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Georges Delerue

Georges Delerue (12 March 1925 – 20 March 1992) was a French composer who composed over 350 scores for cinema and television. Delerue won numerous important film music awards, including an Academy Award for A Little Romance (1980), three César Awards (1979, 1980, 1981), two ASCAP Awards (1988, 1990), and one Gemini Award for Sword of Gideon (1987). He was also nominated for four additional Academy Awards for Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), The Day of the Dolphin (1973), Julia (1977), and Agnes of God (1985), four additional César Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and one Genie Award for Black Robe (1991).

The French newspaper Le Figaro named him "the Mozart of cinema." Delerue was the first composer to win three consecutive César Awards for Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1979), Love on the Run (1980), and The Last Metro (1981). Georges Delerue was named Commander of Arts and Letters, one of France's highest honours.

Early life and education
Delerue was born 12 March 1925 in Roubaix, France, to Georges Delerue and Marie Lhoest. He was raised in a musical household; his grandfather led an amateur chorale group and his mother sang and played piano at family gatherings. By the age of fourteen he was playing clarinet at the local music conservatory. In 1940 he was forced to abandon his studies at the Turgot Institute in order to work at a factory to help support his family. He continued playing clarinet with local bands, eventually transitioning to piano under the instruction of Madame Picavet-Bacquart. He studied Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and Grieg, and was particularly inspired by Richard Strauss. Following a long convalescence after being diagnosed with scoliosis, Georges decided to become a composer.

In 1945, following his studies at the Roubaix conservatory, Delerue was accepted into the Conservatoire de Paris, where he studied fugue with Simone Plé-Caussade and composition with Henri Büsser. To help support himself, he took jobs playing at dances, baptisms, marriages, and funerals—even performing jazz in the piano bars near the Paris Opera.

In 1947 he received an honorable mention for the Rome Prize, and the following year he won the Second Grand Rome Prize. That year at the Theater Festival of Avignon, Delerue conducted a performance of Scheherazade. In the 1949 Rome Prize competition, he won the First Second Grand Prize, and the First Prize for Composition. He began writing stage music during the late 1940s, including for the Théâtre National Populaire, Comédie-Française and the company of Jean-Louis Barrault. He also became friends with Maurice Jarre and Pierre Boulez.

Career
By the early 1950s Delerue was composing music for short films and writing theatrical music for the Théâtre Babylone and the Opéra Comique. He began collaborating with Boris Vian on a number of projects during this time, including theatrical adaptations of The Snow Knight and The Builders of Empire, an oratorio A Regrettable Incident, and a ballet The Barker. In 1952 he began directing the orchestra of the Club d'Essai for French National Radio and Television, and scored his first television drama Princes du sang. In 1954 he wrote his first compositions for historical spectacles of light and sound, Lisieux and The Liberation of Paris. In 1955 he composed his Concert Symphony for Piano and Orchestra, and on 31 January 1957 his opera The Snow Knight premiered at Nancy and was a popular success. In 1959 he composed his first score for a feature film, Le bel âge.

His career was diverse and he composed frequently for major art house directors, most often François Truffaut (including Jules and Jim), but also for Jean-Luc Godard's film Contempt (Le Mépris), and for Alain Resnais, Louis Malle, and Bernardo Bertolucci, besides later working on several Hollywood productions, including Oliver Stone's Platoon and Salvador. Another director Delerue composed for was Ken Russell, who in return filmed a BBC documentary about Delerue entitled Don't Shoot the Composer (1966).

He composed the music for Flemming Flindt's ballet, Enetime (The Lesson), based on Ionesco's play, La Leçon. During his 42 years career he put his talent to the service of nearly 200 feature movies, 125 short ones, 70 TV films and 35 TV serials. The soundtrack for war docudrama by Pierre Schoendoerffer, Diên Biên Phu (1992), was one of his late notable works.

Delerue also made cameo appearances in La nuit americaine and Les deux anglaises et le continent.

Collaborations with Jack Clayton
Delerue composed the music for five of the films made by the noted British director Jack Clayton. Their first collaboration was The Pumpkin Eater (1964), followed by Our Mother's House (1967). In 1982 they reunited for the Disney film version of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, but the production was fraught with problems. Unhappy with the sinister tone of Clayton's original cut, the studio took control of the film, and held it back from release for over a year. They reportedly spent an additional $5 million on re-editing the film, cutting some scenes and replacing them with newly shot footage, with the aim of making the film more commercial and 'family-friendly'. To Delerue's great disappointment, Disney also insisted on the removal of his original music (which was considered 'too dark'), and replaced it with a new, 'lighter' score by American composer James Horner. Speaking later about the rejection of his score, Delerue said: "It was extremely painful ... because it was probably the most ambitious score I wrote in the United States." Delerue's music for the film was only available to collectors in low-quality bootleg copies until 2011, when Disney authorised the release of approximately 30 minutes of music, sourced from Delerue's personal tape copy of the score (which originally ran for over an hour). This was issued by Universal France (along with Delerue's music for the 1991 film Regarding Henry) in a limited edition of 3000 CDs, as the inaugural release of its "Ecoutez le Cinema!" soundtrack series. Despite this disappointment, Delerue worked with Clayton twice more, on his last feature film, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987), and on Clayton's final screen project, a feature length BBC TV adaptation of Muriel Spark's Memento Mori (1992), which aired just a month after Delerue's death.

Working methods
According to many testimonies Delerue would do and redo some cues to fit the new editing of a sequence without any protestation. He insisted on being allowed to orchestrate and conduct himself in order to polish every detail. Georges Delerue had a great talent for melody and for creating surrounding overtones which encapsulated the spirit of the movies on which he collaborated, enhancing them often beyond the expectations of their directors.

Death
Georges Delerue died on 20 March 1992 from a heart attack in Los Angeles, eight days after his 67th birthday, just after recording the last cue for the soundtrack to Rich in Love. He is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. He left behind his wife, Colette Delerue, whom he married in 1984, and his daughter Claire from an earlier marriage.

Filmography
Georges Delerue composed the musical scores for 351 feature films, television movies, television series, documentaries, and short films. The following is a list of feature films for which he composed the music.

