two IR lights, one on each side of the main gun, continuously emit coded pulsed-IR jamming when an incoming ATGM has been detected.

Shtora-1 has twelve smoke grenade launchers and weighs 400 kg. It can lay a 15 meter high and 20 meter wide smoke screen in three seconds that lasts about twenty seconds at ranges from 50 to 70 meters. The Shtora-1 can also automatically slew the main gun towards a detected threat, so that the tank crew can return fire and so that the stronger frontal turret armour is facing it.

Shtora-1 can operate in fully automatic or semi-automatic modes, continuously for six hours against ATGM attack.

Operational history
The Shtora-1 can effectively jam obsolete SACLOS missiles such as the TOW, HOT, MILAN, Dragon, and Malyutka and laser guided weapons such as the Copperhead and some variants of the Maverick and Hellfire. Newer missiles such as the TOW 2 (which encodes the tracking beacon signals to reject interference) and imaging infrared guided missiles such as the Javelin are unaffected by it. This has resulted in a number of Shtora-1 protected T-90s being lost to such weapons in Syria and Ukraine. The jammers have been removed from many currently serving T-90s and the more modern S and M variants did not include them.

Specifications

 * Laser illumination sensors:
 * 2x TShU-1-1 coarse precision sensors and 2x TShU-1-11 fine sensors
 * Field of view (each): 138° azimuth (coarse) 45° (fine) and −5 to +25° elevation
 * Field of view (total): 360° azimuth
 * Angular resolution: 7.5° (coarse) 3.75° (fine)
 * EO interference emitters:
 * 2x OTShU-1-7
 * Operating band: 0.7-2.7 μm
 * Protected sector: 4° elevation and 20° azimuth
 * Energy consumption: 1 kW
 * Light intensity: 20 mcd
 * IR smoke grenades:
 * 12x 81 mm 3D17
 * Obscured band: 0.4-14 μm
 * Bloom time: 3 s
 * Cloud persistence: 20 s

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

title: Shtora-1


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Cardinal tetra

The cardinal tetra (Paracheirodon axelrodi) is a freshwater fish of the family Characidae of order Characiformes. It is native to the upper Orinoco and Negro Rivers in South America. Growing to about 3 cm total length, the cardinal tetra has the striking iridescent blue line characteristic of the genus Paracheirodon laterally bisecting the fish, with the body below this line being vivid red in color, hence the name "cardinal tetra". The cardinal tetra's appearance is similar to that of the closely related neon tetra, with which it is often confused; the neon's red coloration extends only about halfway to the nose, and the neon's blue stripe is a less vibrant blue.

The cardinal tetra is a very popular aquarium fish, but is less widespread than the neon tetra because until recently, it was difficult to breed in captivity. However, many breeders are now producing the fish; in most cases, one can determine if the cardinal tetra is bred or wild-caught due to damaged fins on wild-caught specimens. Some ichthyologists believe fishkeepers should continue to support the sustainable cardinal fishery of the Amazon Basin, since thousands of people are employed in the region to capture fish for the aquarium trade. If those fishermen lost their livelihoods catching cardinals and other tropical fish, they might turn their attention to engaging in deforestation.

Taxonomy
American ichthyologist Leonard Peter Schultz described the cardinal tetra in 1956 as Cheirodon axelrodi. The specific epithet honors ichthyologist Herbert R. Axelrod. Hyphessobrycon cardinalis is an obsolete synonym. The fish's common name, cardinal tetra, refers to the brilliant red coloration, reminiscent of a cardinal's robes. P. axelrodi is also often called the red neon tetra.

The species exists in a number of different color forms or phenotypes. A "gold" and "silver-blonde" form exists in the Rio Negro drainage that has less blue in the longitudinal stripe. The normal form from the Rio Negro drainage has a blue stripe, which extends to the adipose fin, while the Orinoco drainage phenotype has a stripe that stops posterior to the adipose. The Orinoco phenotype may represent a subspecies of P. axelrodi.

Description

The cardinal tetra has bright red ventral parts and an iridescent blue line that runs horizontally along its body. The characteristic iridescence of this and related fishes, such as the neon tetra, is a structural color, caused by refraction of light within guanine crystals that develop within special cells called iridocytes in the subcutaneous layer. The exact shade of blue seen depends on the viewing angle of the viewer relative to the fish - if the viewpoint changes so as to look at the fish more from below, the colour will change hue, becoming more deeply sapphire blue and even indigo. Change of viewpoint to one above the fishes, however, and the color becomes more greenish. Cardinal tetras appear to grow larger in captivity than they do in the wild. They have a large stomach and small gut.

Distribution and habitat
Cardinal tetras are found on the upper Orinoco and the Negro, which are located in Colombia and Venezuela and Brazil, respectively.

Diet
The cardinal tetra forages in areas of slow-moving, shallow water. It is predominantly predatory, feeding on tiny animals found on underwater plants, roots, and leaf litter. Creatures commonly eaten include the larvae of chironomid midges and microcrustaceans such as water fleas (Cladocera) of the families Moinidae, Macrotrichidae, and Daphniidae, and copepods of the family Harpacticidae. Other organisms eaten include other fly larvae, insect eggs, rotifers, and testate amoebae.

Reproduction
In the wild, the cardinal tetra swims upstream in large numbers to parts of its native river habitat completely enclosed above by rainforest canopy. Such waters are subject to heavy shading by the rainforest trees, and virtually no sunlight reaches them. Here, the fishes spawn in large aggregations. If the fishes are ready to spawn, the male pursues the female into fine-leaved plants; her fuller outline, which usually indicates the presence of ripe eggs within her reproductive tract, should be readily apparent at this point. If the female is ready, she allows the male to swim alongside her, and together, the pair release eggs and sperm.

Lifespan
The fish might also be effectively an annual species with a lifespan of just a single year in nature. It lives for several years in captivity. For those seeking to breed them in the aquarium, the best way to do so is by mimicking the same natural setup. A study conducted in Manaus, Brazil, subjected cardinal tetras to adverse water conditions for 96 hours. The fish perished at a low temperature of 19.6 C and a high of 33.7 C, and pH below 2.9 or above 8.8.

In the aquarium trade
An entire industry is in place in Barcelos on the banks of Brazil's Rio Negro in which the local population catches fish for the aquarium trade. The cardinal fishery here is highly valued by the local people who act as stewards for the environment. The local people may not become involved in potentially environmentally damaging activities, such as deforestation, because they can make a sustainable living from the fishery.

