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Béla H. Bánáthy

Béla Heinrich Bánáthy (Bánáthy Béla; December 1, 1919 – September 4, 2003) was a Hungarian-American linguist, and Professor at San Jose State University and UC Berkeley. He is known as founder of the White Stag Leadership Development Program, established the International Systems Institute in 1982, and was co-founder of the General Evolutionary Research Group in 1984.

He grew up in largely rural Hungary and served in the Hungarian military during World War II. When Russia invaded Hungary in April 1945, he and his family fled to Allied-occupied Austria and lived in a displaced persons camp for six years. In 1951, they emigrated to Chicago, sponsored by the Presbyterian church. Within the year his former commanding officer suggested to the U.S. government that they hire Bánáthy as a Hungarian instructor at the Army Language School in Monterey, California. While living in Monterey, he founded the White Stag Leadership Development Program.

His program gained national attention, and the Boy Scouts of America conducted research into incorporating leadership training into its programs. The Boy Scouts of America's Wood Badge and junior leader training programs had until then focused primarily on Scoutcraft skills, not leadership. William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt among others resisted the change.

After 20 years, Bánáthy left the renamed Defense Language Institute and went to work for the Far West Laboratory for Research and Development in Berkeley and later San Francisco. He retired from Far West in 1989 but maintained an active interest in social systems and science, including attending many conferences and advising students and others in those fields. In 1992, he helped restart the Hungarian Scout Association within his native country. In 2003, Bánáthy and Eva moved to live with their son Tibor in Chico, California. After a brief and unexpected illness, Bánáthy died on September 4, 2003.

Biography
Béla Bánáthy was born in 1919 in Gyula, Hungary, as the oldest of four sons. His father Peter was a minister of the Reformed Church in Hungary and his mother Hildegard Pallmann was a teacher. Peter Bánáthy had earned the honorary title Vitéz for his service during World War I, and Béla, as his oldest son, inherited the title.

Military service during World War II
In 1937, Bánáthy entered the hu:Ludovika Akadémia as was the custom for young men aspiring to military careers. In 1940, at age 21, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the armored infantry. Later that year he met his future wife Eva Balazs. The peacetime Hungarian Army received very little training. Bánáthy served two tours on the Russian front in World War II as an armored infantry officer. The Hungarian Army expanded rapidly from an initial force of 80,000, but when fighting started, the rank-and-file of the army had undergone only eight weeks of training.

In 1941, Bánáthy's unit advanced as part of German Army Group South to within 140 km of Moscow, during a severe November ice storm. In 1942, as a soldier in the 109,000 strong Second Hungarian Army (Second Magyar Honved), Bánáthy returned to the Russian front. They fought in the Battle of Voronezh at the Don River bend, supporting the German attack. They were charged with protecting the 8th Italian Army's's northern flank between the Novaya Pokrovka on the Don River to Rossosh, part of the larger force defending the drive by the German 6th Army against Soviet General Vasily Chuikov's 62nd Army, which was defending Stalingrad. Bánáthy was seriously wounded during the action, and he returned from the front to Budapest where he spent seven months recuperating. He married his fiancé, Eva Balazs, with his arm in a sling on December 5, 1942 in Budapest.

Bánáthy was promoted as a junior officer of the Royal Hungarian Army and served on the faculty of the Ludovika Akademia under his mentor, Commandant Colonel-General Kisbarnaki General Farkas. Farkas sought a volunteer to teach junior leader training at the academy and Bánáthy volunteered. Farkas also asked Bánáthy to organize a Scout Troop for young men, 19 years and older, which was a common practice within the Hungarian Scout Association at the time. Bánáthy became committed to training the young men in officer's leadership skills; he served as the voluntary national director for youth leadership development and a member of the National Council of the Hungarian Scout Association.

In July 1944 Farkas was Commander of the Hungarian VI Army Corps, which had been garrisoned at Debrecen. He replaced General Beregfy, who was loyal to the fascist Arrow Cross Party. During that month, Farkas' VI Army Corps was instrumental in repelling a Red Army attack across the Carpathian mountains. On 15 October 1944, Farkas was named commander of the Pest bridgehead and Government Commissioner for Evacuation. In early November 1944, the first Russian units appeared on the southeastern edge of Budapest. As an associate of Farkas, Bánáthy likely had advance notice of the Russian advance. He also knew he would likely be executed if captured. Bánáthy was able to get his wife Eva, one-year-old son Béla and two-week-old son László out of Budapest. Bánáthy's family, along with other officers and their families, found shelter at first in farmhouses, and later in bunkers, caves, and trenches.

When the Hungarian Second Army was disbanded on 1 December 1944 due to a lack of equipment and personnel, the remaining units of the Second Army, including Bánáthy's, were transferred to the Third Army. The siege of Budapest began when the city was encircled on 29 December 1944 by the Red Army. Bánáthy fought with the remainder of his unit against the Russians until after Budapest fell on 13 February 1945. The Axis was striving to protect the last oil fields they controlled in western Hungary around Lake Balaton. By late March 1945, most of what was left of the Hungarian Third Army was surrounded and destroyed about 40 km to the west of Budapest in an advance by the Soviet 46th Army towards Vienna. The remaining shattered units fought on as they retreated progressively westward through the Transdanubian Mountains towards Austria.

Bánáthy's family and others of the remainder of his and other military units made their way west, along with tens of thousands of other refugees, about 250 km into Austria, trying to stay ahead of advancing Russian troops. Temperatures through the time of their flight remained near 0 C.

Life in displaced persons camp

Bánáthy reunited with his family in Austria. As the war ended and Austria was occupied in April 1945 by the French, British, Soviet and US military forces, the family was placed in an Allied displaced persons camp. They were housed in a single 6 by room in a wooden barrack; it served as their bedroom, kitchen, living room and firewood storage area. Food was extremely scarce and at times they subsisted on around 600 calories per person per day. They were among 1.4 million displaced persons in Austria at the time during a worldwide food shortage as a result of the war. Food was also severely restricted by punitive U.S. policies including directive JCS 1067. In 1947 German citizens were surviving on 1040 calories a day, but the Allies were also suffering from food shortages.

Bánáthy later traded for milk to give two-year-old Béla and one-year-old László enough protein. As extremely little food was available in the camps, in early 1947 his wife's twin sister came from Hungary to take their older two sons back to live with the older sister. The Pallendal family, Bánáthy's in-laws, was well-educated and relatively wealthy, so they had access to more food than what was available in the camps. They intended to return the Banathy boys to their parents within a year. Beginning in early 1948, when the Cold War ensued, it became virtually impossible for refugees or displaced persons to cross from the border of one country into another, or even from one Occupation Zone to another. The Pallendal family could not return the two boys from behind the Iron Curtain.

In 1948, shortly after their third son Tibor was born, the Banathy family was moved to another camp, near a Marshall Plan warehouse. Bánáthy was assigned to unload sacks of wheat from railroad cars. He contacted the World Scouting Movement for assistance and began to organize scouting in the DP camps. During 1947, Bánáthy was named the Hungarian Scout Commissioner for Austria; he led training for Hungarian Scout leaders along with his former commanding officer Farkas. He was ordained by the World Council of Churches and became minister for youth among Hungarian refugees. Banathy served as director of religious education of the Protestant Refugee Service of Austria, was editor of a religious youth service and of a Scout publication.

In 1948 Bánáthy's fourth son Robert was born. Bánáthy soon found work as a technical draftsman in the statistical office of a U.S. Army warehouse. In 1949, with help from a Swiss foundation, Bánáthy assisted in establishing and was selected as the President of the Collegium Hungaricum, a boarding school for refugees, at Zell am See near Saalfelden, Austria. In the same year, the Communist government in Hungary seized the businesses belonging to the Pallendal family. Because they were members of the social elite, the Communist government considered them to be a political threat.

In 1951, in what was a common practice during this time, the Hungarian Police arrived at dawn to seize the Pallendal family home and arrest and deport the family from Budapest. Seven-year-old Béla and six-year-old László Banathy, along with their Pallendal grandmother and two aunts, were put aboard a freight train and sent toward Russia. The train stopped occasionally and a few hundred people were forced off at rural towns. The Pallendal family was ejected in eastern Hungary. There an uncle located them and hid them from authorities in a small village.

Emigrates to the United States
In January, 1951, the student body of the Presbyterian McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago sponsored Béla, Eva, Tibor and Robert Banathy as refugees to the United States. Bánáthy lived with his family at the Seminary, where he worked nights 60 hours a week shoveling coal to fire the Seminary furnace. At the same time, he was studying English from a book. He occasionally preached at nearby Hungarian churches. His wife found work as a machine operator and Tibor, their third son, entered American public school.

Begins teaching Hungarian
Bánáthy moved to Monterey in June 1951, a pivotal change in his life. At the Army Language School, he met Joseph Szentkiralyi (Americanized as St. Clair), the founder of the Hungarian Department. They soon figured out they had met at the 4th World Scout Jamboree in 1933. The wives of the two men also realized they had been girlhood friends in grammar school in Budapest. Using her experience managing the Pallendal family restaurant in Budapest before World War II, Eva took work as a waitress in a restaurant on the Monterey Peninsula. Bánáthy served as President of his local Parent-Teacher Association and on the board of the local Red Cross.

On February 28, 1956, Bánáthy was naturalized as a United States citizen. After nine years of separation, and repeated failures to get his sons repatriated from behind the Iron Curtain, Bánáthy obtained help from Dr. Eugene Blake, President of the National Council of Churches; Representative Charles M. Teague; Ernest Nagy, Vice Consul in the U.S. Legation in Budapest; Hulda Neiburh of the McCormick Theological Seminary; and Howard Pyle, deputy assistant to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was finally able to arrange for 13-year-old Béla and 11-year-old László to emigrate to the United States A photograph of the two boys greeting their mother was featured in Life Magazine. "Carrying pictures of their parents, two Hungarian brothers arrived at New York International Airport, Idlewild, Queens, yesterday... The pictures are necessary because the boys... have not seen their mother and father for nine years." The boys were greeted by their parents at San Francisco International Airport at 1:10 a.m. The boys' release marked the first time since the Cold War that anyone under 65 years old had been allowed to leave Hungary to be reunited with family.

Professional life
Bánáthy was an educator, a systems and design scientist, and an author. At the Army Language School, he taught in the Hungarian language department, later becoming its chairman.

White Stag Leadership Development Program
In 1957 Bánáthy began enlarging a concept for a leadership development program. As Council Training Chairman in the Monterey Bay Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America, he received strong support from the Council Executive and Council Executive Board for his proposal to train boys in leadership skills. He was assisted by fellow Hungarians Joe Szentkiralyi (aka St. Clair, Chair of the Hungarian Language Department at the Army Language school) and Paul Sujan (Hungarian Language Instructor at the Army Language school); Fran Peterson (a member of the National Council and a Scoutmaster from Chular, California); and Maury Tripp (a Scouter from Saratoga, California, a member of the National Council, and a research scientist). "Lord Baden-Powell was my personal idol and I long felt a commitment to give back to Scouting what I had received", Bánáthy said.

