text:
Album

An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track or cassette), or digital. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records collected in a bound book resembling a photo album; this format evolved after 1948 into single vinyl long-playing (LP) records played at $33 1/3$ rpm.

The album was the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption from the mid-1960s to the early 21st century, a period known as the album era. Vinyl LPs are still issued, though album sales in the 21st-century have mostly focused on CD and MP3 formats. The 8-track tape was the first tape format widely used alongside vinyl from 1965 until being phased out by 1983, being gradually supplanted by the cassette tape throughout the 1970s and early 1980s; the popularity of the cassette reached its peak during the late 1980s before sharply declining during the 1990s. The cassette had largely disappeared by the first decade of the 2000s.

Most albums are recorded in a studio, although they may also be recorded in a concert venue, at home, in the field, or a mix of places. The time frame for completely recording an album varies between a few hours to several years. This process usually requires several takes with different parts recorded separately, and then brought or "mixed" together. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed "live", even when done in a studio. Studios are built to absorb sound, eliminating reverberation, to assist in mixing different takes; other locations, such as concert venues and some "live rooms", have reverberation, which creates a "live" sound. Recordings, including live, may contain editing, sound effects, voice adjustments, etc. With modern recording technology, artists can be recorded in separate rooms or at separate times while listening to the other parts using headphones; with each part recorded as a separate track.

Album covers and liner notes are used, and sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of the recording, and lyrics or librettos. Historically, the term "album" was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage, the word was used for collections of short pieces of printed music from the early nineteenth century. Later, collections of related 78 rpm records were bundled in book-like albums (one side of a 78 rpm record could hold only about 3.5 minutes of sound). When LP records were introduced, a collection of pieces or songs on a single record was called an "album"; the word was extended to other recording media such as compact disc, MiniDisc, compact audio cassette, 8-track tape and digital albums as they were introduced.

History
An album (Latin albus, white), in ancient Rome, was a board chalked or painted white, on which decrees, edicts, and other public notices were inscribed in black. It was from this that in medieval and modern times, album came to denote a book of blank pages in which verses, autographs, sketches, photographs and the like are collected. This in turn led to the modern meaning of an album as a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item.

The first audio albums were actually published by the publishers of photograph albums. Single 78 rpm records were sold in a brown heavy paper sleeve with a large hole in the center so the record's label could be seen. The fragile records were stored on their sides. By the mid-1920s, photo album publishers sold collections of empty sleeves of heavier paper in bound volumes with stiff covers slightly larger than the 10" popular records. (Classical records measured 12".) On the paper cover in small type were the words "Record Album." Now records could be stored vertically with the record not touching the shelf, and the term was applied to the collection.

In the early nineteenth century, "album" was occasionally used in the titles of some classical music sets, such as Robert Schumann's Album for the Young Opus 68, a set of 43 short pieces.

With the advent of 78 rpm records in the early 1900s, the typical 10-inch disc could only hold about three minutes of sound per side, so almost all popular recordings were limited to around three minutes in length. Classical-music and spoken-word items generally were released on the longer 12-inch 78s, playing around 4–5 minutes per side. For example, in 1924, George Gershwin recorded a drastically shortened version of his new seventeen-minute composition Rhapsody in Blue with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. The recording was issued on both sides of a single record, Victor 55225 and ran for 8m 59s. By 1910, though some European record companies had issued albums of complete operas and other works, the practice of issuing albums was not widely taken up by American record companies until the 1920s.

By about 1910, bound collections of empty sleeves with a paperboard or leather cover, similar to a photograph album, were sold as record albums that customers could use to store their records (the term "record album" was printed on some covers). These albums came in both 10-inch and 12-inch sizes. The covers of these bound books were wider and taller than the records inside, allowing the record album to be placed on a shelf upright, like a book, suspending the fragile records above the shelf and protecting them. In the 1930s, record companies began issuing collections of 78 rpm records by one performer or of one type of music in specially assembled albums, typically with artwork on the front cover and liner notes on the back or inside cover. Most albums included three or four records, with two sides each, making six or eight compositions per album.

By the mid-1930s, record companies had adopted the album format for classical music selections that were longer than the roughly eight minutes that fit on both sides of a classical 12" 78 rpm record. Initially the covers were plain, with the name of the selection and performer in small type. In 1938, Columbia records hired the first graphic designer in the business to design covers, others soon followed and colorful album covers cover became an important selling feature.

By the later '30s, record companies began releasing albums of previously released recordings of popular music in albums organized by performer, singers or bands, or by type of music, boogie-woogie, for example.

When Columbia introduced the Long Playing record format in 1948, it was natural the term album would continue. Columbia expected that the record size distinction in 78s would continue, with classical music on 12" records and popular music on 10" records, and singles on 78s. Columbia's first popular 10" LP in fact was Frank Sinatra's first album, the four-record eight-song The Voice of Frank Sinatra, originally issued in 1946.

RCA's introduction of the smaller 45 rpm format later in 1948 disrupted Columbia's expectations. By the mid-1950s, 45s dominated the singles market and 12" LPs dominated the album market and both 78s and 10" LPs were discontinued. In the 1950s albums of popular music were also issued on 45s, sold in small heavy paper-covered "gate-fold" albums with multiple discs in sleeves or in sleeves in small boxes. This format disappeared around 1960. Sinatra's "The Voice" was issued in 1952 on two extended play 45s, with two songs on each side, in both packagings.

The 10-inch and 12-inch LP record (long play), or $33 1/3$ rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. A single LP record often had the same or similar number of tunes as a typical album of 78s, and it was adopted by the record industry as a standard format for the "album". Apart from relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound capability, it has remained the standard format for vinyl albums.

The term "album" was extended to other recording media such as 8-track tape, audio cassette, compact disc, MiniDisc, and digital albums, as they were introduced. As part of a trend of shifting sales in the music industry, some observers feel that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album.

Length
An album may contain any number of tracks. In the United States, The Recording Academy's rules for Grammy Awards state that an album must comprise a minimum total playing time of 15 minutes with at least five distinct tracks or a minimum total playing time of 30 minutes with no minimum track requirement. In the United Kingdom, the criteria for the UK Albums Chart is that a recording counts as an "album" if it either has more than four tracks or lasts more than 25 minutes. Sometimes shorter albums are referred to as mini-albums or EPs. Albums such as Tubular Bells, Amarok, and Hergest Ridge by Mike Oldfield, and Yes's Close to the Edge, include fewer than four tracks, but still surpass the 25-minute mark. The album Dopesmoker by Sleep contains only a single track, but the composition is over 63 minutes long. There are no formal rules against artists such as Pinhead Gunpowder referring to their own releases under thirty minutes as "albums".

If an album becomes too long to fit onto a single vinyl record or CD, it may be released as a double album where two vinyl LPs or compact discs are packaged together in a single case, or a triple album containing three LPs or compact discs. Recording artists who have an extensive back catalogue may re-release several CDs in one single box with a unified design, often containing one or more albums (in this scenario, these releases can sometimes be referred to as a "two (or three)-fer"), or a compilation of previously unreleased recordings. These are known as box sets. Some musical artists have also released more than three compact discs or LP records of new recordings at once, in the form of boxed sets, although in that case the work is still usually considered to be an album.

Tracks
Material (music or sounds) is stored on an album in sections termed tracks. A music track (often simply referred to as a track) is an individual song or instrumental recording. The term is particularly associated with popular music where separate tracks are known as album tracks; the term is also used for other formats such as EPs and singles. When vinyl records were the primary medium for audio recordings a track could be identified visually from the grooves and many album covers or sleeves included numbers for the tracks on each side. On a compact disc the track number is indexed so that a player can jump straight to the start of any track. On digital music stores such as iTunes the term song is often used interchangeably with track regardless of whether there is any vocal content.

A track that has the same name as the album is called the title track.

Bonus tracks
A bonus track (also known as a bonus cut or bonus) is a piece of music which has been included as an extra. This may be done as a marketing promotion, or for other reasons. It is not uncommon to include singles, B-sides, live recordings, and demo recordings as bonus tracks on re-issues of old albums, where those tracks were not originally included. Online music stores allow buyers to create their own albums by selecting songs themselves; bonus tracks may be included if a customer buys a whole album rather than just one or two songs from the artist. The song is not necessarily free nor is it available as a stand-alone download, adding also to the incentive to buy the complete album. In contrast to hidden tracks, bonus tracks are included on track listings and usually do not have a gap of silence between other album tracks. Bonus tracks on CD or vinyl albums are common in Japan for releases by European and North American artists; since importing international copies of the album can be cheaper than buying a domestically released version, Japanese releases often feature bonus tracks to incentivize domestic purchase.

Non-audio printed format
Commercial sheet music is published in conjunction with the release of a new album (studio, compilation, soundtrack, etc.). A matching folio songbook is a compilation of the music notation of all the songs included in that particular album. It typically has the album's artwork on its cover and, in addition to sheet music, it includes photos of the artist. Most pop and rock releases come in standard Piano/Vocal/Guitar notation format (and occasionally Easy Piano / E-Z Play Today). Rock-oriented releases may also come in Guitar Recorded Versions edition, which are note-for-note transcriptions written directly from artist recordings.

Vinyl records

Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one-half of the album. If a pop or rock album contained tracks released separately as commercial singles, they were conventionally placed in particular positions on the album. During the sixties, particularly in the UK, singles were generally released separately from albums. Today, many commercial albums of music tracks feature one or more singles, which are released separately to radio, TV or the Internet as a way of promoting the album. Albums have been issued that are compilations of older tracks not originally released together, such as singles not originally found on albums, b-sides of singles, or unfinished "demo" recordings.

Double albums during the seventies were sometimes sequenced for record changers. In the case of a two-record set, for example, sides 1 and 4 would be stamped on one record, and sides 2 and 3 on the other. The user would stack the two records onto the spindle of an automatic record changer, with side 1 on the bottom and side 2 (on the other record) on top. Side 1 would automatically drop onto the turntable and be played. When finished, the tone arm's position would trigger a mechanism which moved the arm out of the way, dropped the record with side 2, and played it. When both records had been played, the user would pick up the stack, turn it over, and put them back on the spindle—sides 3 and 4 would then play in sequence. Record changers were used for many years of the LP era, but eventually fell out of use.