 * Le mystère du quai de Conti (1950)
 * Ingénieurs de la mer (1951)
 * Les techniciens en pompons rouges (1952)
 * L'aventure et ses Terras-Nuevas (1952)
 * Berre, cité du pétrole (1953)
 * Le largage à six heures du matin (1953)
 * Madagascar (1954)
 * La grande cité d'Angkor (1954)
 * Au rythme du siècle (1954)
 * Au pays de Guillaume le Conquérant (1954)
 * Première croisière (1954)
 * Regards sur l'Indochine (1954)
 * Âmes d'argile (1955)
 * Sur l'Arroyo (1956)
 * La rue chinoise (1956)
 * Tu enfanteras sans douleur (1956)
 * Marche française (1956)
 * Girl in His Pocket (1957)
 * Fleuve invisible (1959)
 * Images pour Baudelaire (1959)
 * Hiroshima mon amour (1959)
 * Women and War (1960)
 * Une question d'assurance (1960)
 * Le bel âge (1960)
 * Une fille pour l'été (1960)
 * The Big Risk (1960)
 * Marche ou crève (1960)
 * The Love Game (1960)
 * Love and the Frenchwoman (1960)
 * Shoot the Piano Player (1960)
 * Sahara Year Four (1961)
 * The Joker (1961)
 * Love Play (1961)
 * Five Day Lover (1961)
 * La mort de Belle (1961)
 * The Long Absence (1961)
 * Le bonheur est pour demain (1961)
 * The Nina B. Affair (1961)
 * La morte saison des amours (1961)
 * Par-dessus le mur (1961)
 * Jules and Jim (1962)
 * Cartouche (1962)
 * Operation Gold Ingot (1962)
 * Le petit garçon de l'ascenseur (1962)
 * Le monte-charge (1962)
 * Love at Twenty (1962)
 * Crime Does Not Pay (1962)
 * La dénonciation (1962)
 * Thank You, Natercia (1963)
 * Nunca pasa nada (1963)
 * Till the End of the World (1963)
 * The Man from Chicago (1963)
 * L'Immortelle (1963)
 * Rififi in Tokyo (1963)
 * The Reluctant Spy (1963)
 * Magnet of Doom (1963)
 * Portuguese Vacation (1963)
 * Contempt (1963)
 * Le journal d'un fou (1963)
 * Chair de poule (1963)
 * That Man from Rio (1964)
 * Trouble Among Widows (1964)
 * Greed in the Sun (1964)
 * The Soft Skin (1964)
 * Laissez tirer les tireurs (1964)
 * French Dressing (1964)
 * Salad by the Roots (1964)
 * The Pumpkin Eater (1964)
 * Le gros coup (1964)
 * The Other Woman (1964)
 * The Unvanquished (1964)
 * Male Companion (1964)
 * Lucky Jo (1964)
 * That Tender Age (1964)

 * Mata Hari, Agent H21 (1964)
 * Mona, l'étoile sans nom (1965)
 * The Sucker (1965)
 * The Uninhibited (1965)
 * L'amour à la chaîne (1965)
 * Rapture (1965)
 * Killer Spy (1965)
 * Up to His Ears (1965)
 * Viva Maria! (1965)
 * The Moment of Peace (1965)
 * A Man for All Seasons (1966)
 * King of Hearts (1966)
 * The Sunday of Life (1967)
 * The 25th Hour (1967)
 * The Two of Us (1967)
 * Our Mother's House (1967)
 * Thursday We Shall Sing Like Sunday (1967)
 * Oscar (1967)
 * A Little Virtuous (1968)
 * The Hotshots (1968)
 * Interlude (1968)
 * The High Commissioner (1968)
 * The Erasers (1969)
 * The Brain (1969)
 * The Devil by the Tail (1969)
 * Hibernatus (1969)
 * Women in Love (1969)
 * A Walk with Love and Death (1969)
 * Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
 * Happy He Who Like Ulysses (1970)
 * Give Her the Moon (1970)
 * The Conformist (1970)
 * Promise at Dawn (1970)
 * Malpertuis: The Legend of Doom House (1971)
 * Reckonings Against the Grain (1971)
 * Mira (1971)
 * The Most Gentle Confessions (1971)
 * The Horsemen (1971)
 * Two English Girls (1971)
 * The Artless One (1972)
 * Dear Louise (1972)
 * Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (1972)
 * Somewhere, Someone (1972)
 * Day for Night (1973)
 * The Day of the Jackal (1973)
 * Love Comes Quietly (1973)
 * The Day of the Dolphin (1973)
 * Alien Thunder (1974)
 * La femme de Jean (1974)
 * La gifle (1974)
 * That Most Important Thing: Love (1975)
 * Incorrigible (1975)
 * Femmes fatales (1976)
 * Forget Me, Mandoline (1976)
 * Nevermore, Forever (1976)
 * Police Python 357 (1976)
 * Boomerang (1976)
 * The Game of Solitaire (1976)
 * The Big Operator (1976)
 * Julie Gluepot (1977)
 * Julia (1977)
 * Focal Point (1977)
 * Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978)
 * Dear Inspector (1978)
 * Va voir maman, papa travaille (1978)
 * La petite fille en velours bleu (1978)
 * Le cavaleur (1979)
 * Love on the Run (1979)
 * Mijn vriend (1979)
 * A Little Romance (1979)
 * An Almost Perfect Affair (1979)
 * The Black Sheep (1979)
 * First Voyage (1980)
 * Willie & Phil (1980)

 * The Last Metro (1980)
 * Richard's Things (1980)
 * Broken English (1981)
 * Documenteur (1981)
 * Rich and Famous (1981)
 * Garde à Vue (1981)
 * La vie continue (1981)
 * True Confessions (1981)
 * The Woman Next Door (1981)
 * Josepha (1982)
 * A Little Sex (1982)
 * Guy de Maupassant (1982)
 * La Passante du Sans-Souci (1982)
 * Partners (1982)
 * The Escape Artist (1982)
 * Something Wicked This Way Comes (1982) - unused
 * L'africain (1983)
 * The Black Stallion Returns (1983)
 * Man, Woman and Child (1983)
 * Exposed (1983)
 * One Deadly Summer (1983)
 * Confidentially Yours (1983)
 * Liberty Belle (1983)
 * Silkwood (1983)
 * Love Thy Neighbor (1984)
 * Le Bon Plaisir (1984)
 * Femmes de personne (1984)
 * Les Morfalous (1984)
 * Agnes of God (1985)
 * Maxie (1985)
 * A Time to Live (1985)
 * Salvador (1986)
 * Conseil de famille (1986)
 * Touch and Go (1986)
 * Descente Aux Enfers (Descent Into Hell) (1986)
 * Crimes of the Heart (1986)
 * Platoon (1986)
 * My Letter to George (1986)
 * A Man in Love (1987)
 * Maid to Order (1987)
 * Tours du Monde, Tours du Ciel, documentary series (1987)
 * The Pick-up Artist (1987)
 * The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987)
 * The House on Carroll Street (1988)
 * Chouans! (1988)
 * Biloxi Blues (1988)
 * A Summer Story (1988)
 * To Kill a Priest (1988)
 * Memories of Me (1988)
 * Heartbreak Hotel (1988)
 * Paris by Night (1988)
 * Twins (1988)
 * Beaches (1988)
 * Her Alibi (1989)
 * La Révolution française (1989)
 * The Spirit (1989)
 * Seven Minutes (1989 film) (1989)
 * Steel Magnolias (1989)
 * Joe Versus the Volcano (1990)
 * A Show of Force (1990)
 * Slacker (1990)
 * Mister Johnson (1990)
 * Cadence (1990)
 * American Friends (1991)
 * La reine blanche (1991)
 * Black Robe (1991)
 * Curly Sue (1991)
 * Without Warning: The James Brady Story (1991)
 * The Josephine Baker Story (1991)
 * Dien Bien Phu (1992)
 * Céline (1992)
 * Man Trouble (1992)
 * Rich in Love (1992)