As part of his master's degree program in counseling psychology at San José State University, he wrote a thesis titled "A Design for Leadership Development in Scouting". This book described the founding principles of the White Stag program, which was later adapted by the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Prior to Bánáthy's work, the adult Wood Badge and the junior leader training programs had focused on teaching Scoutcraft skills and some aspects of the Patrol Method. His research and findings on teaching principles and competencies of leadership had a huge impact on these two programs, shifting their focus to leadership skills.

Some individuals on the national staff and many volunteers across the nation resisted the idea of changing the focus of Wood Badge from training leaders in Scoutcraft to leadership skills. Among them was William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt, who had been the first United States Wood Badge Course Director in 1948. Although officially retired, he had many loyal followers. He was adamant that Wood Badge should continue to teach Scoutcraft skills and tried to persuade the national council to stick to that tradition, but his objections were ignored.

The leadership competencies Banathy articulated became the de facto method for Scout adult and junior leader training. (In 2008, the White Stag program celebrated its 50th anniversary.) In 1960, the Monterey Bay Area Council recognized Béla for his exceptional service to youth and awarded him the Silver Beaver.

In the 1970s, due to the success of the White Stag program, Bánáthy was appointed to the Interamerican Scout Committee and participated in three interamerican "Train the Trainer" events in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Venezuela.

Systems science
In the 1960s Bánáthy began teaching courses in applied linguistics and systems science at San José State University. In 1962 he was named Dean and Chairman of the East Europe and Middle East Division at the Army Language School, overseeing ten language departments. In 1963 he completed his master's degree in psychology at San Jose State University, and in 1966 he received a doctorate in education for a transdisciplinary program in education, systems theory, and linguistics from the University of California in Berkeley. During the mid-1960s Bánáthy was named Chair of Western Division of the Society for General Systems Research. He published his first book, Instructional Systems, in 1968.

Large complex systems
During the 1960s and 1970s, Bánáthy was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and as he continued teaching at San Jose State University. In 1969, he left the renamed Defense Language Institute and became a Program Director, and later Senior Research Director and Associate Laboratory Director, at the Far West Laboratory for Research and Development (now WestEd) in Berkeley (later moved to San Francisco). He "directed over fifty research and development programs, designed many curriculum projects and several large scale complex systems, including the design and implementation of a Ph.D. program in educational research and development for UC Berkeley".

In the 1970s and 1980s, he focused his research on the application of systems and design theories and methodologies in social, social service, educational, and human development systems. In the 1980s he developed and guided a Ph.D. curriculum in humanistic systems inquiry and social systems design for the Saybrook Graduate School.

General Evolutionary Research Group
In 1984, Bánáthy was co-founder with general evolution theorist Ervin László and others of the initially secret General Evolutionary Research Group, or General Evolutionary Research Group. A member of the Society of General Systems Research since the 1960s, he was Managing Director of the Society in the early 1980s, and in 1985 he became its president. He then served on its Board of Trustees. During the 1980s, he served on the Executive Committee of the International Federation of Systems Research. In 1989, he retired from Far West Labs and returned to live on the Monterey Peninsula. He continued to serve as Professor Emeritus for the Saybrook Graduate School, counseling Ph.D. students. He also continued his work with the annual ISI international systems design conversations, and authored a number of articles and books about systems, design, and evolutionary research. He served two terms as president of the International Federation of Systems Research during 1994-98.

He coordinated over twenty international systems research conferences held in eight countries, including the 1994 Conversation on Systems Design conversation held at Fuschl Am See, Austria, sponsored by the International Federation of Systems Research. He was also honorary editor of three international systems journals: Systems Research and Behavioral Science, the Journal of Applied Systems Studies, and Systems. He was on the Board of Editors of World Futures, and served as a contributing editor of Educational Technology.

Final years
In the summer of 2003 Bánáthy and his wife moved to live with their son Tibor in Chico, California. After a brief and unexpected illness, Bánáthy died on September 4, 2003. He and Eva had been married 64 years at the time of his death.

Publications
Bánáthy wrote and published several books and hundreds of articles. A selection:
 * 1963, A Design for Leadership Development in Scouting, Monterey Bay Area Council, Monterey, California.
 * 1964, Report on a Leadership Development Experiment, Monterey Bay Area Council, Monterey, California.
 * 1968, Instructional Systems, Fearon Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8224-3930-1
 * 1969, Leadership Development — World Scouting Reference Papers, No. 1, Boy Scouts World Bureau, Geneva, Switzerland.
 * 1972, A Design for Foreign Language Curriculum, D.C. Heath. ISBN 978-0-669-82073-7
 * 1973, Developing a Systems View of Education: The Systems Models Approach, Lear Siegler Fearon Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8224-6700-7
 * 1985, with Kenneth D. Bailey et al. (ed.), Systems Inquiring: Applications, Volume II of the Proceedings of the Society for General Systems Research International Conference. Seaside, CA: Intersystems Publications.
 * 1991, Systems Design of Education, A Journey to Create the Future, Educational Technology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. ISBN 978-0-87778-229-2
 * 1992, A Systems View of Education: Concepts and Principles for Effective Practice, Educational Technology, Englewood Cliffs, CA. ISBN 0-87778-245-8
 * 1992, "Comprehensive Systems Design in Education: Building a Design Culture," in: Education. Educational Technology, 22(3) 33–35.
 * 1996, Designing Social Systems in a Changing World, Plenum, NY. ISBN 0-306-45251-0
 * 1998, Evolution Guided by Design: A Systems Perspective, in Systems Research, Vol. 15.
 * 1997, A Taste of Systemics , The Primer Project, 2007.
 * 2000, Guided Evolution of Society: A Systems View, Springer ISBN 978-0-306-46382-2
 * 2000, The Development of the AgoraWebsite: Personal Communication to Agora Stewards, International Systems Institute, Asilomar Networked Democracy Group, Pacific Grove, CA.
 * 2000, Agora Structure, International Systems Institute, Asilomar Networked Democracy Group, Pacific Grove, CA.
 * 2000, Bio: Personal Communication to Agora Stewards, International Systems Institute, Asilomar Networked Democracy Group, Pacific Grove, CA.
 * 2000, Story: Personal Communication to Agora Stewards, International Systems Institute, Asilomar Networked Democracy Group, Pacific Grove, CA.
 * 2000, Reflections: The Circle of Agora Stewards, International Systems Institute, Asilomar Networked Democracy Group, Pacific Grove, CA.
 * 2000, Guided Evolution of Society: A Systems View, Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York.
 * 2002, with Patrick M. Jenlink, "The Agora Project: the New Agoras of the Twenty-first Century," Systems Research and Behavioral Science
 * 2002, with Gordon Rowland, "Guiding our evolution: If we don't do it, who will?"
 * 2005, with Patrick M. Jenlink, et al. (ed.), Dialogue as a Means of Collective Communication (Educational Linguistics), Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York. ISBN 978-0-306-48689-0
 * 2007, with Patrick M. Jenlink, et al. (ed.), Dialogue as a Means of Collective Communication (Volume 2), Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York. ISBN 978-0-387-75842-8

title: Béla H. Bánáthy


text:
Karoo

The Karoo (from the Afrikaans borrowing of the South Khoekhoe !Orakobab or Khoemana word ǃ’Aukarob "Hardveld" ) is a semi-desert natural region of South Africa. No exact definition of what constitutes the Karoo is available, so its extent is also not precisely defined. The Karoo is partly defined by its topography, geology and climate, and above all, its low rainfall, arid air, cloudless skies, and extremes of heat and cold. The Karoo also hosted a well-preserved ecosystem hundreds of million years ago which is now represented by many fossils.

The ǃ’Aukarob formed an almost impenetrable barrier to the interior from Cape Town, and the early adventurers, explorers, hunters, and travelers on the way to the Highveld unanimously denounced it as a frightening place of great heat, great frosts, great floods, and great droughts. Today, it is still a place of great heat and frosts, and an annual rainfall of between 50 and 250 mm, though on some of the mountains it can be 250 to 500 mm higher than on the plains. However, underground water is found throughout the Karoo, which can be tapped by boreholes, making permanent settlements and sheep farming possible.

The xerophytic vegetation consists of aloes, mesembryanthemums, crassulas, euphorbias, stapelias, and desert ephemerals, spaced 50 cm or more apart, and becoming very sparse going northwards into Bushmanland and, from there, into the Kalahari Desert. The driest region of the Karoo, however, is its southwestern corner, between the Great Escarpment and the Cederberg-Skurweberg mountain ranges, called the Tankwa Karoo, which receives only 75 mm of rain annually. The eastern and north-eastern Karoo are often covered by large patches of grassland. The typical Karoo vegetation used to support large game, sometimes in vast herds.

Today, sheep thrive on the xerophytes, though each sheep requires about 4 ha of grazing to sustain itself.

Divisions
The Karoo is divided into the Great Karoo and the Little Karoo. The Little Karoo is delimited in the south by the Outeniqua–Langeberg Mountains that run east–west parallel to the coast, and in the north by the Swartberg Mountain Range that also runs east–west. The Great Karoo lies to the north the Swartberg.

Great Karoo
The only sharp and definite boundary of the Great Karoo is formed by the most inland ranges of Cape Fold Mountains to the south and south-west. The extent of the Karoo to the north is vague, fading gradually and almost imperceptibly into the increasingly arid Bushmanland towards the north-west. To the north and north-east, it fades into the savannah and grasslands of Griqualand West and the Highveld. The boundary to the east grades into the grasslands of the Eastern Midlands. The Great Karoo is itself divided by the Great Escarpment into the Upper Karoo (generally above 1200–1500 m) and the Lower Karoo on the plains below at 700–800 m. A great many local names, each denoting different subregions of the Great Karoo, exist, some more widely, or more generally, known than others. In the Lower Karoo, going from west to east, they are the Tankwa Karoo, the Moordenaarskaroo, the Koup, the Vlakte, and the Camdeboo Plains. The Hantam, Kareeberge, Roggeveld, and uweveldare the better known subregions of the Upper Karoo, though most of it is simply known as the Upper Karoo, especially in the north.

Little Karoo
The Little Karoo's boundaries are sharply defined by mountain ranges to the west, north, and south. The road between Uniondale and Willowmore is considered, by convention, to form the approximate arbitrary eastern extremity of the Little Karoo. Its extent is much smaller than that of the Great Karoo. Locally, it is usually called the Klein Karoo, which is Afrikaans for Little Karoo.

Great Karoo
The Great Karoo straddles the 30° S parallel on the west of the continent, in a similar position to other semidesert areas on earth, north and south of the equator. It is furthermore in the rainfall shadow of the Cape Fold Mountains along the western coastline. The western "Lower Karoo" (the Tankwa Karoo and Moordenaarskaroo) contain remnants of the Cape Fold Mountains (e.g. the Witteberg and Anysberg Mountains) which give it a moderate hilly appearance, but further east, the Lower Karoo becomes a monotonously flat plain. The "Upper Karoo" has been intruded by dolerite sills (see below), creating multiple flat-topped hills, or Karoo Koppies, which are iconic of the Great Karoo.