8-track tape

8-track tape (formally Stereo 8: commonly known as the eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, or simply eight-track) is a magnetic tape sound recording technology popular in the United States from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s when the Compact Cassette format took over. The format is regarded as an obsolete technology, and was relatively unknown outside the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

Stereo 8 was created in 1964 by a consortium led by Bill Lear of Lear Jet Corporation, along with Ampex, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Motorola, and RCA Victor Records. It was a further development of the similar Stereo-Pak four-track cartridge created by Earl "Madman" Muntz. A later quadraphonic version of the format was announced by RCA in April 1970 and first known as Quad-8, then later changed to just Q8.

Compact cassette

The Compact Cassette was a popular medium for distributing pre-recorded music from the early 1970s to the early 2000s. The first "Compact Cassette" was introduced by Philips in August 1963 in the form of a prototype. Compact Cassettes became especially popular during the 1980s after the advent of the Sony Walkman, which allowed the person to control what they listened to. The Walkman was convenient because of its size, the device could fit in most pockets and often came equipped with a clip for belts or pants.

The compact cassette used double-sided magnetic tape to distribute music for commercial sale. The music is recorded on both the "A" and "B" side of the tape, with cassette being "turned" to play the other side of the album. Compact Cassettes were also a popular way for musicians to record "Demos" or "Demo Tapes" of their music to distribute to various record labels, in the hopes of acquiring a recording contract.

Compact cassettes also saw the creation of mixtapes, which are tapes containing a compilation of songs created by any average listener of music. The songs on a mixtape generally relate to one another in some way, whether it be a conceptual theme or an overall sound. After the introduction of Compact discs, the term "Mixtape" began to apply to any personal compilation of songs on any given format.

The sales of Compact Cassettes eventually began to decline in the 1990s, after the release and distribution Compact Discs. The 2010s saw a revival of Compact Cassettes by independent record labels and DIY musicians who preferred the format because of its difficulty to share over the internet.

Compact disc

The compact disc format replaced both the vinyl record and the cassette as the standard for the commercial mass-market distribution of physical music albums. After the introduction of music downloading and MP3 players such as the iPod, US album sales dropped 54.6% from 2001 to 2009. The CD is a digital data storage device which permits digital recording technology to be used to record and play-back the recorded music.

MP3 albums, and similar
Most recently, the MP3 audio format has matured, revolutionizing the concept of digital storage. Early MP3 albums were essentially CD-rips created by early CD-ripping software, and sometimes real-time rips from cassettes and vinyl.

The so-called "MP3 album" is not necessarily just in MP3 file format, in which higher quality formats such as FLAC and WAV can be used on storage media that MP3 albums reside on, such as CD-R-ROMs, hard drives, flash memory (e.g. thumbdrives, MP3 players, SD cards), etc.

Types of album
The contents of the album are usually recorded in a studio or live in concert, though may be recorded in other locations, such as at home (as with JJ Cale's Okie, Beck's Odelay, David Gray's White Ladder, and others),   in the field – as with early Blues recordings, in prison, or with a mobile recording unit such as the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio.

Studio
Most albums are studio albums — that is, they are recorded in a recording studio with equipment meant to give those overseeing the recording as much control as possible over the sound of the album. They minimize external noises and reverberations and have highly sensitive microphones and sound mixing equipment. In some studios, each member of a band records their part in separate rooms (or even at separate times, while listening to the other parts of the track with headphones to keep the timing right). In the 2000s, with the advent of digital recording, it became possible for musicians to record their part of a song in another studio in another part of the world, and send their contribution over digital channels to be included in the final product.

Live

Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing or multi-tracking are termed "live", even when done in a studio. However, the common understanding of a "live album" is one that was recorded at a concert with a public audience, even when the recording is overdubbed or multi-tracked. Concert or stage performances are recorded using remote recording techniques. Albums may be recorded at a single concert, or combine recordings made at multiple concerts. They may include applause, laughter and other noise from the audience, monologues by the performers between pieces, improvisation, and so on. They may use multitrack recording direct from the stage sound system (rather than microphones placed among the audience), and can employ additional manipulation and effects during post-production to enhance the quality of the recording.

Notable early live albums include the double album of Benny Goodman, The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert, released in 1950. Live double albums later became popular during the 1970s. Appraising the concept in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau said most "are profit-taking recaps marred by sound and format inappropriate to phonographic reproduction (you can't put sights, smells, or fellowship on audio tape). But for Joe Cocker and Bette Midler and Bob-Dylan-in-the-arena, the form makes a compelling kind of sense."

Eric Clapton's Unplugged (1992), over 26 million copies, Garth Brooks' Double Live (1998), over 21 million copies, and Peter Frampton's Frampton Comes Alive! (1976), over 11 million copies, are among the best selling live albums.

In Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 18 albums were live albums.

Solo
A solo album, in popular music, is an album recorded by a current or former member of a musical group which is released under that artist's name only, even though some or all other band members may be involved. The solo album appeared as early as the late 1940s. A 1947 Billboard magazine article heralded "Margaret Whiting huddling with Capitol execs over her first solo album on which she will be backed by Frank De Vol". There is no formal definition setting forth the amount of participation a band member can solicit from other members of their band, and still have the album referred to as a solo album. One reviewer wrote that Ringo Starr's third venture, Ringo, "[t]echnically... wasn't a solo album because all four Beatles appeared on it". Three of the four members of the Beatles released solo albums while the group was officially still together.

A performer may record a solo album for several reasons. A solo performer working with other members will typically have full creative control of the band, be able to hire and fire accompanists, and get the majority of the proceeds. The performer may be able to produce songs that differ widely from the sound of the band with which the performer has been associated, or that the group as a whole chose not to include in its own albums. Graham Nash of the Hollies described his experience in developing a solo album as follows: "The thing that I go through that results in a solo album is an interesting process of collecting songs that can't be done, for whatever reason, by a lot of people". A solo album may also represent the departure of the performer from the group.

Compilation album
A compilation album is a collection of material from various recording projects or various artists, assembled with a theme such as the "greatest hits" from one artist, B-sides and rarities by one artist, or selections from a record label, a musical genre, a certain time period, or a regional music scene. Promotional sampler albums are compilations.

Tribute or cover
A tribute or cover album is a compilation of cover versions of songs or instrumental compositions. Its concept may involve various artists covering the songs of a single artist, genre or period, a single artist covering the songs of various artists or a single artist, genre or period, or any variation of an album of cover songs which is marketed as a "tribute".

title: Album


text:
HMS Alacrity

Nine ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Alacrity:

 * HMS Alacrity (1806) was an 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop launched in 1806 and captured by the French in 1811.
 * HMS Alacrity (1818) was a 10-gun Cherokee-class brig-sloop brig-sloop launched in 1818 and sold in 1835.
 * HMS Alacrity (1856) was a wooden screw sloop launched in 1856 and sold in 1864.
 * HMS Alacrity (1872) was the former civilian vessel Ethel, purchased in 1872 and sold in 1882.
 * HMS Alacrity (1885) was a Surprise-class cruiser third class cruiser, launched in 1885 and sold in 1913.
 * the original Surprise-class cruiser third class cruiser HMS Surprise (1885) launched in 1885 was renamed HMS Alacrity in 1913 and sold in 1919.
 * HMS Alacrity (1919) was a yacht and despatch vessel launched as Margarita in 1900, renamed Semiramis in 1910 and Mlada in 1913. She was requisitioned in 1918 and commissioned in 1919 as HMS Alacrity. She was paid off in 1922, sold in 1923 and broken up in 1936.
 * HMS Alacrity (U60) was a Modified Black Swan-class sloop launched in 1944 and broken up in 1956.
 * HMS Alacrity (F174) was a Type 21 frigate launched in 1974. She served in the Falklands War and was sold to Pakistan in 1994 and renamed Badr.

Battle honours
Ships named Alacrity have earned the following battle honours:
 * China, 1900
 * Korea, 1950−52
 * Falkland Islands, 1982

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

title: HMS Alacrity


text:
Chad Trujillo

Chadwick A. Trujillo (born November 22, 1973) is an American astronomer, discoverer of minor planets and the co-discoverer of Eris, the most massive dwarf planet known in the Solar System.

Trujillo works with computer software and has examined the orbits of the numerous trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), which is the outer area of the Solar System that he specialized in. In late August 2005, it was announced that Trujillo, along with Michael Brown and David Rabinowitz, had discovered Eris in 2003. As a result of the discovery of the satellite Dysnomia, Eris was the first TNO known to be more massive than Pluto.

Career
Trujillo attended Oak Park and River Forest High School in Oak Park, Illinois. He received his B.Sc. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995, and was a member of the Xi chapter of Tau Epsilon Phi, and received his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Hawaiʻi in 2000.

Between 2000 and 2003 Trujillo was a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech. In 2003, he started working as an astronomer at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii.

In 2013 Trujillo became head of the Adaptive Optics/Telescope Department at the Gemini Observatory, and continued until 2016. As of 2016, Trujillo is assistant professor at the department of Astronomy and Planetary Science at Northern Arizona University.

He studies the Kuiper belt and the outer Solar System.

Discoveries
Trujillo is credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery and co-discovery of 54 numbered minor planets between 1996 and 2013, including many trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) from the Kuiper belt (see table). The last major TNO, Eris, was at first considered by him, his team, NASA, and many others to be the tenth planet, but the International Astronomical Union assigned it to the new classificatory category of dwarf planet.

The possible dwarf planets Trujillo discovered are:
 * Quaoar, co-discovered with Brown
 * Sedna, co-discovered with Brown and Rabinowitz, possibly the first known inner Oort cloud object
 * Orcus, co-discovered with Brown and Rabinowitz
 * Eris, co-discovered with Brown and Rabinowitz – the only known TNO more massive than Pluto
 * , discovery also claimed by the Sierra Nevada Observatory, Spain (also see José Luis Ortiz Moreno).
 * , co-discovered with Brown and Rabinowitz in 2005, one of the first 5 official dwarf planets.