Between the years of 2006 to 2015, over 92,000,000 cardinal tetras were exported from the state of Amazonas, accounting for 64.57% of all ornamental fish exports from the state during this time. <!-- non-encyclopedic how-to; section needs to be re-worked but information within might be useful

Aquarium maintenance
Perhaps due to their wild-caught origins, cardinal tetras tend to be somewhat delicate in captivity. In the wild, these fish inhabit extremely soft, acidic waters, but seem to be tolerant of harder, more alkaline water conditions; a greater concern is probably polluted tank water (including high nitrate levels). They prefer warmer water temperatures [above 75 °F or warmer], and will readily accept most forms of dry food. Captive-bred cardinals tend to adapt to hard water better than wild-caught cardinals.

Given the origins of the cardinal tetra, namely blackwater rivers whose chemistry is characterised by an acidic pH, low mineral content and the presence of humic acids, the species is adaptable to a wide range of conditions in captivity, though deviation from the soft, acidic water chemistry of their native range will impact severely upon breeding, fecundity, and life expectancy. The preferred temperature range of the fish is 26 to 28 C. However, if necessary they will live at 24 C. The water chemistry of the aquarium water should match that of the wild habitat – filtration of the aquarium water over peat is one means of achieving this, as is the use of reverse osmosis water.

As the species is a shoaling species in the wild, groups of six or more individuals should be maintained in an aquarium although bigger groups are preferred. They will shoal with their close cousins neon tetras, though, so a combination of these two species totalling at least six should suffice (again, larger groups are preferred). Tank currents can help encourage shoaling behavior. The larger the numbers present in an aquarium (subject to the usual constraints imposed by space and filtration efficiency), the better, and large shoals in any case form an impressive and visually stunning display.

The species will feed on a wide range of aquarium foods, though again, conditioning fishes of this species for breeding will usually require the use of live foods such as Daphnia.

Aquarium furnishings should be planned with some care. Live aquatic plants, as well as providing additional biological filtration components to assist with nitrate management, provide an environment that resembles at least part of the wild habitat, and fine-leaved plants such as Cabomba are usually the plants of choice, though other plants such as Amazon swordplants and Vallisneria are equally suitable for an aquarium housing them. Floating plants providing shade will also be welcomed by the species; this is connected with the breeding of the fish. A perfect biotope to promote breeding would be bogwood, a few live native plants, dark substrate and subdued lighting with floating plants.

Captive breeding
In the aquarium, a single pair can be conditioned for breeding, but the breeding aquarium not only needs to contain water with the correct chemical parameters cited above, but the breeding aquarium also needs to be heavily shaded to mimic the low light conditions of the fish's native spawning grounds. -->

title: Cardinal tetra


text:
Surfers' Choice

Surfers’ Choice is the debut studio album of Dick Dale and his Del-Tones, pioneers in the surf genre. The album was released in November 1962. The recording established the conventions of surf music and brought the concept to middle America. The album was mostly recorded live at the Rendezvous Ballroom, with overdubs added in the studio. The record was out of print for a long time. It was reissued on CD by Sundazed Records in October 2006. The album was rereleased by Not Now Music with a bonus disc of singles as Surf Beat.

Track listing
All tracks composed by Dick Dale; except where indicated
 * Side one
 * 1) "Surf Beat"
 * 2) "Sloop John B" (Carl Sandburg, Lee Hays)
 * 3) "Take It Off"
 * 4) "Night Owl" (Tony Allen)
 * 5) "Fanny Mae" (Buster Brown)
 * 6) "Misirlou Twist" (Chaim Tauber, Fred Wise, Milton Leeds, Nicholas Roubanis)
 * Side two
 * 1) "Peppermint Man" (Alonzo Willis)
 * 2) "Surfing Drums"
 * 3) "Shake 'n' Stomp"
 * 4) "Lovey Dovey" (Eddie Curtis, Nuggy)
 * 5) "Death of a Gremmie"
 * 6) "Let's Go Trippin'"

2006 Sundazed CD bonus tracks
"Del-Tone Rock" "Jungle Fever" (a later version of "Surfing Drums" with jungle noises added) "Misirlou" (traditional) "Eight Till Midnight" "Lovin' on My Brain" "A Run For Life"

2013 Not Now Music bonus disc
 "Ooh-Whee Marie"
"Stop Teasin'"

"St. Louis Blues"

"Jessie Pearl"

"We'll Never Hear the End of It"

"The Fairest of Them All"

"Del-Tone Rock"

"Let's Go Trippin'"

"Shake 'N' Stomp"

"Jungle Fever"

"Misirlou"

"Eight 'Til Midnight"

"Peppermint Man"

"Surf Man"

Chart positions
Billboard Music Charts – Album
 * 1963 Pop Albums No. 59

Billboard Music Charts – Single
 * 1962 “Let’s Go Trippin’” Pop Singles No. 60

title: Surfers' Choice


text:
Phenology

Phenology is the study of periodic events in biological life cycles and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate, as well as habitat factors (such as elevation).

Examples include the date of emergence of leaves and flowers, the first flight of butterflies, the first appearance of migratory birds, the date of leaf colouring and fall in deciduous trees, the dates of egg-laying of birds and amphibia, or the timing of the developmental cycles of temperate-zone honey bee colonies. In the scientific literature on ecology, the term is used more generally to indicate the time frame for any seasonal biological phenomena, including the dates of last appearance (e.g., the seasonal phenology of a species may be from April through September).

Because many such phenomena are very sensitive to small variations in climate, especially to temperature, phenological records can be a useful proxy for temperature in historical climatology, especially in the study of climate change and global warming. For example, viticultural records of grape harvests in Europe have been used to reconstruct a record of summer growing season temperatures going back more than 500 years. In addition to providing a longer historical baseline than instrumental measurements, phenological observations provide high temporal resolution of ongoing changes related to global warming.

Etymology
The word is derived from the Greek φαίνω (phainō), "to show, to bring to light, make to appear" + λόγος (logos), amongst others "study, discourse, reasoning" and indicates that phenology has been principally concerned with the dates of first occurrence of biological events in their annual cycle.