The vegetation of the Upper is similar to the Lower Karoo, so few people make a distinction between the two.

The main highway (the N1) and railway line from Cape Town to the north enter the Lower Karoo from the Hex River Valley just before Touws River and follow a course about 50 km south of the Great Escarpment up to Beaufort West. Thereafter, they gradually ascend the Great Escarpment along a broad valley to Three Sisters on the Central Plateau and the Upper Karoo.

Turning north from the N1 between Touws River and Beaufort West, at Matjiesfontein, the road ascends the Great Escarpment through the Verlatenkloof Pass to reach Sutherland, at 1456 m above sea level, which is reputedly the coldest town in South Africa with average minimum temperatures of −6.1 °C during winter. Parts of the eastern Mpumalangan Highveld do at times experience lower temperatures than Sutherland, but not as consistently as Sutherland does. Snowfalls are not infrequent during the southern winter months. The South African Astronomical Observatory has an emplacement of telescopes about 20 km east of the town, on a small plateau 1798 m above sea level, and is home to the Southern African Large Telescope, the largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. To the north, still on the Plateau, and 75 km north-west of Carnarvon, seven radio dishes form part of the Square Kilometer Array which will, 2500 in total, be scattered in other parts of South Africa and Australia, to survey the southern skies at radio frequencies. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, one of the main targets of this enterprise, is best viewed from the Southern Hemisphere. The Upper Karoo is indeed an ideal site for an astronomical observatory. This is not only because of the clear skies, absence of artificial lights, and high altitude, but also because it is tectonically completely inactive (meaning that there are no fault lines or volcanoes nearby, and no earth tremors or earthquakes occur, even at great distances).

Little Karoo
The Little Karoo is separated from the Great Karoo by the Swartberg Mountain range. Geographically, it is a 290 km-long valley, only 40–60 km wide, formed by two parallel Cape Fold Mountain ranges, the Swartberg to the north, and the continuous Langeberg-Outeniqua range to the south. The northern strip of the valley, within 10–20 km from the foot of the Swartberg mountains is least karoo-like, in that it is a well-watered area both from the rain and the many streams that cascade down the mountain, or through narrow defiles in the Swartberg from the Great Karoo. The main towns of the region are situated along this northern strip of the Little Karoo: Montagu, Barrydale, Ladismith, Calitzdorp, Oudtshoorn, and De Rust, as well as such well-known mission stations such as Zoar, Amalienstein, and Dysselsdorp.

The southern 30– to 50 km-wide strip, north of the Langeberg range, is as arid as the western Lower Karoo, except in the east, where the Langeberg range (arbitrarily) starts to be called the Outeniqua Mountains.

The Little Karoo can only be accessed by road through the narrow defiles cut through the surrounding Cape Fold Mountains by ancient, but still flowing, rivers. A few roads traverse the mountains over passes, the most famous and impressive of which is the Swartberg Pass between Oudtshoorn in the Little Karoo and Prince Albert on the other side of the Swartberg mountains in the Great Karoo. Also, the main road between Oudtshoorn and George, on the coastal plain, crosses the mountains to the south via the Outeniqua Pass. The only exit from the Little Karoo that does not involve crossing a mountain range is through the 150 km-long, narrow Langkloof valley between Uniondale and Humansdorp, near Plettenberg Bay.

The Great Karoo

In geological terms, the Karoo Supergroup refers to an extensive and geologically recent (180–310 million years old) sequence of sedimentary and igneous rocks, which is flanked to the south by the Cape Fold Mountains, and to the north by the more ancient Ventersdorp Lavas, the Transvaal Supergroup and Waterberg Supergroup. It covers two-thirds of South Africa and extends in places to 8000 m below the land surface, constituting an immense volume of rocks which was formed, geologically speaking, in a short period of time. Although almost the whole of the Great Karoo is situated on Karoo Supergroup rocks, the geological Karoo rocks extend over a very much larger area, both within South Africa and Lesotho, but also beyond its borders and onto other continents that formed part of Gondwana.

Geological history of the Karoo Supergroup
The Karoo Supergroup was formed in a vast inland basin starting 320 million years ago, at a time when that part of Gondwana which would eventually become Africa, lay over the South Pole. Icebergs that had calved off the glaciers and ice sheets to the north deposited a 1 km-thick layer of mud containing dropstones of varying origins and sizes into this basin. This became the Dwyka Group consisting primarily of tillite, the lowermost layer of the Karoo Supergroup. As Gondwana drifted northwards, the basin turned into an inland sea with extensive swampy deltas along its northern shores. The peat in these swamps eventually turned into large deposits of coal which are mined in KwaZulu-Natal and on the Highveld. This 3 km-thick layer is known as the Ecca Group, which is overlain by the 5.6 km-thick Beaufort Group, laid down on a vast plain with Mississippi-like rivers depositing mud from an immense range of mountains to the south. Ancient reptiles and amphibians prospered in the wet forests, and their remains have made the Karoo famous amongst palaeontologists. The first of these Karoo fossils was discovered in 1838 by Scots-born Andrew Geddes Bain at a road cutting near Fort Beaufort. He sent his specimens to the British Museum, where fellow Scotsman Robert Broom recognised the Karoo fossils' mammal-like characteristics in 1897.

After the Beaufort period, Southern Africa (still part of Gondwana) became an arid sand desert with only ephemeral rivers and pans. These sands consolidated to form the Stormberg Group, the remnants of which are found only in the immediate vicinity of Lesotho. Several dinosaur nests, containing eggs, some with dinosaur fetal skeletons in them, have been found in these rocks, near what had once been a swampy pan.

Finally, about 180 million years ago, volcanic activity took place on a titanic scale, which brought an end to a flourishing reptile evolution. These genera represent some of the extinct, mainly predinosaur, animals of the Karoo:

Karoo Koppies hills are capped by hard, erosion-resistant dolerite sills. This is solidified lava that was forced under high pressure between the horizontal strata of the sedimentary rocks that make up most of the Karoo's geology. This occurred about 180 million years ago, when huge volumes of lava were extruded over most of Southern Africa and adjoining regions of Gondwana, both on the surface and deep below the surface between the sedimentary strata. Since this massive extrusion of lava, Southern Africa has undergone a prolonged period of erosion, exposing the older, softer rocks, except where they were protected by a cap of dolerite. The genera present include:

 * Mesosaurus, aquatic Dwyka carnivore
 * Bradysaurus, Beaufort Group herbivore
 * Owenetta, Beaufort Group insectivore
 * Procolophon, Beaufort Group omnivore
 * Diictodon, Permian synapsid
 * Rubidgea, Permian predator
 * Lystrosaurus, Triassic herbivorous therapsid
 * Thrinaxodon, Triassic carnivorous therapsid
 * Euparkeria, archosaur
 * Massospondylus, late Triassic to early Jurassic herbivorous, bipedal dinosaur
 * Megazostrodon, early mammal

The lava outpourings that ended the Karoo deposition of rocks, not only covered the African surface, and other parts of Gondwana with a 1.6 km thick layer basaltic lava, but it also forced its way, under high pressure, between the horizontal layers of sedimentary rocks belonging to the Ecca and Beaufort groups, to solidify into dolerite sills. The long vertical fissures through which the lava welled up solidified into dikes which resemble the Great Wall of China from the air. From about 150 million years ago the South African surface has been subjected to an almost uninterrupted period of erosion, particularly during the past 20 million years, shaving off many kilometers of sediments. This exposed the dolerite sills, which were more resistant to erosion than the Karoo sediments, forming one of the most characteristic features of the Karoo landscape, namely the flat topped hills, called "Karoo Koppies".

Geology of the Little Karoo
The geology of the Little Karoo bears no resemblance to that of the Great Karoo (see the diagram on the left, of a NS geological cross-section through the Little and Great Karoos). The valley is an integral part of the Cape Fold Mountain Belt, with the two ranges on either side composed of extremely hard, erosion-resistant, quartzitic sandstone belonging to the 450- to 510-million-year-old Table Mountain Group (i.e. the oldest layer of the Cape Supergroup). The valley floor is covered, in the main, by the next (younger) layer of the Supergroup, namely the much softer Bokkeveld shales. The dolerite of the Great Karoo did not penetrate these rocks, so Karoo Koppies are not seen in the Little Karoo.

The Little Karoo contains two other geological features that give the landscape a special character. During the erosion of the African interior following the bulging of the continent during the massive lava outpourings that ended the Karoo sedimentation 180 million years ago, some of the eroded material was trapped in the valleys of the Cape Fold Mountains, especially during the Cretaceous period, about to  years (Ma) ago. These "Enon Conglomerates", as they are known, were deposited by high energy, fast flowing rivers, and are found between Calitzdorp and Oudtshoorn, where they form the strikingly red "Redstone Hills".

The second special geological feature that marks the Little Karoo is the 300 km-long fault line along the southern edge of the Swartberg Mountains. The Swartberg Mountains were lifted up along this fault, to such an extent that in the Oudtshoorn region, the rocks that form the base of the Cape Supergroup are exposed. These are locally known as the Cango Group, but are probably continuous with the Malmesbury Group that forms the base of Table Mountain on the Cape Peninsula, and similar outcrops in the Western Cape. In the Little Karoo, the outcrop is composed of limestone, into which an underground stream has carved the impressively extensive Cango Caves.

Karoo flora
The World Wildlife Fund has classified the Great Karoo and Little Karoo as almost entirely within two of what they consider South Africa's eight botanical biomes, they have coined their biomes succulent Karoo and the Nama Karoo, although both, like the geological Karoo Supergroup, are more extensive than the geographical or historical Karoo described in South African atlases and guide books (compare the map on the right with the map at the beginning of the article).

Succulent Karoo biome
The succulent Karoo biome runs along the West Coast, from approximately Lamberts Bay northwards to over 200 km into southern Namibia. It starts in the south just north of the sandveld geographical region, about 250 km north of Cape Town, and continues through Namaqualand, the Richtersveld, immediately south of the Orange River, and on into the Namaqualand or Namaland region of southern Namibia. None of these regions is ever referred to, either geographically or locally, as "Karoo". However, it has a major extension inland into the Tankwa Karoo and Moordenaarskaroo regions of the Lower Karoo, and adjoining Upper Karoo region of the geographic Great Karoo. It also occurs to the south, in part of the Breede River Valley, as the Robertson Karoo. From here, it continues eastwards into the western half of the Little Karoo. The succulent Karoo biome is dominated by dwarf, leafy-succulent shrubs, and annuals, predominantly Asteraceae, popularly known as Namaqualand daisies, which put on spectacular flower displays covering vast stretches of the landscape in the southern spring-time (August–September) after good rains in the winter. Grasses are uncommon, making most of the biome unsuitable for grazing. The low rainfall, in fact, discourages most forms of agriculture. An exception is the thriving ostrich-farming industry in the Little Karoo, which is heavily dependent on supplementary feeding with lucerne. The difference between the succulent Karoo biome and the Nama Karoo biome is that the former receives the little rain that falls as cyclonic rainfall in winter, which has less erosive power than the infrequent but violent summer thunderstorms of the Nama Karoo. Frost is also less common in the succulent Karoo biome than in the Nama Karoo biome. The number of mainly succulent plant species is very high for an arid area of this size anywhere in the world.