 * Memento Mori1 (1992) (A BBC drama)

Discography
The following is a select list of albums of the music of Georges Delerue.
 * Jules et Jim (1961)
 * Cent Mille Dollars Au Soleil (1963)
 * Il Conformista (1970)
 * Paul Gauguin (1974)
 * A Little Romance (1979)
 * The Borgias (1981)
 * Vivement Dimanche! (1981)
 * La Femma d'A Cote (1983)
 * Agnes of God (1984)
 * The London Sessions (1990)
 * Delerue: Suite Cinématographique, Tirée des films (1990)
 * Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent (1991)
 * Black Robe (1992)
 * Diên Biên Phú (1992)
 * Man Trouble (1992)
 * Rich in Love (1992)
 * Like a Boomerang (1993)
 * Georges Delerue: Music from the Films of François Truffaut (1997)
 * Comme un Boomerang (2000)
 * Joe Versus the Volcano (2002)
 * True Confessions (2005)
 * An Almost Perfect Affair (2006)
 * The Pick-Up Artist (2006)
 * The Cinema of François Truffaut (2007)
 * Promise at Dawn (2008)
 * Georges Delerue: Jules et Jim; Les Deux Anglaises (2008)
 * Partitions Inedites (2011)

Other compositions

 * Operas: Ariane; Le chevalier de neige; Une regrettable histoire; Médis et Alyssio
 * Ballets: L'emprise; Conte cruel; La leçon; Les trois mousquetaires
 * Diptyque for flute
 * Duos pour flûte et guitare
 * Concerto pour Trombone
 * Visages (for guitar)
 * Mosaique (for guitar)
 * Graphic (for guitar)
 * Antienne 1 for violin and piano
 * Concerto de l'Adieu
 * Aria et Final
 * Mouvements pour instruments à percussion et piano
 * Stances for cello and piano
 * Violin Sonata
 * Récit et choral for trumpet and organ
 * Madrigal, for solo trombone and five trombones (published 1999)
 * Fanfares Pour Tous Les Temps for brass
 * Cérémonial (for brass ensemble)
 * Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano
 * Prélude & danse for oboe and piano
 * String Quartet No. 1
 * String Quartet No. 2

Awards and nominations

 * 1969 Academy Award Nomination for Best Original Score (Anne of the Thousand Days)
 * 1969 Golden Globe Award Nomination for Best Original Score (Anne of the Thousand Days)
 * 1970 BAFTA Award Nomination for Film Music (Women in Love)
 * 1973 Academy Award Nomination for Best Original Score (The Day of the Dolphin)
 * 1973 Golden Globe Award Nomination for Best Original Score (The Day of the Dolphin)
 * 1977 Academy Award Nomination for Best Original Score (Julia)
 * 1977 César Award Nomination for Best Music Written for a Film (Police Python 357)
 * 1979 Academy Award for Best Original Score (A Little Romance) Won
 * 1979 César Award for Best Music Written for a Film (Get Out Your Handkerchiefs) Won
 * 1979 Golden Globe Award Nomination for Best Original Score (A Little Romance)
 * 1979 BAFTA Award Nomination for Film Music (Julia)
 * 1980 César Award for Best Music Written for a Film (Love on the Run) Won
 * 1981 César Award for Best Music Written for a Film (The Last Metro) Won
 * 1983 César Award Nomination for Best Music Written for a Film (La passante du Sans-Souci)
 * 1984 César Award Nomination for Best Music Written for a Film (One Deadly Summer)
 * 1985 Academy Award Nomination for Best Original Score (Agnes of God)
 * 1988 ASCAP Award for Top Box Office Film (Twins) Won
 * 1990 ASCAP Award for Top Box Office Film (Platoon) Won
 * 1991 Genie Award for Best Original Score (Black Robe) Won
 * 1992 Australian Film Institute Award for Best Original Music Score (Black Robe) Won
 * 1993 César Award Nomination for Best Music Written for a Film (Dien Bien Phu)

title: Georges Delerue


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Ajax (1906 automobile)

The Ajax was a Swiss automobile built from 1906 to 1910.

Dr. G. Aigner built his first car in Zürich in 1906, but failed. The remains were taken over by a company led by three directors from New York City, Java and Switzerland. A chain-drive monobloc 20/27cv four was introduced early on; the company failed soon after, but regrouped and reformed in 1907. That year the company introduced four new models. These were a 2270 cc 16cv four and a 3267 cc 24cv four, as well as bi-bloc sixes of 3405 cc and 4900 cc. The cars had a mechanical starter, which would begin operating the moment anybody stood on the running board.

In 1907, two Ajax cars competed at the Targa Florio race. One car was crashed, the other failed. The company made an unsuccessful venture into the Droschke (taxi) business which forced its closure once again in February 1910, this time for good.

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

title: Ajax (1906 automobile)


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William Nicholson (chemist)

William Nicholson (13 December 1753 – 21 May 1815) was an English writer, translator, publisher, scientist, inventor, patent agent and civil engineer. He launched the first monthly scientific journal in Britain, Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts, in 1797, and remained its editor until 1814. In 1800, he and Anthony Carlisle were the first to achieve electrolysis, the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen, using a voltaic pile. Nicholson also wrote extensively on natural philosophy and chemistry

Early life
Nicholson was educated in Yorkshire, and after leaving school, he made two voyages as a midshipman in the service of the British East India Company. His first voyage was to India and the second voyage was to China on board the Gatton, (1772-1773).

Subsequently, having become acquainted with Josiah Wedgwood in 1775, he moved to Amsterdam, where he made a living for a few years as Wedgwood's agent.

On his return to England he was persuaded by Thomas Holcroft to apply his writing talents to the composition of light literature for periodicals, while also assisting Holcroft with some of his plays and novels - Alwyn and Duplicity.