The term was first used by Charles François Antoine Morren, a professor of botany at the University of Liège (Belgium). Morren was a student of Adolphe Quetelet. Quetelet made plant phenological observations at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels. He is considered "one of 19th century trendsetters in these matters." In 1839, he started his first observations and created a network over Belgium and Europe that reached a total of about 80 stations in the period 1840–1870.

Morren participated in 1842 and 1843 in Quetelets 'Observations of Periodical Phenomena' (Observations des Phénomènes périodiques), and at first suggested to mention the observations concerning botanical phenomena "anthochronological observations". That term had already been used in 1840 by Carl Joseph Kreutzer.

On 16 December 1849, Morren used the term 'phenology' for the first time in a public lecture at the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, to describe "the specific science which has the goal to know the manifestation of life ruled by the time."

Four years later, Morren published "Phenological Memories". The term may not have been common in the decades to follow, as in an article in The Zoologist of 1899 describing an ornithological meeting in Sarajevo, where "questions of Phaenology" were discussed, a footnote by the Editor, William Lucas Distant, says: "This word is seldom used, and we have been informed by a very high authority that it may be defined as "Observational Biology", and as applied to birds, as it is here, may be taken to mean the study or science of observations on the appearance of birds".

Historical

Observations of phenological events have provided indications of the progress of the natural calendar since ancient agricultural times. Many cultures have traditional phenological proverbs and sayings which indicate a time for action: "When the sloe tree is white as a sheet, sow your barley whether it be dry or wet" or attempt to forecast future climate: "If oak's before ash, you're in for a splash. If ash before oak, you're in for a soak". But the indications can be pretty unreliable, as an alternative version of the rhyme shows: "If the oak is out before the ash, 'Twill be a summer of wet and splash; If the ash is out before the oak, 'Twill be a summer of fire and smoke." Theoretically, though, these are not mutually exclusive, as one forecasts immediate conditions and one forecasts future conditions.

The North American Bird Phenology Program at USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center (PWRC) is in possession of a collection of millions of bird arrival and departure date records for over 870 species across North America, dating between 1880 and 1970. This program, originally started by Wells W. Cooke, involved over 3,000 observers including many notable naturalists of the time. The program ran for 90 years and came to a close in 1970 when other programs starting up at PWRC took precedence. The program was again started in 2009 to digitize the collection of records and now with the help of citizens worldwide, each record is being transcribed into a database which will be publicly accessible for use.

The English naturalists Gilbert White and William Markwick reported the seasonal events of more than 400 plant and animal species, Gilbert White in Selborne, Hampshire and William Markwick in Battle, Sussex over a 25-year period between 1768 and 1793. The data, reported in White's Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne are reported as the earliest and latest dates for each event over 25 years; so annual changes cannot therefore be determined.

In Japan and China the time of blossoming of cherry and peach trees is associated with ancient festivals and some of these dates can be traced back to the eighth century. Such historical records may, in principle, be capable of providing estimates of climate at dates before instrumental records became available. For example, records of the harvest dates of the pinot noir grape in Burgundy have been used in an attempt to reconstruct spring–summer temperatures from 1370 to 2003; the reconstructed values during 1787–2000 have a correlation with Paris instrumental data of about 0.75.

Great Britain
Robert Marsham, the founding father of modern phenological recording, was a wealthy landowner who kept systematic records of "Indications of spring" on his estate at Stratton Strawless, Norfolk, from 1736. These took the form of dates of the first occurrence of events such as flowering, bud burst, emergence or flight of an insect. Generations of Marsham's family maintained consistent records of the same events or "phenophases" over unprecedentedly long periods of time, eventually ending with the death of Mary Marsham in 1958, so that trends can be observed and related to long-term climate records. The data show significant variation in dates which broadly correspond with warm and cold years. Between 1850 and 1950 a long-term trend of gradual climate warming is observable, and during this same period the Marsham record of oak-leafing dates tended to become earlier.

After 1960 the rate of warming accelerated, and this is mirrored by increasing earliness of oak leafing, recorded in the data collected by Jean Combes in Surrey. Over the past 250 years, the first leafing date of oak appears to have advanced by about 8 days, corresponding to overall warming on the order of 1.5 °C in the same period.

Towards the end of the 19th century the recording of the appearance and development of plants and animals became a national pastime, and between 1891 and 1948 the Royal Meteorological Society (RMS) organised a programme of phenological recording across the British Isles. Up to 600 observers submitted returns in some years, with numbers averaging a few hundred. During this period 11 main plant phenophases were consistently recorded over the 58 years from 1891 to 1948, and a further 14 phenophases were recorded for the 20 years between 1929 and 1948. The returns were summarised each year in the Quarterly Journal of the RMS as The Phenological Reports. Jeffree (1960) summarised the 58 years of data, which show that flowering dates could be as many as 21 days early and as many as 34 days late, with extreme earliness greatest in summer-flowering species, and extreme lateness in spring-flowering species. In all 25 species, the timings of all phenological events are significantly related to temperature, indicating that phenological events are likely to get earlier as climate warms.

The Phenological Reports ended suddenly in 1948 after 58 years, and Britain remained without a national recording scheme for almost 50 years, just at a time when climate change was becoming evident. During this period, individual dedicated observers made important contributions. The naturalist and author Richard Fitter recorded the First Flowering Date (FFD) of 557 species of British flowering plants in Oxfordshire between about 1954 and 1990. Writing in Science in 2002, Richard Fitter and his son Alistair Fitter found that "the average FFD of 385 British plant species has advanced by 4.5 days during the past decade compared with the previous four decades." They note that FFD is sensitive to temperature, as is generally agreed, that "150 to 200 species may be flowering on average 15 days earlier in Britain now than in the very recent past" and that these earlier FFDs will have "profound ecosystem and evolutionary consequences". In Scotland, David Grisenthwaite meticulously recorded the dates he mowed his lawn since 1984. His first cut of the year was 13 days earlier in 2004 than in 1984, and his last cut was 17 days later, providing evidence for an earlier onset of spring and a warmer climate in general.

National recording was resumed by Tim Sparks in 1998 and, from 2000, has been led by citizen science project Nature's Calendar, run by the Woodland Trust and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Latest research shows that oak bud burst has advanced more than 11 days since the 19th century and that resident and migrant birds are unable to keep up with this change.

Continental Europe
In Europe, phenological networks are operated in several countries, e.g. Germany's national meteorological service operates a very dense network with approx. 1200 observers, the majority of them on a voluntary basis. The Pan European Phenology (PEP) project is a database that collects phenological data from European countries. Currently 32 European meteorological services and project partners from across Europe have joined and supplied data.

In Geneva, Switzerland, the opening of the first leaf of an official chestnut tree (a horse chestnut) has been observed and recorded since 1818, thus forming the oldest set of records of phenological events in Switzerland. This task is conducted by the secretary of the Grand Council of Geneva (the local parliament), and the opening of the first leaf is announced publicly as indicating the beginning of the Spring. Data show a trend during the 20th century towards an opening that happens earlier and earlier.

Other countries
There is a USA National Phenology Network in which both professional scientists and lay recorders participate.

Many other countries such as Canada (Alberta Plantwatch and Saskatchewan PlantWatch ), China and Australia also have phenological programs.

In eastern North America, almanacs are traditionally used by farmers for information on action phenology (in agriculture), taking into account the astronomical positions at the time. William Felker has studied phenology in Ohio, US, since 1973 and now publishes "Poor Will's Almanack", a phenological almanac for farmers (not to be confused with a late 18th-century almanac by the same name).

In the Amazon rainforests of South America, the timing of leaf production and abscission has been linked to rhythms in gross primary production at several sites. Early in their lifespan, leaves reach a peak in their capacity for photosynthesis, and in tropical evergreen forests of some regions of the Amazon basin (particularly regions with long dry seasons), many trees produce more young leaves in the dry season, seasonally increasing the photosynthetic capacity of the forest.

Airborne sensors

Recent technological advances in studying the earth from space have resulted in a new field of phenological research that is concerned with observing the phenology of whole ecosystems and stands of vegetation on a global scale using proxy approaches. These methods complement the traditional phenological methods which recorded the first occurrences of individual species and phenophases.

The most successful of these approaches is based on tracking the temporal change of a Vegetation Index (like Normalized Difference Vegetation Index(NDVI)). NDVI makes use of the vegetation's typical low reflection in the red (red energy is mostly absorbed by growing plants for Photosynthesis) and strong reflection in the Near Infrared (Infrared energy is mostly reflected by plants due to their cellular structure). Due to its robustness and simplicity, NDVI has become one of the most popular remote sensing based products. Typically, a vegetation index is constructed in such a way that the attenuated reflected sunlight energy (1% to 30% of incident sunlight) is amplified by ratio-ing red and NIR following this equation:
 * $$\mathrm{NDVI}={\mathrm{NIR}-\mathrm{red} \over \mathrm{NIR}+\mathrm{red}}$$

The evolution of the vegetation index through time, depicted by the graph above, exhibits a strong correlation with the typical green vegetation growth stages (emergence, vigor/growth, maturity, and harvest/senescence). These temporal curves are analyzed to extract useful parameters about the vegetation growing season (start of season, end of season, length of growing season, etc.). Other growing season parameters could potentially be extracted, and global maps of any of these growing season parameters could then be constructed and used in all sorts of climatic change studies.

A noteworthy example of the use of remote sensing based phenology is the work of Ranga Myneni from Boston University. This work showed an apparent increase in vegetation productivity that most likely resulted from the increase in temperature and lengthening of the growing season in the boreal forest. Another example based on the MODIS enhanced vegetation index (EVI) reported by Alfredo Huete at the University of Arizona and colleagues showed that the Amazon Rainforest, as opposed to the long-held view of a monotonous growing season or growth only during the wet rainy season, does in fact exhibit growth spurts during the dry season.

However, these phenological parameters are only an approximation of the true biological growth stages. This is mainly due to the limitation of current space-based remote sensing, especially the spatial resolution, and the nature of vegetation index. A pixel in an image does not contain a pure target (like a tree, a shrub, etc.) but contains a mixture of whatever intersected the sensor's field of view.

Phenological mismatch
Most species, including both plants and animals, interact with one another within ecosystems and habitats, known as biological interactions. These interactions (whether it be plant-plant, animal-animal, predator-prey or plant-animal interactions) can be vital to the success and survival of populations and therefore species.

Many species experience changes in life cycle development, migration or in some other process/behavior at different times in the season than previous patterns depict due to warming temperatures. Phenological mismatches, where interacting species change the timing of regularly repeated phases in their life cycles at different rates, creates a mismatch in interaction timing and therefore negatively harming the interaction. Mismatches can occur in many different biological interactions, including between species in one trophic level (intratrophic interactions) (i.e. plant-plant), between different trophic levels (intertrophic interactions) (i.e. plant-animal) or through creating competition (intraguild interactions). For example, if a plant species blooms its flowers earlier than previous years, but the pollinators that feed on and pollinate this flower do not arrive or grow earlier as well, then a phenological mismatch has occurred. This results in the plant population declining as there are no pollinators to aid in their reproductive success. Another example includes the interaction between plant species, where the presence of one species aids in the pollination of another through attraction of pollinators. However, if these plant species develop at mismatched times, this interaction will be negatively affected and therefore the plant species that relies on the other will be harmed.

Phenological mismatches means the loss of many biological interactions and therefore ecosystem functions are also at risk of being negatively affected or lost all together. Phenological mismatches will effect species and ecosystems food webs, reproduction success, resource availability, population and community dynamics in future generations, and therefore evolutionary processes and overall biodiversity.

title: Phenology


text:
Can opener

A can opener (North American and Australian English) or tin opener (British English) is a mechanical device used to open metal tin cans. Although preservation of food using tin cans had been practiced since at least 1772 in the Netherlands, the first can openers were not patented until 1855 in England and 1858 in the United States. These early openers were basically variations of a knife, though the 1855 design continues to be produced.

The can opener consisting of the now familiar sharp rotating cutting wheel that runs round the can's rim to cut open the lid was invented in 1870, but was considered very difficult to operate for the ordinary consumer. A more successful design came out in 1925 when a second, serrated wheel was added to hold the cutting wheel on the rim of the can. This easy-to-use design has become one of the most popular can opener models.

Around the time of World War II, several can openers were developed for military use, such as the American P-38 and P-51. These featured a robust and compact design with a pull cutting blade hinged to a corrugated handle with a pivot. Electric can openers were introduced in the late 1950s and met with success. The development of new can opener types continues with a recent redesign of a side-cutting model.

Invention of cans
Food preserved in tin cans was in use by the Dutch Navy from at least 1772. Before 1800, there was already a small industry of canned salmon in the Netherlands. Freshly caught salmon were cleaned, boiled in brine, smoked and placed in tin-plated iron boxes. This canned salmon was known outside the Netherlands, and in 1797 a British company supplied one of their clients with 13 cans. Preservation of food in tin cans was patented by Peter Durand in 1810. The patent was acquired in 1812 by Bryan Donkin, who soon set up the world's first canning factory in London in 1813. By 1820, canned food was a recognised article in Britain and France and by 1822 in the United States. The first cans were robust containers, which weighed more than the food they contained and required ingenuity to open, using whatever tools available. The instruction on those cans read "Cut round the top near the outer edge with a chisel and hammer." The gap of decades between the invention of the can and can opener may be attributed to the functionality of existing tools versus the cost and effort of a new tool.

Twist-key can-opener

Also called tin can key can-opener. During the 1800s, the canning process was mechanised and refined, with can walls becoming thinner. The twist-key can-opener was patented by J. Osterhoudt in 1866. There still was no general-purpose can-opener, thus each can came with a spot-welded or soldered-on twist-key can-opener which snapped off after fatiguing the metal by bending at a thin region. Each food-type had its own can-type, and came with its own can-opener-type. Tinned fish and meat were sold in rectangular cans. These cans were fitted with a twist-key that would roll around the top of the can, peeling back a pre-scored strip. Coffee, beans, and most other types of meat were packaged in cylinders with metal strips that could be peeled back with their own kinds of built-in keys that would roll around the top of the can. Cans of milk used puncture devices.

Lever-type can openers
General-purpose can openers first appeared in the 1850s and had a primitive claw-shaped or "lever-type" design. In 1855, Robert Yeates, a cutlery and surgical instrument maker of Trafalgar Place West, Hackney Road, Middlesex, UK, devised the first claw-ended can opener with a hand-operated tool that haggled its way around the top of metal cans.

In 1858, another lever-type opener of a more complex shape was patented in the United States by Ezra Warner of Waterbury, Connecticut, US. It consisted of a sharp sickle, which was pushed into the can and sawed around its edge. A guard kept the sickle from penetrating too far into the can. The opener consisted of several parts which could be replaced if worn out, especially the sickle. This opener was adopted by the United States Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865); however, its unprotected knife-like sickle was too dangerous for domestic use. A home-use opener named the "Bull's head opener" was designed in 1865 and was supplied with cans of pickled beef named "Bully beef". The opener was made of cast iron and had a very similar construction to the Yeates opener, but featured a more artistic shape and was the first move towards improving the look of the can opener. The bull-headed design was produced until the 1930s and was also offered with a fish-head shape.

Rotating wheel can openers
The first rotating wheel can opener was patented in July 1870 by William Lyman of Meriden, Connecticut, US and produced by the firm Baumgarten in the 1890s. The can was to be pierced in its centre with the sharp metal rod of the opener. Then, the length of the lever had to be adjusted to fit the can size, and the lever fixed with the wingnut. The top of the can was cut by pressing the cutting wheel into the can near the edge and rotating it along the can's rim.

The necessity to pierce the can first was a nuisance, and this can opener design did not survive. In 1920, Edwin Anderson patented a can opener with pivoted handles with which to hold the can in one hand while a key-type handle geared to a cutting wheel is turned with the other cutting the outside of the lip,  a side can opener, unlike the gramophone-like orientation of most contemporary can openers, in effect a hand-held pliers version of the Swanson Can-Opener. In 1925, the Star Can Opener Company of San Francisco, California, US had improved Lyman's design by adding a second, serrated wheel, called a "feed wheel", which allowed a firm grip of the can edge. This addition was so efficient that the design is still in use today.

Whereas all previous openers required using one hand or other means to hold the can, can-holding openers simultaneously grip the can and open it. The first such opener was patented in 1931 by the Bunker Clancey Company of Kansas City, Missouri and was, therefore, called the "Bunker". It featured the now standard pliers-type handles, when squeezed would tightly grip the can rim, while turning the key would rotate the cutting wheel, progressively cutting the lid along the rim. The cutting wheel is coupled to a serrated feed wheel as in the Star design and rotated in the opposite direction by interlocking cogwheels reducing friction. The Bunker company was absorbed by the Rival Manufacturing Company, also of Kansas City, in 1938.

A new style of the can opener emerged in the 1980s. Whereas most other openers remove the lid by cutting down through the lid from the top just inside the rim, removing the top and leaving the rim attached to the can, these use a roller and cutting wheel to cut through the outside seam of the can. The can is left with a relatively safe, non-jagged edge, and the top can be set back on top as a cover, although it does not provide a seal. The feed wheel teeth have a somewhat finer pitch than those of earlier designs and reside at the bottom of a V-shaped groove, which surrounds the rim on three sides at the point of action.

Church key
Church key initially referred to a simple hand-operated device for prying the cap (called a "crown cork" or "bottle cap") off a glass bottle; this kind of closure was invented in 1892. The first of these church key style openers was patented in Canada in 1900.

The shape and design of some of these early "church key" opener's fulcrum hole resembled a large old key's dual-node keyring hole. In 1935, steel beer cans with flat tops appeared, and a device to pierce the lids was needed. The same opener was used for piercing those cans. Made from a single piece of pressed metal, with a sharp point at one end, it was devised by D. F. Sampson, for the American Can Company, who depicted operating instructions on the cans. The church key opener is still being produced, sometimes as part of another opener. For example, a "butterfly" opener is often a combination of the church key and a serrated-wheel opener. Beer and soda cans began in the mid-1960s to feature pop-tabs, which were rings attached to cans. These tabs eliminated the need for church keys to open the cans.

Military use can openers
Several can openers with a simple and robust design have been specifically developed for military use. The P-38 and P-51 are small can openers with a cutter hinged to the main body. They were also known as a "John Wayne" because the actor was shown in a training film opening a can of K-rations. The P-38 can opener is keychain-sized, about 1.5 inches (38 mm) long, and consists of a short metal blade that serves as a handle (and can also be used as a screwdriver), with a small, hinged metal tooth that folds out to pierce the can lid. A notch just under the hinge point keeps the opener hooked around the rim of the can as the device is "walked" around the rim to cut the lid out. A larger version, called P-51, is somewhat easier to operate. P-38 was developed in 1942 and was issued in the canned field rations of the United States Armed Forces from World War II to the 1980s. The P-38 and P-51 are cheaper to manufacture and are smaller and lighter to carry than most other can openers. The device can be easily attached to a keyring or dog tag chain using the small punched hole.

Official military designations for the P-38 include "US Army pocket can opener" and "Opener, can, hand, folding, type I". As with some other military terms (e.g., jeep), the origin of the term is not known with certainty. The P-38 and P-51 openers share a designation with the Lockheed P-38 Lightning and North American P-51 Mustang fighters, however this is coincidental. The most likely origin of the name is much more pedestrian; the P-38 and P-51 measure 38 mm and 51 mm in length respectively.

P-38s are no longer used for individual rations by the United States Armed Forces, as canned C-rations were replaced by soft-pack MREs in the 1980s. They are, however, included with United States military "Tray Rations" (canned bulk meals). They are also still seen in disaster recovery efforts and have been handed out alongside canned food by rescue organizations, both in America and abroad in Afghanistan. The original US-contract P-38 can openers were manufactured by J. W. Speaker Corp. (stamped "US Speaker") and by Washburn Corp. (marked "US Androck"), they were later made by Mallin Hardware (now defunct) of Shelby, Ohio and were variously stamped "US Mallin Shelby O." or "U.S. Shelby Co."

A similar device that incorporates a small spoon at one end and a bottle opener at the other is currently employed by the Australian Defence Force and New Zealand Army in its ration kits. The Field Ration Eating Device is known by the acronym "FRED". It is also known as the "Fucking Ridiculous Eating Device".

Another similar device was included with British Army "Operational Ration Pack, General Purpose" 24-hour ration pack and "Composite Ration Pack" rations. At one time they were manufactured by W. P. Warren Engineering Co., Ltd. The instructions printed on the miniature, greaseproof paper bag in which they were packed read: "Their design is similar, but not identical, to the P-38 and P-51 can openers."

Most military ration can openers have a very simple design and have also been produced for civilian use in many countries. For example, small folding openers similar to the P-38 and P-51 were designed in 1924 and were widely distributed in the Eastern European countries.

In Slovenia a somewhat rounded version of a P-38 is known as "sardine can opener", because in the 1990s such openers were usually packed with cans that did not feature the pull-top pre-scored lid. A non-folding version of the P-38 used to be very common in Israeli kitchens, and can still be found in stores, often sold in packs of five.

Electric openers
The first electric can opener was patented in 1931 and modeled after the rotating wheel can opener design. Those openers were produced in the 1930s and advertised as capable of removing lids from more than 20 cans per minute without risk of injury. Nevertheless, they found little success. Electric openers were re-introduced in 1956 by two American companies. Klassen Enterprises of Centreville brought out a wall-mounted electric model, but this complex design was unpopular too. The same year, Walter Hess Bodle invented a freestanding device, combining an electric can opener and knife sharpener. He and his family members built their prototype in his garage, with daughter Elizabeth sculpting the body design. It was manufactured under the "Udico" brand of the Union Die Casting Co. in Los Angeles, California, US and was offered in Flamingo Pink, Avocado Green, and Aqua Blue, popular colors of the era. These openers were introduced to the market for Christmas sales and found immediate success.

title: Can opener


text:
Muriel Rukeyser

Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913 – February 12, 1980) was an American poet, essayist, biographer, novelist, screenwriter and political activist. She wrote across genres and forms, addressing issues related to racial, gender and class justice, war and war crimes, Jewish culture and diaspora, American history, politics, and culture. Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her "exact generation," Anne Sexton famously described her as "mother of us all", while Adrienne Rich wrote that she was “our twentieth-century Coleridge; our Neruda."

One of her most powerful pieces was the long poem titled The Book of the Dead (1938), documenting the details of the Hawk's Nest incident, an industrial disaster in which hundreds of miners died of silicosis.

Her poem "To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century" (1944), on the theme of Judaism as a gift, was adopted by the American Reform and Reconstructionist movements for their prayer books, something Rukeyser said "astonished" her, as she had remained distant from Judaism throughout her early life.

Early life
Muriel Rukeyser was born on December 15, 1913, to Lawrence and Myra Lyons Rukeyser. She attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, a private school in The Bronx, then Vassar College in Poughkeepsie. From 1930 to 1932, she attended Columbia University.

Her literary career began in 1935 when her book of poetry Theory of Flight, based on flying lessons she took, was chosen by the American poet Stephen Vincent Benét for publication in the Yale Younger Poets Series.

Activism and writing
"Rukeyser was one of the great integrators, seeing the fragmentary world of modernity not as irretrievably broken, but in need of societal and emotional repair."

Rukeyser was active in progressive politics throughout her life. At age 21, she covered the Scottsboro case in Alabama, then worked for the International Labor Defense, which handled the defendants' appeals. She wrote for the Daily Worker and a variety of publications, including Decision and Life & Letters Today, for which she was supposed to cover the People's Olympiad (Olimpiada Popular, Barcelona), the Catalan government's alternative to the Nazis' 1936 Berlin Olympics. Instead of reporting on the games, she witnessed the first days of the Spanish Civil War an experiences that she would describe as a "moment of proof," forming the basis of her rediscovered autobiographical novel, Savage Coast, and the long poem Mediterranean. Rukeyser famously traveled to Gauley Bridge, West Virginia with the filmmaker and photographer Nancy Naumburg, to investigate the recurring silicosis among miners there, which resulted in her modernist masterpiece the documentary poem The Book of the Dead (poem). During and after World War II she gave a series of lectures, entitled The Usable Truth, about art and politics in times of crisis, eventually published as The Life of Poetry. From the end of the war through the period of McCarthyism, she was the target of sexist literary and political attacks which affected her career trajectory and publishing opportunities, and the FBI compiled a thick file on her as a suspected Communist. For much of her life, she taught university classes and led writing workshops, but she never became a career academic.

In 1996, Paris Press reissued The Life of Poetry, which was published in 1949 but had fallen out of print. In a publisher's note, Jan Freeman called it a book that "ranks among the most essential works of twentieth century literature." In it Rukeyser makes the case that poetry is essential to democracy, essential to human life and understanding.

In the 1960s and 1970s, when Rukeyser presided over PEN America, her feminism and opposition to the Vietnam War drew a new generation to her poetry. The title poem of her final book, The Gates, is based on her unsuccessful attempt to visit Korean poet Kim Chi-Ha on death row in South Korea. In 1968, she signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

In addition to her poetry, she wrote a fictionalized memoir, The Orgy, plays and screenplays, and translated work by Octavio Paz and Gunnar Ekelöf. She also wrote biographies of Josiah Willard Gibbs, Wendell Willkie, and Thomas Hariot. Andrea Dworkin worked as her secretary in the early 1970s. Also in the 1970s she served on the Advisory Board of the Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective, a New York City based theatre group that wrote and produced plays on feminist issues.

Rukeyser died in New York on February 12, 1980, from a stroke, with diabetes as a contributing factor. She was 66.

In other media
In the television show Supernatural, Metatron the angel quotes an excerpt of Rukeyser's poem "Speed of Darkness": "The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms."

Jeanette Winterson's novel Gut Symmetries (1997) quotes Rukeyser's poem "King's Mountain".

Rukeyser's translation of a poem by Octavio Paz was adapted by Eric Whitacre for his choral composition "Water Night." John Adams set one of her texts in his opera Doctor Atomic, and Libby Larsen set the poem "Looking at Each Other" in her choral work Love Songs.

Writer Marian Evans and composer Chris White are collaborating on a play about Rukeyser, Throat of These Hours, titled after a line in Rukeyser's Speed of Darkness.

The JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory, a publication from Eastern Michigan University, dedicated a special issue to Rukeyser in Fall 2013.

Rukeyser's 5-poem sequence "Käthe Kollwitz" (The Speed of Darkness, 1968, Random House) was set by Tom Myron in his composition "Käthe Kollwitz for Soprano and String Quartet," "written in response to a commission from violist Julia Adams for a work celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Portland String Quartet in 1998."

Rukeyser's poem "Gunday's Child" was set to music by the experimental rock band Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.

Personal life
Rukeyser was bisexual. In 1936 she had traveled to Spain to cover the People's Olympiad for the literary journal Life and Letters. The Spanish Civil War broke out and during her five-day stay, she fell in love with Otto Boch, a German communist athlete who volunteered to fight the fascists, and who was later killed. That experience was evoked in "To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century." Also, her literary agent Monica McCall was her partner for decades.

Awards

 * Yale Younger Poets Award (1935) with Theory of Flight
 * Harriet Monroe Poetry Award (the first)
 * Levinson Prize
 * Copernicus Prize
 * Guggenheim Fellowship

Works

 * Rukeyser's original collections of poetry
 * Theory of Flight. Foreword by Stephen Vincent Benet. New Haven: Yale Uni. Press, 1935. Won the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1935.
 * Mediterranean. Writers and Artists Committee, Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy, 1938.
 * U.S. 1: Poems. Covici, Friede, 1938.
 * A Turning Wind: Poems. Viking, 1939.
 * The Soul and Body of John Brown. Privately printed, 1940. With etchings by Rudolph von Ripper.
 * Wake Island. Doubleday, 1942.
 * Beast in View. Doubleday, 1944.
 * The Green Wave: Poems. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1948. Includes translations of Octavio Paz poems and rari.
 * Orpheus. Centaur Press, 1949. With the drawing "Orpheus" by Picasso.
 * Elegies. New Directions, 1949.
 * Selected Poems. New Directions, 1951.
 * Body of Waking: Poems. NY: Harper, 1958. Includes translated poems of Octavio Paz.
 * Waterlily Fire: Poems 1935-1962. NY: Macmillan, 1962.
 * The Outer Banks. Santa Barbara CA: Unicorn, 1967. 2nd rev. ed., 1980.
 * The Speed of Darkness: Poems. NY: Random House, 1968.
 * 29 Poems. Rapp & Whiting, 1972.
 * Breaking Open: New Poems. Random House, 1973.
 * The Gates: Poems. NY: McGraw-Hill, 1976.

 * Fiction by Rukeyser
 * Savage Coast : A Novel. Feminist Press, 2013.

 * Plays by Rukeyser
 * The Middle of the Air. Produced in Iowa City, IA, 1945.
 * The Colors of the Day: A Celebration of the Vassar Centennial. Produced in Poughkeepsie, NY, at Vassar College, June 10, 1961.
 * Houdini. Produced in Lenox, MA, at Lenox Arts Center, July 3, 1973. Published as Houdini: A Musical, Paris Press, 2002.

 * Film written by Rukeyser
 * All the Way Home. Produced in New York City, NY, 1957.

 * Children's books
 * Come Back, Paul. Harper, 1955.
 * I Go Out. Harper, 1961. Illustrated by Leonard Kessler.
 * Bubbles. Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967.
 * Mazes. Simon & Schuster, 1970. Photography by Milton Charles.
 * More Night. Harper & Row, 1981. Illustrated by Symeon Shimin.

 * Memoirs by Rukeyser

 * The Orgy: An Irish Journey of Passion and Transformation. London: Andre Deutsch, 1965; NY: Pocket Books, 1966; Ashfield, MA: Paris Press, 1997.

 * Works of criticism by Rukeyser
 * The Life of Poetry. NY: Current Books, 1949; Morrow, 1974; Paris Press, 1996.

 * Biographies by Rukeyser
 * Willard Gibbs: American Genius, 1942. Reprinted by the Ox Bow Press, Woodbridge CT. Biography of Josiah Willard Gibbs, physicist.
 * One Life. NY: Simon and Schuster, 1957. Biography of Wendell Willkie.
 * The Traces of Thomas Hariot. NY: Random House, 1971. Biography of Thomas Hariot.

 * Translations by Rukeyser
 * Selected Poems of Octavio Paz. Indiana University Press, 1963. Rev. ed. published as Early Poems 1935-1955, New Directions, 1973.
 * Sun Stone. Octavio Paz. New Directions, 1963.
 * Selected Poems of Gunnar Ekelöf. With Leif Sjöberg. Twayne, 1967.
 * Three Poems. Gunnar Ekelöf. T. Williams, 1967.
 * Uncle Eddie's Moustache. Bertolt Brecht. Pantheon Books, 1974.
 * A Molna Elegy: Metamorphoses. Gunnar Ekelöf. With Leif Sjöberg. 2 volumes. Unicorn Press, 1984.