Nama Karoo biome
The Nama Karoo biome is located entirely on the central plateau mostly at altitudes between 1000 and 1500 m. It incorporates nearly the whole of the historical and geographical Great Karoo, but also includes a portion of southern Namibia's Namaqualand, and South Africa's Bushmanland (both local geographical names, not names of biomes). It is the second-largest biome in South Africa, and forms the botanical transition between the fynbos biome to the south and the savannah biome to the north. It is defined primarily by the dominance of dwarf (less than 1 m high) shrubs with a co-dominance of grasses especially towards the north-east and east where it grades into the grassland biome of the highveld and the Eastern Midlands. The shrubs and grasses are deciduous, mainly in response to the irregular rainfall. Much of the Nama Karoo biome is used for sheep and goat farming, providing mutton, wool, and pelts for local and international markets, especially since livestock can frequently be provided with a regular supply of water from boreholes. Overgrazing exacerbates the erosion caused by the violent thunderstorms that occur, infrequently, in the summer. It also promotes the replacement of the grasses by shrubs, especially the less edible varieties such as the threethorn (Rhigozum trichotomum), bitterbos (Chrysocoma ciliata), and sweet thorn (Acacia karroo). However, there are few rare or Red Data Book plant species in the Nama Karoo biome.

Great Karoo
The Great Karoo used to support a large variety of antelope (particularly the springbok), the quagga, and other large game, especially on the grassy flats in the east. Francois Le Vaillant, the famous French explorer, naturalist, and ornithologist, who traveled through the Great Karoo in the 1780s, killed a hippopotamus in the Great Fish River in the Karoo (and ate its foot for breakfast). He also recorded that he saw the spoor of a rhinoceros near Cranemere, in the Camdeboo Plains (eastern Lower Karoo). Elephant tusks have been found by farmers in the Camdeboo district, but no records exist of any having been seen alive in that region. The quagga roamed the Karoo in great numbers together with wildebeest and ostriches, which always seemed to accompany them. These quagga seemed gentle and easy to domesticate. (A pair of quagga was used to draw a horse carriage through London, more for curiosity than for any superiority the quagga might have had over a horse.) They were consequently also easy prey for hunters, who hunted them for sport rather than their meat. By the middle of the 1800s, they were almost extinct, and in 1883, the last one died in an Amsterdam zoo.

Probably the strangest and most puzzling zoological phenomenon in the Great Karoo was the periodic, unpredictable appearance of massive springbok migrations. These migrations always came from the north, and could either go west towards Namaqualand and the sea, south-west through towns such as Beaufort West, or south through the Camdeboo district. These vast herds moved steadily and inexorably across the plains, trampling all before them, including their own kind. Le Vaillant gave the first eyewitness account of such a migration in 1782. He rode through the herd filling the Plains of Camdeboo, seeing neither the beginning nor end of the moving mass.

In 1849, a massive herd of springbok, amongst which were intermingled wildebeest, blesbok, quagga, and eland, moved through Beaufort West. Early one morning, the town was awakened to a sound like that of a strong wind, and suddenly the town was filled with animals. They devoured every sprig of foliage in the town and surrounding countryside. The last of the continuously moving herd left the town 3 days later, to disappear towards the west. The Karoo looked as if a fire had swept through it. During these migrations, the plains and hillsides on every side were thickly covered by one vast mass of springbok, packed like sheep in a fold. As far as the eye could see, the landscape was alive with them.

During these migrations, the springbok never ran or trotted. On the whole, they were silent, except for the shudder of their stamping hoofs. Nothing could divert them, and hunters could ride amongst them, shooting them at random, without apparently causing alarm. People could move amongst them and kill them with sticks, or cripple them by seizing a leg and breaking it. Not only people followed these herds for the easy meat they provided, but also lions, leopards, cheetahs, African wild dogs, hyenas, and jackals preyed on them.

No one knew how, why, or where these migrations started, nor where they ended, nor did anyone know if these animals ever returned to where they had started. The migrations were always unidirectional, from north of the Great Karoo.

Great locust swarms also frequently invaded or arose in the Great Karoo, and still occur from time to time today.

The riverine rabbit, a critically endangered animal, lives exclusively in seasonal river basins and a very particular set of scrubland in the central semiarid region in the Karoo. It is hunted by falconiformes and Verreaux's eagles. Its numbers have been consistently lowering due to destruction of its habitat. They are unique relative to similar species through how they are polygamous and how each female can only produce one or two offspring per year.

The introduction of the windpump to tap the Great Karoo's underground water resources in the late 1800s made permanent human habitation and sheep farming possible over large parts of the Great Karoo for the first time. As a result, the teeming number of large antelope in the Karoo has dwindled into insignificance, and with them, the large carnivores have all but disappeared. Today, the caracal (7–19 kg), black-backed jackal (6–10 kg), Verreaux's eagle (3.0–5.8 kg) and the martial eagle (3.0–6.2 kg) are arguably the largest predators likely to be seen in the Great Karoo today. Leopards (20–90 kg) do occur, especially in the mountains, but are very secretive, so are rarely seen. Many of the animals that formerly inhabited the Karoo in large numbers, including lions, have been reintroduced to the area in nature reserves and game farms.

Little Karoo
As in the Great Karoo, antelope and other big game inhabited the Little Karoo in the past. However, the dominant zebra was not the quagga, but the Cape mountain zebra, (Equus zebra zebra) which is adapted for life on rugged, mountainous terrain. Their hooves are harder and faster-growing than those of Burchell's zebra (Equus quagga burchellii), which lives on the plains. The two species are, therefore, rarely seen in the same habitat. The quagga is closely related to Burchell's zebra, and appears also to have been confined to the plains.

The mountain zebra occurred in the mountain regions of the Cape Fold Belt and along the southern portion of the Great Escarpment. Thus, they were endemic to, amongst others, the western Lower Karoo and the Little Karoo. However, they were hunted to near extinction, leaving fewer than 100 individuals by the 1930s. Conservation efforts since then brought their numbers up to 1200 by 1998, mainly by concentrating these zebra in nature reserves and protected areas, the most well-known of these being the Mountain Zebra National Park near Cradock in the Great Karoo. Cape mountain zebras are still found in protected areas managed by Cape Nature, including the Kamanassie and Gamkaberg Nature Reserves.

The ostrich is found throughout Africa, but the most handsome specimens came from the Little Karoo, where the dry weather, but plentiful water in the streams formed an ideal habitat for these large, flightless birds. Here, they grow to over 2 m in height, and weigh over 100 kg. The male's feathers have been prized by many cultures in Africa, Europe, and Asia over thousands of years. In the 1860s, a farmer in the Graaff-Reinet district was apparently the first person to demonstrate that the ostrich could successfully be domesticated, bred in captivity, and the eggs hatched in incubators, while still producing the magnificent feathers. This idea was quickly adopted by farmers in the Little Karoo, where they started growing lucerne as the birds' favorite food. During 1880, no less than 74,000 kg of feathers were exported, and in 1904, it passed the 210,000-kg mark.

The First World War brought about a slump in the ostrich feather market, but the industry recovered in later years, when not only the feathers were sought after, but also ostrich leather, and its meat, which is very tasty, and a major export item. Today, several farms can be visited by tourists, near Oudtshoorn, the center of the ostrich industry.

Great Karoo
The first European settlers landed in the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, and between 1659 and 1664, made several unsuccessful attempts to penetrate the Great Karoo from the south-west. The Europeans who first entered the Great Karoo did so from the south-east (traveling north from Algoa Bay), which is slightly less arid than the western Karoo. These were the trekboers of the mid-1700s, who led a nomadic existence, enduring great hardships in the relentless aridity, the intense heat (such that even their dogs could not walk on the scorching ground and had to be lifted into the overcrowded wagons), and the bitter cold in winter, especially at night. Before that time, the only inhabitants were the Khoe-speaking clans migrating through the area, and !Ui-speaking peoples, who lived in small family groups and, it is believed, remained largely in their own "territories", killing their own game, and gathering bulbs and roots and drinking from a spring or other water source within their territory. Sometimes these territories were very large and the family group moved from one part to the other. Their only domestic animals were dogs. The Ntu-speaking agriculturalists to the east of the Great Karoo did not occupy this arid region due to the scarce rainfall which prevented the farming of cattle. In 1854, Daniel Halladay invented the multibladed windpump (windmill) in the USA. It was perfected in 1883, and soon South Africa (and elsewhere) produced them in large numbers. These windpumps transformed the Great Karoo, making permanent settlement and stock farming (predominantly sheep) possible over large parts of the Karoo for the first time. Like the Karoo Koppie, the multibladed windpump became an iconic feature of the Great Karoo. Sheep farming and the fencing off of the land have meant that antelope numbers have dwindled significantly, and with them, the big carnivores. Leopards still occur in the mountains, but lions now only occur in nature reserves, where they have been recently reintroduced into the Great Karoo. In 1872, construction was started to connect the Cape Colony's coastal railway system with the diamond fields in Kimberley, The new line started in Worcester and entered the Lower Karoo through the Hex River valley, where it followed a course almost midway between the Swartberg Mountains to the south and the Great Escarpment to the north. Along the way, it passed through the quaint Victorian village of Matjiesfontein, with the historic Lord Milner Hotel, which is still operational today. The railway reached this point in 1878, before proceeding to Beaufort West at the foot of the Great Escarpment. From there, it reached the top of the African Plateau near Three Sisters along a valley with such a low gradient that passengers were (and still are) hardly aware that they were ascending the Great Escarpment. From there it continued through the Upper Karoo, to De Aar, and crossed the Orange River at Hopetown, where South Africa's first diamond, the Eureka Diamond, was found. The Orange River, at this point, forms the local unofficial boundary between the Great Karoo and the Highveld.

The line reached Kimberley in 1885, and has since been extended via Botswana (then Bechuanaland) to reach Zimbabwe and Zambia (when they were still known as South and North Rhodesia), and branch lines have been constructed to Namibia and Port Elizabeth through a hub at De Aar, in the Great Karoo. Further branch lines were later built from points further north to Bloemfontein, Durban, and, of course, to Johannesburg.

During the Second Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, three Republican commando units, reinforced by the sympathizers ("rebels") from the Cape Colony, conducted widespread operations throughout the Karoo. Countless skirmishes took place in the region, with the Calvinia magisterial district, in particular, contributing a significant number of fighters to the Republican cause. Fought both conventionally and as a guerrilla struggle over the Karoo's vast expanses, it was a bloody war of attrition wherein both sides used newly developed technologies to their advantage. Numerous abandoned blockhouses can still be seen at strategic locations, especially along the railway line, throughout the Great Karoo. A prime example still "guards" a bridge over the Buffels River, 12 km to the east of the town of Laingsburg, in the Lower Karoo, between Matjiesfontein and Beaufort West.

Recently, nature reserves and game farms have been established in many parts of the Great Karoo, turning what was once regarded as a forbiddingly desolate and unattractive geographical barrier into a tourist destination.