List of discovered minor planets
The Minor Planet Center credits Chad Trujillo with the discovery and co-discovery of 57 minor planets during 1996–2013. His numerous co-discoverers were: D. C. Jewitt,  J. X. Luu,  J. Chen,  K. Berney,  D. J. Tholen,  M. E. Brown,  W. Evans,  S. S. Sheppard,  D. L. Rabinowitz,  A. Udalski,  M. Kubiak,  R. Poleski and  Glenn Smith.

Honors and awards
The main-belt asteroid 12101 Trujillo is named for him.

In 2006 he was named one of the Science Spectrum Magazine Trailblazer, top minority in science.

title: Chad Trujillo


text:
Albert Mol

Albert Mol (3 January 1917 – 9 March 2004) was a Dutch author, actor and television personality.

Life and career
Mol was born in Amsterdam, and was one of the first openly gay actors in the Netherlands. He married Lucy Bor in 1948. The couple had a child the following year, actress Kika Mol, but divorced in 1955.

On 16 March 1998, Mol registered his relationship with his partner Guerdon Bill. Their relationship lasted until Guerdon's death on 17 August 2003. Mol died in Laren on 9 March 2004 from an aneurysm, aged 87.

Books

 * Breek me de bek niet open (with Frans Mulder)
 * Het doek viel te vroeg
 * Wat Zien Ik!?
 * Haar van Boven
 * Blonde Greet
 * Dag dag welterusten
 * Mengele broek en pintje billen (autobiographical)

Books on Albert Mol

 * Albert Mol (by Tony van Verre)

title: Albert Mol


text:
Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda

Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, formerly Baroda College, is a public university in the city of Vadodara, Gujarat, India. Originally established as a college in 1881, it became a university in 1949 after India's independence. It was later renamed after its benefactor Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III, the former ruler of Baroda State.

The university offers undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral programs. It houses 89 departments spread over 6 campuses (2 rural and 4 urban) covering 275 acres of land.

History
The university has its origins in the Baroda College, established in 1881 by Baroda State. The main building, which houses the Faculty of Arts, was designed by Robert Fellowes Chisholm in Indo-Saracenic architecture style, in a fusion of Indian and Byzantine arches and domes in brick and polychrome stone. The main dome on the convocation hall was modelled after the great dome of the Gol Gumbaz in Bijapur.

Pratap Singh Gaekwad of Baroda, the last Maharaja of the erstwhile Baroda State, founded the university in 1949 on the wishes of his grandfather, Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III, and settled the Sir Sayajirao Diamond Jubilee and Memorial Trust, which caters to the education and other needs of people of the former Baroda State.

Faculty of Education and Psychology
This faculty is established for the development of teachers of child psychology. Its departments include:

 * Department of Education (CASE)
 * Department of Psychology
 * Department of Educational Administration

The Department of Education was established in 1935, having formerly been a teacher training college. The department was originally named the Center of Advance Study in Education Baroda.

Faculty of Science
The old Baroda College founded in 1881 consisted of Arts and Science faculties. The Faculty of Science started its independent existence in March 1951 with Dr C.S. Patel as its first dean. The Old Building which houses the Faculty of Science was completed in about 1934 in the reign of Sayajirao Gaekwad III. It is conspicuous by its small copper dome and is flanked on the west by the building of the Faculty of Education and Psychology and on the east by the majestic building of the Old Baroda College, now the Faculty of Arts.

Department of Physics
The department, established in 1949, offers U.G., P.G., and PhD programme and is a sponsored department of Science and Technology, Government of India under FIST programme. In MSc, students are offered Solid State Physics, Electronics and Communication, Nuclear Physics, and Molecular Spectroscopy as specialization. The department is also equipped by two of the oldest and famous observatories: (i) Astronomical Observatory and (ii) Meteorological observatory.

Researchers are provided with advanced technologies including FTIR-4100 Spectrometer, Thermal Analyser (DSC), AFM, Workstations-4, Cluster Computing facility (Supercomputer), etc. which help them in researching on Condensed Matter Physics, Material Science, Experimental Nuclear Physics, Spectroscopy, Theoretical Particle Physics, and Astrophysics. It is one of the oldest Physics departments in India, which adopted advanced curricula based on Courses viz, Berkeley Physics Course, Feynman Lecture Series, etc. under the leadership of S.K. Shah and H.S. Desai. Department has an active society, notably 'The Physical Society MSU Baroda'. Department of Condensed Matter Physics has been sponsored for researches in coordination with TIFR and BARC by DST-FIST as a major beneficiary. Department is indulged in a number of active researches with record endowments. The university holds the accolade of having worldwide spread Departmental alumni, including Nobel Laureate cum President, Royal Society, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan.

Dr. Vikram Sarabhai Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology

Established in 2012, Dr. Vikram Sarabhai Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology is an interdisciplinary research institute that integrates several departments of the Faculty of Science. The centre was established with the financial support of the Government of Gujarat. The institute started a 5-year Integrated MSc programme in Cell and Molecular Biology in 2012. The course offers 30 seats each year, which are filled through a common entrance exam.

Department of Computer Applications
Formally established in 2013, the department offers three programmes, Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA), MSc in Information Technologies and MSc in Software Technologies.

Department of Biochemistry
The Department of Biochemistry was established in 1955, under the Chemistry Department, and was headed by Prof. C.V. Ramakrishnan, father of 2009 Chemistry Nobel Laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan). The department was awarded an Excellent status in 2006 by FIST, a Government of India accreditation agency. It imparts master's degree courses in Biochemistry & Medical Biotechnology with a force of around 50 research students. The department was funded under the DST-FIST I programme under which it has the most worst equipment that has been purchased and infrastructure facilities strengthened. The department has received support from UGC-DRS, UGC-DSA, and COSIST programs.

The Biochemistry Department offers courses in enzymology, genetics, molecular biology, neuroscience, plant biochemistry, endocrinology, clinical biochemistry among others. The department conducts research in areas including bacterial cooperation, polyketide synthase clusture, antibiotic resistance, Apoptosis, phosphate solubilisation, nitrogen fixation, probiotics, heavy metal toxicity, diabetes, prostate cancer, female infertility, endophytes, magnetoliposomes, protein folding, and vitiligo.

The areas of research in which the department is engaged are Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering, Microbiology, Bioprocess Engineering,and Immunology, Biophysics. Courses offered: include doctoral programs, and Master of Science in biochemistry, medical biotechnology and Postgraduate diploma in applied biochemistry.

Classical music
Maharaja Sayajirao Rao Gaekwad was a patron of Indian classical music. ustad Moula Bux founded the Academy of Indian Music under the patronage of Sayajirao, on 26 February 1886. This academy later became the Music College and is now the Faculty of Performing Arts of The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Apart from Moula Bux, Sayajirao's Court boasted of artists like Ustad Inayat Khan and legendary Agra Gharana Aftaab e Mousiqui (Sun of Music) Ustad Faiyyaz Khansaheb

After educationist Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande's music curriculum was introduced at the college, Gayanacharya Madhusudan Joshi became the first recipient of a diploma in Music (1932) in the history of music education in India.

Dance
The MSU started the first dance programme in India in 1950.

In 1880, the Maharani Chimnabai I of Tanjore was married to Baroda's Maharaja Sayajirao III Gopalrao Gaekwad, a prince who established the Baroda College as one of his first public acts. It was later absorbed into the university that bears his name. Chimnabai I was knowledgeable in Bharatanatyam and Carnatic music and brought a troupe with her: two dancers, two nattuvanars (leaders of Bharatanatyam concerts), and two teachers. Others followed: Nattuvanar Appaswamy and his dancer wife Kantimati, who had studied with Kannusamy and Vadively, two members of the Tanjore Quartet. After Appaswamy's death in 1939, Kantimati and their son, Kubernath, left to teach in Lucknow and worked in film in South India until Maharaja Pratap Singhrao Gaekwad called the Tanjorkars family back to Baroda in 1949, to teach in the music department in the Palace Kalavan which was later absorbed into MSU.

Faculty of Arts
The Faculty of Arts building is known for its Gumbaz (The Dome) which has been modelled on the 'Gol Gumbaz' of Bijapur and has often been rated as the finest dome for Educational Institutions in India.

Departments

 * Department of Archaeology and Ancient History
 * Department of Anthropology
 * Department of Arabic
 * Department of Canadian Studies
 * Department of Defence and National Security Studies
 * Department of Economics
 * Department of English (The oldest in Gujarat)
 * Department of French
 * Department of Geography
 * Department of German
 * Department of Gujarati
 * Department of Hindi
 * Department of History
 * Department of International Relation
 * Department of Journalism & Communication
 * Department of Library & Information Science
 * Department of Linguistics
 * Department of Marathi
 * Department of Persian
 * Department of Philosophy
 * Department of Political Science
 * Department of Pali
 * Department of Prakrit
 * Department of Russian
 * Department of Sanskrit
 * Department of Sindhi
 * Department of Sociology
 * Department of Traditional Sanskrit Studies
 * Department of Urdu
 * Department of Management Studies
 * Department of Education and Psychology

Faculty of Management Studies
Popularly known as FMS Baroda, was established in 1984 in the city of Vadodara. The courses are approved by All India Council for Technical Education. The institute offers the specialization in Marketing, Finance, Human Resource Management and Information Systems. During 1995, it increased its intake from 30 to 40 for 2-year full-time (regular) MBA, and in 1997 introduced a 3-Year MBA Evening Programme.

Faculty of Medicine
The Baroda Medical College serves as the Faculty of Medicine. Attached with the Sir Sayajirao General (SSG) Hospital, Faculty of Medicine is considered amongst the top Medical Colleges of Gujarat. Started in 1949,today it has a batch of 250 MBBS Students per year and more than 400+ Post graduate students in various MD & MS Residency programmes. GMERS Medical College & Hospital, Gotri has also been given affiliation of Faculty of Medicine, MSUB

Faculty of Pharmacy
The Faculty of Pharmacy was established in 2015. Prior to that, it was a department under the Faculty of Technology and Engineering. Prof M R Yadav is the founder dean of Faculty of Pharmacy.

Library
The Hansa Mehta Library was established in 1950.

Oriental Institute
The institute was established in Baroda on 1 September 1927. It operated from the Central Library before it was shifted to a separate building near the palace. It is known for the seven volumes of the critical edition of Ramayana that it published between 1951 and 1975, a part of a 25-year project sponsored by the University Grants Commission (UGC). The text was later the reference source for Ramayan, the popular TV series by Ramanand Sagar that originally ran in 1987–88.

One of the oldest manuscripts preserved at the institute is Ayodhya Mahatmya, written by Harishankar in 1656 AD, part of the collection of over 10,000 manuscripts of Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III, who first conceptualized the institute in 1893, inspired by the opening of the Oriental Research Institute Mysore in 1891, established by then Maharaja of Mysore Chamaraja Wodeyar, and a close friend. A road was named after as Chamaraja Road in Vadodara and Sayajirao Road in Mysore to emmark the friendship between Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III and Chamaraja Wodeyar. Chamaraja Road starts from Eastern gate of Lakshmi Vilas Palace and has the prominent landmarks like Kirti Stambh, Khanderao Market and others before terminating near Bhagat Singh Chowk.

The Oriental Institute organizes seminars and conferences for research in Oriental studies.

Rankings
Internationally, the university was ranked 701–750 in Asia on the QS World University Rankings of 2023. It was ranked 501+ in Asia by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings of 2022 and in the same band among emerging economies. The NIRF ranked the university 30th in its 2023 pharmacy rankings .It also ranked 101-150 band in the university rankings and 151-200 band in the engineering rankings

Student life
The university offers NCC and NSS on campus.

Sayaji FM
Sayaji FM is the online radio station of The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda.

Notable alumni

 * Vijayakumar Menon
 * Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
 * Avinash Sachdev
 * Aniruddh Brahmabhatt
 * T. V. Santhosh
 * Dadasaheb Phalke
 * Gulam Mohammed Sheikh
 * Sam Pitroda
 * Vinoba Bhave
 * Hemlata Talesra
 * Rang Avadhoot
 * Manan Desai
 * Ajay Bhatt
 * Abhiram Radhakrishnan
 * Reetika Khera
 * Vijay Bhatkar
 * Prateek Sharma
 * Shankar Subbanarasayya Mantha
 * Shrenu Parikh
 * Nandita Kumar
 * Jagannath Panda

Faculty

 * M. N. Srinivas
 * Rajni Kothari
 * Jyotsna Bhatt

title: Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda


text:
St. Mary's Church, Gdańsk

St. Mary's Church (Polish: Bazylika Mariacka, St. Marienkirche), or formally the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is a Brick Gothic Catholic church located in central Gdańsk, Poland. With its volume between 185,000 m3 and 190,000 m3 it is currently one of the two or three largest brick churches in the world. Only San Petronio Basilica in Bologna, comprising 258,000 m3 is larger, Munich Frauenkirche and Ulm Minster also comprise 185,000 to 190,000 m3.

Between 1536 and 1572 St. Mary's Church was used for Catholic and Lutheran services simultaneously. From the 16th century until 1945 it was the second largest Lutheran church in the world.

It is 105.5 m long, and the nave is 66 m wide. Inside the church is room for 25,000 people. It is an aisled hall church with a transept. It is a co-cathedral in the Archdiocese of Gdańsk, along with the Oliwa Cathedral.

History
According to tradition, as early as 1243 a wooden Church of the Assumption existed at this site, built by Duke Swietopelk II.

The foundation stone for the new brick church was placed on 25 March 1343, the feast of the Annunciation. At first a six-span bay basilica with a low turret was built, erected from 1343 to 1360. Parts of the pillars and lower levels of the turret have been preserved from this building.

In 1379 the Gdańsk architect Heinrich Ungeradin and his team began construction of the present church. Their building shows some differences from St. Mary's Church in Lübeck, sometimes called the mother of all Brick Gothic churches dedicated to St. Mary in Hanseatic cities around the Baltic, and it has some details in common with Gothic brick churches in Flanders and the Netherlands. By 1447 the eastern part of the church was finished, and the tower was raised by two floors in the years 1452–1466.

From 1485 the work was continued by Hans Brandt, who supervised the erection of the main nave core. After 1496, the structure was finally finished under Heinrich Haetzl, who supervised the construction of the vaulting.

In the course of the Reformation most people of Gdańsk adopted Lutheranism, among them the parishioners of St. Mary's. After a short wave of turbulent religious altercations in 1525 and 1526, in which the previous city council was overthrown, the new authorities favored a smooth transition to Lutheran religious practice. In 1529 the first Lutheran sermon was given in St. Mary's. From 1536 — in cooperation with Włocławek's Catholic officials — a Lutheran cleric was permanently employed at St. Mary's and both Lutheran services and Catholic masses were held. The Lutheran congregation then began registering personal data, and the oldest surviving register is that of burials starting in 1537. In July 1557, King Sigismund II Augustus of Poland granted Gdańsk the religious privilege of celebrating communion with both bread and wine. Thereafter the City Council ended Catholic masses in all Gdańsk churches except St. Mary's, where Catholic masses continued until 1572. As part of the smooth transition Lutheran pastors and services at first also continued Catholic traditions, including using precious liturgical garments, such as chasubles. However Catholic traditions gradually were abandoned at St. Mary's. Gdańsk's Lutheran congregation, like others in northern Europe, stored the old liturgical garments, some of which survived.

The inventories of St. Mary's reflect usage of Catholic-style accessories in Gdańsk's early Lutheran services. The inventory of 1552 still mentions a great stock of garments and embroideries. The parishioners of St. Mary's formed a Lutheran congregation which - as part of Lutheran church polity - adopted a church order. A more elaborate church order (constitution) followed in 1612, the Alte kirchenordnung. The first senior pastor (Erster Pfarrer, pastor primarius) of Gdańsk's Lutheran state church was Johannes Kittelius, pastor at St. Mary's between 1566 and 1590. The church officially was called Supreme Parish Church of St. Mary's (Oberpfarrkirche St. Marien), indicating its prominent position in the city.

Due to the anti-Bathory rebellion, in 1577 the Polish King Stephen Báthory imposed the Siege of Gdańsk (1577). The defense of its political position forced the city to hire mercenaries, who were so costly that the City Council confiscated gold and silver from the inhabitants and from the treasuries of the city and its Lutheran state church. Most of the gold and silver utensils of St. Mary's were melted down and minted to pay the mercenaries. An inventory of 1552 still recorded no less than 78 silver gilt chalices, 43 altar crucifixes, 24 great silver figures of saints and the like more. After 1577 most of it was gone. The Gdańsk rebellion ended in December 1577 with a compromise forcing the city to pay the king the sum of 200,000 florins. But the Polish monarch also recognised Gdańsk's religious freedom and Lutheran faith. As a compromise the jurisdiction over Gdańsk's Lutherans as to marital and sexual matters remained with Włocławek's Catholic officials.

In 1594, the Polish royal court tribunal attempted to restore Catholic services to St. Mary's, but the City Council rejected that approach. But as a compromise, since the Catholic kings of Poland had been the nominal heads of the City since the Second Peace of Thorn (1466), the Council authorised building the Baroque Catholic Royal Chapel. It was erected by Tylman van Gameren (Gamerski) and completed in 1681, near St. Mary's Church, for the king's Catholic service when he visited Gdańsk. With St. Mary's pastor Constantin Schütz (1646–1712) a moderate pietist theology replaced the previously dominant Lutheran orthodoxy.

In the course of the Partitions of Poland the city lost its autonomy in 1793, regaining it for a short period (1807–1814) as a Napoleonic client state, before it became part of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1815. The Prussian government integrated St. Mary's and all the Lutheran state church into the all-Prussian Lutheran church administration. In 1816 the Gdańsk Consistory was established taking on the tasks and some of the members of the Gdańsk spiritual ministerium. Gdańsk's then senior, and prime pastor at St. Mary's (1801–1827), Karl Friedrich Theodor Bertling, became a consistorial councillor in the church body. In 1817 the government imposed the union of Reformed and Lutheran congregations within the entire kingdom. First intended to win all these congregations to adopt a unified Protestant confession, the vast Lutheran majority insisted on retaining the Augsburg Confession, thus St. Mary's remained a Lutheran church and congregation, but joined the new umbrella of the Evangelical Church in Prussia in 1821, a regional Protestant church body of united administration but no common confession, comprising mostly Lutheran, but also some Reformed and united Protestant congregations.

In 1820, during Bertling's pastorate, long forgotten chests and cabinets in the sacristy were opened and the first medieval garments and liturgical decorations were rediscovered. In the 1830s more historic garments were found. At that time the congregation did not grasp the richness and rarity of these findings. So when Chaplain Franz Johann Joseph Bock, art historian and curator of the then Cologne Archdiocesan Museum, reviewed the discoveries he acquired a number of the best pieces from the congregation. Bock showed them in an exhibition in 1853. After his death some Gdańsk pieces from his personal collection were sold to London's Victoria and Albert Museum. These and also later sales to private collectors included cloths and vestments made of fabrics from ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, obtained during the Crusades; as well as renaissance wares from Venice, Florence and Lucca (more than 1000 items altogether).

In 1861–64 a Sexton named Hinz systematically searched chests, cabinets and other storages in chambers and rooms, also in the tower, and found many more historic liturgical garments. In the 1870s and 1880s the congregation sold more than 200 incomplete pieces, but also intact altar cloths and embroideries to the Berlin Museum of Decorative Arts. The remaining pieces of the garment collection, the so-called Danziger Paramentenschatz (Gdańsk Parament Treasure), mostly originate from the 150 years between 1350 and 1500.

The congregation also sold other artifacts, such as the winged triptych by Jan van Wavere, acquired by Archduke Maximilian, now held in the Church of the Teutonic Order in Vienna, and the sculpture of the Madonna and Child by Michael of Augsburg from the main altar, sold to Count Alfons Sierakowski, now in the chapel in Waplewo Wielkie. In addition, the Prussian authorities melted down gold and silver reliquaries for reuse.

Until World War II, the church interior and exterior were well preserved. Between 1920 and 1940 St. Mary's became the principal church within the Protestant Regional Synodal Federation of the Free City of Danzig. In this time the presbytery (board of the congregation) discerned the value of its parament collection and prompted its cataloguing. During a renovation in the 1920s more historic garments and altar cloths were found. From 1930 to 1933 Walter Mannowsky, then director of the City Museum (now housed in the National Museum, Gdańsk), delivered a detailed four volume inventory of the Paramentenschatz. It was then presented in the St. Barbara Chapel of St. Mary's. In 1936 the Paramentenschatz was moved to a newly equipped room in the City Museum with a controlled climate, since the Barbara Chapel was too damp. The Paramentenschatz remained property of the congregation, presented on loan in the city museum (Stadtmuseum).

Beginning in the third war year 1942, major items of Gdańsk's cultural heritage were dismantled and demounted in coordination with the cultural heritage curator (Konservator). The presbytery of St. Mary's Church agreed to remove items like archive files and artworks such as altars, paintings, epitaphs, mobile furnishings to places outside the city. Meanwhile, churches in Gdańsk as elsewhere in Germany, and in German-occupied areas, saw their church bells requisitioned as non-ferrous metal for war production. Bells were classified according to historical and/or artistical value and those categorised the least valuable and cast after 1860, and especially those requisitioned in occupied areas, were melted down the first.

The church was severely damaged late in World War II, during the storming of Gdańsk city by the Red Army in March 1945. The wooden roof burned completely and most of the ceiling fell in. Fourteen of the large vaults collapsed. The windows were destroyed. In places the heat was so intense that some of the bricks melted, especially in the upper parts of the tower, which acted as a giant chimney. All remaining bells crashed down when their bell cages collapsed in the fire. The floor of the church, containing priceless gravestone slabs, was torn apart, allegedly by Soviet soldiers attempting to loot the corpses buried underneath.

By the end of the Second World War many German parishioners of St. Mary's fled westwards, and also the parament treasure was evacuated to the west. In March 1945 Poland began expelling the remaining ethnic Germans in the city even before the border changes promulgated at the Potsdam Conference reassigned the city to Poland. Most of St. Mary's surviving parishioners wound up in the British occupation zone in northern Germany. Lübeck became a center for exiled Germans. All property of St. Mary's Lutheran congregation in Gdańsk was expropriated and its cemetery despoiled. However, two unsmelted bells of St. Mary's, dating from 1632 and 1719, later were found in the so-called Hamburg bell cemetery (Glockenfriedhof). Of the prewar chimes, there still exist two bells, after restitution to the congregation loaned by its presbytery exiled in Lübeck to other congregations in northern Germany. Osanna from 1632 can be found in St. Andrew's Church, Hildesheim, and Dominicalis from 1719 can be found under the name Osanna in St. Mary's Church, Lübeck, both in Germany. Dominicalis is used by the congregation of Lutheran St. Mary's Church, and the parament treasure is on public display.

Gdańsk was gradually repopulated by more Poles, and Polish authorities handed over St. Mary's Church to the Catholic diocese. Most of the artworks from the interior survived, having been evacuated for safekeeping to villages near the city. Many of these have returned to the church, but some are displayed in various museums around Poland. The diocese has sought to secure their return.

The reconstruction started shortly after the war in 1946. The roof was rebuilt in August 1947, using reinforced concrete. After the basic reconstruction was finished, the church was reconsecrated on November 17, 1955. The reconstruction and renovation of the interior is an ongoing effort.

On November 20, 1965, by papal bull, Pope Paul VI elevated the church to the dignity of the basilica. On February 2, the Congregation for Bishops established the Bazylika Mariacka as the Gdańsk Co-Cathedral in the then still non-metropolitan Catholic Diocese of Gdańsk. Since 1925 the Oliwa Cathedral is the cathedral of the diocese (elevated to archdiocese in 1992).

The funeral of Paweł Adamowicz, the assassinated Mayor of Gdańsk, took place at the basilica on 19 January 2019.

In 2020, the 15th-century Gothic Pietas Domini altar, which was stolen by Germany during World War II, was restored to the church from Berlin.

Exterior
St. Mary's Church is a triple-aisled hall church with a triple-aisled transept. Both the transept and the main nave are of similar width and height. Certain irregularities in the form of the northern arm of the transept are remnants of the previous church situated on the same site. In all, the building is a good example of late Gothic architecture.

The vaulting is a true piece of art. Much of it was restored after World War II. Main nave, transept and presbytery are covered by net vaults, while the aisles are covered by crystal vaults.

The exterior of the nave is dominated by plain brick walls and high and narrow pointed arch windows. Such a construction was possible by placing corbels and buttresses inside of the church and erecting chapels between them. Similar constructions have been used in Albi Cathedral (1287–1487, Southern France) and Munich Frauenkirche (1468–1494). The gables are divided by a set of brick pinnacles. All corners are accentuated by turrets crowned by metal headpieces (reconstructed after 1970). Similar turrets can be found on the town hall of Lübeck as well as on the two large Churches of Leiden and on the Ridderzaal in The Hague.

It is stabilized by strong buttresses.

The church has seven portals, one in the west under the steeple, one in the eastern façade of the choir, two on the northern and three on the southern side, six of them (all except the western) are of sandstone masonry.

Interior
The church is decorated within with several masterpieces of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque painting. The most notable, The Last Judgement by Flemish painter Hans Memling, is currently preserved in the National Museum of Gdańsk. Other works of art were transferred to the National Museum in Warsaw in 1945. It was not until the 1990s when several of them were returned to the church. The most notable parts of internal decoration are:

 * Jerusalem Altar, 1495–1500 (currently in the National Museum in Warsaw)
 * High Altar, 1511–1517, Michael of Augsburg
 * Ten Commandments, approx. 1485
 * Gravestone of Simon and Judith Bahr, 1614–1620, Abraham van den Blocke
 * Pietà, approx. 1420
 * Holy Mother of God sculpture, approx. 1420
 * Gdańsk astronomical clock, 1464–1470, Hans Düringer of Nuremberg, reconstructed after 1945
 * Organ set, partially transferred from St. John's church in 1985.

Bells
There are two bells in St Mary's Church. Both of them were cast in 1970 by foundry Felczyński in Przemyśl. The larger one is called Gratia Dei, weighs 7850 kg, and sounds in nominal F sharp. The smaller bell is the so-called Ave Maria, weighs 2600 kg, and sounds in C sharp.

title: St. Mary's Church, Gdańsk


text:
Laval, Mayenne

Laval is a town in western France, about 300 km west-southwest of Paris, and the capital of the Mayenne department.

Its inhabitants are called Lavallois. The commune of Laval proper, without the metropolitan area, is the 7th most populous in the Pays de la Loire region and the 132nd in France.

A part of the traditional province of Maine before the French Revolution, which now split between two departments, Mayenne and Sarthe, Laval also lies on the threshold of Brittany and is not far from Normandy and Anjou. It was thus an important stronghold in northwestern France during the Middle Ages. Laval became a city during the 11th century, and was the cradle of the House of Laval, one of the most powerful families in Maine and Brittany. The counts of Laval developed a textile industry around 1300 and made Laval a significant centre for the French Renaissance a century later. The linen industry remained the principal activity in Laval until the 20th century, when milk processing became more profitable.

Laval developed around a promontory, on which the castle was built, and along the river Mayenne. The Laval metropolitan area is a small economic centre in western France, particularly active in the industrial sector, dairy production, electronics and chemicals. Laval is economically oriented towards Rennes, the administrative capital of the region of Brittany, and located only 80 km west of Laval.

Laval proper covers 34.2 km² and has a population of 49,573 inhabitants, while c. 144,000 live in its metropolitan area (1435 km²). The Laval Agglomération intercommunality is made up of 34 communes covering 686 km² with 113,000 inhabitants.

Laval is notably the birthplace of Henri Rousseau, a major Naïve painter, and the town has a museum dedicated to him and other Naïve artists. Laval also enjoys a significant architectural heritage, with its castle, portions of city walls, medieval houses, old bridges and churches.

Toponymy
Laval is a relatively new foundation in comparison to other French cities. That is to say that the borough was not officially mentioned prior to the 11th century. According to legend glorifying the Counts of Laval, mediaeval chroniclers portrayed the citizens of Laval as being the offspring of Charles Martel's grandson Wala of Corbie. By virtue of the chroniclers' accounts, Laval should be a synonym for "Vala" or "Valla"—the two spelling variants of "Wala".

Etymologically spoken, however, the name of Laval, in all likelihood, merely stands for "the valley" in French ("la vallée" in contemporary language), to capture the lush valley of the Mayenne river, wherein Laval is situated. This name commonly appears in other French location names, sometimes with a second word, such as in Laval-d'Aurelle (Ardèche) or Laval-sur-Doulon (Haute-Loire).

The first mention of the town was the Latin Vallis Guidonis, meaning "Guy's valley", because the counts of Laval were all called Guy. On its side, the castle was usually named Castrum Guidonis or Aula Guidonis ("Guy's castle" and "Guy's palace"). During the 11th century, Laval is also called Castrum Vallis or simply Vallis; and Lavallis appears in 1080. Other Latin names include Valles and Castrum de Valibus. Lavallum Guidonis is first written in 1239. After the Renaissance, Lavallis and Lavallium are both commonly used by the clergy and the scholars.

As in Latin, the name evolved in French from Laval-Guion or Laval-Guyon to Laval in one single word. Laval is one of the few cities in the world to have a palindrome as a name, as Laval can be read the same way in either direction.

Location
Laval is located at the geographical centre of the Mayenne department, on the road which connects Paris to Brittany, between Rennes and Le Mans. The town is situated on the middle course of the Mayenne, a river which has its source in Normandy and runs towards the Loire crossing the Mayenne department from North to South.

Laval is located approximately 70 km from Rennes, 75 km from Le Mans and Angers, 130 km from Nantes, 135 km from Tours, 150 km from Caen and 280 km from Paris. It is also 100 km far from Le Mont-Saint-Michel and the surrounding sea resorts, located on the English Channel.

Elevation varies between 42 and 122 meters above sea level. Laval is, in fact, a hilly town, marked by a rocky promontory dominating the valley of the Mayenne river. The castle was built on this promontory and the medieval centre spreads around. The promontory and the slightly hilly landscape around Laval are traces of the Armorican Massif, an old range of mountains that forms the Breton peninsula.

The town is surrounded by agricultural land essentially made of large fields. The traditional bocage with its old hedgerows is still partially visible. Laval is also surrounded by several forests, such as the Forêt de Concise, with c. 600 hectares, and the Bois de l'Huisserie, with 254 hectares. Both are located south of the town.

Metropolitan area
The commune of Laval is bordered by seven other communes. These are, clockwise, Changé, Bonchamp-lès-Laval, Forcé, Entrammes, L'Huisserie, Montigné-le-Brillant and Saint-Berthevin. Saint-Berthevin forms part of the agglomeration, and Changé and Bonchamp-lès-Laval are well integrated, but the other communes remain rural areas with villages and hamlets. 26 other communes situated farther form with them the Communauté d'agglomération Laval Agglomération. They unite c. 113,000 inhabitants.

Climate
Laval enjoys a very mild climate because of its proximity with the Atlantic Ocean and the English Channel, giving it an oceanic climate. Winters are usually wet, with scarce frosts and snowfalls, and summers are warm and sunny, although rainfalls are common.

Urban morphology
The oldest streets and buildings in Laval are located around the promontory where the castle stands. The urban structure there dates back from the Middle Ages and is limited to the western bank of the Mayenne river. This old core is today the main shopping area, with several pedestrian streets and little shops. Several medieval half-timbered houses are still visible, but most of the buildings are dating from the 18th and 19th centuries and are made of tufa.

The suburb of Avesnières, located one kilometer (1 km) south of the castle, is a former commune which merged with Laval in 1863. Founded in 1073, it still comprises several old houses and a medieval basilica. Other large medieval hamlets absorbed by the town include Le Bourg Hersend and Saint-Martin. The eastern bank of the Mayenne was also settled in the Middle Ages, along the street that leads to the bridge crossing the river, but it was mostly developed during the second half of the 19th century when the train station was built there. The old faubourgs surrounding the town centre date from the same period and are mainly composed of individual houses.

The 20th-century suburbs comprise some council estates but individual houses are much more common. Some shopping centres and several industrial areas are located on the outskirts of the town. Laval is encircled by a small ring road and the Paris-Rennes highway bypasses the town by the North.

Until the 20th century, Laval had had a port on the Mayenne river, which was surrounded by several factories, mainly linen manufactures. The old industrial areas were redeveloped after 1970 and the river has since become a recreational area.

Green areas
Laval is a small town and nature is not far away from the centre. The town manages 25 hectares of parks and gardens, and 200 hectares of green areas in total.

The largest park is the Jardin de la Perrine, located in the centre, at the top of a rocky promontory. Formerly a private garden, it encircles an 18th-century mansion and comprises a French and an English garden as well as a rose garden, an orangery and a small menagerie. This park encompasses 4,5 hectares. Henri Rousseau, a major Naïve artist born in Laval, is buried there.

Apart from the Jardin de la Perrine, the main green areas in the centre are the Square de Boston, refurbished in 2012, and the Square Foch, located on the place du 11-Novembre, which is the central point of the town.

The commune of Laval owns the Bois Gamats, a 25 hectares wood located on the southern hedge of the town. The neighbouring Bois de l'Huisserie, much bigger, is managed by Laval Agglomération.

Heraldry
The coat of arms of Laval is: gules, a lion passant guardant. The coat of arms were those of the House of Laval, and not to the city. Still, several members of the family permitted the town to use their arms, notably in 1211, when the direct branch died, and in 1464.

The House of Laval had a motto, Eadem mensura ("of same measure"), which is sometimes associated with the town of Laval.

In 1987, the municipality adopted a logotype, replaced in 2010 by a new one which uses the heraldic lion as well as the palindrome as the two symbols of Laval. This logotype is made of "Laval" written in capital letters, with the final "L" held by the lion and reversed to suggest the palindrome.

Middle Ages
Before the construction of the castle during the 11th century, Laval did not exist. However, the site of the town was already a thoroughfare because it was located on the Roman road that connected Le Mans to Corseul, a provincial capital in present-day Brittany. Moreover, some parts of the city territory had been settled by the Gauls. For instance, a Gallic stele has been unearthed in the suburb of Pritz, north of the centre. The chapel of Pritz was on its side first mentioned in 710. The body of Tudwal, a Breton Saint, is believed to have been brought to Laval in 870 or 878, during a Norman invasion in Brittany.

The site of Laval had a strategic importance because the travelers taking the Roman road had to cross there the Mayenne river on a ford. The western bank of the river was further dominated by a rocky promontory which could ensure a total control on the ford. During the 10th century, a first military structure was built on it, and a villa was mentioned there at the end of the century in a charter issued by the count of Maine. Around 1020, Herbert I of Maine offered the new barony of Laval to Guy I, who became the first lord of the town. Guy I of Laval built a new castle and the town slowly appeared around the Roman road and on the river banks.

The castle built by Guy I was much wider than the present-day structure. It was encircled by an earthen wall and it spread from the present-day keep to the cathedral. A motte built over the wall commanded the access to the top of the promontory, where the Lords lived, and the second motte was probably located inside the compound. The basilica in Avesnières, located several kilometers south of the castle, was founded in the 12th century by Guy III. Around 1200, the earthen wall was pulled down and the castle became smaller, taking its present-day appearance. The town developed on its side its own defense system.

Beatrix of Gavere, the wife of Guy IX de Laval, who lived in the 13th century, is believed to be at the origin of the textile tradition of the town. Born in Flanders, she would have brought Flemish weavers with her, and would have encouraged linen production. Linen weaving remained the main economic activity of the town until the 19th century.

During the Hundred Years' War, the town was taken by the English commanded by John Talbot, in 1428. It became French again a year later. The fighting occasioned great damages and the town was fully rebuilt afterwards. Thus all the half-timbered houses that still stand in the medieval centre were not built before the 15th century. During that period, the town's walls were completed by the addition of a powerful artillery fort in an innovative design, known as the Tour Renaise. Around 1450, Guy XIV de Laval had the castle refurbished. New rooms and halls were built, and new Gothic windows were opened on the courtyard at the beginning of the 16th century.

Modern period
Guy XVII built a Renaissance gallery in extension to the castle around 1542. The gallery was later slightly redecorated in 1747. Guy XVII was a member of the Court of Francis I, one of the greatest kings of the French Renaissance. The House of Laval played a certain role in the development of the Renaissance arts in the region. Jean of Laval-Châteaubriant built for instance a large palace at the château de Châteaubriant, located in Brittany. On his side, Guy XIX became a Huguenot.

During the 17th century, Laval became very prosperous and the Counter-Reformation led to the foundation of many religious institutions. Large convents were opened, including Ursulines, Benedictines and Capuchins. All these convents were later sold and demolished during the French Revolution. During the 18th century, the town, which had kept its medieval appearance, started to expand. New faubourgs appeared, and the local aristocracy built there many elegant hôtels particuliers, particularly around the place de Hercé, which became the most fashionable area of Laval.

In the middle of the 18th century, Laval had around 18,000 inhabitants and 3,525 households. It was the second most populous town in Maine, after Le Mans. It enjoyed several institutions, such as a présidial, an office of the ferme générale, a local jurisdiction, a hospital, a gendarmery and a city hall. Laval was also at the head of a pays d'élection (fiscal region) encompassing 65 parishes in southern Maine. Because it was located close to the Breton border, Laval had a large salt storehouse, which controlled the collect of the gabelle, a tax on salt. Because Brittany was a large salt producer, it was exempted from gabelle, but people living in Maine, or other hinterland provinces, had to buy a certain amount of salt every year, thus paying the gabelle was compulsory for them. A salt storehouse such as the one in Laval was therefore a tax office and it had to deal with salt contraband. 26 fairs were held each year in the pays d'élection, and three markets were held in the town. At that time Laval was made up of three parishes.

The textile industry in Laval reached its zenith just before the French Revolution. The town had the right to produce eight sorts of cloth, including the royales and demi-Hollande, which were among the finest linen weaved in France. The neighbouring towns of Mayenne and Château-Gontier also had the right to produce linen, but in only three or four kinds of cloth.

The royales and demi-Hollande were the best linen of Laval, as well as the most expensive. A demi-Hollande could cost up to 700 pounds, and a toile forte, the cheapest one, had a worth of 50 pounds. The other sorts of linen made in Laval were also cheap and of a low quality, but they represented the largest share of the total production. The linen of Laval were sold mainly in France, but also abroad. The rustic non-battues were only made for the Spanish market, some of the best linen were sold in Portugal and the stronger clothes were exported to the French colonies in America. The royales and the demi-Hollande were usually sold in Troyes, Senlis and Beauvais, three towns located around Paris, which were renowned for their markets. Laval also produced a specific kind of linen, the pontivy, for the French army.

In the 18th century, the old medieval centre was still encircled by city walls, and its narrow plots and streets forbade any large urban transformation. However, the authorities planned to build a large thoroughfare bypassing the centre by the north. That involved the construction of a new bridge on the Mayenne river, because at that time Laval only had one, which was small and very old. The project was validated in 1758, but works did not start before 1804. The idea of a new axis was important not only for the town, but also for the whole region, because Laval was on the road between Paris and Brittany. Every traveler taking that road had to cross the Mayenne river on the old bridge, and to cross the insalubrious and narrow walled town.

The War in the Vendée, which opposed French revolutionaries and Royalist Catholics during the last decade of the 18th century, started in the département of Vendée, located south of the Loire, but it quickly spread in Brittany, Anjou and Maine, which were Catholic strongholds. Laval, which had been under the control of the revolutionaries since 1789, was seized by the Royalists 22 October 1793. The town was on their itinerary to the English Channel, where they were waiting for reinforcement. However, the expedition to Normandy was a total failure, and they were defeated there by the Republican army. The Royalists came back to Laval 25 December 1793, but they lost a siege in Angers and were definitely defeated in 1794.

Contemporary period
After the French Revolution, the local authorities decided to achieve the master plan planned in the 18th century. The new bridge was completed in 1824 and the new East-West axis, bypassing the old centre by the North, was developed during the 1820s and 1830s. A new town centre emerged on the axis, and a new square was built close to the bridge. Several official buildings were constructed around, including a new city hall, the préfecture and a theatre. Around the new bridge, the Mayenne river was deviated to form a straight waterway, and new quays were built between 1844 and 1863. After 1850, major works were carried in the medieval centre: several new streets were built and the square in front of the castle was enlarged. In 1855, Laval obtained a diocese and a railway station. That year, trains coming from Paris had their terminus in Laval, but the line was further extended towards Brittany in 1856.

Laval experienced a significant demographic growth throughout the 19th century. It had 15,000 inhabitants around 1800, and that figure rose to 21,293 in 1861. Two years later, the neighbouring communes of Avesnières and Grenoux were absorbed into Laval, together with parts of Changé. As a consequence of this amalgamation, Laval counted 27,000 inhabitants by 1863. In 1866, the town numbered 30,627 inhabitants, but then it experienced a slight decline which lasted until the end of the Second World War. This decline was due to both socio-economical and geopolitical factors:
 * the decline of the textile industry: At the beginning of the 19th century, linen prices dropped, and the region stopped to produce flax. Instead, the factories in Laval imported cotton, but process costs were too high for the activity to be profitable.
 * the invasions by Germany and ensuing costs caused by these invasions, both in terms reparations and the human misery.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Laval had several institutions, such as courts of justice, a chamber of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, a seminary and a secondary school for boys. The declining textile industry was still employing 10,000 hands in Laval and its suburbs. Other activities included metal-founding, flour-milling, tanning, dyeing, the making of boots and shoes, and the sawing of marble.

During the Second World War, Laval was occupied by Nazi Germany. The town was bombed several times by the Allies in June and July 1944. The train station and the surrounding area, as well as the viaduct and some streets in the centre were heavily damaged. General Patton's troops arrived in Laval 6 August 1944. The German occupiers did not surrender immediately, and they destroyed the bridges before leaving the town at around 3pm.

After the war, Laval experienced a quick industrialisation. Most of the old cloth factories were closed down and the town developed instead a large food processing sector, particularly dairies. It also developed plastics processing and car manufacturing. During that period, the town quickly expanded and several new institutions were built, such as a campus and a new hospital.

Population
The population data in the table and graph below refer to the commune of Laval proper, in its geography at the given years. The commune of Laval absorbed the former communes of Notre-Dame-d'Avenières and Grenoux (partly) in 1863.

Education
The city counts 27 primary schools (écoles primaires), 8 middle schools (collèges) and 7 high schools (lycées).

Some institutions also provide higher education in Laval like :
 * ESTACA
 * ESIEA (university)
 * Le Mans University
 * Catholic University of the West

Economy
The town is historically a manufacturer of fine linens, but there are also foundries. Laval is also home to the Laval and Mayenne Technology Park, where firms working in electronics, computing and peripherals, food technology, veterinary pharmaceuticals, virtual reality, audiovisual productions, patents, marketing and a resource centre are all to be found in modern buildings.

It is also an important centre for the dairy industry and produces cheeses, ultra-high-temperature processing milk, and yoghurt. It is the headquarters of Lactalis.

There is a market in the town centre every Tuesday and Saturday, held near the former Palais de Justice.

Railway
The Laval railway station offers regional connections with Le Mans, Rennes, Angers, and Nantes with TER Pays de la Loire and long range connections to the main cities of the country like Paris, Strasbourg or Lille with TGV.

Roads
The motorway A81 passes just in the north of Laval, linking the city to Paris and Brittany. Several other main roads cross in Laval which gives the city direct roads to Rennes, Le Mans, Angers, Tours and Nantes.

Public transport
The bus network operating in Laval is called TUL (Transports Urbains Lavallois). It is made of 17 urban lines for the city of Laval and its close suburb, including 4 which work from Monday to Sunday.

Laval also has a bicycle-sharing system called Vélitul.

Cantons
Since the French canton reorganisation which came into effect in March 2015, the town of Laval is subdivided into three cantons:
 * The canton of Laval-1 is composed of part of Laval (19,538 inhabitants in 2014);
 * The canton of Laval-2 is composed of part of Laval (16,377 inhabitants);
 * The canton of Laval-3 is composed of part of Laval (14,158 inhabitants).

Agglomeration
The urban area of Laval Agglomération covers 34 communes.

Mayors of Laval
The following are the most recent mayors.
 * See list of mayors

 * François d'Aubert (1995–2004) (left the mayoralty on entering the Ministry for Research)
 * Roland Houdiard (2004–2005)
 * François d'Aubert (2005–2008) (returned as mayor following a change of government)
 * Guillaume Garot (2008-2012)
 * Jean-Christophe Boyer (2012-2014)
 * François Zocchetto (2014-2020)
 * Florian Bercault (since 2020)

Main sights

 * Medieval Château de Laval (tower and building)
 * Significant remains of the town walls and of a town gate. The town came together around the foundation of the castle in 1020 in its position in the march, the border lands between France and Brittany. It was built for Guy I of Dénéré who became a vassal of the Count of Maine. at the end of the 12th century, local troubles combined with the town's position on the road into Brittany led the lord of Laval to build a great round keep which still has its original hoarding. At first the town was composed of scattered settlements such as the bourg cheverel and the bourg hersent. However, from the time of the new castle, it grew rapidly. It was enclosed in ramparts from the 13th century. There were five gates in the walls of which the sole one remaining is the porte Beucheresse or gate of the woodcutters.
 * Cathedral of the Trinity (La Trinité). Pre-Romanesque and Romanesque characteristically, it has rich wall paintings and figurative stone carving but the general architectural style of the buildings is restrained. In Laval, that architectural sobriety was retained through the early Gothic period. The painting can be seen well in the calendars in Notre-Dame de Pritz, Saint-Martin, and Saint-Pierre-le-Potier. The architecture shows best at Grenoux, and Avesnières; while the stone carving is well displayed in the zoomorphic column capitals at Avesnières. The early Gothic, what in England would be called Early English but in Laval is Angevin Gothic, is to be seen in la Trinité. Here we are close to Anjou, the home of the Angevin kings of England beginning with Henry II. In the Cathedral, on the effigy tomb of the bishop Louis Bougaud (1888), the following inscription may be read:
 * HEIC IN PACE QVIE SCIT
 * LUDOVICVS BOVGAVD EPISCOPUS VALLEGVIDONENSIS DECESSIT VII IDVS NOVEMB AN MDCCCLXXXVIII (1888)
 * ANNOS NATVS LXV.M.V.III.D.VII
 * VIVAS IN DEO

 * The Jardin botanique de la Perrine, a botanical garden and park

Arts
The town has obtained the label Ville d'Art et d'Histoire from the fact of its rich heritage.

As a response to the Douanier Rousseau's having been born in Laval, there is a biennial festival of naive art, the Biennale Internationale d'Art naïf de Laval. It seeks to explore the course of modern primitivism. Pictures are brought from all round Europe.

Sport
Stade Lavallois, is the local professional football side. Lavallois plays its home matches at the Stade Francis Le Basser located in the city of Laval, and is managed by Olivier Frapolli.

Notable people

 * Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (born 1989), professional footballer
 * Emmanuel Besnier (born 1970), billionaire
 * Birds in Row, hardcore band
 * Éric Boullier (born 1973), motorsport engineer
 * Grégory Bourillon (born 1984), professional footballer
 * Yann Clairay (born 1983), racing driver
 * Francis Coquelin (born 1991), professional footballer
 * Odile Decq (born 1955), architect
 * René Diehl, archaeologist
 * Alain Gerbault (1893–1941), sailor, writer, tennis champion
 * Jean-Marie Guyau (1854–1888), writer and philosopher
 * Maxime Guyon (born 1989), multiple French flat horse racing champion jockey
 * Géo Ham (1900–1972), illustrator and designer
 * Alfred Jarry (1873–1907), writer
 * Anne Terrier Laffaille (1904–1971), composer
 * Charles Landelle (1821–1908), painter
 * Madeleine Laurain-Portemer (1917–1996), historian
 * François de Laval (1623–1708), first bishop of Quebec
 * Louis Lemercier de Neuville (1830–1918), dramatic author and puppeteer
 * Thibault de Montalembert (born 1962), actor
 * Prosper Mortou, musician
 * Ambroise Paré, medical doctor considered one of the fathers of surgery and a pioneer in surgical techniques and battlefield medicine
 * François Pyrard, sailor
 * Henri Rousseau (1844–1910), known as le Douanier, painter
 * Lucienne de Saint-Mart (1866–1958), French painter
 * Daniel Tauvry (1669–1701), physician and anatomist
 * Augustine Tuillerie (1833–1923), alias G.Bruno, writer

International relations
Laval is twinned with:

 * Boston, United Kingdom
 * 🇺🇸 Modesto, United States
 * Chalkidiki, Greece.
 * 🇪🇸 Gandia, Spain
 * 🇧🇫 Garango, Burkina Faso
 * 🇨🇦 Laval, Canada
 * 🇩🇪 Mettmann, Germany
 * 🇧🇬 Lovech, Bulgaria
 * 🇷🇴 Suceava, Romania

title: Laval, Mayenne


text:
Bertrand paradox (economics)

In economics and commerce, the Bertrand paradox — named after its creator, Joseph Bertrand — describes a situation in which two players (firms) reach a state of Nash equilibrium where both firms charge a price equal to marginal cost ("MC"). The paradox is that in models such as Cournot competition, an increase in the number of firms is associated with a convergence of prices to marginal costs. In these alternative models of oligopoly, a small number of firms earn positive profits by charging prices above cost. Suppose two firms, A and B, sell a homogeneous commodity, each with the same cost of production and distribution, so that customers choose the product solely on the basis of price. It follows that demand is infinitely price-elastic. Neither A nor B will set a higher price than the other because doing so would yield the entire market to their rival. If they set the same price, the companies will share both the market and profits.

On the other hand, if either firm were to lower its price, even a little, it would gain the whole market and substantially larger profits. Since both A and B know this, they will each try to undercut their competitor until the product is selling at zero economic profit. This is the pure-strategy Nash equilibrium. Recent work has shown that there may be an additional mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium with positive economic profits under the assumption that monopoly profits are infinite. For the case of finite monopoly profits, it has been shown that positive profits under price competition are impossible in mixed equilibria and even in the more general case of correlated equilibria.

The Bertrand paradox rarely appears in practice because real products are almost always differentiated in some way other than price (brand name, if nothing else); firms have limitations on their capacity to manufacture and distribute, and two firms rarely have identical costs.

Bertrand's result is paradoxical because if the number of firms goes from one to two, the price decreases from the monopoly price to the competitive price and stays at the same level as the number of firms increases further. This is not very realistic, as in reality, markets featuring a small number of firms with market power typically charge a price in excess of marginal cost. The empirical analysis shows that in most industries with two competitors, positive profits are made. Solutions to the Paradox attempt to derive solutions that are more in line with solutions from the Cournot model of competition, where two firms in a market earn positive profits that lie somewhere between the perfectly competitive and monopoly levels.

Some reasons the Bertrand paradox do not strictly apply:

 * Capacity constraints. Sometimes firms do not have enough capacity to satisfy all demand. This was a point first raised by Francis Edgeworth and gave rise to the Bertrand–Edgeworth model.
 * Integer pricing. Prices higher than MC are ruled out because one firm can undercut another by an arbitrarily small amount. If prices are discrete (for example have to take integer values) then one firm has to undercut the other by at least one cent. This implies that the price one cent above MC is now an equilibrium: if the other firm sets the price one cent above MC, the other firm can undercut it and capture the whole market, but this will earn it no profit.  It will prefer to share the market 50/50 with the other firm and earn strictly positive profits.
 * Product differentiation. If products of different firms are differentiated, then consumers may not switch completely to the product with lower price.
 * Dynamic competition. Repeated interaction or repeated price competition can lead to the price above MC in equilibrium.
 * More money for higher price. It follows from repeated interaction: If one company sets their price slightly higher, then they will still get about the same amount of buys but more profit for each buy, so the other company will raise their price, and so on (only in repeated games, otherwise the price dynamics are in the other direction).
 * Oligopoly. If the two companies can agree on a price, it is in their long-term interest to keep the agreement: the revenue from cutting prices is less than twice the revenue from keeping the agreement and lasts only until the other firm cuts its own prices.
 * Effort to Purchase. If there is a difference in the effort it takes for a consumer to purchase one over the other based on the consumer's circumstances (such as a difference in travel time to stores that stock the products), this can cause consumers to prefer one product over the other even if the product itself is exactly the same.
 * Social Interdependence. If indifferent consumers are treated as having a strategic choice between products based on loyalty and the choices of others the firms can achieve a price equilibrium with positive profits without directly violating Bertrand's assumptions.
 * Goodwill. Even when confronted with otherwise identical products in a market of price competition the two companies are themselves inherently different entities which may influence a consumer's choice of product via brand goodwill.
 * Status Quo. Consumers have an observed bias for retaining status quo so even when a new firm with identical product enters a market, consumers are biased to continue to purchase from the original firm.
 * Customer Heterogeneity. While products may be homogenous, heterogenous consumers can still create a market in which two price competing firms achieve price equilibrium with positive profits.

title: Bertrand paradox (economics)


text:
Wroughton

Wroughton is a large village and civil parish in northeast Wiltshire, England. It is part of the Borough of Swindon and lies along the A4361 between Swindon and Avebury; the road into Swindon crosses the M4 motorway between junctions 15 and 16. The village is about 2.2 mi south of Swindon town centre on the edge of the Marlborough Downs, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The town of Marlborough is about 11 mi to the south, and the World Heritage Site at Avebury is about 7 mi to the south.

The parish includes North Wroughton, formerly a small settlement on the road towards Swindon but now part of the built-up area; and the hamlets of Elcombe and Overtown.

History
The earliest evidence of human presence in the area is from the Mesolithic period, although this is fairly limited. More significant evidence of settlement and occupation in the area is available for the Neolithic period, most notably due to the extensive ritual complex at Avebury and scattered finds in the locality. The earliest archaeological evidence from within Wroughton dates from the Roman period (AD 43–410), showing a period of intensive settlement and farming in the area. Occupation of the area continued into the early Middle Ages (AD 410–1066) when two battles are understood to have taken place in the area: Breahburh (AD 567), thought to have been fought by Ceawlin of Wessex on the slopes of Barbury Hill, and Ellandun (AD 825) at Elcombe Hall by Egbert of Wessex. However, there is no agreement that the latter was here (it is known to have been south of Swindon). Burial sites in the vicinity are believed to be associated with these battles.

Until the 19th century it was just a country village. Wroughton is close to The Ridgeway, a national path which is connected to the ancient Uffington White Horse. In the 20th century the village grew but largely avoided the effects of suburbanisation while its larger neighbour Swindon expanded rapidly to the immediate north. The construction of the M4 motorway prevented Swindon from enveloping Wroughton, which has retained a village identity, albeit with the population of a small market town (approximately 8,000 residents) in the early 21st century.

In 1874, the village celebrated for two days after the horse George Frederick which was stabled in the High Street, won The Derby. The horse and its trainer, Tom Leader, who was born in Wroughton, were escorted from Swindon railway station by a brass band and received in the village which had declared all of its pubs to be open houses and provided free beer for the occasion.

Wroughton Feast
Between 1855 and 1930, there was an "annual feast"—a week-long summer fair attended by local farmers and residents from north Wiltshire in the school holidays. Events included "A Programme of Horse, Pony, Donkey and Foot racing; climbing the greasy pole ..." the prize being a leg of mutton at the end. The event was held at the rear of the Three Tuns pub with other local fairs and a grandstand was built in the field. The main event was the "Champion Gip Fight", a bare-knuckle boxing competition between a Gypsy champion and a challenger.

Frederick Large, in his book A Swindon Retrospect 1855–1930 comments: "At Wroughton Feast, an annual festival lasting a week, it was the custom for many years for "the champion gip" to fight the best man who could be produced, for a purse of gold. The venue was the paddock at the back of the Three Tuns tavern, where the usual paraphernalia of fairs used to congregate in full force. The Feast always took place in the summer at a time which included a week of our school holidays. I was not more than seven or eight years of age when, without my parents' consent, I wandered over to Wroughton ... This annual event always commenced on a Sunday evening by friends and neighbours from Swindon, Wroughton and neighbouring villages congregating at the Three Tuns, where, crowded inside and out, large quantities of beer and spirits were consumed. A miniature grand stand was erected for Feast Week in an orchard adjoining the paddock, upon which many of the elite of the neighbourhood, both ladies and gentlemen, occupied seats, and indulged freely in choice fruits and refreshments."

Parish church
The Church of England parish church of St John the Baptist and St Helen stands on a ridge above the southwest of the present village, near the road to Avebury. The present church is the result of remodelling in the 14th and 15th centuries but the Norman north and south doorways indicate an earlier building, of which the north arcade survived until T.H. Wyatt replaced it during restoration work in 1846. The church was designated as Grade I listed in 1955.

The shallow bowl of the font, simply decorated, is from the 13th century. The oldest of the six bells is dated 1596, and three others are from the next century. Stained glass in the 1852 east window is by Powell and Sons.

The ecclesiastical parish extends a little further north than the civil parish, to take in the large housing areas at Wichelstowe which began to be built in 2006. At some point the name of the parish was changed to Wroughton and Wichelstowe.

Schools
The Ridgeway School and Sixth Form College opened in 1967 as Wiltshire's first purpose-built comprehensive school. It teaches about 1,500 children aged 11–18. The catchment area includes Bishopstone, Hinton Parva, Wanborough, Liddington, Coate, Badbury, Chiseldon, Hodson, Uffcott, Broad Hinton and Winterbourne Bassett.

RAF Wroughton
RAF Wroughton, just south of the village, closed in the 1990s. The site is now the Science Museum at Wroughton, a part of the Science Museum Group and used as a storage site occasionally open to the public. Since 2016, television series The Grand Tour has used part of the northern perimeter road as a car test track.

Ellendune Centre
The Ellendune Centre is a sports and entertainment venue that boasts one of the larger amateur facilities in the local area. It plays host to amateur dramatic groups who use it to meet and perform, including the Ellendune Entertainers and WADAMS (Wroughton Amateur Dramatic and Musical Society).

Wroughton reservoir
Wroughton reservoir on Overtown Hill Road is a live fishing site. The main types of fish are Tench, Bream, Crucian Carp, Rudd and Carp. The reservoir is 1.01 hectares in size and the water is fed from the large area of fields above.

Sport
Wroughton ASC Swimming Club trains young swimmers and competes in team galas both locally and across Wiltshire, as well as the annual Wiltshire County Championships.

A greyhound racing track was opened in the fields opposite the Black Horse Hotel and Inn in North Wroughton on 26 July 1930. The race distance was 500 yards. The racing was independent (not affiliated to the sports governing body the National Greyhound Racing Club) and it was known as a flapping track which was the nickname given to independent tracks. It is not known when the racing ended.

For many years, the twinning committee organised a fun Bowls/Pétanque tournament. Some Saint-Germinois would come from the twin-town to play on Wroughton's boulodrome (pétanque terrain) and some Wroughtonians would return the compliment on St Germain's bowling green.

Notable people

 * Fiona Benson, poet, born in Wroughton in 1978
 * Sir Henry Langton, later Calley (1914–1997), RAF pilot, county councillor and Chairman of Wiltshire County Council, lived at Wroughton
 * Geoffrey Cox, Attorney General for England and Wales and MP for the Torridge and West Devon constituency, born in Wroughton
 * Jahméne Aaron Douglas, singer, runner-up to James Arthur on the ninth series of The X Factor in 2012, brought up in Wroughton
 * William Gosling (VC) (1892–1945), recipient of the Victoria Cross in 1917, farmer at Wroughton

Twin Town
Wroughton is twinned with
 * 🇫🇷 Saint-Germain-lès-Corbeil, France

title: Wroughton