 * Edited collections of Rukeyser's works
 * The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser. McGraw, 1978.
 * Out of Silence: Selected Poems. Edited by Kate Daniels. Triquarterly Books, 1992.
 * A Muriel Rukeyser Reader. Norton, 1994.
 * The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005.
 * The Muriel Rukeyser Era: Selected Prose. Eds. Eric Keenaghan and Rowena Kennedy-Epstein. Cornell University Press, 2023.

title: Muriel Rukeyser


text:
Polar Bear Express

The Polar Bear Express is a Canadian passenger train operated by the Ontario Northland Railway in Northern Ontario. Service was introduced in 1964. While designated as a passenger train, the Polar Bear Express also carries freight and is equipped with specialized equipment including boxcars for canoes, snowmobiles and all terrain vehicles. There are also baggage and express cars. In the past a special car existed for canoes but now these are carried in regular boxcars.

This train service is the only Motorail service currently in Canada, with chaincars (flat cars with tie downs) for carrying cars and light trucks. There are no roads to Moosonee, so vehicles come in and out by train.

It operates five days per week year-round and connects Cochrane with Moosonee. During the summer months there is an additional train on Sundays and the train often includes a full-length dome car. Prior to 2012, the train carried a full dining car during the summer.

Scheduled stops
Tickets for the passenger service are sold by phone or at offices in Cochrane, Moosonee, Moose Factory and Timmins. The train will stop on demand in some locations as part of the flag stop service.

The town of Cochrane recommends taking the train to Moosonee for a "great rail excursion" in summer, to view the "hydroelectric dams, isolated homes and perhaps even some wildlife."

The Polar Bear Express service was expanded on June 5, 2007, after increased funding from the Government of Ontario to ONR was announced in March 2007. It resulted in the discontinuation of the Little Bear mixed freight-passenger service which had operated three days per week, year-round, resulting in dedicated separate freight and passenger rail service to Moosonee.

Operations

In summer 2008, track conditions resulted the train running very late much of the time (2.5 hours by railway announcement). By late 2008, running times had improved somewhat and timings of five and a half to six hours for the 186 mi - all distances are shown in miles along the tracks - trip were becoming typical. Service deteriorated significantly in 2009 mainly due to bad track conditions and mechanical failures — on one occasion the train, scheduled to arrive in Cochrane at 9:42 in the evening did not arrive until 4:00 in the morning.

Before the 2007 service expansion, the Polar Bear Express operated six days per week during the summer months. It leaves Cochrane in the morning, stays in Moosonee for a few hours, and returns to Cochrane in the evening. It was primarily used by tourists, although it was used by an increasing number of local residents.

The name of the train is misleading — polar bears are rarely seen anywhere near Moosonee, although there are some extremely rare exceptions. The Polar Bear Express today mostly services the residents of Moosonee and Moose Factory when they travel south from their communities that lack road connections to the rest of Ontario. During the winter, many passengers are from communities further north who travel to Moosonee by winter road before taking the train, due to the high cost of vehicle transport. The motorail service is important to those living in the northern communities inaccessible by regular roads.

Prior to 2012 the summer train included special programs for children and an entertainment car.

title: Polar Bear Express


text:
Fitionești

Fitionești is a commune in the center-north hill area of Vrancea County, Western Moldavia, Romania (2,859 inhabitants). The commune is composed of five villages: Ciolănești, Fitionești, Ghimicești, Holbănești and Mănăstioara. Fitionești is said to have taken its name from the Fetion family, an old family of local boyars. The first historical evidence dates back to the Thracian Bronze Age.

Geography
The river Zăbrăuț crosses the village that lies between two hills, surrounded by wooden areas. Fitionești has a varied relief: Bouroș(u) Hill to the East, Valea Rea Valley to the West, followed by Costin Hill; also, Pisc Hill (Pi Chisc) to the northwest, and Ursoaia. Twenty kilometres north of Fitionești, after Glodișteanu Woods, there is Moșinoaiele monastery (Moșânoaia). These surroundings are proper for (agro)tourism.

The closest town is Panciu, ten kilometres to the South-East, which is virtually the only access way to "civilization", historically also referred to as „la Vale“ ("to the fields"). Another neighboring commune is Movilița, to the North-East. To the west, beyond Valea Rea and Costin hill, there is Muncelu village (Străoane commune).

Economy
The inhabitants are mostly farmers. They mainly cultivate maize, beans, and potatoes, also onion, cabbage, radishes, tomatoes, and cucumbers. There are also many vineyards (part of the Panciu vineyard) and orchards in Fitionești. Plums, apples, pears, and sour-cherries are most popular. Also they raise poultry (chicken, geese, ducks, sometimes turkeys), sheep, and cows. They keep horses (they still use them for farming work like ploughing), dogs, and cats.

They produce wine and „rachiu“ (a strong alcoholic drink), cheese, and make some of their clothes at home by hand. Also, some popular home manufacture includes soap, carpets, and brooms, usually for family use, not for selling.

Social facts

 * Literacy: some old people are illiterate
 * Ethnicity: In 2002, all inhabitants except two (a German and a Hungarian) were ethnic Romanian.
 * Religion: 2803 Romanian Orthodox, 5 Roman Catholics and 51 Protestants
 * Institutions: Căminul Cultural, one communal library, four elementary schools (pupils go on to attend Ioan Slavici high-school in Panciu)
 * Places of interest: the Mosinoaiele (or Musinoaiele) monastery dedicated to the Ascension of the Holy Virgin, located 20 km from the village. The Musunoaiele hunting fund (boars, brown bears, deer, does, and foxes).

title: Fitionești


text:
Whitefish Lake 6, Ontario

Whitefish Lake 6 is a reserve in Ontario, Canada. It is inhabited by the Ojibwa Atikameksheng Anishnawbek First Nation.

It is immediately south of the community of Naughton in Greater Sudbury, and is considered part of Greater Sudbury's Census Metropolitan Area. In the Canada 2011 Census, the community of Whitefish Lake had a population of 394 living on the reserve. It is bordered by both Greater Sudbury and the Unorganized North Sudbury District.

In 2010, the community was selected as the host community for Building Homes and Building Skills, a project by television personality Mike Holmes to train First Nations people in construction and building trades.

Notable members

 * Loma Lyns, singer and songwriter

title: Whitefish Lake 6, Ontario