Little Karoo
This area was explored by European settlers in the late 17th century, who encountered the Khoisan people as the original inhabitants of this area. The latter called the Swartberg Mountains kango meaning "a place rich in water". The Cango Caves in the Swartberg Mountains are named after this Khoisan word.

The Little Karoo, and especially Oudtshoorn, became synonymous with the ostrich-feather industry in the 1880s. The resulting "feather millionaires" built Victorian "Feather Palaces" all over town, using the red rocks belonging to the Enon Conglomerate, and related Kirkwood Formation, to build them. These grand red palaces and other buildings in Oudtshoorn can still be admired today.

A railway line was built to connect Calitzdorp and Oudtshoorn, to Willowmore and from there, via Klipplaat, to Port Elizabeth, from where the ostrich feathers from the Little Karoo's ostrich farms could be exported to Europe. That line is no longer in use today.

The Swartberg Pass was built, with convict labor, between 1881 and 1888 by Thomas Bain, son of the famous Andrew Geddes Bain, who built Bain's Kloof Pass and many others in the Western Cape. The main motivation for building the pass was to provide an all-weather road connection between the southern Great Karoo, and Oudtshoorn (and from there to the sea). The two alternative roads, through the Meiringspoort and the Seweweekspoort defiles, were subject to periodic flooding, after heavy thunderstorms in the Great Karoo. The Swartberg Pass is not tarred and can be treacherously slippery after rain. It also becomes impassable after heavy snowfalls on the mountain, a not infrequent occurrence in winter.

Karoo in literature
Poet Thomas Hardy wrote of the Karoo in his 1899 poem "Drummer Hodge" (or "The Dead Drummer").

Rudyard Kipling, in his 1901 poem "Bridge-Guard in the Karroo", evoked the loneliness experienced by blockhouse soldiers at Ketting station on the Dwyka River while guarding the Karoo railway track, a lifeline during the South African War.

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

title: Karoo


text:
Tanzanian shilling

The shilling (Swahili: shilingi; abbreviation: TSh; code: TZS) is the currency of Tanzania. It is subdivided into 100 cents (senti in Swahili). The Tanzanian shilling replaced the East African shilling on 14 June 1966 at par.

Notation
Prices in the Tanzanian shilling are written in the form of x/y, where x is the amount above 1 shilling, while y is the amount in cents. An equals sign or hyphen represents zero amount. For example, 50 cents is written as "" and 100 shillings as "" or "100/-". Sometimes the abbreviation TSh is prefixed for distinction. If the amount is written using words as well as numerals, only the prefix is used (e.g. TSh 10 million).

This pattern was modelled on sterling's pre-decimal notation, in which amounts were written in some combination of pounds (£), shillings (s), and pence (d, for denarius). In that notation, amounts under a pound were notated only in shillings and pence.

Coins

In 1966, coins were introduced in denominations of, , and  and , with the  struck in bronze, the  in nickel-brass (copper-nickel-zinc) and the -/50 and 1/= in cupro-nickel. Cupro-nickel coins were introduced in 1972, followed by scalloped, nickel-brass  in 1977. This First Series coins set, in circulation from 1966 up to 1984, was designed by Christopher Ironside OBE.

In 1987, nickel-plated steel replaced cupro-nickel in the and, and cupro-nickel  and  coins were introduced, with the  decagonal in shape. In 1990, nickel-clad-steel, and  were introduced, followed by brass-plated steel coins for  in 1993,  in 1996 and copper-nickel-zinc  in 1998.

Coins currently in circulation are the, , , and. The coin was issued on 8 September 2014.

Banknotes
On 14 June 1966, the Benki Kuu Ya Tanzania (Bank of Tanzania) introduced notes for, , and. The note was replaced by a coin in 1972. notes were introduced in 1985, followed by in 1986,  in 1989 and  in 1990. The, , and  notes were replaced by coins in 1987, 1990, 1996 and 1994, respectively. and notes were introduced in 1995, followed by 2,000/= in 2003. A new series of notes came out in 2011. These new notes include many security features that prevent counterfeiting.

Banknotes in circulation today are, , , and

title: Tanzanian shilling


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Voiron

Voiron (Vouèron) is a commune (French municipality) in the ninth district of the Isère department in southeastern France. It is the capital of the canton of Voiron and has been part of the Grenoble-Alpes Métropole since 2010. Voiron is located 25 km northwest of Grenoble and 85 km southeast of Lyon. Its roughly 20,000 inhabitants are named Voironnais in French.

Voiron, along with Chambéry and Grenoble, is a gateway city of the Chartreuse Mountains in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.

History
Voiron had been a part of the County of Savoy in the Middle Ages. In the Treaty of Paris (1355) the count exchanged Voiron and the rest of the region between the rivers Rhône and Isère (watered by the Guiers Mort) for Faucigny and Gex from France.

17th and 18th centuries
In 1700, the capital of the Chartreuse massif and its surrounding area had about 1,200 inhabitants and more than a hundred of them worked in the processing of hemp.

Since the beginning of the century, production had been organized around the Voironnaise factory and canvases were marked to certify their origin. The city acquired a great reputation thanks to its paintings resulting from a secular know-how. The privileges granted by Louis XII disappeared during the French Revolution. However, the production of canvas continued, and their reputation allowed Voiron to maintain this activity under the First Empire due in large part to purchases by the army.

19th century
The nineteenth century saw the decline of the era of canvas in Voiron because of the scarcity of linen and cotton, and because of the disappearance of the sailing navy which had been a large consumer of canvasses. Voiron came to be known for its fine silks, sought after by European royalties. Voiron then benefited from a female workforce, housed at the factory and often poorly paid. Voiron also gained religious influence marked by the 1876 erection of the Saint-Bruno church of neo-Gothic style by a first magistrate. A statue representing the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus, a tribute to Notre-Dame-de-France Puy-en-Velay, was also erected.

20th century
The company Skis Rossignol was founded in 1907 by Abel Rossignol. Entire families of Voiron, along with Italian immigrants who arrived en masse at the beginning of the century, worked in these factories. On the eve of the First World War, the silk-weaving business used nearly 3,000 looms. At the same time, the rise of paper mills on the banks of the Morge, the river crossing the small town, attracted workers to the city. The company Radiall was founded as well and the population of Voiron grew past 15,000.

21st century
Voiron remains a significant economic and administrative center of the department of Isère. Voiron has sought to keep its independence from its much larger neighbor, the Grenoble conurbation. Voiron survived a difficult conversion after the departure of companies Rossignol and Johnson & Johnson. Pays Voironnais is working to attract new jobs aimed at limiting the dormitory phenomenon already affecting the suburbs of Voiron. However, because of the urban sprawl between Voreppe and Voiron, this town has been considered by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) as belonging to the Grenoble-Alpes Métropole since 2010.

Geography
The city is located 25 km northwest of Grenoble and 85 km southeast of Lyon. Voiron is at an altitude of 290 m, on the Morge (a tributary of the Isère).

Sights
The church of St Bruno was built between 1864 and 1873 at the expense of the monks of the Grande Chartreuse. Voiron was the starting-point of the steam tramways to Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, 12 mi (for the Grande Chartreuse), and to Charavines, over 10 mi (for the Lac de Paladru).

The distillery Chartreuse Cellars is a popular tourist destination. It is the longest liqueur cellar in the world. The cellar is open year-round with English guided tours available during June, July, and August.

Economy
Voiron is a manufacturing town, and it contains numerous factories. Companies include: Rossignol (skis), Radiall Connections, Antésite (a liquorice-flavored drink), Chartreuse liquor cellars, Bonnat Chocolatier (since 1884), and Allaman (manufacturing and transporting of petrol tanks).

Education

 * Secondary (high school):
 * Lycée Édouard Herriot
 * Lycée Ferdinand Buisson
 * Lycée agricole La Martelière

Notable people

 * Dantès Dailiang (born 1978), singer-songwriter
 * Christophe Bouchut (born 1966), race driver, 24 Hours of Le Mans winner
 * Mélina Robert-Michon (born 1979), discus thrower
 * Fabien Centonze (born 1996), footballer

Twin towns – sister cities
Voiron is twinned with:
 * 🇮🇹 Bassano del Grappa, Italy
 * 🏴 Droitwich Spa, England, United Kingdom
 * 🇩🇪 Herford, Germany
 * Šibenik, Croatia

title: Voiron


text:
Aleksander Koniecpolski (1620–1659)

Prince Aleksander Koniecpolski (1620–1659) was a Polish nobleman. He became the Grand Standard-Bearer of the Crown in 1641, the Palatine of Sandomierz Voivodeship in 1656, and the Starost of Perejasław, Korsun, Płoskirow and Dolina. He was the son of the famous hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski.

During the Chmielnicki Uprising, he was elected as one of the Regimentarz of the pospolite ruszenie and took part on the losing side of the Battle of Pyliavtsi in 1648.

title: Aleksander Koniecpolski (1620–1659)


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Endymion (Disraeli novel)

Endymion is a novel published in 1880 by Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, the former Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was paid an advance of £10,000 for it. It was the last novel Disraeli published before his death. He had been writing another, Falconet, when he died; it was published, incomplete, after his death.

Background
Like most of Disraeli's novels, Endymion is a romance, although Disraeli took the unusual step of setting it between 1819 and 1859. This meant that the hero of the novel–Endymion Ferrars–had to be a Whig, rather than a Tory. The time period that Disraeli chose was dominated by the Whig party; there would have been little opportunity for a young, rising Tory. Given that, it seems likely that Disraeli chose the time period in order to move a final time in the world in which he grew up and began his ascent.

Plot
William Pitt Ferrars, a rising Tory politician with cabinet ambitions, is disappointed of his hopes by the fall of the Tory ministry of the Duke of Wellington in 1832, and his party's overwhelming defeat in that year's parliamentary election. He retires from his opulent house in Hill Street, London, to the modest country estate of Hurstley; his failure to reenter the government in Sir Robert Peel's brief ministry in 1835, and his inability to secure a parliamentary seat in the subsequent elections, leads his wife to die of sorrow and disillusionment, and ultimately to his own suicide.

He leaves behind him two adolescent children, Endymion and Myra, who are determined to redeem their father's legacy. Endymion has received a clerkship in Somerset House, a government office, and takes lodgings at the home of the Rodneys, former protégés of his parents; at Somerset House he becomes acquainted with fellow clerks Trenchard, Seymour Hicks, and the aspiring but pretentious novelist St. Barbe; Trenchard lays the foundations for his future career by introducing him to the debating club of the politically minded Bertie Tremaine.

In the meantime his sister is hired as a companion to the daughter of Adrian Neuchatel, a great Whig magnate and banker. Myra becomes a favorite member of the household, and her position enables her to introduce Endymion to the high society of the Whig party. Myra herself is wooed and won by Lord Roehampton, secretary of state in the Melbourne ministry. This places her in a position to forward Endymion's career, and she recommends him for private secretary to the Whig cabinet minister Sidney Wilton, an old friend of her father. Her brother distinguishes himself. In the elections of 1841, however, the Whigs are voted out of office, and Endymion loses his position. He compensates for this by getting elected to parliament in a constituency controlled by the Whig Lord Montfort, whose wife Endymion has befriended.