Meanwhile, he devoted himself to the preparation of An Introduction to Natural Philosophy, which was published in 1782 by Joseph Johnson and was at once successful. Translations for Joseph Johnson included Voltaire's Elements of the Philosophy of Newton as well as M. Maistre de La Tour's History of Hyder Shah in 1784. He then published The Navigator's Assistant based on his time with the East India Company.

In 1784 he was proposed by Josiah Wedgwood (the current chairman) and appointed as secretary to the General Chamber of Manufacturers of Great Britain, and he was also connected with the Society for the Encouragement of Naval Architecture, established in 1791.

Scientific work
On 12 December 1783, Nicholson was elected to the "Chapter Coffee House Philosophical Society". He was proposed by Jean-Hyacinthe Magellan and seconded by horologist John Whitehurst.

Nicholson communicated to the Royal Society in 1789 two papers on electrical subjects. In the same year he reviewed the controversy which had arisen over Richard Kirwan's essay on phlogiston, and published a translation of the adverse commentaries by the French academicians (Lavoisier, Monge, Berthollet, and Guyton de Morveau) as 'An Essay on Phlogiston, to which are added Notes.'

In 1784 he invented the Nicholson hydrometer, a constant volume hydrometer to measure specific gravity of liguids or solids, with a pan for small weights on top and a small container ("basket") on the bottom into which a sample can be placed.

in 1790, William Nicholson obtained a patent for a cylindrical printing machine - a design which was copied in the US and Barcelona, before Friedrich Koenig developed and commercialised the concept in 1814.

In 1797 he founded, published, and wrote part of the Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts, generally known as Nicholson's Journal, the earliest monthly scientific work of its kind in Great Britain. The journal published the first known aerodynamic analysis of gliders and heavier-than-air fixed-wing flying machines designs, by George Cayley in 1809–1810. The publication continued until 1814.

Nicholson held a life-long interest in horology, and he became good friends with clockmakers Edward Nairne and J.H. de Magellan. Between April 1797 and August 1799, he wrote four papers of his own on the aspects of timekeeping and throughout his editorship of the Journal (between 1797 and 1813) he published numerous papers by others on the topic. Nicholson had at least two clocks made to his own designs, and his innovations include ‘creating new types of escapement and temperature compensation for pendulum clocks’. One, a skeleton clock, is privately owned. The other is a table regulator with Nicholson’s own form of gravity escapement, dated 1797, in the Ilbert Collection at the British Museum. Described as ‘a unique piece’ with ‘a movement of most unusual and interesting design it has also been called ‘one of the most ingenious’ early pendulum temperature compensators.

In 1799 he established a school in London's Soho Square, where he taught natural philosophy and chemistry, with the aid of a grant of £1,500 from Thomas Pitt.

In May 1800 he with Anthony Carlisle discovered electrolysis, the decomposition of water into hydrogen and oxygen by voltaic current. The two were then appointed to a chemical investigation committee of the new Royal Institution. But his own interests shortly turned elsewhere. In 1809 he became a first class corresponding member, living abroad, of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands.

Besides considerable contributions to the Philosophical Transactions, Nicholson wrote translations of Fourcroy's Chemistry (1787) and Chaptal's Chemistry (1788), First Principles of Chemistry (1788) and a Chemical Dictionary (1795); he also edited the British Encyclopedia, or Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (6 vols., London, 1809).

Later life
During the later years of his life, Nicholson's attention was chiefly directed to water supply engineering at Portsmouth, at Gosport and in Hammersmith. William Nicholson died in Bloomsbury at the age of 61 on 21 May 1815, attended by Sir Anthony Carlisle.

title: William Nicholson (chemist)


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Midreshet Ben-Gurion

Midreshet Ben-Gurion (מִדְרֶשֶׁת בֶּן גּוּרְיוֹן), also known as Midreshet Sde Boker, is an educational center and boarding school in southern Israel. Located in the Negev next to kibbutz Sde Boker, it falls under the jurisdiction of Ramat HaNegev Regional Council. In it had a population of.

History
The construction of a field school began in 1962, inspired by David Ben-Gurion's vision of developing a thriving Jewish culture in the arid Negev.

The Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, affiliated with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Ben Gurion Heritage Institute, and a high school emphasizing environmental studies, are now located there.

Ben-Gurion and his wife Paula Ben-Gurion are buried nearby in the Ben-Gurion Tomb National Park on a cliff overlooking the Zin valley.

Solar energy research
The Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research has developed a solar energy research program focusing on how extremes of heat and cold in the desert can be mitigated through efficient storage of heat during the day for release at night.

An adobe house was built with rational fenestration, small windows in the northern side and heat collecting concrete prisms in the windows of the south facing wall. The prisms are situated in the rooms. They absorb heat during the day and can be rotated to allow the heat to discharge into the rooms at night. The "chimney" is part of an evaporative cooling system that maintains the temperature of the house during the day at bearable levels.

A double skin greenhouse uses copper sulfate solution as a heat screen during the day. The liquid is pumped between the two skins, protects the interior from ultraviolet rays and collects heat. At night the liquid is recirculated returning the heat to the greenhouse.

David Faiman of the Solar Center has made advancements in the realm of concentrator photovoltaics CPV. Faiman has produced a CPV unit capable of producing energy at a factor of up to a thousand more than conventional units.

Agricultural and biotechnology research
Researchers at Midreshet Ben-Gurion have made breakthroughs in agriculture and biotechnology relevant to drylands and sustainable agriculture. The STRS1 and STRS2 genes, master controller genes in stress responses, discovered by Dr. Simon Barak and his students in 2006, helped to elucidate some of the more important genes involved with abiotic stress responses.

Avigad Vonshak, Director of the Institutes from 2002 to 2010, made headlines for his discovery, together with Prof. Sammy Boussiba (also of the institutes) of astaxanthin accumulation in green algae. Astaxanthin is an extremely valuable poly-unsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) which is valued for its use as a pigment, nutritional value, and possible use in bio-diesel.

Notable residents

 * Gannit Ankori

title: Midreshet Ben-Gurion


text:
Ajax (1913 automobile)

The Ajax was a French automobile built by the American Briscoe brothers, Benjamin and Frank, between 1913 and 1919. Originally built in Neuilly, it was a 12 hp cyclecar with 980 cc 4-cylinder engine with friction drive. It sold for £78.

Production continued after the brothers returned to the United States where they built the Argo car, which was similar to the Ajax, differing in the inclusion of a more conventional transmission.

title: Ajax (1913 automobile)


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Soyuz TM-23

Soyuz TM-23 was a Soyuz spaceflight which launched on February 21, 1996, to Mir. The spacecraft launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, and after two days of flight, Yuri Onufrienko and Yury Usachov docked with Mir and became the 21st resident crew of the Station. On September 2, 1996, after 191 days docked with Mir, the ship undocked with the launch crew and Claudie André-Deshays onboard, before eventually landing 107 km south west of Akmola, Kazakhstan.

Highlights
Onufrienko and Usachev began their mission without a third crew member. American astronaut Shannon Lucid would join them in late March 1996 during STS-76 and depart the Mir 20 mission in September 1996 with STS-79.

Progress M-30 Undocked and Soyuz TM-23 Launched
On February 21, Soyuz TM-23 launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome with the cosmonauts for Mir Principle Expedition 21. To clear a docking port for the Soyuz TM-23, the Progress M-30 was undocked on February 22 and re-entered over the Pacific Ocean. The Soyuz docked on February 23 at the +X docking port on the rear of the Kvant module. An hour and a half after docking, the hatches opened and the Soyuz TM-23 crew were greeted by Yuri Gidzenko, Sergei Avdeyev and Thomas Reiter, members of Mir Principle Expedition 20 and Euromir 95. This began a week of joint operations where Mir 20 handed the station over to Mir 21, including familiarization with the current conditions of the projects and the station itself. Two days before the return flight, a water leak appeared in the Mir base block, but the cosmonauts were able to repair it.

Mir 20/Euromir 95 mission ends
Gidzenko, Avdeyev and Reiter donned their Sokol launch and reentry suits and entered the Soyuz TM-22 on February 29, 1996. They landed safely about 105 km from Arkalyk. Their mission lasted 179 days, 1 hour and 42 minutes. Reiter then held the record for spaceflight duration by a Western European.

First EVA for Mir 21
On March 15, Onufrienko and Usachev exited the Kvant 2 EVA hatch for their first space walk. Because the existing Strela could not be used to reach the Kristall module in its current location, they installed a second Strela boom on the Mir base block, on the side opposite the Strela already in place. In the 5-hour, 51-minute EVA, they also prepared cables and electrical connectors on the surface of the Kvant module for the May installation of the Mir Cooperative Solar Array. The array was stored on the surface of the Docking Module that was installed on Kristall last November.

Atlantis launched
The U.S. Space Shuttle Orbiter Atlantis was launched from Kennedy Space Center on March 22 at 11:00 UTC for its sixteenth flight as STS-76. During the ascent phase, flight controllers detected a small leak in one of Atlantis's three redundant hydraulic systems, but after the system was shut off when Atlantis reached orbit, the leak stopped. The approximately 20% loss of that one system's hydraulic fluid would not adversely affect the mission because the hydraulic system would not be used again until the descent phase.

Preparations for docking
During the first two days of the mission, Atlantis Commander Kevin Chilton and Pilot Richard Searfoss began jet firings to guide Atlantis's journey toward Mir. The crew prepared for the docking by checking out communications equipment and docking and alignment aids. They also activated Spacehab and began orbital operations for Biorack experiments. Mission Specialists Linda Godwin and Michael Clifford checked out the space suits and equipment for their upcoming EVA.

Atlantis approaches Mir
On mission day 3, when Atlantis was within 8 miles of the station, Chilton fired the orbital maneuvering system engines in the terminal phase initiation burn. As the two spacecraft completed another orbit, Atlantis approached Mir from below along the R-bar, using rendezvous radar to track its approach rate and measure its distance.

Third Atlantis/Mir Docking
Chilton took manual control at one-half mile below the Mir, executing a 180 degree yaw rotation to align Atlantis with the Docking Module on Kristall. He used the ODS centerline camera as an aid in refining and maintaining the alignment. At 12:34 UTC on March 24, he achieved contact, adding Atlantis to a space station complex that then totaled 230 tons. After confirmation of docking, leak checks and pressurization of the docking vestibule, the hatches were opened and the two crews greeted each other. Shortly afterward, the Atlantis crew installed ducts to aid in circulating air between the two spacecraft during the docking phase.

Lucid joins the Mir 21 crew
Shannon Lucid officially became a Mir 21 crew member at 12:30 UTC on March 24 after a joint "go" from the Russian and U.S. mission control centers. She became the first in a planned continuous U.S. astronaut presence on Mir until 1998.

New supplies brought up on Atlantis
In the joint portion of the mission, the two crews loaded into the station more than 1 ton of U.S. science equipment, almost 2 tons of Russian supplies and 15 containers of water totaling about 1.5 tons. Approximately a ton of excess equipment, waste and science payload was transferred from Mir to Atlantis. From their vantage point in orbit, the crews were treated to a good view of the comet Hyakutake. Some of the spacecraft hardware items brought up by Atlantis were replacement gyrodyne, a seat liner kit for Lucid to be placed in a Soyuz module if emergency return to Earth was required and three Russian storage batteries which had been replenished on Earth.

Experiment Supplies
Some of the new supplies and equipment for onboard experiments included replacement hardware for the Mir glovebox stowage experiments, Mir electric field characterization hardware to measure radio interference inside and around the complex, and a liquid phase sintering experiment that would use the Optizon furnace to bond different metals.

Spacehab module work
On flight days 4, 5 and 7, the crew worked on the Biorack in the Spacehab module in the Orbiter payload bay. The Biorack contained eleven experiments to investigate the effects of microgravity and cosmic radiation on plants, animal tissues, bacteria, and insects. The various experiments were designed by France, Germany, the U.S., Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Pre-EVA procedures
In preparation for the EVA, Atlantis's cabin air pressure was lowered from 14.7 to 10.2 psia. the hatches were closed between Mir and Atlantis and Atlantis and Spacehab throughout the EVA to allow for sustained cabin depressurization. The Mir crew, including Lucid, stayed inside Mir and the Atlantis crew stayied inside the Orbiter cabin, with Ronald Sega coordinating the space walk activities from inside.

SAFER backpacks worn
Attached to their regular portable life support system backpack, Godwin and Clifford donned new self-contained backpacks with propulsion systems to allow enough free-flight capability to return an un-tethered astronaut to the spacecraft in an emergency. The device, called the Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER), was designed for EVAs on docked vehicles which would be unable to quickly retrieve a drifting spacewalker. The backpack was test-flown on STS-64 in September 1994.

First EVA by U.S. astronauts at Mir
On March 27, Godwin and Clifford performed their 6-hour EVA in Atlantis' cargo bay and on the exterior of the Mir Docking Module. Their major task was to secure four experiment canisters to handrails on the docking Module. The experiments, collectively called the Mir Environmental Effects Payload (MEEP), were designed to record data on orbital debris, and to test potential International Space Station materials by exposing them to the low Earth orbit environment. The four passive experiment canisters would be retrieved by a later STS crew after almost 2 years of data collection. During their work on the Docking Module, the astronauts also evaluated new tether hooks and foot restraints that could be used on both Mir and Shuttle Orbiter exteriors, prototypes of International Space Station EVA equipment. They also retrieved the Mir-mounted camera that had been used in docking alignment during STS-74 in November 1995.

Atlantis leaves Mir again
The STS-76 and Mir 21 crews bid each other farewell on the morning of March 28. They closed the hatches to their spacecraft, and the astronauts began preparations for undocking and return to Earth. With the steering jets to both spacecraft shut down, Atlantis separated from the Mir Docking Module. Then Chilton reactivated the jets and slowly moved away from Mir. At 600 feet out, he began a fly-around, circled the station twice while the crews took pictures of each other's spacecraft, then moved to another orbit.

Mir 21 continues with full crew
The daily flight plan, or cyclogram, for the Russian-U.S. crew was provided 4 days ahead of schedule by TsUP. A group of NASA science experts in Moscow served as consultants on science activities. The first week after Atlantis' departure, the crew focused on the Optizon Liquid Phase Sintering Experiment (OLiPSE), processing 70 samples of different metals at high temperatures. The crew also conducted life sciences research and Earth observation photography. Space Acceleration Measurement System (SAMS) monitors were placed throughout the station to record movement that might disrupt experiments. Radiation dosimeters in various locations provided another measurement of the station's internal environment. A leak in a coolant loop in the core module was detected in mid-April, but the crew was unable to find the exact location. That loop was turned off and the alternate loop was used.

The Priroda Module
The long-awaited launch of Priroda, earlier announced for March 10 so that the module would be in place when Lucid arrived at Mir, had been moved forward at least twice: once because of late delivery from the Khrunichev factory and once because a commercial Proton launch in early April took precedence. But on April 23, Priroda was launched from Baikonur atop a SL-13 Proton rocket for a three-day orbital trip to Mir. One of the two battery-powered electrical systems on the spacecraft dropped off-line, eliminating the backup power source for the automatic docking system. If the primary electrical system had also malfunctioned, the Mir crew would have immediately initiated a manual docking.

The Priroda module had a mass of 19.700 kg, a length of ~12 m, a max diameter of ~4.35m and a pressurized volume of ~66 cubic meters. it was the last of the six permanent habitable Mir modules. Priroda was, like Spektr, designed by RKK Energia in the mid- to late-1980s and was built and assembled in the Khrunichev plant between 1989 and 1991. The module's two propulsion systems included one for orbit correction during the flight to Mir and rendezvous with Mir and one was for berthing and stabilization during the docking phase. The Priroda module included an unpressurized instrument compartment and an instrument/payload compartment.

The Kurs automatic docking system on Priroda worked flawlessly, as did the electrical system. No problems were encountered on the April 26 docking of the new module at the -X port at the front of the Mir base block.

On April 27, from inside the station, the Mir 21 crew controlled Priroda's repositioning with the Lyappa arm to the +Z docking port, directly across from the Kristall module. Thus the Mir complex, with its six habitable modules and Docking Module, attained its final basic configuration. Henceforth, the shape of the complex would change only temporarily, with dockings by Progress, Soyuz and Space Shuttle Orbiter spacecraft.

Because of concern about possible sulfur dioxide leaks from the malfunctioning battery system, a test of the modules' atmosphere was made before the crew entered. Once inside Priroda, the crew's first task was to unbolt the batteries, cap their connectors and place them in plastic bags. The 168 batteries would later be placed in Progress M-31 for disposal. The crew then connected Mir power sources to the Priroda systems and troubleshot the battery problems.

Progress M-31 brings new supplies
A new Progress cargo spacecraft was launched from Baiknour on May 5 and docked under control of the Kurs automatic system at the -X port of the Mir on May 7. For the first time in the station's history, all ports of the base block were occupied at the same time. The crew began unloading the vehicle that week, in addition to continuing their science experiments and Priroda activation. They successfully tested the new Mir interface-to-payload systems (MIPS) hardware for downlinking data to the ground and replaced three nickel-cadmium batteries in the Priroda power system. However, a power controller for the system failed, and ground controllers began monitoring and controlling battery charging. The crew finally isolated the coolant loop leak in the core module, but there was no health risk associated with the leak and repair was not immediately scheduled.

Cooperative solar array installed over 2 EVAs
Onufrienko and Usachev left the station early on May 20 to remove the Mir Cooperative Solar Array from its stowed position on the exterior of the Docking Module at the base of Kristall. They used the new Strela boom installed during their March 15 EVA to reach the array and move it to the Kvant module, where they positioned its cables in preparation for final installation during their next EVA. During the five-hour and 20-minute EVA, they inflated an aluminum and nylon model of a Pepsi Cola can, which they filmed against the backdrop of Earth. The soft drink company paid for the procedure and planned to use it in a television commercial. On May 25, in their third spacewalk of the mission, the cosmonauts were outside the station for five hours and 43 minutes, completing the solar array installation on Kvant. After all connections were made, the array unfurled upon command from inside the station.

Mir 21 crew greets STS-77 crew
All the crew members exchanged greetings with the astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-77 and they held a conference with U.S. and Russian news media.

Camera Installed on Priroda Exterior During Fourth Mir 21 EVA
On May 30, Onufrienko and Usachev installed the Modular Optoelectronic Multispectral Scanner (MOMS), a German remote sensing camera, on the Priroda module. The camera, designed to collect Earth atmosphere and environment data, had been flown earlier on two Shuttle missions, STS-7 in June 1983 and STS-41B in February 1984. After the installation, Lucid activated the system by remote command from inside the station. During the five-hour EVA, the cosmonauts also installed a new handrail on the Kvant-2 to facilitate movements in future spacewalks.

More experiments Installed during fifth EVA
The Particle Impact Experiment and the Mir Sample Return Experiment, U.S. space science experiments brought to orbit inside Priroda, were installed on the exterior of the Kvant 2 module during a June 6 EVA lasing about 3 and a half hours. The cosmonauts also replaced a cassette in the Komza experiment on the surface of Spektr.

Rapana Girder assembled on Kvant in the sixth EVA
On June 13, the cosmonauts spent over five hours outside Mir, installing and deploying a Rapana girder on the surface of the Kvant module as a platform for installing future experiments on the station exterior. The 5 meter structure was deployed in four sections. Another activity during this EVA was manual deployment of the Travers radar antenna on the exterior of Priroda. The large antenna had failed to deploy fully by command from inside the station.

Science work continued
In addition to assisting the cosmonauts during EVAs from inside the station, Lucid continued activating equipment, such as the Biotechnology System Facility for long-term biotechnology studies and conducting experiments such as the Humoral Immunity experiment to study spaceflight effects on the human immune system. The crew also monitored various aspects of the spacecraft environment. They took air samples in Spektr and the core module using the Solid Sorbent Air Sampler (SSAS) and the Grab Sample Container (GSC). They recorded effects of spacecraft motion with the SAMS equipment and began evaluation of the Microgravity Isolation Mount (MIM).

Fourth shuttle docking with Mir delayed
On July 12, NASA announced the decision to postpone the July 31 launch of STS-79, the fourth mission Atlantis would dock with Mir, until mid-September. In a post-flight discovery of STS-78, it was found that hot gas had seeped into the joints of the boosters used in STS-78 launch in June. An investigation found that the most probable cause of the leakage was use of a new adhesive and cleaning fluid that was also used on the boosters for STS-79. Although the boosters were judged safe to fly, a decision was made to replace them in order to further study the J-joint failure and improve the safety margin of the joint.

U.S. record surpassed
On July 15, Lucid surpassed the space duration record for a U.S. astronaut set by Norm Thagard with his 115 days on Mir Principal Expedition 18 in 1996. With the delay to STS-79, her flight record would be even longer than anticipated.

Greenhouse work
The crew assembled the Svet facility for the Fundamental Biology Greenhouse plant experiment during the latter part of July. A temporary limitation of power in Kristall caused a delay in the first planting, but was solved when ground planners instructed the crew to plug an extension cord into the Spektr's power supply. Station maintenance during the last week of July included replacement of a vacuum valve assembly on the carbon dioxide removal system. On July 26, the crew activated the backup oxygen system on August 1.

Progress M-31 departs and Progress M-32 arrives
On August 1 at 16:45 UTC, Progress M-31 left the -X port for destructive reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. Launched on July 31 with fresh supplies and hardware for the upcoming Cassiopee mission experiments, Progress M-32 docked at the -X port on August 2.

Gyrodynes refurbished
The Mir 21 crew began setting up experiments for the upcoming mission. They also refurbished the gyrodyne system, maintaining station attitude by thruster firings from August 5 through the 7th while the gyrodynes were not available.

August experimental work
The seeds of the first crop of dwarf wheat were planted in the Greenhouse on August 5. Earth observations were made of areas of the United States, Europe and Asia. Lucid continued to run experiments, including the Queen's University Experiment in Liquid Diffusion (QUELD), using a furnace to analyze the formation of alloys in space, the Candle Flame in Microgravity (CFM), to study the physiochemical processes of combustion, the Anticipatory Postural Activity (POSA), to measure how muscles work in microgravity, the Forced Flow Framespread test to examine the flame-spreading properties of solid fuels, the Solid Sorbent Air Sampler for Volatile Organic Compounds to evaluation the Mir environment and provided data for the development of advanced life support systems and the Tissue Equivalent Proportional Counter (TEPC), a radiation-dosage measurement device.

Mir 22 crew arrives
On August 17, Soyuz TM-24 was launched from Baikonur with the new crew for Mir Principal Expedition 22. To free the -X port for docking of the approaching Soyuz, Progress M-32 was undocked on August 18 under automatic control and moved to a parking orbit. It would remain until the departure of Soyuz TM-23 with the homeward-bound Mir 21 crew on September 2. The Soyuz TM-24 docked at the -X port on August 19. The new arrivals were Commander Valery Korzun, Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri and Cosmonaut Researcher Claudie Andre-Deshays of the French Space Agency (CNES). Andre-Deshays accompanied the Mir 22 crew for a 2-week program of a set of scientific investigations collectively called Cassiopee. She would return to Earth with the Mir 21 crew.

Cassiopee mission
Andre-Deshays, Korzun and Kaleri worked on PHYSIOLAB, a study of cardiovascular physiology, COGNILAB, tests of neurosensory system responses in microgravity, FERTILE, egg-based studies to determine the role of gravity on embryonic development, ALICE II, experiments in fluid dynamics and CASTOR, analyses of structural dynamics.

September 1996 – Mir 21 heads home aboard Soyuz TM-23
Onufrienko, Usachev and Andre-Deshays departed Mir on September 2 in the Soyuz TM-23 spacecraft and safely landed in Central Asia. Onufrienko and Usachev had been in space 194 days, Andre-Deshays 17 days.

title: Soyuz TM-23


text:
Ajax (1921 automobile)

The Ajax was an American assembled 5 seat touring car automobile that never went beyond the prototypical stage. It was to have a Continental 7-R six-cylinder engine with a 116 in wheelbase, and had been slated to begin production in 1921.

title: Ajax (1921 automobile)


text:
User:Dmeranda

Search user languages

My name is Deron Meranda. I am a male and live in the United States. My personal homepage is http://deron.meranda.us/

If you wish to discuss an article or my contributions, please go to my Talk page.

My other Wikimedia Foundation profiles

 * My Wikimedia Commons user page
 * My Wikimedia Meta user page
 * My Wikibooks user page

My major contiributions
New articles I've started:
 * Zoneinfo
 * Netfilter/iptables

Some of the articles I've made major contributions to include:
 * Callback (computer science)
 * Control flow
 * Fastener
 * For loop
 * Function object
 * Generic programming
 * Iterator
 * Justification (typesetting)
 * L2TP
 * Molecular assembler
 * Oblate
 * Orphan process
 * Reference ellipsoid
 * Sorting
 * Time zone
 * Unisex name
 * UTF-16/UCS-2
 * Video Toaster

I adding a lot of information to each of the letters of the Latin alphabet, including Unicode and other representations. See A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K, and so on. (Others have since made it even prettier, thanks.)

I've also helped clean up a few disambiguation pages.

Plus hundreds of smaller edits.

title: User:Dmeranda


text:
Paula Ben-Gurion

Paula Ben-Gurion (née Munweis) (פולה בן גוריון; 8 April 1892 – 29 January 1968) was the wife of David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the State of Israel.

Biography
Paula Munweis was born in Minsk, then part of the Russian Empire, the daughter of Samuel Munweis and Bertha Bloch. She immigrated to New York as a teenager where the 1910 United States census gave her date of birth as 1890. She was trained as a nurse at Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey and worked in a New York gynaecological clinic. David Ben-Gurion met her at the home of her employer and Poale Zion supporter Dr Samuel Ellsberg in summer of 1915. They spoke Yiddish together because Ben-Gurion's English was poor and Paula could not speak Hebrew. They married in 1917 at New York City's town hall. The following year Ben-Gurion enlisted as a soldier in the new British-raised Jewish Legion. He left Paula three months pregnant. They did not meet again until she arrived, with their one year old daughter Geula, in Jaffa 18 months later. Paula was originally against the idea of going to Israel, as her anarchist politics pitted her against both Zionism and state building. Recalling this period Ben-Gurion said that she was not a Zionist, she had very little Jewish feeling, she was an American, she was an anarchist. She had no interest in Israel. "America is better, why do we need the land of Israel?" They had three children, Geula, Amos and Renana. Throughout their marriage she had to endure Ben-Gurion's long absences abroad and recurring suspicions, sometimes justified, about his relationships with other women. She was known for her acerbic tongue. She was fluent in Yiddish, English, and eventually Hebrew. A feisty woman, she had no qualms about asking her husband to wash the dishes. She was bemused by her husband's interest in yoga and when his tutor, the famous Moshé Feldenkrais would show up she would say: "Here comes Mr. Hocus Pocus."

Paula is buried with her husband at the Ben-Gurion Tomb National Park in Midreshet Ben-Gurion in Israel's Negev desert.

In 1958, David Ben-Gurion published his letters to her: Letters to Paula and the Children.

Legacy and commemoration
A number of schools and institutions in Israel are named for her. Leslie Moonves, former president and CEO of CBS Television, is her grand-nephew.

title: Paula Ben-Gurion


text:
Electro stimulation

Electro-stimulation is stimulation using electricity.

It can be used in the context of:
 * Animal husbandry as part of the artificial insemination process
 * Bioelectromagnetics
 * Cranial electrotherapy stimulation
 * Transcranial magnetic stimulation
 * Transcorneal electrical stimulation
 * Electrical muscle stimulation
 * Bio-electric stimulation therapy
 * Functional electrical stimulation
 * Erotic electrostimulation, sometimes a form of BDSM

title: Electro stimulation


text:
Andover Earth Station

Andover Earth Station was one of the first satellite earth stations, located at Andover in the US state of Maine. It was built by AT&T in 1961 to communicate with the Telstar 1 satellite, the first direct relay communications satellite. It provided the first experimental satellite telephone and television service between North America and Europe. It was also used with the Relay satellite. The giant horn was dismantled in the mid 1980s along with the visitor center.

The location was selected by AT&T in December 1960. The main factors were the topography (set in the Western Maine Mountains), and the radio interference signal level. Other factors included a location in the Northeastern United States to give a short great circle path to Western Europe, it was located close enough to existing transcontinental radio relay television and telephone routes to facilitate interconnection. In addition, the site had to be large enough to accommodate an antenna structure and control building, and if necessary, provide room for expansion.

Land was purchased in January 1961, and construction of the complex began on May 1. Building construction was completed and the equipment was installed in February 1962. The Ground Station was operational in the Spring of 1962. AT&T and Bell Labs initiated, funded, constructed and took the leadership to make this project possible.

The radio transmitter aboard Telstar was very low-powered compared to modern communication satellites, with a power of only 14 watts, and transmitted through an omnidirectional antenna, so the ground antennas that communicated through it had to be huge. The Andover Earth Station was equipped with a giant horn antenna, 7 stories high and weighing 340 tons. To protect it from bad weather, a radome made of Dacron covered the antenna. It was 160 feet (49 m) high, 210 feet (64 m) wide and weighed 30 tons. Since the satellite was not in a geostationary orbit like modern communication satellites, it passed overhead quickly, and the giant antenna had to be precisely steerable to track the satellite as it moved across the sky.

Telstar was launched on July 10, 1962, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and went into orbit at 4:46 a.m. The engineers at the Andover Earth Station would have to wait 15 hours for the satellite, travelling at a rate of 5 miles per second (8 km/s), 3,000 miles (4,800 km) above the earth to reach within their "view". The engineers successfully sent a signal to Telstar, which amplified it 10 billion times and relayed it back to Andover.

Eugene F. O'Neill, Telstar Project Director and IEEE Fellow, oversaw the success of this project at Andover. He noted that one of the challenges was pointing an extremely sharp beam very accurately at the satellite. At 7:17 p.m. he announced "We've acquired Telstar!" At 7:31 p.m. an American flag at Andover appeared on the television screen. Then at 7:47 p.m. engineers at Andover received word that the French site, Pleumeur-Bodou, had received the television picture.

The Large radome was torn down and land returned to nature in the mid-1980s.

MCI purchased the Andover Earth station in 1987, MCI was later purchased by Verizon including the Andover Earth station in 2006 and managed under the Verizon Business name. The site still operates to this day as part of Verizon's Satellite Solution group supporting satellite operations for Verizon.

title: Andover Earth Station


text:
Dutch uncle

Dutch uncle is an informal term for a person who issues frank, harsh or severe comments and criticism to educate, encourage or admonish someone. Thus, a "Dutch uncle" is the reverse of what is normally thought of as avuncular or uncle-like (indulgent and permissive).

Origins
During the Anglo-Dutch Wars between England and the Netherlands in the 17th century, the English language gained an array of insults (including "Dutch uncle"), such as:

These terms also gained prominence in 17th-century New England during its rivalry with New Netherland, which the Dutch captured (and later recaptured) during the Second Anglo-Dutch War.

These colorful (though now incongruous) phrases became part of English usage worldwide, and some are still in use today.

Alternative explanations
Another proposed explanation is that the term, often expressed as "talk to one like a Dutch uncle," originated in the early 19th century as an allusion to the sternness and sobriety attributed to the Dutch people. Dutch behaviour is defined in the book ''Culture Shock! Netherlands: A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette'' as "practical, direct, outspoken, stubborn, well-organised, blunt and thinking they are always right." According to that source, these are the alleged reasons behind the English term "Dutch uncle." Another book that advocates this theory is The UnDutchables, which assigns comparable characteristics to Dutch people: "not lacking in self-esteem ... caught up in a cycle of endless envy ... always speak their mind ... frank, obstinate, blunt", basically summed up by the phrase "the natives thrive on shaking their fingers at and scolding each other."

title: Dutch uncle


text:
Soyuz TM-24

Soyuz TM-24 was the 27th expedition to Mir. Soyuz TM-24 carried a crew of three. The crew consisted of Cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Aleksandr Kaleri, and the first French woman in space, Claudie André-Deshays. They joined American astronaut Shannon Lucid and Mir 21 crewmates Yuri Onufriyenko and Yuri Usachev. André-Deshays carried out biological and medical experiments on Mir for 16 days (the Cassiopée mission) before returning to Earth with Onufriyenko and Usachev.

title: Soyuz TM-24