In Parliament, under the guidance of Lord Roehampton, Endymion's makes his mark among the Whig opposition; and when his party returns to power in 1846 he becomes under-secretary of state to Lord Roehampton; when the latter dies of overwork, Endymion resigns rather than serve under his successor. Meanwhile, Prince Florestan, a pretender in exile from his country, whom Endymion knew at Eton, has returned to his country and successfully established himself on his throne. He now offers the widowed Myra (whom he has met at the Neuchatels) the crown as his queen. She accepts. Endymion, devastated at this separation from his sister, finds consolation in the love of Lady Montfort, whose husband has died. Although his party is soon again evicted from government, he is now a prominent member of the out-of-power Whigs, headed by Sidney Wilton; with the fall of the Tory ministry Sidney Wilton becomes Prime Minister, and Endymion his secretary of state; through success in foreign wars and prosperous management of relations with the continent, Endymion makes himself the natural successor to Sidney Wilton. When the latter resigns, Endymion is charged by the queen with the formation of the next government.

Characters
The title character's name is a reference to the shepherd Endymion of Greek mythology, familiar in 19th-century culture as the title of an 1818 John Keats poem among other references. It is explained in the text as a traditional name of his noble family since the time of Charles the First, and is in fact represented historically among English nobles such as Endymion Porter.

It is very like his own autobiography, with his retrospection of English politics woven into the thread of a story. The action and conversations are distributed between characters who had figured in English politics or the fashionable romance of Europe during the last forty years. Endymion is Disraeli in his youth. Zenobia, a queen of fashion, is based on his Lady Blessington with a combination of some other great lady. She was Benjamin Disraeli's first great patroness, who opened the avenue of his wonderful career. Zenobia later retires to the background to give place to Lady Montfort. She is a combination of Lady Blessington and Mrs. Wyndham Lewis (the latter Disraeli married) so we have in Lady Montfort at once the patroness and the wife.

St Barbe, the journalist in " Endymion " is an intended caricature of Thackeray, and Gushy is Dickens. Vigo, a minor character of the novel, is a combination of Poole, the tailor, and George Hudson, the Sunderland railway king, as he was styled in his time. Prince Florestan is probably a sketch of Louis Napoleon in his early days in England. He is constantly presented as a child of destiny wailing for the European revolution of '48 to give him back his throne.

Job Thornberry comes into the story with the Anti-Corn-Law League, representing the remarkable change in English politics which made the Whigs so different from what they were fifty years earlier and which necessitated the passage of Reform Bills even by the Conservative Derby-Disraeli ministries. Job Thornberry may be Richard Cobden; for he certainly has much of Cobden's subject in him. The energetic and capable minister Lord Roehampton is taken to be Lord Palmerston, and Count Ferrol is perhaps Bismarck. Neuchatel, the great banker, is the historical Rothschild; Cardinal Henry Edward Manning figures as the tendentious papist Nigel Penruddock.
 * William Pitt Ferrars, Endymion's father, distinguished Tory politician in 1830s
 * Mrs Ferrars, Endymion's mother
 * Endymion Ferrars
 * Myra Ferrars, Endymion's twin sister, wife of Lord Roehampton, later of Florestan
 * Earl of Roehampton, Secretary of state, prominent Whig politician, and Endymion's patron
 * King Florestan, Endymion's childhood friend, and exiled pretender to a continental throne (presumably France)
 * Berengaria, Lady Montfort, distinguished Whig society lady, Endymion's patroness, later his wife
 * Lord Montfort, eccentric Whig nobleman
 * Count Ferrol, continental statesman
 * Baron Sergius, continental statesman, friend of Florestan
 * The Duke of St Angelo, Florestan's chamberlain
 * Bertie Tremaine, prominent MP, leader of third party in house of commons of 1841; of ambiguous principles
 * Tremaine Bertie, brother of the latter, MP, member of his party
 * Job Thornberry, leader of Anti-Corn-Law League, radical MP
 * Nigel Penruddock, the Archbishop of Tyre, rejected lover of Myra, churchman, Tractarian
 * St. Barbe, vain, envious satirical novelist
 * Trenchard, Whig MP, Endymion's friend
 * Seymour Hicks, social climber, Endymion's friend
 * Mr Rodney, protégé of Pitt Ferrars, Endymion's friend, Tory MP
 * Mrs Rodney, protégée of Lady Ferrars
 * Earl of Beaumaris, tenant of the Rodneys, socially reclusive, prominent Tory politician
 * Lady Beaumaris, sister of Mrs Rodney, prominent Tory society figure in 1840s
 * Zenobia, prominent Tory society figure in 1830s
 * Sidney Wilton, Whig minister, Endymion's patron, ultimately Prime Minister
 * Lord Waldershare, tenant of the Rodneys, eccentric nobleman, Tory MP.

Themes
The novel is full of political lessons and conceits, and its pictures of aristocratic circles, with the semi-ministerial management of English affairs by the queens of fashionable society on behalf of their Endymions, not only expose the romance of Disraeli's own life, but also reveal the things behind the scenes which, perhaps, none so well could have done as this Jewish ex-premier of England in the literary winding up of his strange eventful life. It is this inner view of Disraeli's novel which gives its real significance.

Publication
Internet Archive: Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3. (The author's name appears only on the spine.)

title: Endymion (Disraeli novel)


text:
Honda E engine

The E-series was a line of inline four-cylinder automobile engines designed and built by Honda for use in their cars in the 1970s and 1980s. These engines were notable for the use of CVCC technology, introduced in the ED1 engine in the 1975 Civic, which met 1970s emissions standards without using a catalytic converter.

The CVCC ED1 was on the Ward's 10 Best Engines of the 20th century list.

EA

 * Also see the Japanese Wikipedia entry

The EA-series is a water-cooled 356 cc inline two-cylinder engine replacing the N360's air-cooled 354 cc engine. An SOHC design with a timing belt (replacing the chain used in the N360 engine), the EA was first seen in the 1971 Honda Life. This engine was derived from the air-cooled engine in the Honda CB450 and was adapted for water-cooled application. The displacement was reduced to be in compliance with Japanese kei car legislation that stipulated maximum engine displacement. Bore and stroke were 67x50.6 mm. A version producing 30 PS at 8,000 rpm was installed in the Honda Life, while the Honda Z and the Honda Life Touring (introduced in May 1972) received a twin-carb model with 36 PS at a heady 9,000 rpm.

 * 1971.06-1974 Honda Life
 * 1972.11-1974 Honda Z

EB
The EB series was fitted to the first generation Honda Civic.

 * Displacement 1169 cc
 * Bore & Stroke 70x76 mm
 * compression ratio: 8.6:1
 * Valve Train: SOHC 8-valve
 * design with a 2 barrel carburetor or 1 carburetor.
 * Power: 69 PS 5,500 rpm
 * Torque: 10.2 kgm at 4,000 rpm
 * Max Speed: 155 km/h estimated

Applications:
 * EB2/EB3
 * The EB2 and EB3 displace 1237 cc and different diameter valves in the head. A CVCC version was also developed later, called the "EE".
 * Bore & Stroke 72x76 mm
 * Valve Train: SOHC 8-valve
 * design with a 2 barrel carburetor or 1 carburato
 * Power: 64 PS at 5,000 rpm and
 * Torque: 10.6 kgm at 3,000 rpm
 * EB1
 * 1973- Honda Civic
 * EB2
 * 1974-1979 Honda Civic
 * EB3
 * 1978-1979 Honda Civic

EC
76 PS 5,500 rpm (1979 Civic Van) 11.1 kgm at 3,500 rpm (1979 Civic Van)
 * Displaced 1488 cc
 * Bore & Stroke 74x86.5 mm.
 * compression ratio: 8.1, 8.4 (Van)
 * Valve Train: SOHC 8-valve
 * design with a 2 barrel carburetor.
 * Fel control: electric fuel pump
 * Power: 65 PS 5,500 rpm
 * Torque: 10.5 kgm at 3,000 rpm
 * Oil Capacity: 3.5 L

 * EC
 * 1975-1979 Honda Civic 4 doors
 * 1975-1979 Honda Civic Van (VB)

ED

The ED series introduced the CVCC technology; it is otherwise the same as the contemporary EC engine. It displaced 1488 cc and used an SOHC 12-valve design. Output with a 3 barrel carburetor was 53 PS at 5000 rpm and 9.4 kgm at 3000 rpm.

 * ED1
 * 1975- Honda Civic CVCC
 * ED2
 * 1975- Honda Civic Wagon
 * ED3
 * 1976-1979 Honda Civic CVCC
 * ED4
 * 1976-1979 Honda Civic Wagon

EE
The EE series applied the CVCC technology to the 1237 cc and used an SOHC 12-valve design. It was replaced by the 1.3-liter EJ engine in 1978. The EE engine produces 63 PS at 5500 rpm and 9.5 kgm at 3500 rpm.

 * August 1975-June 1978 Honda Civic CVCC

EF

 * Displaced 1599 cc
 * Bore & Stroke 74x93 mm
 * compression ratio: 8.0:1
 * Valve Train: SOHC 12-valve CVCC
 * design with a 3 barrel carburetor.
 * Fuel control: electric fuel pump
 * Power: 82 PS 5,300 rpm
 * Torque: 12.35 kgm at 3,000 rpm
 * Cast iron block & aluminum cylinder head
 * Six port cylinder head (four intake ports and two exhaust ports)
 * Valve order (IEEIIEEI)
 * Three barrel Keihin carburettor (1976 & 1977 had manual choke, 1978 and up cars received an automatic choke)
 * Point type ignition

USAGE: 1976-1978 Honda Accord CVCC, US market automobiles.

EG
The EG displaced 1598 cc and was an SOHC 8-valve engine with a 2 barrel carburetor. Output was 69 PS @ 5000 rpm and 11.7 kgm @ 3000 rpm.

EG

1976-1978 Honda Accord Non USDM

EH
The water-cooled SOHC two-cylinder EH was first seen installed in the first generation Honda Acty truck introduced in July 1977, and later in the 1985 Honda Today. It was based on one bank of cylinders from the horizontally opposed four used on the Honda Gold Wing GL1000 motorcycle, with which it shared the 72 mm bore. The horsepower rating of the 545 cc 72x67 mm engine was 28 PS at 5,500 rpm, and 4.2 kgm at 4,000 rpm. When installed in the Today, max power was raised to 31 PS at the same revs, and torque at 4.4 kgm, with a compression ratio of 9.5:1.

Applications:
 * 1977.07-1988.05 Honda Acty
 * 1985.09-1988.02 Honda Today

EJ

 * Displaced 1335 cc
 * Bore & Stroke 72x82 mm
 * compression ratio: 7.9:1
 * Valve Train: SOHC 12-valve auxiliary valve CVCC
 * Fuel Control: Electric fuel pump
 * Power: 68 PS 5,500 rpm
 * Torque: 10 kgm at 3,500 rpm
 * Max Speed: 155 km estimated
 * Oil Capacity: 3 L
 * EJ
 * June 1978-July 1979 Honda Civic 1300 (SK/SP)
 * EJ1
 * July 1979 – 1983 Honda Civic CVCC

EK
The EK was an SOHC 12-valve (CVCC) engine, displacing 1751 cc. Output varied (see below) as the engine itself was refined. This was the last CVCC configuration engine manufactured by Honda.

 * Displaced 1751 cc
 * Bore & Stroke 77x94 mm
 * compression ratio: 8.8:1
 * design with a 3 barrel carburetor.
 * Fuel control: electric fuel pump
 * Power: 97 PS 5,500 rpm
 * Torque: 14.3 kgm at 3,000 rpm
 * Cast iron block & aluminum cylinder head
 * Three barrel Keihin carburetor (all were automatic choke)
 * Electronic ignition (Nippon Denso or Tek Electronics)
 * Oil cooler (or provision for this in the block)

USAGE: 1979-1983 Honda Accord CVCC (US market) 1979-1982 Honda Prelude CVCC (US market) 1981-1983 Honda Accord/Vigor (JDM)
 * Cylinder head iterations:
 * Six port cylinder head (4 intake port / 2 exhaust ports) & IEEIIEEI valve order for 1979 & 1980 49 state
 * Eight Port cylinder head (4 intake port / 4 exhaust ports) & IEEIIEEI valve order for 1980 (California only) and 1981 (50 states)
 * Eight Port cylinder head (4 intake port / 4 exhaust ports) & EIEIIEIE valve order from 1982 to end of CVCC production (1985)
 * Power: 6-port output was 73 PS at 4500 rpm and 13 kgm at 3,000 rpm, while the original 8-port head raised this to 76 PS at 4500 rpm and 13.3 kgm at 3000 rpm. The revised 4-port (82 & later) had another slight horsepower increase.

EK9 is not related to the EK engine; EK is also the chassis code for several versions of the sixth generation Honda Civic. EK9 is the chassis code for 1997-2000 Honda Civic Type R.

EL
The EL displaced 1602 cc and was an SOHC eight-valve engine with a two-barrel carburetor. Output in North American configuration is 79 PS at 5,000 rpm and 12.8 kgm at 3,000 rpm.

 * Displaced 1602 cc
 * Bore & Stroke 77x86 mm
 * compression ratio: 8.4:1
 * Valve Train: SOHC 8-valve
 * design with a 2 barrel carburetor.
 * Fuel control: electric fuel pump
 * Power: 73.5 PS SAE at 5,000 rpm
 * Torque: 12.4 kgm at 3,000 rpm
 * Oil Capacity: 3.5 L

 * EL1
 * 1979-1983 Honda Accord Non USDM
 * 1979-1982 Honda Prelude (Australian and Canadian models) Non USDM

EM

 * Displaced 1488 cc
 * Bore & Stroke 74x86.5 mm
 * compression ratio: 8.8:1
 * Valve Train: SOHC 12-valve auxiliar valve CVCC
 * design with a 2 barrel carburetor or 3 barrel carburetor.
 * Fuel control: electric fuel pump
 * Power: 80 PS 5,500 rpm
 * Torque: 12.5 kgm at 3,500 rpm
 * Oil Capacity: 3 L

 * EM1
 * 1980 Honda Civic, 53 PS
 * 1981-1983 Honda Civic, 64 PS

EN
The EN displaced 1335 cc. It had a single overhead cam and eight-valve head, and was fitted to Civics in all markets aside from the United States domestic market. In Europe it also found a home in the Honda Ballade-based Triumph Acclaim. Both block and head are from aluminium.

 * EN1
 * 1980-1983 Honda Civic, single carb, 61 PS
 * EN4
 * 1981-1984 Honda Civic S and Triumph Acclaim, twin carb, 72 PS

EP
The EP was an SOHC 12-valve (CVCC) engine, displacing 1601 cc. It was essentially an EL 1.6 L block with an EK 1.8 L cylinder head.

 * Displaced 1601 cc
 * Bore & Stroke 77x86 mm
 * compression ratio: 8.8:1
 * Valve Train: SOHC 12-valve
 * design with a 3 barrel carburetor.
 * Fel control: electric fuel pump
 * Power: 95 PS 5,300 rpm
 * Torque: 13.5 kgm at 3,000 rpm
 * Oil Capacity: 3.5 L
 * EP
 * 1980-1985 Honda Quintet / Quint (Japan)
 * 1980-1983 Honda Accord 1600 / Vigor 1600

ER
The long-stroke ER four-cylinder engine,
 * sold as a 12-valve CVCC-II in Japan and as a simple eight-valve unit in Europe and Asia,
 * was only used in the AA/VF/FA series City/Jazz from 1981 until 1986.
 * It was available as a normally aspirated carburated version or with Honda's own PGM-FI fuel injection as one of a very few turbocharged engines built by Honda.
 * The Japanese market CVCC engine was also known as COMBAX, an acronym of COMpact Blazing-combustion AXiom. The E-series were tuned for economy, with higher gearing and later on with computer-controlled variable lean burn.
 * As of March 1985, the naturally aspirated ER engines gained composite conrods (a world first in a production car), lighter and stronger these helped further reduce fuel consumption.

The lower powered engines in the commercial "Pro" series had a lower compression, a mechanically timed ignition rather than the breakerless setup found in the passenger cars, and a manual choke. The ER had five crankshaft bearings and the overhead camshaft was driven by a cogged belt.

Carburetor versions used either a single or 2bbl downdraft Keihin. The turbocharger in the Turbo and Turbo II was developed together with IHI, the Turbo II being equipped with an intercooler and a computer-controlled wastegate.

ER1-4 Honda City

ES
The ES displaced 1829 cc. All ES engines were SOHC 12-valve engines. The ES1 used dual sidedraft carburetors to produce 102 PS @ 5500 rpm and 14.4 kgm @ 4000 rpm. The ES2 replaced this with a standard 3 barrel carburetor for 87 PS @ 5800 rpm and 13.7 kgm @ 3500 rpm. Finally, the ES3 used PGM-FI for 102 PS @ 5800 rpm and 14.9 kgm @ 2500 rpm.

 * ES1
 * 1983-1984 Honda Prelude
 * ES2
 * 1984-1985 Honda Accord
 * ES3
 * 1985- Honda Accord SE-i
 * 1981-1985 Honda Vigor VTL-i, VT-i, TT-i (Japan)

ET
The ET displaced 1829 cc and was an SOHC 12-valve engine. ET1 had a single, downdraft carb with 4-1 exhaust manifold. The ET2 with dual sidedraft carburetors and 4-2-1 exhaust manifold produced 100 PS at 5,500 rpm and 14.4 kgm at 4,000 rpm. JDM versions included a triple-barrel carburetted version for the Accord (110 PS at 5,800 rpm) and one with Honda PGM-FI which produced 130 PS at 5,800 rpm.

 * ET
 * 1983-1985 Honda Accord
 * 1983-1987 Honda Prelude

EV
The EV displaced 1342 cc 74mm bore, 78mm stroke and was an SOHC 12-valve design. 3 barrel carburetors produced 61 PS at 5,500 rpm and 10.1 kgm at 3,500 rpm for the US market. The JDM version, featuring 12 valves and auxiliary CVCC valves, produced 80 PS at 6,000 rpm and 11.3 kgm at 3,500 rpm. It was available in all bodystyles of the third generation Honda Civic.

 * EV1
 * 1983-1986 Honda Civic
 * 1983-1986 Honda CRX
 * EV2
 * 1984-1990 Rover 213 71 PS
 * 1983-1986 Honda Civic

EW
The final E-family engine was the EW, presented along with the all new third generation Honda Civic in September 1983. Displacing 1488 cc, the EWs were SOHC 12-valve engines. Early 3 barrel EW1s produced from 58 to 76 hp and 11 to 11.6 kgm. The fuel injected EW3 and EW4 produced 92 PS at 5,500 rpm and 12.8 kgm at 4,500 rpm. The "EW" name was replaced by the Honda D15 series, with the EW (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) renamed to D15A (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) in 1987. It also received a new engine stamp placement on the front of the engine like the "modern D series" (1988+).

 * EW1
 * 1983-1985 Honda Civic/CRX DX (unlabeled)
 * 1983-1986 Honda Civic
 * 1983-1986 Honda Shuttle
 * EW2
 * 1983-1987 Honda Civic non-CVCC (CDM)
 * EW3
 * 1985- Honda Civic/CRX Si non-CVCC
 * EW4
 * 1985-1986 Honda CRX Si non-CVCC
 * 1986 Honda Civic Si non-CVCC
 * EW5
 * similar to the EW1, Fuel injected CVCC 12-Valve 4 Aux valves. A third throttle plate in the throttle body supplied intake air to a 5th injector which powered the CVCC ports, The rated power is different between the Civic and the CR-X: the Civic makes 100 PS at 5800 rpm and 13.2 kgm torque at 4000 rpm, the CR-X made 110 PS at 5800 rpm and 13.8 kgm torque at 4500 rpm. Differences in power are largely down to a more efficient exhaust system on the CR-X it used a factory cast iron 4-2-1 extractor went through a catalytic converter further down the exhaust system and had twin exit tail pipes. The Civic had a short 4-1 design into a catalytic converter and single pipe exit. There was a revised intake manifold for vehicles produced in 1986 and 1987. The EW5 was only available in Japan. It came in the following models: CR-X 1.5i, Civic 25i Hatchback, Ballade CRi Sedan.

ZA
The ZA1 and ZA2 are anomalously named, but closely related to the 1.3-litre EV. With a shorter stroke but the same bore 74x69 mm, this 1187 cc shared most of the EV's characteristics. It was only sold in the third generation Civic in European and various smaller markets where the taxation structure suited this version. The high octane version produces 62 PS at 6000 rpm and 9.0 kgm at 4000 rpm. There was also a low-octane model, producing 55 PS at 6000 rpm.

 * 1984-1987 Honda Civic hatchback (AL)
 * 1984-1987 Honda Civic saloon (AM)

title: Honda E engine


text:
Category:Saitama Prefecture

Saitama Prefecture (埼玉県; Saitama-ken) is a prefecture located in the Kantō region on Honshū island, Japan. The capital is the city of Saitama.

title: Category:Saitama Prefecture


text:
Battle of Lake Okeechobee

The Battle of Lake Okeechobee was one of the major battles of the Second Seminole War. It was fought between 800 troops of the 1st, 4th, and 6th Infantry Regiments and 132 Missouri Volunteers (under the command of Colonel Zachary Taylor), and between 380 and 480 Seminoles led by Billy Bowlegs, Abiaca, and Halpatter Tustenuggee (Alligator) on 25 December 1837. Halpatter Tustenuggee had played a major role in the Dade Battle two years earlier. The Seminole warriors were resisting forced relocation to a reservation in Oklahoma. Though both the Seminoles and Taylor's troops emerged from the battle claiming victory, Taylor was promoted to the rank of brigadier general as a result, and his nickname of "Old Rough and Ready" came mostly due to this battle.

Taylor's command
Major General Thomas Jesup was placed in command of the war in Florida in 1836. In 1837 Jesup planned a major campaign to finally remove the Seminoles from Florida. In November, four columns started sweeping down the peninsula. One column moved down the east coast from the Mosquito Inlet along the Indian River. A second column moved south along the St. Johns River. A third column crossed from Tampa to the Kissimmee River and then proceeded down the river to Lake Okeechobee. The fourth column moved up the Caloosahatchee River. Colonel Taylor was in charge of the third column. Jesup ordered him to set up a depot somewhere near the Peace River. Taylor built Fort Gardner (near Lake Tohopekaliga) on the Kissimmee River. On December 19, Taylor left Fort Gardiner with more than 1,000 men, marching down the Kissimmee towards Lake Okeechobee. As a number of Seminoles surrendered to Taylor's column, he stopped to build Fort Basinger, and left prisoners, guards and sick men there.

Events of the battle
Taylor's army came up to a large hammock with half a mile of swamp in front of it. On the far side of the hammock was Lake Okeechobee. Here the saw grass stood five feet high. The mud and water were three feet deep. Horses would be of no use. It was plain that the Seminole meant this to be the battleground. They had cut the grass to provide an open field of fire and had notched the trees to steady their rifles. Their scouts were perched in the treetops to follow every movement of the troops coming up.

At about half past noon, the sun shining directly overhead and the air still and quiet, Taylor moved his troops squarely into the center of the swamp. His plan was to make a direct attack rather than encircle the Indians. All his men were on foot. In the first line were the 132 Missouri volunteers. As soon as they came within range, the Indians opened with heavy fire. The volunteers suffered heavy casualties, and their commander, Colonel Richard Gentry, was fatally wounded leading them. Despite his wounds, he inspired them for an hour. To escape the kill zone in the swamp, the Missourians pushed into the hammock. The Indians then mounted a counterattack on the remaining soldiers. In the deadly assault some of the soldiers were scalped by the Indians. Gentry had suggested to Taylor before the battle an encirclement strategy which Taylor rejected, charging that Gentry was afraid of a direct confrontation. This could have motivated Gentry to keep charging the Seminole positions even though the original battle plan had the militia retreating at the first sign of enemy fire to re-form behind the regular army lines.

As a result of the additional casualties induced by the continued charge, the Missourians lost cohesion, but continued fighting. The fighting in the saw grass was deadliest for five companies of the Sixth Infantry; every officer but one, and most of their noncommissioned officers were killed or wounded. When that part of the regiment retired a short distance to re-form, they found only four men of these companies unharmed. The 6th Infantry's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander R. Thompson, was among the dead. Lieutenant William H.T. Walker, later a general in the Confederate Army, was wounded in the neck, shoulder, chest, left arm, and also his leg during the battle.

26 U.S. soldiers, including the majority of Taylor's officers and NCOs, were killed, with 112 wounded, against 11 Seminoles killed and 14 wounded. The battle temporarily stopped Taylor's troops from further advancing south and no Seminoles were captured, although Taylor did capture 100 ponies and 600 head of cattle. Years later Seminole chief Holata Micco (also known as Billy Bowlegs) visited Washington and on being escorted through the buildings of the Capitol and viewing many statues and paintings, he suddenly halted before a portrait of Zachary Taylor, grinned and exclaimed: "Me whip!" There are now over four thriving Seminole Indian reservations located in south Florida, one of which is in Okeechobee County (the location of the battle).

Battlefield endangered
The National Trust for Historic Preservation named the site on a list of "America's Most Endangered Historic Places 2000". The state of Florida spent $3.2 million for a 145 acre park. An annual battle reenactment is held to raise money for the State park.

Archaeological investigations carried out at the park by the U.S. National Park Service in 2015 failed to locate any evidence of the 1837 battle. The exact location of the fighting remains unknown.

title: Battle of Lake Okeechobee


text:
Diffusion-limited aggregation

Diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA) is the process whereby particles undergoing a random walk due to Brownian motion cluster together to form aggregates of such particles. This theory, proposed by T.A. Witten Jr. and L.M. Sander in 1981, is applicable to aggregation in any system where diffusion is the primary means of transport in the system. DLA can be observed in many systems such as electrodeposition, Hele-Shaw flow, mineral deposits, and dielectric breakdown.

The clusters formed in DLA processes are referred to as Brownian trees. These clusters are an example of a fractal. In 2D these fractals exhibit a dimension of approximately 1.71 for free particles that are unrestricted by a lattice, however computer simulation of DLA on a lattice will change the fractal dimension slightly for a DLA in the same embedding dimension. Some variations are also observed depending on the geometry of the growth, whether it be from a single point radially outward or from a plane or line for example. Two examples of aggregates generated using a microcomputer by allowing random walkers to adhere to an aggregate (originally (i) a straight line consisting of 1300 particles and (ii) one particle at center) are shown on the right.

Computer simulation of DLA is one of the primary means of studying this model. Several methods are available to accomplish this. Simulations can be done on a lattice of any desired geometry of embedding dimension (this has been done in up to 8 dimensions) or the simulation can be done more along the lines of a standard molecular dynamics simulation where a particle is allowed to freely random walk until it gets within a certain critical range whereupon it is pulled onto the cluster. Of critical importance is that the number of particles undergoing Brownian motion in the system is kept very low so that only the diffusive nature of the system is present.

Brownian tree

A Brownian tree, whose name is derived from Robert Brown via Brownian motion, is a form of computer art that was briefly popular in the 1990s, when home computers started to have sufficient power to simulate Brownian motion. Brownian trees are mathematical models of dendritic structures associated with the physical process known as diffusion-limited aggregation.

A Brownian tree is built with these steps: first, a "seed" is placed somewhere on the screen. Then, a particle is placed in a random position of the screen, and moved randomly until it bumps against the seed. The particle is left there, and another particle is placed in a random position and moved until it bumps against the seed or any previous particle, and so on.

Factors
The resulting tree can have many different shapes, depending on principally three factors:

 * the seed position
 * the initial particle position (anywhere on the screen, from a circle surrounding the seed, from the top of the screen, etc.)
 * the moving algorithm (usually random, but for example a particle can be deleted if it goes too far from the seed, etc.)

Particle color can change between iterations, giving interesting effects.

At the time of their popularity (helped by a Scientific American article in the Computer Recreations section, December 1988), a common computer took hours, and even days, to generate a small tree. Today's computers can generate trees with tens of thousands of particles in minutes or seconds.

These trees can also be grown easily in an electrodeposition cell, and are the direct result of diffusion-limited aggregation.

Artwork based on diffusion-limited aggregation
The intricate and organic forms that can be generated with diffusion-limited aggregation algorithms have been explored by artists. Simutils, part of the toxiclibs open source library for the Java programming language developed by Karsten Schmidt, allows users to apply the DLA process to pre-defined guidelines or curves in the simulation space and via various other parameters dynamically direct the growth of 3D forms.

title: Diffusion-limited aggregation


text:
Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation

The Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) (ශ්‍රී ලංකා ගුවන් විදුලි සංස්ථාව, Shrī Lankā Guvan Viduli Sansthāva, இலங்கை ஒலிபரப்புக் கூட்டுத்தாபனம், Ilangkai Oliparappuk Kūṭṭuttāpaṉam) came into existence on 5 January 1967 when Radio Ceylon became a public corporation. Dudley Senanayake who was the Prime Minister of Ceylon in 1967 ceremonially opened the newly established Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation along with Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa and the Director-General of the CBC, Neville Jayaweera. The first board of Directors of CBC consisted of Mr Neville Jayaweera (CCS), Mr A. L. M. Hashim, Mr Dharmasiri Kuruppu, Mr K.A.G. Perera and Mr Devar Surya Sena. After the first board meeting, it was decided unanimously to appoint the chairman, Mr Jayaweera, as the new Director-General.

Radio Ceylon
The Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC), formerly Radio Ceylon, is the oldest radio station in Asia, and was founded as Colombo Radio in 1925. Edward Harper who was then the Chief Engineer at the Telegraph Department in 1921, was the first person who initiated experimental broadcasts in Ceylon. The first-ever broadcast on an experimental basis took place in 1923. Gramophone music was played from the Ceylon Telegraph Office with the aid of a transmitter built by engineers of the Telegraph Department. The transmitter was built using radio equipment from a captured German submarine. Ceylon began a broadcasting service three years after the launching of broadcasting services in Europe.

Edward Harper who is known as the 'Father of Broadcasting in Ceylon' founded the Ceylon Wireless Club together with British and Sri Lankan radio enthusiasts. Sir Hugh Clifford, the British Governor, spoke to the nation on Colombo Radio for the first time on 16 December 1925. This was a historic occasion. The advent of broadcasting in Sri Lanka places the country alongside Great Britain, the United States of America and Germany, in terms of international broadcasting history.

Radio SEAC
During World War II, the Allied Forces took over radio operations in Colombo and Radio Seac was born. Colombo based (British) announcers, David Jacobs and Desmond Carrington (who joined the BBC after the war) were among those who presented the news and radio programs for the Allied Forces across South-East Asia. When the war was over, Radio Seac was handed back to the Government of Ceylon. This was when the name was changed to Radio Ceylon. The name change heralded a new chapter in broadcasting in South Asia.

Radio Ceylon
Radio Ceylon enjoyed the status 'King of the airwaves' of South Asia in the 1950s and 1960s. Millions of listeners tuned into the radio broadcasts. This was the golden era of Radio Ceylon. Clifford Dodd, an administrator from Australia was brought in under the Colombo Plan. It was Dodd who founded the Commercial Service of Radio Ceylon which was very successful.

Radio Ceylon and the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation produced some of the finest announcers and presenters in the world. Among them are Livy Wijemanne, Vernon Corea, Pearl Ondaatje, Greg Roskowski, Tim Horshington, Claude Selveratnam, Jimmy Bharucha, Thevis Guruge, Chitrananda Abeysekera, A.W. Dharmapala, Karunaratne Abeysekera, H.M. Gunasekera, S.P. Mylvaganam, Gnanam Rathinam, Nihal Bhareti, Leon Belleth, k. mylavaganam and Vijaya Corea Mark Anthony Fernando to name some.

80 Years of Broadcasting
In 2005 the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation celebrated 80 years in the world of broadcasting. This was a historic landmark where broadcasting was concerned a very important chapter for communication in Sri Lanka.

40 Years as a Public Corporation
In 2007 the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation celebrated 40 years as a public broadcasting corporation. With the incorporation in 1967 came the name change to Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation. When the country became a republic in 1972 the station came to be known as the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation.

Re-Launch of the English Commercial Service
The Chairman of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, Hudson Samarasinghe, took the decision in 2008 to re-launch the English Commercial Service. Back in the 1950s and 1960s the Commercial Service of Radio Ceylon was a brand leader and helped the station to rule the airwaves in South Asia. The re-launch commenced on 1 September 2008. The SLBC had earlier allocated more time to BBC regular programmes. More entertainment programmes have been added to the re-vamped English Commercial Service with a view to grabbing a market share of listeners on the island and across the Indian sub-continent.

title: Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation