An Atlas-D rocket in Mercury-Atlas Configuration is on display at Kennedy Space Center.

 

Atlas LV-3B

 

The Atlas LV-3B, Atlas D Mercury Launch Vehicle or Mercury-Atlas Launch Vehicle, was a human-rated expendable launch system used as part of the United States Project Mercury to send astronauts into low Earth orbit. Manufactured by American aircraft manufacturing company Convair, it was derived from the SM-65D Atlas missile, and was a member of the Atlas family of rockets.

 

The Atlas D missile was the natural choice for Project Mercury since it was the only launch vehicle in the US arsenal that could put the spacecraft into orbit and also had a large number of flights to gather data from. But its reliability was far from perfect and Atlas launches ending in explosions were an all-too common sight at Cape Canaveral. Thus, significant steps had to be taken to human-rate the missile and make it safe and reliable unless NASA wished to spend several years developing a dedicated launch vehicle for crewed programs or else wait for the next-generation Titan II ICBM to become operational. Atlas’s stage-and-a-half configuration was seen as somewhat preferable to the two stage Titan in that all engines were ignited at liftoff, making it easier to test for hardware problems during prelaunch checks.

 

Shortly after being chosen for the program in early 1959, the Mercury astronauts were taken to watch the second D-series Atlas test, which exploded a minute into launch. This was the fifth straight complete or partial Atlas failure and the booster was at this point nowhere near reliable enough to carry a nuclear warhead or an uncrewed satellite, let alone a human passenger. Plans to human-rate Atlas were effectively still on the drawing board and Convair estimated that 75% reliability would be achieved by early 1961 and 85% reliability by the end of the year.

 

•General Specifications:

oFunction: Crewed Expendable Launch System

oManufacturer: Convair

oCountry of Origin: United States

•Size:

oHeight: 28.7 meters (94.3 ft)

oDiameter: 3.0 meters (10.0 ft); Width Over Boost Fairing: 4.9 meters (16 ft)

oMass: 120,000 kilograms (260,000 lb)

oStages: 1½

•Capacity:

oPayload to LEO: 1,360 kilograms (3,000 lb)

•Launch History:

oStatus: Retired

oLaunch Sites: CCAFS LC-14

oTotal Launches: 9

oSuccesses: 7

oFailures: 2

oFirst Flight: July 29, 1960

oLast Flight: May 15, 1963

•Boosters:

oNumber of Boosters: 1

oEngines: 2

oThrust: 1,517.4 kilonewtons (341,130 lbf)

oBurn Time: 134 seconds

oFuel: RP-1/LOX

•First Stage:

oDiameter: 3.0 meters (10.0 ft)

oEngines: 1

oThrust: 363.22 kilonewtons (81,655 lbf)

oBurn Time: 5 minutes

oFuel: RP-1/LOX

 

Quality Assurance

 

Aside from the modifications described below, Convair set aside a separate assembly line dedicated to Mercury-Atlas vehicles which was staffed by personnel who received special orientation and training on the importance of the crewed space program and the need for as high quality workmanship as possible. Components used in the Mercury-Atlas vehicles were given thorough testing to ensure proper manufacturing quality and operating condition, in addition components and subsystems with excessive operating hours, out-of-specification performance, and questionable inspection records would be rejected. All components approved for the Mercury program were earmarked and stored separately from hardware intended for other Atlas programs and special handling procedures were done to protect them from damage.

 

Propulsion systems used for the Mercury vehicles would be limited to standard D-series Atlas models of the Rocketdyne MA-2 engines which had been tested and found to have performance parameters closely matching NASA’s specifications.

 

All launch vehicles would have to be complete and fully flight-ready at delivery to Cape Canaveral with no missing components or unscheduled modifications/upgrades. After delivery, a comprehensive inspection of the booster would be undertaken and prior to launch, a flight review board would convene to approve each booster as flight-ready. The review board would conduct an overview of all prelaunch checks, and hardware repairs/modifications. In addition, Atlas flights over the past few months in both NASA and Air Force programs would be reviewed to make sure no failures occurred involving any components or procedures relevant to Project Mercury.

 

The NASA Quality Assurance Program meant that each Mercury-Atlas vehicle took twice as long to manufacture and assemble as an Atlas designed for uncrewed missions and three times as long to test and verify for flight.

 

Systems Modified

 

Abort Sensor

 

Central to these efforts was the development of the Abort Sensing and Implementation System (ASIS), which would detect malfunctions in the Atlas’s various components and trigger a launch abort if necessary. Added redundancy was built in; if ASIS itself failed, the loss of power would also trigger an abort. The system was tested on a few Atlas ICBM flights prior to Mercury-Atlas 1 in July 1960, where it was operated open-loop (MA-3 in April 1961 would be the first closed-loop flight).

 

The Mercury launch escape system (LES) used on Redstone and Atlas launches was identical, but the ASIS system varied considerably between the two boosters as Atlas was a much larger, more complex vehicle with five engines, two of which were jettisoned during flight, a more sophisticated guidance system, and inflated balloon tanks that required constant pressure to not collapse.

 

Atlas flight test data was used to draw up a list of the most likely failure modes for the D-series vehicles, however simplicity reasons dictated that only a limited number of booster parameters could be monitored. An abort could be triggered by the following conditions, all of which could be indicative of a catastrophic failure:

 

•The booster flight path deviated too far from the planned trajectory

•Engine thrust or hydraulic pressure dropped below a certain level

•Propellant tank pressure dropped below a certain level

•The intermediate tank bulkhead showed signs of losing structural integrity

•The booster electrical system ceased operating

•The ASIS system ceased operating

 

Some failure modes such as an erroneous flight path did not necessarily pose an immediate danger to the astronaut’s safety and the flight could be terminated via a manual command from the ground (e.g. Mercury-Atlas 3). Other failure modes such as loss of engine thrust in the first few moments of liftoff required an immediate abort signal as there would be little or no time to command a manual abort.

 

An overview of failed Atlas test flights showed that there were only a few times that malfunctions occurred suddenly and without prior warning, for instance on Missile 6B when one turbopump failed 80 seconds into the launch. Otherwise, most failures were preceded by obvious deviations from the booster’s normal operating parameters. Automatic abort was only necessary in a situation like Atlas 6B where the failure happened so fast that there would be no time for a manual abort and most failure modes left enough time for the astronaut or ground controllers to manually activate the LES. A bigger concern was setting up the abort system so as to not go off when normal, minor performance deviations occurred.

 

Rate Gyros

 

The rate gyro package was placed much closer to the forward section of the LOX tank due to the Mercury/LES combination being considerably longer than a warhead and thus producing different aerodynamic characteristics (the standard Atlas D gyro package was still retained on the vehicle for the use of the ASIS). Mercury-Atlas 5 also added a new reliability feature—motion sensors to ensure proper operation of the gyroscopes prior to launch. This idea had originally been conceived when the first Atlas B launch in 1958 went out of control and destroyed itself after ground crews forgot to power on the gyroscope motors during prelaunch preparation, but it was phased into Atlas vehicles only gradually. One other Atlas missile test in 1961 also destroyed itself during launch, in that case because the gyroscope motor speed was too low. The motion sensors would thus eliminate this failure mode.

 

Range Safety

 

The range safety system was also modified for the Mercury program. There would be a three-second delay between engine cutoff and activation of the destruct charges so as to give the LES time to pull the capsule to safety. The ASIS system could not terminate engine thrust for the first 30 seconds of flight in order to prevent a malfunctioning launch vehicle from coming down on or around the pad area; during this time only the Range Safety Officer could send a manual cutoff command.

 

Autopilot

 

The old-fashioned electromechanical autopilot on the Atlas (known as the “round” autopilot due to the shape of the containers its major components were housed in) was replaced by a solid-state model (the “square” autopilot) that was more compact and easier to service, but it would prove a serious headache to debug and man-rate. On Mercury-Atlas 1, the autopilot system functioned well until launch vehicle destruction a minute into the flight. On Mercury-Atlas 2, there was a fair bit of missile bending and propellant slosh. Mercury-Atlas 3 completely failed and had to be destroyed shortly after launch when the booster did not perform the pitch and roll maneuver. After this debacle, the programmer was recovered and examined. Several causes were proposed including contamination of pins in the programmer or perhaps a transient voltage. The autopilot was extensively redesigned, but Mercury-Atlas 4 still had high vibration levels for the first 20 seconds of launch which led to further modifications. Finally on Mercury-Atlas 5, the autopilot worked perfectly.

 

Antenna

 

The guidance antenna was modified to reduce signal interference.

 

LOX Boil-Off Valve

 

Mercury-Atlas vehicles utilized the boil-off valve from the C-series Atlas rather than the standard D-series valve for reliability and weight-saving reasons.

 

Combustion Sensors

 

Combustion instability was an important problem that needed to be fixed. Although it mostly only occurred in static firing tests of the MA-2 engines, three launches (Missiles 3D, 51D, and 48D) had demonstrated that unstable thrust in one engine could result in immediate, catastrophic failure of the entire missile as the engine backfired and ruptured, leading to a thrust section fire. On Missile 3D, this had occurred in flight after a propellant leak starved one booster engine of LOX and led to reduced, unstable thrust and engine failure. The other two launches suffered rough combustion at engine start, ending in explosions that severely damaged the launch stand. Thus, it was decided to install extra sensors in the engines to monitor combustion levels and the booster would also be held down on the pad for a few moments after ignition to ensure smooth thrust. The engines would also use a “wet start”, meaning that the propellants were injected into the combustion chamber prior to igniter activation as opposed to a “dry start” where the igniter was activated first, which would eliminate rough ignition (51D and 48D had both used dry starts). If the booster failed the check, it would be automatically shut down. Once again, these upgrades required testing on Atlas R&D flights. By late 1961, after a third missile (27E) had exploded on the pad from combustion instability, Convair developed a significantly upgraded propulsion system that featured baffled fuel injectors and a hypergolic igniter in place of the pyrotechnic method, but NASA was unwilling to jeopardize John Glenn’s upcoming flight with these untested modifications and so declined to have them installed in Mercury-Atlas 6’s booster. As such, that and Scott Carpenter’s flight on MA-7 used the old-style Atlas propulsion system and the new variant was not employed until Wally Schirra’s flight late in 1962.

 

Static testing of Rocketdyne engines had produced high-frequency combustion instability, in what was known as the “racetrack” effect where burning propellant would swirl around the injector head, eventually destroying it from shock waves. On the launches of Atlas 51D and 48D, the failures were caused by low-order rough combustion that ruptured the injector head and LOX dome, causing a thrust section fire that led to eventual complete loss of the missile. The exact reason for the back-to-back combustion instability failures on 51D and 48D was not determined with certainty, although several causes were proposed. This problem was resolved by installing baffles in the injector head to break up swirling propellant, at the expense of some performance as the baffles added additional weight reduced the number of injector holes that propellants were sprayed through. The lessons learned with the Atlas program later proved vital to the development of the much larger Saturn F-1 engine.

 

Electrical System

 

Added redundancy was made to the propulsion system electrical circuitry to ensure that SECO would occur on time and when commanded. The LOX fuel feed system received added wiring redundancy to ensure that the propellant valves would open in the proper sequence during engine start.

 

Tank Bulkhead

 

Mercury vehicles up to MA-6 had foam insulation in the intermediate bulkhead to prevent the super-chilled LOX from causing the RP-1 to freeze. During repairs to MA-6 prior to John Glenn’s flight, it was decided to remove the insulation for being unnecessary and an impediment during servicing of the boosters in the field. NASA sent out a memo to GD/A requesting that subsequent Mercury-Atlas vehicles not include bulkhead insulation.

 

LOX Turbopump

 

In early 1962, two static engine tests and one launch (Missile 11F) fell victim to LOX turbopump explosions caused by the impeller blades rubbing against the metal casing of the pump and creating a friction spark. This happened after over three years of Atlas flights without any turbopump issues and it was not clear why the rubbing occurred, but all episodes of this happened when the sustainer inlet valve was moving to the flight-ready “open” position and while running untested hardware modifications. A plastic liner was added to the LOX turbopump to prevent friction rubbing. In addition Atlas 113D, the booster used for Wally Schirra’s flight, was given a PFRT (Pre-Flight Readiness Test) to verify proper functionality of the propulsion system.

 

Pneumatic System

 

Mercury vehicles used a standard D-series Atlas pneumatic system, although studies were conducted over the cause of tank pressure fluctuation which was known to occur under certain payload conditions. These studies found that the helium regulator used on early D-series vehicles had a tendency to induce resonant vibration during launch, but several modifications to the pneumatic system had been made since then, including the use of a newer model regulator that did not produce this effect.

 

Propellant Utilization System

 

In the event that the guidance system failed to issue the discreet cutoff command to the sustainer engine and it burned to propellant depletion, there was the possibility of a LOX-rich shutdown which could result in damage to engine components from high temperatures. For safety reasons, the PU system was modified to increase the LOX flow to the sustainer engine ten seconds before SECO. This was to ensure that the LOX supply would be completely exhausted at SECO and prevent a LOX-rich shutdown.

 

Skin

 

After MA-1 was destroyed in-flight due to a structural failure, NASA began requesting that Convair deliver Atlases with thicker skin. Atlas 10D (as well as its backup vehicle 20D which was later used for the first Atlas-Able flight), the booster used for the Big Joe test in September 1959, had sported thick skin and verified that this was needed for the heavy Mercury capsule. Atlas 100D would be the first thick-skinned booster delivered while in the meantime, MA-2’s booster (67D) which was still a thin-skinned model, had to be equipped with a steel reinforcement band at the interface between the capsule and the booster. Under original plans, Atlas 77D was to have been the booster used for MA-3. It received its factory rollout inspection in September 1960, but shortly afterwards, the postflight findings for MA-1 came out which led to the thin-skinned 77D being recalled and replaced by 100D.

 

Guidance

 

The vernier solo phase, which would be used on ICBMs to fine-tune the missile velocity after sustainer cutoff, was eliminated from the guidance program in the interest of simplicity as well as improved performance and lift capacity. Since orbital flights required an extremely different flight path from missiles, the guidance antennas had to be completely redesigned to ensure maximum signal strength. The posigrade rocket motors on the top of the Atlas, designed to push the spent missile away from the warhead, were moved to the Mercury capsule itself. This also necessitated adding a fiberglass insulation shield to the LOX tank dome so it wouldn’t be ruptured by the rocket motors.

 

Engine Alignment

 

A common and normally harmless phenomenon on Atlas vehicles was the tendency of the booster to develop a slight roll in the first few seconds following liftoff due to the autopilot not kicking in yet. On a few flights however, the booster developed enough rolling motion to potentially trigger an abort condition if it had been a crewed launch. Although some roll was naturally imparted by the Atlas’s turbine exhaust, this could not account for the entire problem which instead had more to do with engine alignment. Acceptance data from the engine supplier (Rocketdyne) showed that a group of 81 engines had an average roll movement in the same direction of approximately the same magnitude as that experienced in flight. Although the acceptance test-stand and flight-experience data on individual engines did not correlate, it was determined that offsetting the alignment of the booster engines could counteract this roll motion and minimize the roll tendency at liftoff. After Schirra’s Mercury flight did experience momentary roll problems early in the launch, the change was incorporated into Gordon Cooper’s booster on MA-9.

 

Launches

 

Nine LV-3Bs were launched, two on uncrewed suborbital test flights, three on uncrewed orbital test flights, and four with crewed Mercury spacecraft. Atlas LV-3B launches were conducted from Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

 

It first flew on July 29, 1960, conducting the suborbital Mercury-Atlas 1 test flight. The rocket suffered a structural failure shortly after launch, and as a result failed to place the spacecraft onto its intended trajectory. In addition to the maiden flight, the first orbital launch, Mercury-Atlas 3 also failed. This failure was due to a problem with the guidance system failing to execute pitch and roll commands, necessitating that the Range Safety Officer destroy the vehicle. The spacecraft separated by means of its launch escape system and was recovered 1.8 kilometers (1.1 mi) from the launch pad.

 

A further series of Mercury launches was planned, which would have used additional LV-3Bs; however these flights were canceled after the success of the initial Mercury missions. The last LV-3B launch was conducted on 15 May 1963, for the launch of Mercury-Atlas 9. NASA originally planned to use leftover LV-3B vehicles to launch Gemini-Agena Target Vehicles, however an increase in funding during 1964 meant that the agency could afford to buy brand-new Atlas SLV-3 vehicles instead, so the idea was scrapped.

 

Mercury-Atlas Vehicles Built and Eventual Disposition

 

•10D—Launched Big Joe 9/14/59

•20D—Backup vehicle for Big Joe. Reassigned to Atlas-Able program and launched 11/26/59.

•50D—Launched Mercury-Atlas 1 7/29/60

•67D—Launched Mercury-Atlas 2 2/21/61

•77D—Original launch vehicle for Mercury-Atlas 3, replaced by Atlas 100D after postflight findings from Mercury-Atlas 1

•88D—Launched Mercury-Atlas 4 9/13/61

•93D—Launched Mercury-Atlas 5 11/29/61

•100D—Launched Mercury-Atlas 3 4/25/61

•103D—Cancelled

•107D—Launched Aurora 7 (Mercury-Atlas 7) 5/24/62

•109D—Launched Friendship 7 (Mercury-Atlas 6) 2/21/62

•113D—Launched Sigma 7 (Mercury-Atlas 8) 10/3/62

•130D—Launched Faith 7 (Mercury-Atlas 9) 5/15/63

•144D—Cancelled, was planned launch vehicle for Mercury-Atlas 10

•152D—Cancelled

•167D—Cancelled

Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

The Forty-Sixth Street Theater survives today as one of the historic theaters that symbolize American theater for both New York and the nation. Built during the mid-1920s, the Forty-Sixth Street was among the half-dozen theaters constructed by the Chanin Organization, to the designs of Herbert J. Krapp, that typified the development of the Times Square/Broadway theater district.

 

Founded by Irwin S. Chanin, the Chanin organization was a major construction company in New York. During the 1920s, Chanin branched out into the building of theaters, and helped create much of the ambience of the heart of the theater district. The Forty-Sixth Street Theater was the organization's first Broadway venture.

 

Herbert J. Krapp, who designed all the Chanins' theaters, was the most prolific architect of the Broadway theater district. Having worked in the offices of Herts & Tallant, premier theater designers of the pre-war period, Krapp went on to design theaters for the two major builders of the post-war era, the Shubert and Chanin organizations.

 

As the Chanins' first Broadway theater, the Forty- Sixth Street incorporated a number of his ideas for the improvement of theater design, including a single entrance for all ticket-holders, and an interior designed in the "stadium" configuration. Krapp designed an exceptionally handsome facade for the Chanins' Broadway debut, featuring a glazed terracotta neo-classical arcade.

 

For half a century the Forty-Sixth Street Theater has served as home to countless numbers of the plays through which the Broadway theater has come to personify American theater, with a special reputation for musical comedy hits. As such, it continues to help define the Broadway theater district, the largest and most famous concentration of legitimate stage theaters in the world.

 

Herbert J. Krapp

 

The character of today's Broadway theater district owes more to architect Herbert J. Krapp (1883-1973) than to any other architect. He designed sixteen of the extant Broadway theaters (almost half the total), fourteen of which are in active theatrical use, as well as five that have been demolished. Despite his enormous output, however, little is known today of his life and work.

 

Herbert Krapp's career coincided with the rise of the Shubert organization as the major force in the New York theater. Upon his graduation from Cooper Union, Krapp joined the office of noted theater architects Henry Herts and Hugh Tallant, who had designed some of the handsomest early twentieth-century theaters in New York, including the Lyceum (1903), New Amsterdam (1902-03), Helen Hayes (1911, demolished), and Longacre (1912-13). According to Krapp's daughter, the partners were becoming increasingly debilitated by morphine addiction, and gradually entrusted Krapp with responsibility for design and office operations. Be that as it may, when the Shuberts next decided to build new theaters, in 1916, they turned to Krapp for designs, and proceeded to commission from him a dozen theaters in Times Square in as many years (1916-1928). Throughout his professional career Krapp remained the preferred Shubert architect. He designed their theaters in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and elsewhere, supervised Shubert theater alterations nationwide, and was even the architect for their private residences.

 

Besides his twelve Shubert theaters, Krapp designed nine other Times Square houses. Six, built between 1924 and 1927, were for the Chanin Construction Company. Only three, the Alvin, the Hammerstein (now the Ed Sullivan), and the Waldorf (demolished) were designed for independent interests. A brilliant acoustician and gifted architect of great invention, Krapp was responsible for scores of theaters throughout New York City and State (including three movie houses in Queens: the Sunnyside in Woodside and the Jackson and the Boulevard in Jackson Heights) and others

 

stretching from Palm Beach to Detroit. His office records document alterations to literally hundreds of theaters across the country.

 

Krapp's Broadway theaters closely reflect the interest and needs of a new breed of theatrical entrepreneur, the large-scale speculative owner/builder. Prior to the rise of the Shuberts as major theater owners, most theaters had been erected for independent impresarios, including Oscar Hammerstein who built the first Times Square theater and whose Victory Theater (1899) still stands on 42nd Street, Daniel Frohman who built the Lyceum (1903), Charles Dillingham who built the Lunt-Fontanne (1910), and David Belasco and John Cort who built the theaters that bear their names (1907 and 1912). At the turn of the century, Klaw and Erlanger's Theatrical Syndicate dominated most of the Times Square theaters, but did not sponsor a unified building campaign as the Shuberts eventually did. Since the Shuberts were building theaters largely as financial ventures, most of their buildings tended to be simpler than those designed for the impresarios who were attempting to draw attention both to their theaters and to themselves.

The theaters that Krapp designed for the Shuberts are relatively restrained on both the exterior and interior, but they reflect Krapp's mastery of theater layout, as well as the general stylistic trends established by the earlier and more elaborate theater designs in the Times Square theater district.

 

Krapp's earliest theaters, the Plymouth (1916-17) and Broadhurst (1917), were built as a pair located immediately to the west of Henry Herts's earlier Shubert pair, the Shubert and Booth. The designs of the Plymouth and Broadhurst echo those of the earlier theaters. Like the Shubert and Booth, Krapp's houses have rounded corners that face towards Broadway (the direction from which most audience members arrived). Each corner is accented by an entrance with a broken pedimented enframement and by an oval cartouche. These forms imitate, in a simplified manner, the ornamental forms on Herts's buildings. In addition, Krapp's theaters are faced with bricks separated by wide, deeply inset mortar joints in a manner favored by Herts. The Plymouth and Broadhurst facades are simpler than their neighbors, but they were clearly designed to complement Herts's theaters and create a unified group of Shubert houses.

 

The Plymouth and Broadhurst are not adorned with a great deal of applied stone or terra cotta. This lack of architectural ornament is typical of Krapp's designs for the Shuberts;5 the facades of these theaters are generally enlivened by diaper-patterned brick and occasionally by the use of ornamental iron bal conies. The use of diaper-patterned brick can be seen on the Plymouth and the Broadhurst, but it is most evident on the Morosco (1917, demolished), Ritz (1921), Ambassador (1921), and the 46th-Street facade of the Imperial (1923). Krapp's use of diaperwork might have been inspired by Herts & Tallant's use of an ornate diaper pattern of terra cotta on their Helen Hayes Theater (1911).

 

After building a large number of new theaters between 1916 and 1923 the Shuberts undertook very little construction in the Times Square area from 1924 through 1927. During these years the Chanin Construction Company emerged as the major theater builder in the area. The Chanins also turned to Krapp for their theater designs. Major New York City builders, the Chanins considered theaters to be sound financial investments from which they could not fail to profit. The six theaters that Krapp designed for

 

the Chanins are more ornate than those he designed for the Shuberts. One reason may be that the Chanins, new to the theater world, decided that their theaters should project an elegant image; another, that as a building company, they were more concerned than the Shuberts about the exterior appearance of their buildings. Still another factor may have the greater availability of money in the middle of the 1920s as compared to the years during and immediately following World War I when most of the Shubert theaters were erected.

 

Krapp's first two theaters for the Chanins, the Forty-Sixth Street (1924) and the Biltmore (1925), are neo-Renaissance style structures with extensive terra-cotta detail that includes rusticated bases, monumental Corinthian pilasters, and ornate cornices and balustrades. Krapp's next commission, the Brooks Atkinson (1926), has a facade with the Mediterranean flavor that came to be favored by the Chanins. Referred to at the time as "modern Spanish" in style6, the Brooks Atkinson is a brick building articulated by three Palladian openings supported by twisted columns. Roundel panels and a Spanish-tiled parapet are additional Spanish forms on the facade. Krapp's largest commission from the Chanins was a trio of theaters, the Golden, Royale, and Majestic, all built between 1926 and 1927 in conjunction with the Lincoln Hotel (now the Milford Plaza Hotel). Like the Brooks Atkinson, these three theaters were described as being "modern Spanish in character." All three were constructed of yellow brick and adorned with areas of decorative terja-cotta pilasters, twisted columns, arches, parapets, and columned loggias.

 

Following his work for the Chanins, Krapp designed three independent houses, all of which were stylistically unusual. The Waldorf (1926, demolished) which stood on West 50th Street was an ornate French neoclassical -style structure; the Alvin (1927, now the Neil Simon) an impressive neo-Federal style red brick building; and the Hammerstein (now the Ed Sullivan) a neo-Gothic theater housed in a tall office building. The latter two were commissioned by theatrical impresarios, hence their more elaborate design as compared to Krapp's work for the Shubert and Chanin theater chains.

 

In 1928 the Shuberts commissioned their final theater from Krapp. The Ethel Barrymore is among Krapp's finest and most unusual designs. The theater is a monumentally scaled structure combining an extremely ornate rusticated Beaux-Arts-style base with a superstructure boldly modeled after the windowed facade of a Roman bath.

 

Like the exteriors of his buildings, Krapp's interiors are stylistically varied, reflecting the design eclecticism of the first decades of the twentieth century. On many occasions the style of the interior has little to do with that of the exterior. Most of the theater interiors designed for the Shuberts have Adamesque style ornament, a style deriving from the neo-Classical designs originated by the eighteenth-century English architect Robert Adam. Krapp's Adamesque interiors display the refined, elegant forms common to the style, and such features as delicate garlands, rosettes, and foliate bands. The "Spanish" theaters that Krapp designed for the Chanins have interior details such as twisted columns, arcades, and escutcheons that match the style of the exteriors. All of Krapp's interiors were designed to create a relaxing and comfortable environment for the theatergoer. The decor of the auditoriums is simple yet elegant, and generally complemented by similarly designed lobbies and lounges.

 

Although Krapp lived to the age of 86, he apparently designed no theaters during the last forty years of his life. Because of the theater glut caused by financial problems during the Depression, theaters ceased being a lucrative architectural specialty. Krapp survived as a building assessor for the City of New York, and turned increasingly to industrial design. A twentieth-century Renaissance man, he supplemented his architectural practice with the patterning of silver- and flatware and especially with his design of mechanical couplings. The theaters he designed in the early decades of this century, however, remain a lasting legacy, and many of his buildings, such as the Majestic, Imperial, Plymouth, and Forty-Sixth Street Theaters, are counted among the most successful and sought-after on Broadway.

 

Chanin's Forty-Sixth Street Theater

 

Chanin's Forty-Sixth Street Theater, built in 1924,* was Irwin Chanin's first venture into the Broadway theater business, and he apparently saw it as an opportunity to put his notions about theaters into physical form. Acquiring a site on West 46th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, Chanin hired Herbert Krapp, whom he knew to have been the architect of the Shuberts' theaters, to design a theater.

 

Recently built theaters had generally been smaller than the large pre-War houses. The Forty-Sixth Street, however, according to the contemporary architectural press:

 

...with a seating capacity of 1,500...is a considerably larger theatre than has been employed in recent years for the production of musical comedies.

 

Smaller theaters had come into vogue in prior decades because of the problems of sight-lines and acoustics of large houses, but the new "stadium" type was "an improvement" in these regards. Krapp laid out the interior of the 46th Street in the stadium-type plan in a manner that Chanin believed would democratize theater seating. The orchestra was raked steeply upwards at the rear, rising over the entrance lobby; there was one large balcony above. All seats were to Jbe entered from the single entrance lobby, whether in the front of the orchestra, the rear ("stadium"), or the balcony.

 

Krapp and Chanin took special care in the design of the theater's exterior. Where Krapp's designs for the Shubert theaters up to that time had had relatively simple brick fronts, Chanin's Forty-Sixth Street Theater was given an elaborate "Renaissance" style brick and terra-cotta facade. Its triple-arched loggia set within a colonnade of five Corinthian pilasters, supporting an architrave and parapet, was adorned with elaborate classical ornament, including theatrical masks.

 

The arrangement of the theater's exterior was considered as novel as that of its interior:

 

The open exits for both the balcony and the orchestra are placed within the building line in an arcade scheme which gives an open exit somewhat protected from the weather and

 

not objectionable from an architectural point of view____

 

the wide marquise which extends nearly the width of the front, furnishes a protection of such length that four automobiles may stand in front of the theatre at one time.

 

(The original marquee, which extended the length of the triple arcade, has

 

been replaced.)

 

That this was Chanin's first theater may explain the unusually elaboratetreatment.

 

The Forty-Sixth Street Theater as a Playhouse

 

The Forty-Sixth Street Theater has had a distinguished history of musical comedy productions. The theater opened on February 7, 1925, with Is Zat So?, a long-running comedy about boxing that moved here from the Thirty-ninth Street Theater. One of its biggest hits came three years later with Good News, by Laurence Schwab and B.G. De Sylva, which ran for 551 performances. Opening in September 1927, it was called the "quintessential musical of the 1920s." Walter Winchell welcomed the show as "flip, fast, furious, free and flamingly festive."^ Hit songs from the show included "Varsity Drag" and "The Best Things In Life Are Free." It was followed in 1929 by Follow Thru, by the same authors, with Jack Haley and Eleanor Powell (401 performances). Described in its program as "a musical slice of country club life," the show included the hit songs "Button Up Your Overcoat" and "My Lucky Star."5 The Forty-Sixth Street Theater rounded out its 1920s roster of shows with Top Speed, starring Ginger Rogers.

 

The first hits of the 1930s at the Forty-Sixth Street Theater were Sweet and Low with Fanny Brice and George Jessel (opened November 17, 1930; 184 performances) and You Said It with Lou Holtz (opened January 19, 1931; 190 performances). She Loves Me Not, by Howard Lindsay, opened on November 20, 1933, and played 367 performances, with John Beal, Burgess Meredith and Polly Walters. The following year, Henry Fonda starred in The Farmer Takes a Wife. After a number of short runs during the later 1930s, Ole Olson and Chic Johnson's Hellzapoppin, one of Broadway's most successful reviews, opened at the Forty-Sixth Street Theater in September of 1938, and played a total of 1,404 performances. It moved on to another theater later in 1938, and in 1939 Cole Porter's Du Barry Was A Lady opened

 

at the Forty-Sixth Street; starring Ethel Merman and Bert Lahr, it played 408 performances.

 

The 1940s at the Forty-Sixth Street Theater opened with another Cole Porter show, Panama Hattie, with Ethel Merman, which played 501 performances. Described as "a brash brassy musical," it was also "the first book musical since the Depression to run more than 500 performances."' Another hit of that decade, Finian's Rainbow, ran 725 performances. One Touch of Venus opened in January 1944, product of an extraordinary collaboration: book by S.J. Perelman and Ogden Nash, lyrics by Nash, and music by Kurt Weill. It was considered among the "most literate and witty of American musicals,"® and ran for 567 performances. In 1948, the unusual collaboration of Allen Jay Lerner and Kurt Weill produced Love Life, starring Nanette Fabray.

 

On November 24, 1950, Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling's Guys and Pol Is opened at the Forty-Sixth Street. Based on a story by Damon Runyon, and directed by George S. Kaufman, the musical about Broadway life went on to play 1,194 performances, and won the New York Drama Critic's Circle Award and six Tony awards. Jean Giraudoux's Ondine opened in 1954, directed by Alfred Lunt and starring Audrey Hepburn, both of whom, along with the set designer, won Tony Awards. Damn Yankees starring Gwen Verdon and Ray Walston, opened in 1955, and played over a thousand performances. Gwen Verdon also starred in New Girl in Town, which opened in 1957 and played 431 performances.

 

The 1960s saw a continuation of major musicals at the Forty-Sixth Street Theater. Frank Loesser's Pulitzer Prize-winning How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying opened in 1961, played over 1400 performances, and won Tony Awards for Robert Morse and Rudy Vallee. In 1965, the Richard Rodgers/Stephen Sondheim musical, Do I Hear a Waltz? opened; 1966 saw the opening of I Do! I Doi, with Robert Preston and Mary Martin; it played 540 performances. The" Tony-Award winning musical 1776, which opened in 1969, starring William Daniels, Howard Da Silva and Ken Howard, ran for 1217 performances.

 

In 1971, a revival of the 1925 hit, No, No, Nanette brought Ruby Keeler back to Broadway to star in her biggest smash, running 855 performances. Clare Booth Luce's The Women played the Forty-Sixth Street in 1973, followed by Raisin, a musical version of Lorraine Hansberry's Ra is in in the Sun that played 847 performances. It was followed by a revival of Noel Coward's Private Lives in 1975, and then Bob Fosse's Chicago, with Jerry Ohrbach, Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera, which played 898 performances. Working, based on Stud Terkel's book, opened in 1978 with Susan Bigelow and Patti Lu Pone, but lasted only 25 performances. It was followed, however, by The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which moved from an off-Broadway house for a long run at the Forty-Sixth Street. Nine, starring Raul Julia, opened at the Forty-Sixth Street theater in May 1982, running until 1984.

 

Description^"

 

The Forty-Sixth Street Theater has a symmetrically-designed, arcaded Renaissance-inspired facade which is wider than it is high and is faced in glazed white brick and terra cotta above a terrazo water table. The rusticated ground floor is punctuated by five openings with sha 11 ow reveals containing: a stage door above terrazo steps at the west, pairs of metal doors leading from the auditorium above terrazo steps, three pairs of cast aluminum and glass doors leading into the box office lobby, and paired metal doors leading to a service alley. Wood display boxes flank the auditorium doors. The base terminates in a simple cornice. A modern marquee with signs extends out above the three center openings. The facade is dominated by a triple two-story arcade. The arches with console-bracket keystones are flanked by Corinthian pilasters with capitals containing swans, all executed in terra cotta. This trabeated arcade in turn is flanked by brick paneled wall sections, framed by identical Corinthian pilasters.

 

These brick wall panels are adorned by terra-cotta swags and terra-cotta panels with theatrical masks. An electrical sign with the name of the theater extends from the eastern wall section. A wrought-iron railing extends along the base of the arcade; the designcomplements the design of the railing on the fire stair which is set within the arcade. The brick wal1 behind the arcade is enhanced by decorative terra-cotta panels with lyres, bellf lowers, and swags. The facade is terminated by a ful 1 entablature with a frieze of pane 1 s alternating with rinceaux and shields, and a terra-cotta modillioned cornice. This supports a terra-cotta urn-adorned parapet of three blind lattice motif bays flanked on the extremes by bays containing Roman shields and fo 1 iation in low relief. A secondary brick parapet with a terra-cotta coping rises behind.

 

The seven-story stagehouse is at the west of the main theater facade. Faced with wire-cut buff brick above a terrazo water table, the upper stories are flanked by brick pilasters. These floors have four window openings per floor; the windows have two-over-two iron sash. At the ground floor terrazo steps provide access to a stage door and large doors for stage property access and removal. The elevation is terminated by a modillioned sheetmetal roof cornice with Adamesque detail.

 

Conclusion

 

The Forty-Sixth Street Theater survives today as one of the historic playhouses that symbolize American theater for both New York and the nation. One of the group of theaters constructed for the Chanin Organization during the 1920s, it helped shape the character of the Broadway theater district. Designed for the Chanins by Herbert J. Krapp, the most prolific architect of the Broadway theater district, the Forty-Sixth Street represents a typical and important aspect of the nation's theatrical history. Its facade is an exceptionally handsome design, based on the neo-classical sources which inspired so many of Herbert Krapp's Broadway theaters.

 

For half a century the Forty-Sixth Street Theater has served as home to countless numbers of the plays through which the Broadway theater has come to personify American theater. As such, it continues to help define the Broadway theater district, the largest and most famous concentration of legitimate stage theaters in the world.

 

- From the 1987 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

I knew when I saw the unusal configuration of the bridge that I had found an interesting ship, I was not disappointed..

 

Built in 1971 for Pacific Far East Line as SS Thomas E Cuffe, a LASH (Lighter Aboard SHip) design. Converted to a container ship in 78 by APL, and renamed SS President Hoover. Bought by Matson in 96 and renamed Lihue, she sailed until laid up in 2012. Not sure when she was brought back into service.

 

Gross tonnage:30,877 tons

Summer DWT:39,276 tons

Length:240 m

Beam:31 m

Draught:9.7 m

Build year:1971

Builder:Avondale Shipyard New Orleans La, U.s.a.

A look around the Piazza del Duomo in Siena, mainly to look at Siena Cathedral (Duomo di Siena) but there was other buildings around the square and some sculptures to admire!

  

Piazza del Duomo in Siena flanks the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta with an "L" shape and with an ideal continuation in the missing nave of the "New Cathedral", today Piazza Jacopo della Quercia. In addition to the famous religious building, there is the museum complex of Santa Maria della Scala .

 

The square is located at the top of the hill of Santa Maria, near the oldest part of the Roman city, the Castelvecchio . The birth of the religious center can be referred, hypothetically and circumstantially, to the seventh century or so (although it can not be excluded that the hill hosted a sort of more ancient acropolis ), when the episcopal see and the cathedral were moved there from a place unspecified of Castelvecchio. The entire apiscopis pit was in fact included in the first circle of the early medieval walls , which passed more or less along the current via del Fosso di Sant'Ansano, that is on the back of the Santa Maria della Scala building .

 

With the construction of the Duomo , from the eleventh century, the square began to have the current configuration, which became mostly definitive only in the seventeenth century, when the ancient bishop's palace (eleventh century) was demolished, freeing the right flank of the cathedral, while on the northern side was demolished the loggia that connected the old Canonica to the Duomo itself.

  

The extraordinary façade of the Duomo visually dominates the square, with the light that illuminates it for most of the day without shadows from the surrounding buildings, which are however closely calibrated. It was built in the lower part between 1285 and 1296 by Giovanni Pisano in Gothic style with rayonnant influences, and in the upper part by Camaino di Crescentino and finished in 1317 . The steps that lift the cathedral are concluded in a proportionate platform that is the base of the monument, on which are located marble, in correspondence of the main entrances marble (today copies of the originals) representing the ceremonies of the initiation of Nastagio di Gaspare , datable to 1450 .

 

At the corners of the staircase two Lupe with the marble twins on columns are respectively works by Giovanni Pisano and Urbano da Cortona , both admitted to the nearby Museo dell'Opera Metropolitana and replaced by copies. The right side of the building, the one that gives onto the square, is simpler, standing out the only Door of Forgiveness adorned with a bas-relief of the Madonna and Child by Donatello (also in copy).

 

The bell tower , with white and black bands, was built by incorporating part of the ancient tower of the Bisdomini, towards the end of the thirteenth century.

 

The opposite side of the cathedral façade is occupied by the former hospital of Santa Maria della Scala , which owes its name to the steps of the Cathedral. Founded by the same canons to give hospitality to the pilgrims, assist the poor, the sick and welcome orphan children, it was one of the largest and most important structures of this kind in Tuscany between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Its prestige is reflected today in the rich decoration of the complex, which in the meantime became a museum. Inside there are only a small part of the works of art owned by the hospital (many are in the National Gallery ), but sufficient to give an idea of ​​the ancient splendor. It also houses the National Archaeological Museum (in the basement) and the original pieces of the Fonte Gaia , both by Jacopo della Quercia and the nineteenth-century reconstruction by Tito Sarrocchi .

 

The north side of the square is occupied by the Archbishop's Palace , which today has an eighteenth-century facade, but camouflaged by the use of the Gothic-Sienese style of the fourteenth century. Here, up to the middle of the seventeenth century, the Canons and the rector of the Opera were seated, while the archbishop , as already mentioned, lived in a palace that was leaning against the right side of the cathedral.

  

The main facade of Siena Cathedral.

 

Siena Cathedral

 

Siena Cathedral (Italian: Duomo di Siena) is a medieval church in Siena, Italy, dedicated from its earliest days as a Roman Catholic Marian church, and now dedicated to the Assumption of Mary.

 

Previously the episcopal seat of the Diocese of Siena, from the 15th century the Archdiocese of Siena, it is now that of the Archdiocese of Siena-Colle di Val d'Elsa-Montalcino.

 

The cathedral itself was originally designed and completed between 1215 and 1263 on the site of an earlier structure. It has the form of a Latin cross with a slightly projecting transept, a dome and a bell tower. The dome rises from a hexagonal base with supporting columns. The lantern atop the dome was added by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The nave is separated from the two aisles by semicircular arches. The exterior and interior are constructed of white and greenish-black marble in alternating stripes, with addition of red marble on the façade. Black and white are the symbolic colors of Siena, etiologically linked to black and white horses of the legendary city's founders, Senius and Aschius.

  

The façade of Siena Cathedral is one of the most fascinating in all of Italy and certainly one of the most impressive features in Siena. Each of the cardinal points (west, east, north, and south) has their own distinct work; by far the most impressive of these is the west façade. Acting as the main entryway to the Duomo proper, it boasts three portals (see Portal (architecture)); the central one is capped by a bronze-work sun.

 

Built in two stages and combining elements of French Gothic, Tuscan Romanesque architecture, and Classical architecture, the west façade is a beautiful example of Sienanise workmanship. Work began on the lower part around 1284. Built using polychrome marble, the work was overseen by Giovanni Pisano whose work on the Duomo’s façade and pulpit was influenced by his father Nicola Pisano.

 

The lower portion of the façade is designed from Giovanni's original plans. Built in Tuscan Romanesque style it emphasizes a horizontal unity of the area around the portals at the expense of the vertical bay divisions. The three portals, surmounted by lunettes, are based on Giovanni Pisano’s original designs, as are much of the sculpture and orientation surrounding the entrances. The areas around and above the doors, as well as the columns between the portals, are richly decorated with acanthus scrolls, allegorical figures and biblical scenes.

 

Giovanni Pisano was able to oversee his work until about 1296 when he abruptly left Siena, reportedly over creative differences with the Opera del Duomo, the group that oversaw the construction and maintenance of the Siena cathedrals. Pisano's work on the lower façade was continued under the direction of Camaino di Crescentino, but a number of changes were made to the original plan. These included raising the façade due to the raising of the nave of the church and the instillation of a larger rose window based on designs by Duccio di Buoninsegna and commissioned by the city of Siena. Work on the west façade came to an abrupt end in 1317 when the Opera del Duomo redirected all efforts to the east façade.

Upper façade

 

There is debate as to when work on the upper façade was completed. Most scholars agree that it was finished sometime between 1360 and 1370, though when it began again is not known. The work continued to use Pisano's plans for the façade with some adaptations under the direction of Giovanni di Cecco. Di Cecco preferred more elaborate designs, most likely inspired by the Orvieto Cathedral. The façade needed to be much higher than foreseen as the nave had, once again, been raised.

 

The changes were probably needed to accommodate the raised nave and di Cecco's more elaborate design scheme, heavily influenced by French Gothic architecture, caused the apparent division of the upper portion of the cathedral. Most noticeably the pinnacles of the upper portion do not continue from the columns flanking the central portal as they normally would in such cathedrals. Instead they are substantially offset, resulting in a vertical discontinuity which is uncommon cathedrals of the time as it can lead to structural weakness. To adjust for this imbalance, the towers on each side of the cathedral were opened by adding windows, reducing the weight they needed to support. The upper portion also features heavy Gothic decoration, a marked contrast to the simple geometric designed common to Tuscan Romanesque architecture.

Façade sculpture

 

While most of the sculpture decorating the lower level of the lavish façade was sculpted by Giovanni Pisano and assistant depicting prophets, philosophers and apostles, the more Gothic statuary adorning the upper portion—including the half-length statues of the patriarchs in the niches around the rose window—are works of later, unattributed, sculptors. Almost all the statuary adorning the cathedral today are copies. The originals are kept in the Crypt of the Statues in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.

 

Three large mosaics on the gables of the façade were made in Venice in 1878. The large central mosaic, the Coronation of the Virgin, is the work of Luigi Mussini. The smaller mosaics on each side, Nativity of Jesus and Presentation of Mary in the Temple, were made by Alessandro Franchi.

 

The bronze central door is a recent addition to the cathedral, replacing the original wooden one. The large door, known as the Porta della Riconoscenza, was commissioned in 1946 near the end of the German occupation of Siena. Sculpted by Vico Consorti and cast by Enrico Manfrini, the scenes on the door represent the Glorification of the Virgin, Siena’s patron saint.

 

On the left corner pier of the façade is a 14th-century inscription marking the grave of Giovanni Pisano. Next to the façade stands a column with a statue of the Contrade Lupa, a wolf breast-feeding Romulus and Remus. According to local legend Senius and Aschius, sons of Remus and founders of Siena, left Rome with the statue, stolen from the Temple of Apollo in Rome.

  

statues

Wiki

 

The Arc is located on the right bank of the Seine at the centre of a dodecagonal configuration of twelve radiating avenues. It was commissioned in 1806 after the victory at Austerlitz by Emperor Napoleon at the peak of his fortunes. Laying the foundations alone took two years and, in 1810, when Napoleon entered Paris from the west with his bride Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria, he had a wooden mock-up of the completed arch constructed. The architect, Jean Chalgrin, died in 1811 and the work was taken over by Jean-Nicolas Huyot. During the Bourbon Restoration, construction was halted and it would not be completed until the reign of King Louis-Philippe, between 1833 and 1836, by the architects Goust, then Huyot, under the direction of Héricart de Thury. On 15 December 1840, brought back to France from Saint Helena, Napoleon's remains passed under it on their way to the Emperor's final resting place at the Invalides.[8] Prior to burial in the Panthéon, the body of Victor Hugo was exposed under the Arc during the night of 22 May 1885.

 

The sword carried by the Republic in the Marseillaise relief broke off on the day, it is said, that the Battle of Verdun began in 1916. The relief was immediately hidden by tarpaulins to conceal the accident and avoid any undesired ominous interpretations[citation needed]. On 7 August 1919, Charles Godefroy successfully flew his biplane under the Arc.[9] Jean Navarre was the pilot who was tasked to make the flight, but he died on 10 July 1919 when he crashed near Villacoublay while training for the flight.

 

Following its construction, the Arc de Triomphe became the rallying point of French troops parading after successful military campaigns and for the annual Bastille Day Military Parade. Famous victory marches around or under the Arc have included the Germans in 1871, the French in 1919, the Germans in 1940, and the French and Allies in 1944[10] and 1945. A United States postage stamp of 1945 shows the Arc de Triomphe in the background as victorious American troops march down the Champs-Élysées and U.S. airplanes fly overhead on 29 August 1944. After the interment of the Unknown Soldier, however, all military parades (including the aforementioned post-1919) have avoided marching through the actual arch. The route taken is up to the arch and then around its side, out of respect for the tomb and its symbolism. Both Hitler in 1940 and de Gaulle in 1944 observed this custom.

 

By the early 1960s, the monument had grown very blackened from coal soot and automobile exhaust, and during 1965–1966 it was cleaned through bleaching.

 

In the prolongation of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, a new arch, the Grande Arche de la Défense, was built in 1982, completing the line of monuments that forms Paris's Axe historique. After the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, the Grande Arche is the third arch built on the same perspective.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

The Supermarine Spitfire was a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and other Allied countries before, during and after World War II. Many variants of the Spitfire were built, using several wing configurations, and it was produced in greater numbers than any other British aircraft. It was also the only British fighter produced continuously throughout the war.

 

The Spitfire was designed as a short-range, high-performance interceptor aircraft by R. J. Mitchell, chief designer at Supermarine Aviation Works, which operated as a subsidiary of Vickers-Armstrong from 1928. Mitchell pushed the Spitfire's distinctive elliptical wing designed by Beverley Shenstone to have the thinnest possible cross-section, helping give the aircraft a higher top speed than several contemporary fighters, including the Hawker Hurricane. Mitchell continued to refine the design until his death in 1937, whereupon his colleague Joseph Smith took over as chief designer, overseeing the Spitfire's development through its multitude of variants and many sub-variants. These covered the Spitfire in development from the Merlin to Griffon water-cooled inline engines, the high-speed photo-reconnaissance variants and the different wing configurations.

 

One exception was the Spitfire Mk. X: it was the only variant powered by a radial engine, and it looked quite different from its sleek Merlin-powered brethren. Early in its development, the Merlin engine's lack of fuel injection meant that Spitfires and Hurricanes, unlike the Bf 109E, were unable to simply nose down into a steep dive. This meant a Luftwaffe fighter could simply "bunt" into a high-power dive to escape an attack, leaving the Spitfire behind, as its fuel was forced out of the carburetor by negative "g". An alternative engine was to solve this issue. Another factor that suggested an air-cooled engine were theatres of operations in the Far East, primarily India: the hot and humid climate was expected to be a severe operational problem for the liquid-cooled Merlin. As a further side effect a radial engine was expected to be easier to maintain under these conditions than the Merlin.

 

The project of a radial-powered Spitfire variant was eventually launched in late 1940. The choice for the power unit fell on a Bristol Taurus II 14-Cylinder engine, which had an appreciable small diameter, was available in ample numbers and had about the same power output as the early Merlin variants used in the Spitfire Mk. I and II (1.030 hp/740kW). In order to save time and keep the radial engine variant as close as possible to the Spitfire V design, the production type of that era. The new type’s structure and fuselage were only adapted to a minimum to allow the bulkier power unit and its periphery to be taken. The fuselage was widened in front of the cockpit section, a new engine mount was integrated and the Merlin’s radiator bath and respective piping were removed. The oil cooler under the port wing was retained, though, and the Taurus engine was from the start outfitted with dust filters, so that all resulting Spitfire Mk. Xs left the factory tropicalized. Like the Spitfire Mk. V, different wing armaments were available, e.g. an “A” wing with eight .303 in machine guns and a “B” wing with two 20 mm cannon and four machine guns.

 

The first Spitfire Mk. Xs, finally outfitted with a more powerful Taurus VI engine, were delivered to homeland RAF units for evaluation from May 1941 onwards. From the start, the radial-powered Spitfire proved to be inferior to the Merlin-powered variants - even to the early Mk. Is – and they were no match to the modern German fighters, especially at high altitude. As a consequence many Mk. Xs received clipped wing tips for better roll characteristics at low altitude (receiving an additional “L.F.” designation), but this did not significantly improve the type’s overall mediocre performance. Only a few Mk. Xs were actually employed by front line units, most were quickly relegated to training units. Later production aircraft were immediately shipped to the Far East or to units in Northern Africa, where they could be used more effectively.

A few machines were also delivered to Egypt (30), the Netherlands (12 for the East Indies NL-KNIL, which eventually ended up in RAAF service) and Turkey (24). In 1942, many machines still based in Great Britain were handed over to the USAAF, being either used for USAAF pilot and conversion training, or they were allocated to the Northern Africa invasion force during Operation Torch.

 

Since the Taurus-powered Spitfire turned out to be quite ineffective (it was no good either in the fighter or in an alternative ground attack role and 20 mph slower than the comparable Mk. V), production was already stopped in late 1942 after 353 aircraft. At the same time, the Spitfire Mk. IX with a much more powerful Merlin engine entered service, and all resources were immediately allocated to this more potent fighter variant and the idea of the Spitfire with a radial engine was ultimately dropped. Since the Taurus-powered type was quickly phased out of frontline service, the designation was later re-used for a pressurized high-altitude photo reconnaissance variant of the Spitfire, the PR.X, of which only 16 machines were built.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: one pilot

Length: 29 ft 6 in (9.00 m)

Wingspan: 32 ft 2 in (9.80 m)

Height: 11 ft 5 in (3.86 m)

Wing area: 242.1 ft2 (22.48 m²)

Airfoil: NACA 2213 (root)

NACA 2209.4 (tip)

Empty weight: 5,065 lb (2,297 kg)

Loaded weight: 6,622 lb (3,000 kg)

Max. takeoff weight: 6,700 lb (3,039 kg)

 

Powerplant:

1× Bristol Taurus VI 14-Cylinder sleeve valve radial engine, 1.130 hp (830 kW)

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 350 mph (312 kn, 565 km/h)

Combat radius: 410 nmi (470 mi/756 km)

Ferry range: 991 nmi (1,135 mi/1,827 km)

Service ceiling: 36,500 ft (11,125 m)

Rate of climb: 2,535 ft/min (12.9 m/s)

Wing loading: 27.35 lb/ft2 (133.5 kg/m²)

Power/mass: 0.22 hp/lb (0.36 kW/kg)

 

Armament:

2× 20 mm Hispano Mk II with 60 RPG

4× .303 in Browning Mk II machine guns with 350 RPG

  

The kit and its assembly:

My third contribution to the “RAF Centenary” Group Build at whatifmodelers.com, and the next one in chronological order. This one was spawned by the simple thought of “What would a Spitfire with a radial engine look like…?”. I have seen this stunt done in the form of a Fw190/Spitfire kitbash – nice result, but it did IMHO just not look like a “real” Spitfire with a radial engine, rather like an Fw 190 with elliptical wings. And the fact that I had already successfully transplanted a Centaurus engine onto a P-51 airframe made me feel positive that the stunt could be done!

 

Consequently, the conversion was pretty straightforward. The basis is a Revell 1:72 Spitfire VB (1996 mold), which was – except for the nose section – taken OOB. A simple, nice kit, even though it comes with some flaws, like a depression at the rear of the wing/fuselage intersection and the general need for PSR – not much, but I expected a better fit for such a relatively young mold?

 

For the engine, I used a personal replacement favorite, the cowling and the engine block from a Mitsubishi A6M2 “Zero” (Hasegawa). The Nakajima Sakae radial engine has a relatively small diameter, so that it serves well as a dummy for the compact Bristol Taurus engine – a replacement I have already used for a radial-powered Westland Whirlwind. The other benefit of the small diameter is that it is relatively easy to blend the round front end into the oval and very slender fuselage of the early Spitfire airframe. This was realized through massive body sculpting from scratch with 2C putty, widening the area in front of the cockpit and expanding its width to match the cowling – I guess that real life engineers would have followed a similar, simple path.

 

Since the radial engine would not need a radiator, I simple omitted this piece (cut out from the single piece lower wing half) and faired the respective underwing area over with a piece of styrene sheet and PSR. The asymmetrical oil cooler was retained, though. The propeller is a replacement from the scrap box, with a smaller diameter spinner and more slender blades which better suit the open cowling.

 

Since the Taurus had its best performance at low altitudes, I used the Revell kit’s OOB option of clipped wing tips – a move that makes the aircraft look much faster, esp. with the new, deeper nose section.

  

Painting and markings:

I did not want classic RAF markings, but still keep the model well within the Centenary GB confines. The original plan had been a classic Dark Green/Ocean Grey livery, which all Spitfire’s in USAAF service and based in the UK received. But I rather wanted to create a frontline aircraft, operated during Operation Torch in late 1942/early 1943 with American roundels – and the grey/green look would not look plausible on a machine taking part in the North African campaign. In fact, any Spitfire with American roundels I found that was used in North Africa carried the RAF Tropical Scheme in Dark Earth/Middle Stone. And, AFAIK, during Operation 'Torch' all British aircraft received American markings in the hope that the Vichy French, who were anti-British due to them bombing their ships in 1940, would switch to the allied cause. They were supposed to think that the Americans would be invading, not British troops as well. So I eventually switched to the classic Tropical Scheme (using Humbrol 29 and Modelmaster 2052 as basic tones), and it does not look bad at all - even though the yellow trim around the roundels does not stand out as much as on a Grey/Green aircraft.

 

Typically, the RAF codes were retained, as well as – at least during the early phases of Operation Torch – the RAF fin flash. A little personal twist is the pale blue (Humbrol 23, Duck Egg Blue) underside of the aircraft, instead of the typical Azure Blue. The rationale behind is that the Tropical Scheme was originally designed with Sky undersides, and the blue shades were later modifications after initial field experience.

The red spinner is a typical Northern Africa marking, and found on many 5th FS aircraft.

 

The interior (cockpit, landing gear wells) was painted with RAF Cockpit Green (Modelmaster), while wheels and struts became light grey.

 

As a standard procedure, the kit received a light black ink wash and a post shading treatment.

 

The decals were puzzled together from various sheets and sources, the design benchmark was a real USAAF Spitfire Vb from Operation Torch, though. The code letters were taken from an Xtradecal sheet, the roundels come from a Carpena Spitfire sheet, even though I placed American markings in all six positions – the roundels without yellow trim under the wings were taken from a Hobby Boss F6F sheet.

The serial number comes from the Revell kit’s OOB sheet, because it fits perfectly into the kit’s intended time frame. The nose art comes from a P-38 sheet (PrintScale) – not a typical feature for an RAF Spitfire, but a frequent personal decoration among USAAF machines during Operation Torch (e.g. on P-40s).

The Allied yellow ID markings on the wings’ leading edges, which were typically carried by Operation Torch Spitfires, too, were created with generic yellow decal sheet (TL Modellbau), while the maroon machine gun nozzle covers are part of Revell’s OOB sheet.

 

Finally, the kit received some soot stains around gun and exhaust nozzles, and was finally sealed with matt acrylic varnish.

  

A bold experiment, and it turned out well. The Zero’s cowling has the perfect diameter for this transplant, and the scratch-sculpted new front fuselage section blends well with the new engine – the whole thing really looks intentional! I am just not certain if the resulting aircraft still deserves the “Spitfire” designation? Even though only the engine was changed, the aircraft looks really different and has a Ki-43ish aura? I guess that a dark green livery and some hinomaru would also look great and pretty plausible?

 

The 3-cylinder (fan-configuration) Dual-Over-Head-Cam (DOHC) engine has all cylinders above the center line, but uses a master rod and 2 articulating rods like those used in a radial engine. Each cylinder has two valves (one for intake and one for exhaust) and the camshafts are belt driven 1:2 off of the crankshaft. Two camshafts operate the valves in each cylinder head. One camshaft operates the intake valves and the other the exhaust valves, thus “dual overhead cams.”

 

See More Schillings Engines at: www.flickr.com/photos/15794235@N06/sets/72157650830753031/

 

See More Three Cylinder Engines at: www.flickr.com/photos/15794235@N06/sets/72157651691030122/

 

See More Radial Engines at: www.flickr.com/photos/15794235@N06/sets/72157636169553994/

 

See Our Model Engine Collection at: www.flickr.com/photos/15794235@N06/sets/72157602933346098/

 

Visit Our Photo Sets at: www.flickr.com/photos/15794235@N06/sets

 

Courtesy of Paul and Paula Knapp

Miniature Engineering Museum

www.engine-museum.com

Velos Designwerks has just released an inventory update for Fall 2016. Check out their Fall wheel lineup below with their respective fitment sizes and color options. If you have any questions regarding size or the order process, feel free to contact Vivid Racing at 1-480-966-3040. You can also v...

 

www.vividracing.com/blog/announcing-new-products-specials...

Check out my blog: marciabeckett.blogspot.com

The baseline 4x4 configuration of the SMTV family, the Mk401A short bed is the mobile and versatile vehicle ready to move all types of cargo across any sort of terrain you can throw at it.

 

Features include opening doors and top hatch, a cab capable of seating 2 minifigs with body armor and headgear, foldable gunner’s bench, turning front wheels, a center-pivoting rear axle, and spare tire with lift arm.

 

As with my other builds, this is made with all purchasable parts and can be built in real life.

 

If you're interested in this build, a file can be found here:

www.bricklink.com/v3/studio/design.page?idModel=230422

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

The Supermarine Spitfire was a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and other Allied countries before, during and after World War II. Many variants of the Spitfire were built, using several wing configurations, and it was produced in greater numbers than any other British aircraft. It was also the only British fighter produced continuously throughout the war.

 

The Spitfire was designed as a short-range, high-performance interceptor aircraft by R. J. Mitchell, chief designer at Supermarine Aviation Works, which operated as a subsidiary of Vickers-Armstrong from 1928. Mitchell pushed the Spitfire's distinctive elliptical wing designed by Beverley Shenstone to have the thinnest possible cross-section, helping give the aircraft a higher top speed than several contemporary fighters, including the Hawker Hurricane. Mitchell continued to refine the design until his death in 1937, whereupon his colleague Joseph Smith took over as chief designer, overseeing the Spitfire's development through its multitude of variants and many sub-variants. These covered the Spitfire in development from the Merlin to Griffon water-cooled inline engines, the high-speed photo-reconnaissance variants and the different wing configurations.

 

One exception was the Spitfire Mk. X: it was the only variant powered by a radial engine, and it looked quite different from its sleek Merlin-powered brethren. Early in its development, the Merlin engine's lack of fuel injection meant that Spitfires and Hurricanes, unlike the Bf 109E, were unable to simply nose down into a steep dive. This meant a Luftwaffe fighter could simply "bunt" into a high-power dive to escape an attack, leaving the Spitfire behind, as its fuel was forced out of the carburetor by negative "g". An alternative engine was to solve this issue. Another factor that suggested an air-cooled engine were theatres of operations in the Far East, primarily India: the hot and humid climate was expected to be a severe operational problem for the liquid-cooled Merlin. As a further side effect a radial engine was expected to be easier to maintain under these conditions than the Merlin.

 

The project of a radial-powered Spitfire variant was eventually launched in late 1940. The choice for the power unit fell on a Bristol Taurus II 14-Cylinder engine, which had an appreciable small diameter, was available in ample numbers and had about the same power output as the early Merlin variants used in the Spitfire Mk. I and II (1.030 hp/740kW). In order to save time and keep the radial engine variant as close as possible to the Spitfire V design, the production type of that era. The new type’s structure and fuselage were only adapted to a minimum to allow the bulkier power unit and its periphery to be taken. The fuselage was widened in front of the cockpit section, a new engine mount was integrated and the Merlin’s radiator bath and respective piping were removed. The oil cooler under the port wing was retained, though, and the Taurus engine was from the start outfitted with dust filters, so that all resulting Spitfire Mk. Xs left the factory tropicalized. Like the Spitfire Mk. V, different wing armaments were available, e.g. an “A” wing with eight .303 in machine guns and a “B” wing with two 20 mm cannon and four machine guns.

 

The first Spitfire Mk. Xs, finally outfitted with a more powerful Taurus VI engine, were delivered to homeland RAF units for evaluation from May 1941 onwards. From the start, the radial-powered Spitfire proved to be inferior to the Merlin-powered variants - even to the early Mk. Is – and they were no match to the modern German fighters, especially at high altitude. As a consequence many Mk. Xs received clipped wing tips for better roll characteristics at low altitude (receiving an additional “L.F.” designation), but this did not significantly improve the type’s overall mediocre performance. Only a few Mk. Xs were actually employed by front line units, most were quickly relegated to training units. Later production aircraft were immediately shipped to the Far East or to units in Northern Africa, where they could be used more effectively.

A few machines were also delivered to Egypt (30), the Netherlands (12 for the East Indies NL-KNIL, which eventually ended up in RAAF service) and Turkey (24). In 1942, many machines still based in Great Britain were handed over to the USAAF, being either used for USAAF pilot and conversion training, or they were allocated to the Northern Africa invasion force during Operation Torch.

 

Since the Taurus-powered Spitfire turned out to be quite ineffective (it was no good either in the fighter or in an alternative ground attack role and 20 mph slower than the comparable Mk. V), production was already stopped in late 1942 after 353 aircraft. At the same time, the Spitfire Mk. IX with a much more powerful Merlin engine entered service, and all resources were immediately allocated to this more potent fighter variant and the idea of the Spitfire with a radial engine was ultimately dropped. Since the Taurus-powered type was quickly phased out of frontline service, the designation was later re-used for a pressurized high-altitude photo reconnaissance variant of the Spitfire, the PR.X, of which only 16 machines were built.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: one pilot

Length: 29 ft 6 in (9.00 m)

Wingspan: 32 ft 2 in (9.80 m)

Height: 11 ft 5 in (3.86 m)

Wing area: 242.1 ft2 (22.48 m²)

Airfoil: NACA 2213 (root)

NACA 2209.4 (tip)

Empty weight: 5,065 lb (2,297 kg)

Loaded weight: 6,622 lb (3,000 kg)

Max. takeoff weight: 6,700 lb (3,039 kg)

 

Powerplant:

1× Bristol Taurus VI 14-Cylinder sleeve valve radial engine, 1.130 hp (830 kW)

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 350 mph (312 kn, 565 km/h)

Combat radius: 410 nmi (470 mi/756 km)

Ferry range: 991 nmi (1,135 mi/1,827 km)

Service ceiling: 36,500 ft (11,125 m)

Rate of climb: 2,535 ft/min (12.9 m/s)

Wing loading: 27.35 lb/ft2 (133.5 kg/m²)

Power/mass: 0.22 hp/lb (0.36 kW/kg)

 

Armament:

2× 20 mm Hispano Mk II with 60 RPG

4× .303 in Browning Mk II machine guns with 350 RPG

  

The kit and its assembly:

My third contribution to the “RAF Centenary” Group Build at whatifmodelers.com, and the next one in chronological order. This one was spawned by the simple thought of “What would a Spitfire with a radial engine look like…?”. I have seen this stunt done in the form of a Fw190/Spitfire kitbash – nice result, but it did IMHO just not look like a “real” Spitfire with a radial engine, rather like an Fw 190 with elliptical wings. And the fact that I had already successfully transplanted a Centaurus engine onto a P-51 airframe made me feel positive that the stunt could be done!

 

Consequently, the conversion was pretty straightforward. The basis is a Revell 1:72 Spitfire VB (1996 mold), which was – except for the nose section – taken OOB. A simple, nice kit, even though it comes with some flaws, like a depression at the rear of the wing/fuselage intersection and the general need for PSR – not much, but I expected a better fit for such a relatively young mold?

 

For the engine, I used a personal replacement favorite, the cowling and the engine block from a Mitsubishi A6M2 “Zero” (Hasegawa). The Nakajima Sakae radial engine has a relatively small diameter, so that it serves well as a dummy for the compact Bristol Taurus engine – a replacement I have already used for a radial-powered Westland Whirlwind. The other benefit of the small diameter is that it is relatively easy to blend the round front end into the oval and very slender fuselage of the early Spitfire airframe. This was realized through massive body sculpting from scratch with 2C putty, widening the area in front of the cockpit and expanding its width to match the cowling – I guess that real life engineers would have followed a similar, simple path.

 

Since the radial engine would not need a radiator, I simple omitted this piece (cut out from the single piece lower wing half) and faired the respective underwing area over with a piece of styrene sheet and PSR. The asymmetrical oil cooler was retained, though. The propeller is a replacement from the scrap box, with a smaller diameter spinner and more slender blades which better suit the open cowling.

 

Since the Taurus had its best performance at low altitudes, I used the Revell kit’s OOB option of clipped wing tips – a move that makes the aircraft look much faster, esp. with the new, deeper nose section.

  

Painting and markings:

I did not want classic RAF markings, but still keep the model well within the Centenary GB confines. The original plan had been a classic Dark Green/Ocean Grey livery, which all Spitfire’s in USAAF service and based in the UK received. But I rather wanted to create a frontline aircraft, operated during Operation Torch in late 1942/early 1943 with American roundels – and the grey/green look would not look plausible on a machine taking part in the North African campaign. In fact, any Spitfire with American roundels I found that was used in North Africa carried the RAF Tropical Scheme in Dark Earth/Middle Stone. And, AFAIK, during Operation 'Torch' all British aircraft received American markings in the hope that the Vichy French, who were anti-British due to them bombing their ships in 1940, would switch to the allied cause. They were supposed to think that the Americans would be invading, not British troops as well. So I eventually switched to the classic Tropical Scheme (using Humbrol 29 and Modelmaster 2052 as basic tones), and it does not look bad at all - even though the yellow trim around the roundels does not stand out as much as on a Grey/Green aircraft.

 

Typically, the RAF codes were retained, as well as – at least during the early phases of Operation Torch – the RAF fin flash. A little personal twist is the pale blue (Humbrol 23, Duck Egg Blue) underside of the aircraft, instead of the typical Azure Blue. The rationale behind is that the Tropical Scheme was originally designed with Sky undersides, and the blue shades were later modifications after initial field experience.

The red spinner is a typical Northern Africa marking, and found on many 5th FS aircraft.

 

The interior (cockpit, landing gear wells) was painted with RAF Cockpit Green (Modelmaster), while wheels and struts became light grey.

 

As a standard procedure, the kit received a light black ink wash and a post shading treatment.

 

The decals were puzzled together from various sheets and sources, the design benchmark was a real USAAF Spitfire Vb from Operation Torch, though. The code letters were taken from an Xtradecal sheet, the roundels come from a Carpena Spitfire sheet, even though I placed American markings in all six positions – the roundels without yellow trim under the wings were taken from a Hobby Boss F6F sheet.

The serial number comes from the Revell kit’s OOB sheet, because it fits perfectly into the kit’s intended time frame. The nose art comes from a P-38 sheet (PrintScale) – not a typical feature for an RAF Spitfire, but a frequent personal decoration among USAAF machines during Operation Torch (e.g. on P-40s).

The Allied yellow ID markings on the wings’ leading edges, which were typically carried by Operation Torch Spitfires, too, were created with generic yellow decal sheet (TL Modellbau), while the maroon machine gun nozzle covers are part of Revell’s OOB sheet.

 

Finally, the kit received some soot stains around gun and exhaust nozzles, and was finally sealed with matt acrylic varnish.

  

A bold experiment, and it turned out well. The Zero’s cowling has the perfect diameter for this transplant, and the scratch-sculpted new front fuselage section blends well with the new engine – the whole thing really looks intentional! I am just not certain if the resulting aircraft still deserves the “Spitfire” designation? Even though only the engine was changed, the aircraft looks really different and has a Ki-43ish aura? I guess that a dark green livery and some hinomaru would also look great and pretty plausible?

 

How to browse the web anonymously with Google Chrome

 

If you would like to use this photo, be sure to place a proper attribution linking to xmodulo.com

A very rare shot from about 1953, maybe 1954.

 

That's an M1A1 Carbine in the back, probably in original configuration and seemingly without the later-added bayonet lug on the upper band. All the original M1A1 Carbines were by Inland, albeit there's no proof this one is still the original carbine in that wood.

 

French Army archives.

Henry Parohl miniaturized almost every configuration of internal combustion engine that was invented, including this Wankel (Mazda type) rotary engine. It is a four-cycle engine that burns gasoline with oil mixed in for lubrication. The tank sits above the engine and the fuel is gravity fed into carburetor’s float bowl (cylindrical tank next to the carburetor. The float bowl retains a steady level of fuel and maintains constant pressure for the fuel available to the carburetor. The spark for the ignition is provided by an external battery and coil.

 

See More Henry Parohl Engines at: www.flickr.com/photos/15794235@N06/sets/72157634219050453/

 

See Our Model Engine Collection at: www.flickr.com/photos/15794235@N06/sets/72157602933346098/

 

Visit Our Photo Sets at: www.flickr.com/photos/15794235@N06/sets

 

Courtesy of Paul and Paula Knapp

Miniature Engineering Museum

www.engine-museum.com

Keep designs underwent a significant change in the 12th century when square configurations gave way to more rounded forms. But at Chateau Gaillard, Richard the Lionheart’s donjon is in a shape of its own. Its exterior walls are sloped outward. At the front they join and project forward at a sharp angle. This unique form makes it more resistant to projectiles. On the opposite side, the keep backs onto a sheer cliff, making any approach from this side virtually impossible. Inside, Richard I’s last line of defence is a mere eight metres in diameter. The current point of entry is believed to date from a later period, as the original door would have almost certainly been positioned above ground and reached by a ladder or stairway. With no evidence of a fireplace, well, or latrine, it appears that this particular keep was built exclusively for defence.

 

Battle Castle is an action documentary series starring Dan Snow that is now airing on History Television and is scheduled to premiere on Discovery Knowledge in the UK in Spring 2012 and on various BBC-affiliated channels in the near future.

 

For the latest air dates, Like us on Facebook (www.battlecastle.com/facebook) or follow us on Twitter (www.twitter.com/battlecastle)

 

This show brings to life mighty medieval fortifications and the epic sieges they resist: clashes that defy the limits of military technology, turn empires to dust, and transform mortals into legends.

 

Website: www.battlecastle.tv/

 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/battlecastle

 

YouTube: www.youtube.com/battlecastle

 

Flickr: www.flicker.com/battlecastle

 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/battlecastle

   

Castles conjure thoughts of romantic tales, but make no mistake, they are built for war.

 

Dover: Prince Louis' key to England. Malaga: the Granadans final stronghold. And Crac des Chevaliers: Crown Jewel of Crusader castles. Through dynamic location footage and immersive visual effects, Battle Castle reveals a bloody history of this epic medieval arms race.

 

As siege weapons and technology become more ruthless, the men who design and built these castles reply ... or perish. Follow host Dan Snow as he explores the military engineering behind these medieval megastructures and the legendary battles that became testaments to their might.

 

Each episode will climax in the ultimate test of the castle's military engineering -- a siege that will change the course of history. Which castles will be conquered and which will prevail? You'll have to watch to find out.

 

But the journey doesn't end there --in fact, it's just beginning. Battle Castle extends into a multi-platform quest, taking us deep into the secret world of medieval warfare and strategy. Become the ultimate 'Castle Master'. Stay tuned for more on the Battle Castle experience.

Chelsea, Manhattan

 

These modest rowhouses at 145-147 Eighth Avenue are a pair of highly intact 3 1/2 story Federal style houses constructed 1827 for owner Aaron Dexter, a dry goods merchant, who retained ownership of the property until 1846.

 

At the time of its completion they were situated between Greenwich Village and Chelsea. They have continuously housed both residential tenants and businesses, reflecting the evolving commercial character of Eighth Avenue. Over the course of centuries, the original storefront configuration of the ground floor has had several alterations, most notably the historic 1940 arcaded shop front.

 

These row houses are intact above its storefront and exhibits all of the attributes of Federal style houses of the era. The building has a steeply pitched roof with double dormer windows, shares a party wall and central chimney with its neighbor, and a façade clad in Flemish bond brickwork. The windows on the second and third floors have flat stone lintels and sills. No. 145, together with 147 Eighth Avenue is among the rare extant significantly intact Federal style houses with a commercial ground floor that have survived north of 14th Street.

 

Early History of the Site

 

Prior to the arrival of European fur traders and the Dutch West India Company, Manhattan and much of the modern-day tri-state area were populated by bands of Lenape Indians. The Lenape traveled from one encampment to another with the seasons. Fishing camps along the river were occupied in the summer and inland camps were used during the fall and winter to harvest crops and hunt. In 1626, Dutch West India Company Director Peter Minuit “purchased” the island from the Lenape for sixty guilders worth of trade goods. Under the Dutch, the area along this portion of the Hudson River shoreline, the current west side of midtown Manhattan, was divided into a series of large farms, which continued through the 18th century. In the 19th century, the area was described as a largely rural space of market gardens, and estates.

 

During the early 19th century, a vast portion of the area was under the ownership of George Rapelje, son of one of the earliest Dutch settlers of New York, Joris Rapelje. George Rapelje purchased the tract from James Rivington in 1790.2 Rivington according to the 1790 census owned eight slaves. The tract was roughly bounded by 18th Street to the north, 16th Street to the south, Fitzroy Road (Seventh Avenue) to the east, and Tenth Avenue to the west. The Rapelje family owned slaves. George Rapelje mentioned owning two slaves and recalled a man named Shadrach that his family owned in his narratives.

 

In 1825, the entire population of New York numbered 166,000 and very few people lived north of 14th Street.4 Gradually however, the west side of Manhattan began attracting new residents, many of them new immigrants looking for less expensive places to live. In May 1825, George Rapelje’s grandson - also named George - and his wife Susanna began to sell sections of farm land as development tracts.5

 

The neighborhood of Chelsea was once a village in Manhattan, in the 18th and 19th centuries the island consisted of a series of small villages, that later, all became an indistinguishable part of the metropolis. No. 145 Eighth Avenue sits in a small area situated between Greenwich Village to the south, the then-suburb of Chelsea to the north and Paisley Place to the east. Today this area is widely considered to be a part of the neighborhood of Chelsea.

 

Chelsea

 

Captain Thomas Clarke, veteran of the French and Indian Wars, built a house on a hill overlooking the Hudson, and called it Chelsea---in reference to London’s Royal Chelsea Hospital for old soldiers. The family resided here until fire destroyed the building a short time later. The house was rebuilt by his wife, who lived there until her death in 1802, when the building became the property of her grandson, Clement Clarke Moore, who expanded his estate from 19th Street to 24th Street, from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River.7 Clement Clarke Moore, whose father Benjamin Moore was president of Columbia College, received an advanced degree there in 1801. He inherited the estate in 1809, living the life of the landed gentleman, enjoying his extensive property, and dabbling in politics through the writing of several political pamphlets, as well as the first American-produced lexicon of the Hebrew language. The owner of a large estate, Moore held slaves at this time.

 

Flourishing domestic and foreign trade brought prosperity and population growth to New York. The population grew from 124,000 in 1820 to 203,000 in 1830. To accommodate this growth, Chelsea’s isolation as a small village ended by 1835, as detached mansions on separate estates were developed with many new, smaller homes. Moore began opening streets and avenues through his Chelsea property, and used covenants and agreements to control the plans and appearance of new houses.8 Moore sought and achieved a pleasing variety of stylistic, detail within a harmonious uniformity of building dimensions, materials, quality of construction, and relations of buildings to each other and to the streetscape. Later covenants gave a detailed list of prohibited uses, including "any kind of manufacturing, trade or business whatever which may in any ways be noxious to the neighboring inhabitants." Still later, the covenant would prohibit the use of a building for "what is generally termed a community or tenement house.”9

 

By 1830 a community had developed near the General Theological Seminary, around Chelsea Square, including many tenants of Clement Moore.10 The seminary was growing and began to add more buildings. They started a Sunday school for local children, and in 1831 St. Peter’s Church was organized. Clement Moore was a major contributor to St. Peter’s new building, which was constructed in 1836-7. From 1831­1840 more than 500,000 immigrants came to New York; many settled in Chelsea, and were generally of British descent.11

 

During the boom years of the early 1830s development started moving north in Manhattan at an unprecedented pace. It was temporarily stopped by the Panic of 1837, but continued again by the early 1840s. Huge numbers of people were moving to the city and speculators began to build long rows of townhouses for well-to-do businessmen.12 As the population increased, commercial activity moved into previously residential areas, forcing residential growth northward. This was the beginning of major development in Chelsea.

 

As Chelsea developed in the 1840s, it appears that the character of the neighborhood changed from block to block. The Hudson Railroad laid tracks along 10th and 11th Avenues (in 1847), bringing light industry to the area. Factories were locating west of 10th Avenue and those who worked in them settled in tenements nearby. Gradually more and more of the marshy land west of 10th Avenue was filled in, creating more inexpensive land that became home to many of the city’s recent immigrants, including a large group of Irish workers. The city’s first stagecoach line began in 1838 and ran on Broadway from South Ferry to 23rd Street and 9th Avenue, increasing Chelsea’s accessibility. Large estate houses began to give way to smaller homes built along the newly-opened streets.

 

Although much of Chelsea was developed with an eye toward wealthy and middle-class families, they did not stay long in the area and less-affluent, often Irish-Catholic families took their places.13 A quote from a local newspaper in 1855 stated: “Recent neighborhood changes had not helped make Chelsea the court end of town. Tongues very different from English were heard on its streets.”14

 

During much of the 20th century, the area became less affluent. With the construction of Pennsylvania Station just to the north, more factories and warehouses located nearby and residential units were taken over by less fortunate residents.

 

Eighth Avenue

 

Although Eighth Avenue has different names at different points in Manhattan, it is one uninterrupted span of road. The New York Commissioners adopted a plan that established a street and avenue grid system in 1811. It was not until 1835, however, that the avenues were regulated and extended northward to 155th Street. Eighth Avenue was one of the first avenues under construction; its first section was completed in 1816. This section was initially intended to connect with Hudson Street and run to the Hudson River, however, the Commissioners decided Eighth Avenue would extend from Greenwich Lane to Old Road at 121st Street; it would later be extended approximately to the Harlem River.

 

As parts of northern Manhattan developed Eighth Avenue became one of the major thoroughfares to the commercial part of the city, allowing citizens that had moved to other parts of the island easy access to jobs and other commercial interests.17 Eighth Avenue developed as a commercial center for the middle west side of Manhattan and was considered the middle west side's "Main Street." During the early 1900s the section of Eighth Avenue between 17th and 23rd Streets was considered “The Bowery of the West Side; because, after dark it was one of the liveliest and noisiest streets in town.”18

 

Construction, 19th Century Ownership and Tenancy of the 145 Eighth Avenue House19

 

In 1827, dry goods merchant Aaron Dexter purchased two lots north of 17th Street.20

 

Dexter constructed 145 Eighth Avenue in 1827-28 and conducted business there for close to twenty years before selling the property in 1846.21 No. 145 Eighth Avenue was built for commercial as well as residential use. Over the years, the property changed hands several times.22 According to census records, there is no evidence that Dexter was ever a slave owner. In 1846 the property was acquired by Elizabeth Montgomery. Dr. C. Dixon Varley purchased the property in 1852. He was a graduate of New York University Medical School, treasurer of the Alumni Association, and a founding member of the Church of the Holy Apostles (Protestant Episcopal). While it is not known whether or not Dr. Varley practiced medicine here, he owned the property for thirty-five years, and upon his death in April of 1887, the property went to his heirs and remained in the family until 1925.23

 

From the 1850s to the present, 145 Eighth Avenue was rented to a variety of tradesmen and laborers and their families. As noted by Elizabeth Blackmar in her book Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850, these households often included lodgers who helped pay the rent.24 From 1850 until 1870 it was the address of the studio of renowned portraitist and photographer Fernando Dessaur.25 Another photographer named Roya also rented studio space here in the 1930s.26

 

Later History

 

There has been a steady stream of commercial tenants housed in the ground-floor storefront of 145 Eighth Avenue. The original owner operated a shoe store well into the 1840s; Murray’s Shoes occupied the ground floor from 1929 to 1937; Sundial Shoes from 1938 to 1949.27 The earliest known images of the house are a 1937 photograph by an unknown photographer28 and the c.1940 tax photograph. At that time, the red brick building was strikingly similar to the house-shops of the early nineteenth century.

 

In 1931 Oscar Hanpachian acquired this property, but later lost it to foreclosure. It is listed as his address however, well into the late 1960s. Harry ZaZula leased the property in 1940 and purchased the property in 1944.29 A New York City Buildings Department application was filed in 1940 to alter the storefront. Mr. ZaZula is listed as the lessee and the arcaded shop front is credited to this period.30 He and his wife Anna owned the property until 1975.

 

No. 145 Eighth Avenue contains an historic arcaded shop front, which was typically found in upscale shops along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The arcaded shop front was first introduced in 1925 at the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. This new configuration increased the linear amount of show window by recessing the entrance and linking the resulting exterior passageway with display windows.31 The increase in the popularity of the arcaded shop front was fueled by retail businesses trying to attract middle-class buyers, whose tastes for luxury items increased due to a booming economy and expanded European travel. The arcaded shop front was well suited to mass merchandizing establishments, the window shopper could peruse potential purchases from the passage, away from street, yet protected from the elements. Several different type of businesses exploited this display configuration, including booksellers, shoe stores, perfumers, cosmeticians, and beauticians.32

 

Federal Style Rowhouses in Manhattan

 

As the city of New York grew in the period after the Revolution, large plots of land in Manhattan were sold and subdivided for the construction of groups of brick-clad houses. Their architectural style has been called “Federal” after the new republic, but in form and detail they continued the Georgian style of Great Britain. Federal style houses were constructed from the Battery as far north as 23rd Street between the 1790s and 1830s.

 

The size of the lot dictated the size of the house: typically each house lot was 20 or 25 feet wide by 90 to 100 feet deep, which accorded with the rectilinear plan of New York City, laid out in 1807 and adopted as the Commissioners’ Plan in 1811. The rowhouse itself was as wide as the lot, and 35 to 40 feet deep. This allowed for a stoop and small front yard or areaway, and a fairly spacious rear yard, which usually contained a buried cistern to collect fresh water and the privy.

 

During the early 19th century, several houses were often constructed together, sharing common party walls, chimneys, and roof timbering to form a continuous group. The houses were of load-bearing masonry construction or modified timber-frame construction with brick-clad front facades. With shared structural framing and party walls, each house in a row was dependent on its neighbor for structural stability.

 

With the increasing availability of pattern books, such as Asher Benjamin’s American Builders Companion (published in six editions between 1806 and 1827), local builders had access to drawings and instructions for exterior and interior plans and details. Federal style rowhouses usually had a three-bay facade with two full stories over a high basement and an additional half story under a peaked roof with the ridge line running parallel to the front facade. (Very modest houses were sometimes two bays wide, while grander houses had three full stories, and could be up to five bays wide). The front (and sometimes rear) facade was usually clad in red brick laid in the Flemish bond pattern, which alternated a stretcher and a header in every row. This system allowed the linking of the more expensive face brick with the cheaper, rougher brick behind. Walls were usually two “wythes,” or eight inches, thick. Because brick was fabricated by hand in molds (rather than by machine), it was relatively porous. To protect the brick surface and slow water penetration, facades were often painted.

 

The planar quality of Federal style facades was relieved by ornament in the form of lintels, entrances, stoops with iron railings, cornices, and dormers. Doorway and window lintels, seen in a variety of types (flat, incised or molded), were commonly brownstone. The most ornamental feature was the doorway, often framed with columns and sidelights and topped with a rectangular transom or fanlight, and having a single wooden paneled door. The entrance was usually raised and approached by a stoop – a flight of brownstone steps placed to one side of the facade – which created a basement level below the parlor floor. Commercial structures retained the simple detailing but with minor variations. The raised entry was usually eliminated in favor of a ground story entrance which provided access to residential accommodations at the upper stories and ground story shop for customer convenience. Window openings at the parlor and second stories were usually the same height (the size sometimes diminished on the third story) and were aligned and the same width from story to story. The wood-framed sash was double-hung and multi-light (typically six-over-six). Shutters were common on the exterior, a wooden box cornice with a molded fascia extended across the front along the eave, which carried a built-in gutter. A leader head and downspout that drained onto the sidewalk extended down the facade on the opposite side from the doorway. Pedimented or segmental dormers on the front roof slope usually had decorative wood trim, and the top sashes were often arched with decorative muntins. Typically, the roof was covered with continuous wood sheathing over the rafters and clad in slate.

 

Significant remaining features of the modest 21-foot-wide and 3-1/2-story rowhouse at 145 Eighth Avenue characteristic of the Federal style are its brick cladding, fenestration pattern on the second story, simple brownstone lintels and sills, peaked roof, molded cornice, and pedimented dormer. Given the lack of a raised basement and stoop, it is likely that there was originally a shop on the ground story, common on such modest houses in this period and vicinity.

 

The earliest known depiction of the house is a c. 1937 photograph; at that time the building had a version of the current ground-story configuration with flanking display window, recessed central entrance, and a secondary entrance to the left to the residential floors. Despite some alterations, 145 Eighth Avenue, notable singly and as part of a pair along with 147 Eighth Avenue, is among the relatively rare surviving and significantly intact Manhattan buildings of the Federal style period. In particular, it is a very rare surviving modest Federal style rowhouse of the 3-1/2-story, 3­bay, double-dormers and peaked-roof type, with a commercial ground story. Its survival is particularly noticeable on a commercial thoroughfare north of 14th Street. 34

 

Description: 145 Eighth Avenue

 

The modest 21-foot-wide 3 and 1/2 story row house at 145 Eighth Avenue retains characteristics of the Federal style: Flemish bond brick cladding, side entrance and evenly-spaced second-and third-floor windows with simple stone sills, and a steeply pitched roof with two dormer windows. Given the lack of a raised basement and stoop and its location on a historically busy thoroughfare it is likely that there was originally a shop on the ground floor. The current appearance shows the historic 1940 configuration.

 

The ground floor storefront has a tripartite division including a deeply recessed central store entrance with a single wood-and-glass door with transom reached by a passage-way from the street. Flanking angled display windows that run the depth of the passage-way, feature seamless glazing and metal casing. The left side culminates in a protruding hexagonal display case. Both glass display cases rest on concrete and glazed metal bulkheads, with non-historic metal basement access doors in front of the northern display window.

 

The floor of the passage-way is clad in alternating light and dark terra­cotta colored glazed tile, outlined in the darker tile. The entrance to the upper floors at the southern bay is deeply inset within a molded wood reveal. The wood and multi-light door sits on a single stone step and is topped by a denticulated wood cornice and a stained glass transom. The pediment above the door has been removed. A continuous canvas box awning runs the entire width at the top of the ground floor. Throughout the second and third story levels are one-over-one double-hung replacement windows with shaved lintels. Two pedimented dormers are clad in metal siding, with one over-one double-hung replacement windows. The main part of the building is capped by a wood cornice with a plain wide frieze. The building shares a chimney that has been parged, with the building to the north. A metal fire escape extends up the north side of the façade, from the second floor to the dormer window.

 

Description 147 Eighth Avenue

 

The modest 21-foot-wide 3 1/2 story row house at 147 Eighth Avenue retains characteristics of the Federal style: Flemish bond brick cladding, side entrance and evenly-spaced second-and third-floor windows with simple stone sills, and a steeply pitched roof with twin dormer windows.

 

Given the lack of a raised basement and stoop and the buildings location on a historically busy thoroughfare it is likely that there was originally a shop on the ground floor. The store front has had several alterations. In 1914 the storefront was moved flush with the front building line.28 The current modern ground floor storefront has been totally re-configured. The entire storefront is made of seamless glass; the storefront entrance was recessed and relocated to southern part of the facade, and the display window that rests on a wood and concrete bulkhead, with non-historic metal basement access doors in front of a display window.29

 

The entrance to the upper floors consists of a non-historic wood door up one stone step with a non-historic light fixture above. Above the storefront non-historic metal awning housing contains light boxes and runs the width of the storefront. The northern façade is partially obscured by neighboring buildings at the first and second floors; the upper part of this façade retains the shadow of an earlier building showing eaves and wooden anchors. The stone lintels have been shaved and the one-over-one double-hung windows have been replaced throughout. The roof and two pedimented dormers are clad in tar, with one-over-one double-hung windows. The shared chimney with 145 Eighth Avenue has been parged. A non-historic metal-and-glass skylight sits just above and between the two dormers.

 

- From the 2009 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Temporary repair of the pilothouse aft bulkhead is complete. The outside steering station has been removed, and the pilothouse returned to its original configuration. (The brown painted wood is the mast step). The work was done by shipwright Chris Chase, assisted by Paul Lyter.

 

RIPTIDE was built in 1927 by the Schertzer Brothers Boat and Machine Company, then located on the north end of Lake Union near the foot of Stone Way in Seattle. She is 47 feet 1-inch long with a beam of 11 feet 10-inches and a draft of four feet. She is planked in port orford cedar riveted to white oak frames over an apitong backbone with western red cedar houses. She displaces about 10 tons, relatively light for a boat this size.

 

She was originally named NEREIAD, then, shortly thereafter, NOKARE. Her trunk cabin (the raised cabin aft of the pilothouse) was reportedly added (or extended) in 1933. By 1936, when owned by Russell G. Gibson, a Director of the Seattle Yacht club, she had been named RIPTIDE.

 

Mr Gibson owned her through at least 1960. After a few years, she was bought in 1965 by Richard Billings, who used her as a cruiser and live-aboard in Alaska. In 1968 Richard sold her to his brother Roger, who owned her through 2014. RIPTIDE is fortunate to have been owned by knowledgeable and caring owners throughout her long life.

 

RIPTIDE is a Coast Guard documented vessel. She carries documentation number 226242 carved into the interior face of both port and starboard bilge stringers. She is documented at 17 net tons and 21 gross tons.

 

Her original engine may have been a Hall-Scott gasoline engine, but is as yet unknown. By 1959 she had an eight cylinder Chrysler Crown gas engine, a common engine of the time, most likely added in the late 1940's. That engine was removed in 1967 when RIPTIDE was re-powered by a 1967 Volvo MD-70A diesel engine. The Volvo engine was removed in early June 2015 and was replaced by Cummins 5.9 liter diesel of 210hp. While her top speed is over 14 knots at 2400 rpm, her cruising speed is a much more sedate 9 knots at 1500 rpm. She carries 300 gallons of diesel fuel.

 

She was overhauled by the Port Townsend Shipwright's Co-Op in Port Townsend WA between April 8th and September 16th, 2015. The Co-Op replaced 35 frames, then replanked much of her hull above the waterline. They installed a new transom and decks, replaced her engine and exhaust system, and installed a modern electrical system. Finally, a new anchor windlass and chain was installed.

 

Diane Salguero of Salguero Marine Services varnished the transom and pilothouse windows and painted the vessel.

 

RIPTIDE's hailing port is Port Ludlow WA. She is usually moored in Port Madison, on Bainbridge Island, WA.

 

www.ptshipwrights.com/wp/

www.facebook.com/PortTownsendShipwrightsCoOp?fref=ts

 

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The Kenworth T680 Day Cab equipped with a PACCAR MX-11 engine and 6x2 configuration saves Food Express more than 1,500 pounds compared to the previous generation of trucks it had in service. Photo courtesy of Brady Gillman.

New configuration, new category and new factory. "She takes after Auntie Giulia !"

 

1972 - 1984

 

1.186 cc

4 Cylinder Boxer

63 cv @ 6.000 rpm

83 Nm @ 3.500 rpm

Vmax : 152 km/h

920 kg

900.925 ex. (Alfasud)

 

Museo Storico Alfa-Romeo

Viale Alfa-Romeo

Arese

Italy - Italia

November 2018

 

An Atlas-D rocket in Mercury-Atlas Configuration is on display at Kennedy Space Center.

 

Atlas LV-3B

 

The Atlas LV-3B, Atlas D Mercury Launch Vehicle or Mercury-Atlas Launch Vehicle, was a human-rated expendable launch system used as part of the United States Project Mercury to send astronauts into low Earth orbit. Manufactured by American aircraft manufacturing company Convair, it was derived from the SM-65D Atlas missile, and was a member of the Atlas family of rockets.

 

The Atlas D missile was the natural choice for Project Mercury since it was the only launch vehicle in the US arsenal that could put the spacecraft into orbit and also had a large number of flights to gather data from. But its reliability was far from perfect and Atlas launches ending in explosions were an all-too common sight at Cape Canaveral. Thus, significant steps had to be taken to human-rate the missile and make it safe and reliable unless NASA wished to spend several years developing a dedicated launch vehicle for crewed programs or else wait for the next-generation Titan II ICBM to become operational. Atlas’s stage-and-a-half configuration was seen as somewhat preferable to the two stage Titan in that all engines were ignited at liftoff, making it easier to test for hardware problems during prelaunch checks.

 

Shortly after being chosen for the program in early 1959, the Mercury astronauts were taken to watch the second D-series Atlas test, which exploded a minute into launch. This was the fifth straight complete or partial Atlas failure and the booster was at this point nowhere near reliable enough to carry a nuclear warhead or an uncrewed satellite, let alone a human passenger. Plans to human-rate Atlas were effectively still on the drawing board and Convair estimated that 75% reliability would be achieved by early 1961 and 85% reliability by the end of the year.

 

•General Specifications:

oFunction: Crewed Expendable Launch System

oManufacturer: Convair

oCountry of Origin: United States

•Size:

oHeight: 28.7 meters (94.3 ft)

oDiameter: 3.0 meters (10.0 ft); Width Over Boost Fairing: 4.9 meters (16 ft)

oMass: 120,000 kilograms (260,000 lb)

oStages: 1½

•Capacity:

oPayload to LEO: 1,360 kilograms (3,000 lb)

•Launch History:

oStatus: Retired

oLaunch Sites: CCAFS LC-14

oTotal Launches: 9

oSuccesses: 7

oFailures: 2

oFirst Flight: July 29, 1960

oLast Flight: May 15, 1963

•Boosters:

oNumber of Boosters: 1

oEngines: 2

oThrust: 1,517.4 kilonewtons (341,130 lbf)

oBurn Time: 134 seconds

oFuel: RP-1/LOX

•First Stage:

oDiameter: 3.0 meters (10.0 ft)

oEngines: 1

oThrust: 363.22 kilonewtons (81,655 lbf)

oBurn Time: 5 minutes

oFuel: RP-1/LOX

 

Quality Assurance

 

Aside from the modifications described below, Convair set aside a separate assembly line dedicated to Mercury-Atlas vehicles which was staffed by personnel who received special orientation and training on the importance of the crewed space program and the need for as high quality workmanship as possible. Components used in the Mercury-Atlas vehicles were given thorough testing to ensure proper manufacturing quality and operating condition, in addition components and subsystems with excessive operating hours, out-of-specification performance, and questionable inspection records would be rejected. All components approved for the Mercury program were earmarked and stored separately from hardware intended for other Atlas programs and special handling procedures were done to protect them from damage.

 

Propulsion systems used for the Mercury vehicles would be limited to standard D-series Atlas models of the Rocketdyne MA-2 engines which had been tested and found to have performance parameters closely matching NASA’s specifications.

 

All launch vehicles would have to be complete and fully flight-ready at delivery to Cape Canaveral with no missing components or unscheduled modifications/upgrades. After delivery, a comprehensive inspection of the booster would be undertaken and prior to launch, a flight review board would convene to approve each booster as flight-ready. The review board would conduct an overview of all prelaunch checks, and hardware repairs/modifications. In addition, Atlas flights over the past few months in both NASA and Air Force programs would be reviewed to make sure no failures occurred involving any components or procedures relevant to Project Mercury.

 

The NASA Quality Assurance Program meant that each Mercury-Atlas vehicle took twice as long to manufacture and assemble as an Atlas designed for uncrewed missions and three times as long to test and verify for flight.

 

Systems Modified

 

Abort Sensor

 

Central to these efforts was the development of the Abort Sensing and Implementation System (ASIS), which would detect malfunctions in the Atlas’s various components and trigger a launch abort if necessary. Added redundancy was built in; if ASIS itself failed, the loss of power would also trigger an abort. The system was tested on a few Atlas ICBM flights prior to Mercury-Atlas 1 in July 1960, where it was operated open-loop (MA-3 in April 1961 would be the first closed-loop flight).

 

The Mercury launch escape system (LES) used on Redstone and Atlas launches was identical, but the ASIS system varied considerably between the two boosters as Atlas was a much larger, more complex vehicle with five engines, two of which were jettisoned during flight, a more sophisticated guidance system, and inflated balloon tanks that required constant pressure to not collapse.

 

Atlas flight test data was used to draw up a list of the most likely failure modes for the D-series vehicles, however simplicity reasons dictated that only a limited number of booster parameters could be monitored. An abort could be triggered by the following conditions, all of which could be indicative of a catastrophic failure:

 

•The booster flight path deviated too far from the planned trajectory

•Engine thrust or hydraulic pressure dropped below a certain level

•Propellant tank pressure dropped below a certain level

•The intermediate tank bulkhead showed signs of losing structural integrity

•The booster electrical system ceased operating

•The ASIS system ceased operating

 

Some failure modes such as an erroneous flight path did not necessarily pose an immediate danger to the astronaut’s safety and the flight could be terminated via a manual command from the ground (e.g. Mercury-Atlas 3). Other failure modes such as loss of engine thrust in the first few moments of liftoff required an immediate abort signal as there would be little or no time to command a manual abort.

 

An overview of failed Atlas test flights showed that there were only a few times that malfunctions occurred suddenly and without prior warning, for instance on Missile 6B when one turbopump failed 80 seconds into the launch. Otherwise, most failures were preceded by obvious deviations from the booster’s normal operating parameters. Automatic abort was only necessary in a situation like Atlas 6B where the failure happened so fast that there would be no time for a manual abort and most failure modes left enough time for the astronaut or ground controllers to manually activate the LES. A bigger concern was setting up the abort system so as to not go off when normal, minor performance deviations occurred.

 

Rate Gyros

 

The rate gyro package was placed much closer to the forward section of the LOX tank due to the Mercury/LES combination being considerably longer than a warhead and thus producing different aerodynamic characteristics (the standard Atlas D gyro package was still retained on the vehicle for the use of the ASIS). Mercury-Atlas 5 also added a new reliability feature—motion sensors to ensure proper operation of the gyroscopes prior to launch. This idea had originally been conceived when the first Atlas B launch in 1958 went out of control and destroyed itself after ground crews forgot to power on the gyroscope motors during prelaunch preparation, but it was phased into Atlas vehicles only gradually. One other Atlas missile test in 1961 also destroyed itself during launch, in that case because the gyroscope motor speed was too low. The motion sensors would thus eliminate this failure mode.

 

Range Safety

 

The range safety system was also modified for the Mercury program. There would be a three-second delay between engine cutoff and activation of the destruct charges so as to give the LES time to pull the capsule to safety. The ASIS system could not terminate engine thrust for the first 30 seconds of flight in order to prevent a malfunctioning launch vehicle from coming down on or around the pad area; during this time only the Range Safety Officer could send a manual cutoff command.

 

Autopilot

 

The old-fashioned electromechanical autopilot on the Atlas (known as the “round” autopilot due to the shape of the containers its major components were housed in) was replaced by a solid-state model (the “square” autopilot) that was more compact and easier to service, but it would prove a serious headache to debug and man-rate. On Mercury-Atlas 1, the autopilot system functioned well until launch vehicle destruction a minute into the flight. On Mercury-Atlas 2, there was a fair bit of missile bending and propellant slosh. Mercury-Atlas 3 completely failed and had to be destroyed shortly after launch when the booster did not perform the pitch and roll maneuver. After this debacle, the programmer was recovered and examined. Several causes were proposed including contamination of pins in the programmer or perhaps a transient voltage. The autopilot was extensively redesigned, but Mercury-Atlas 4 still had high vibration levels for the first 20 seconds of launch which led to further modifications. Finally on Mercury-Atlas 5, the autopilot worked perfectly.

 

Antenna

 

The guidance antenna was modified to reduce signal interference.

 

LOX Boil-Off Valve

 

Mercury-Atlas vehicles utilized the boil-off valve from the C-series Atlas rather than the standard D-series valve for reliability and weight-saving reasons.

 

Combustion Sensors

 

Combustion instability was an important problem that needed to be fixed. Although it mostly only occurred in static firing tests of the MA-2 engines, three launches (Missiles 3D, 51D, and 48D) had demonstrated that unstable thrust in one engine could result in immediate, catastrophic failure of the entire missile as the engine backfired and ruptured, leading to a thrust section fire. On Missile 3D, this had occurred in flight after a propellant leak starved one booster engine of LOX and led to reduced, unstable thrust and engine failure. The other two launches suffered rough combustion at engine start, ending in explosions that severely damaged the launch stand. Thus, it was decided to install extra sensors in the engines to monitor combustion levels and the booster would also be held down on the pad for a few moments after ignition to ensure smooth thrust. The engines would also use a “wet start”, meaning that the propellants were injected into the combustion chamber prior to igniter activation as opposed to a “dry start” where the igniter was activated first, which would eliminate rough ignition (51D and 48D had both used dry starts). If the booster failed the check, it would be automatically shut down. Once again, these upgrades required testing on Atlas R&D flights. By late 1961, after a third missile (27E) had exploded on the pad from combustion instability, Convair developed a significantly upgraded propulsion system that featured baffled fuel injectors and a hypergolic igniter in place of the pyrotechnic method, but NASA was unwilling to jeopardize John Glenn’s upcoming flight with these untested modifications and so declined to have them installed in Mercury-Atlas 6’s booster. As such, that and Scott Carpenter’s flight on MA-7 used the old-style Atlas propulsion system and the new variant was not employed until Wally Schirra’s flight late in 1962.

 

Static testing of Rocketdyne engines had produced high-frequency combustion instability, in what was known as the “racetrack” effect where burning propellant would swirl around the injector head, eventually destroying it from shock waves. On the launches of Atlas 51D and 48D, the failures were caused by low-order rough combustion that ruptured the injector head and LOX dome, causing a thrust section fire that led to eventual complete loss of the missile. The exact reason for the back-to-back combustion instability failures on 51D and 48D was not determined with certainty, although several causes were proposed. This problem was resolved by installing baffles in the injector head to break up swirling propellant, at the expense of some performance as the baffles added additional weight reduced the number of injector holes that propellants were sprayed through. The lessons learned with the Atlas program later proved vital to the development of the much larger Saturn F-1 engine.

 

Electrical System

 

Added redundancy was made to the propulsion system electrical circuitry to ensure that SECO would occur on time and when commanded. The LOX fuel feed system received added wiring redundancy to ensure that the propellant valves would open in the proper sequence during engine start.

 

Tank Bulkhead

 

Mercury vehicles up to MA-6 had foam insulation in the intermediate bulkhead to prevent the super-chilled LOX from causing the RP-1 to freeze. During repairs to MA-6 prior to John Glenn’s flight, it was decided to remove the insulation for being unnecessary and an impediment during servicing of the boosters in the field. NASA sent out a memo to GD/A requesting that subsequent Mercury-Atlas vehicles not include bulkhead insulation.

 

LOX Turbopump

 

In early 1962, two static engine tests and one launch (Missile 11F) fell victim to LOX turbopump explosions caused by the impeller blades rubbing against the metal casing of the pump and creating a friction spark. This happened after over three years of Atlas flights without any turbopump issues and it was not clear why the rubbing occurred, but all episodes of this happened when the sustainer inlet valve was moving to the flight-ready “open” position and while running untested hardware modifications. A plastic liner was added to the LOX turbopump to prevent friction rubbing. In addition Atlas 113D, the booster used for Wally Schirra’s flight, was given a PFRT (Pre-Flight Readiness Test) to verify proper functionality of the propulsion system.

 

Pneumatic System

 

Mercury vehicles used a standard D-series Atlas pneumatic system, although studies were conducted over the cause of tank pressure fluctuation which was known to occur under certain payload conditions. These studies found that the helium regulator used on early D-series vehicles had a tendency to induce resonant vibration during launch, but several modifications to the pneumatic system had been made since then, including the use of a newer model regulator that did not produce this effect.

 

Propellant Utilization System

 

In the event that the guidance system failed to issue the discreet cutoff command to the sustainer engine and it burned to propellant depletion, there was the possibility of a LOX-rich shutdown which could result in damage to engine components from high temperatures. For safety reasons, the PU system was modified to increase the LOX flow to the sustainer engine ten seconds before SECO. This was to ensure that the LOX supply would be completely exhausted at SECO and prevent a LOX-rich shutdown.

 

Skin

 

After MA-1 was destroyed in-flight due to a structural failure, NASA began requesting that Convair deliver Atlases with thicker skin. Atlas 10D (as well as its backup vehicle 20D which was later used for the first Atlas-Able flight), the booster used for the Big Joe test in September 1959, had sported thick skin and verified that this was needed for the heavy Mercury capsule. Atlas 100D would be the first thick-skinned booster delivered while in the meantime, MA-2’s booster (67D) which was still a thin-skinned model, had to be equipped with a steel reinforcement band at the interface between the capsule and the booster. Under original plans, Atlas 77D was to have been the booster used for MA-3. It received its factory rollout inspection in September 1960, but shortly afterwards, the postflight findings for MA-1 came out which led to the thin-skinned 77D being recalled and replaced by 100D.

 

Guidance

 

The vernier solo phase, which would be used on ICBMs to fine-tune the missile velocity after sustainer cutoff, was eliminated from the guidance program in the interest of simplicity as well as improved performance and lift capacity. Since orbital flights required an extremely different flight path from missiles, the guidance antennas had to be completely redesigned to ensure maximum signal strength. The posigrade rocket motors on the top of the Atlas, designed to push the spent missile away from the warhead, were moved to the Mercury capsule itself. This also necessitated adding a fiberglass insulation shield to the LOX tank dome so it wouldn’t be ruptured by the rocket motors.

 

Engine Alignment

 

A common and normally harmless phenomenon on Atlas vehicles was the tendency of the booster to develop a slight roll in the first few seconds following liftoff due to the autopilot not kicking in yet. On a few flights however, the booster developed enough rolling motion to potentially trigger an abort condition if it had been a crewed launch. Although some roll was naturally imparted by the Atlas’s turbine exhaust, this could not account for the entire problem which instead had more to do with engine alignment. Acceptance data from the engine supplier (Rocketdyne) showed that a group of 81 engines had an average roll movement in the same direction of approximately the same magnitude as that experienced in flight. Although the acceptance test-stand and flight-experience data on individual engines did not correlate, it was determined that offsetting the alignment of the booster engines could counteract this roll motion and minimize the roll tendency at liftoff. After Schirra’s Mercury flight did experience momentary roll problems early in the launch, the change was incorporated into Gordon Cooper’s booster on MA-9.

 

Launches

 

Nine LV-3Bs were launched, two on uncrewed suborbital test flights, three on uncrewed orbital test flights, and four with crewed Mercury spacecraft. Atlas LV-3B launches were conducted from Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

 

It first flew on July 29, 1960, conducting the suborbital Mercury-Atlas 1 test flight. The rocket suffered a structural failure shortly after launch, and as a result failed to place the spacecraft onto its intended trajectory. In addition to the maiden flight, the first orbital launch, Mercury-Atlas 3 also failed. This failure was due to a problem with the guidance system failing to execute pitch and roll commands, necessitating that the Range Safety Officer destroy the vehicle. The spacecraft separated by means of its launch escape system and was recovered 1.8 kilometers (1.1 mi) from the launch pad.

 

A further series of Mercury launches was planned, which would have used additional LV-3Bs; however these flights were canceled after the success of the initial Mercury missions. The last LV-3B launch was conducted on 15 May 1963, for the launch of Mercury-Atlas 9. NASA originally planned to use leftover LV-3B vehicles to launch Gemini-Agena Target Vehicles, however an increase in funding during 1964 meant that the agency could afford to buy brand-new Atlas SLV-3 vehicles instead, so the idea was scrapped.

 

Mercury-Atlas Vehicles Built and Eventual Disposition

 

•10D—Launched Big Joe 9/14/59

•20D—Backup vehicle for Big Joe. Reassigned to Atlas-Able program and launched 11/26/59.

•50D—Launched Mercury-Atlas 1 7/29/60

•67D—Launched Mercury-Atlas 2 2/21/61

•77D—Original launch vehicle for Mercury-Atlas 3, replaced by Atlas 100D after postflight findings from Mercury-Atlas 1

•88D—Launched Mercury-Atlas 4 9/13/61

•93D—Launched Mercury-Atlas 5 11/29/61

•100D—Launched Mercury-Atlas 3 4/25/61

•103D—Cancelled

•107D—Launched Aurora 7 (Mercury-Atlas 7) 5/24/62

•109D—Launched Friendship 7 (Mercury-Atlas 6) 2/21/62

•113D—Launched Sigma 7 (Mercury-Atlas 8) 10/3/62

•130D—Launched Faith 7 (Mercury-Atlas 9) 5/15/63

•144D—Cancelled, was planned launch vehicle for Mercury-Atlas 10

•152D—Cancelled

•167D—Cancelled

Turbo windmill, or Jet Wind Mill [JWM] / JWM is nephew, resp. spin off, of Spailboat, the stable sailing Speed Sail Craft.

 

By now, saving this planet is priority number one, and still all industries and all governments around the world do not see the windsurf formula, which makes it possible to harvest the high winds too.

 

Windsurfing, forerunner on turbo windmill, same formula, stabilitiy: Even a child can see that windsurfing is sensational. Just look at windsurfing from above. The waves make pipelines, and the only safe course in high winds falls parrallel with them. These pipelines lay, notably per definition, perpendicular on the wind's direction and windsurfing is always done half wind, so that the windsurfers automatically go as fast as possible and have a relatively safe ride between the waves. All in all, the windsurf formula implies that a given sail area is optimally used, that the waves are helping in making speed, that the half wind course is always leading to gliding along with the waves, that windsurfing is therefore relatively safe, that a stable configuration is the condition to make big structures, so that former dangerous windy circumstances at open ocean are just perfect to move a significant amount of mass with high speed. The kinetic energy is measured by the formula: 1/2 times the mass of the composition times the square of the speed. This world is dying for energy. So, please, understand the windsurf formula and please make Spailboats for over water, and turbo wind mills for on land.

 

The blades -rotors- are at their ends mantled by a ring. The ring is born within wheels in the housing. Because turbo wind mills use high winds, this mantle piece can be placed at/near the ground, so that there is no significant vibrating occurring at the ends of the blades.

 

In order to use high winds, the blades have to be hold firmly in place, leaving only the opportunity open for the blades to turn, or to move, perpendicular on the winds direction with as a consequence that Pythagoras' law comes in as foundation to calculate the angle of attack in the blades. Further on, one will see that windsurfing is done in the half wind sailing course and waves are swept by the wind, so that wave riding is falling with sailing half wind. Perfect.

 

High speed, directed perpendicular on the wind, leads also to the fact that a given sail area will be used optimally. And because cavitation, air bubbles around the swords, are restricting the windsurfers' speed, spailboat has wheels for swords. You, as reader, have to take it from here, because I can not force you to swallow dry food. Please, take one step at the time. To get started, you firstly need to understand that when a plate is placed flat -perpendicular- on the wind, there is maximum blockage of the wind by that plate. Next step. We imaginary move this plate with for instance 300 m/s in the direction flat on the wind. Now we'll see that the actual wind speed, S, that hits the blade is to be calculated by Pathagoras' law, S^2 =W^2+V^2, in where, V, is the speed of the blade perpendicular on the winds' direction and W is the wind speed. If now the original wind speed is very low, say, 1 m/s, than we might as well assume that the actual wind speed that hits the blade is still 300 m/s. In other words, when an almost flat on the wind positioned blade is moving with very high speed, perpendicular on the original wind's direction, then the actual wind speed that hits the blades, comes almost from the front. A blade end of a windmill moves faster than that blade does near the center, so that blade ends are almost positioned flat on the wind. The same counts for windsurf sails, although the sails are hold almost flat on the wind, the actual wind flow that hits the sails is coming more or less from the front. This means that we want high speed, in order to get maximum conversion of a given sail area. High speed implies high lift forces, and therefore we need stable and strong configurations that hold the blades.

 

I worked on stable sailing machines for twenty years now, because the capsizing and the catapulting with my catamaran scared the ........ out off me. Oh, I sailed from six years old, and won in 1988 the second biggest cat race in the world, together with my nephew, Ruud Goudriaan, who still is a class-A cat sailor. I went to college, and later to the technical university in Delft, and therefore I sold my cat, but continued windsurfing on cheap gear. However, windsurfing on old wave boards with old gear is still going much faster than the fastest cat. I kept on wondering why and when I figured it out [in 1994], I started to create a mechanically operated windsurf boat.

 

Sailing and windsurfing are very much like music, a well written song can be played live on stage over and over again, and every time this song improves itself. I can only ensure you, that the windsurf formula is an outstanding song, in the way to speak. Everything comes together, with as result that the windy circumstances on earth are perfect to use sails, wings, for making axles spin, as well on the oceans, by means of windsurfing -a combination of surfing and sailing stable half wind-, as on land, by means of using turbo windmills.

 

The only limitations in using the high winds are now caused by preoccupation of the existing economy. For instance, the car industries, the airplane industries, wind turbine industries, sailing boats industries, et cetera, keep our engineers in hostage. If we only could stop the production and the developing of the car making, airplane making et cetera, for just one week, and bring this way all the engineers to one imaginary table then the formula of windsurfing is understood. Once the leading engineers understand the windsurf formula, then the building of the prototypes is a year away. Some floors of the car industries and the airplanes industries can make room for new production lines.

 

And to make an even bigger example. When the second world war broke out, suddenly all floors of the car industries and airplane industries were making room for the production of tanks, jeeps, fighter planes, bombers et cetera. So, it is just a matter of priorities.

   

I mean, did you ever see a professor, 60 years old, windsurfing on large waves with 10 bft at open sea? No, that is the problem. These kind of persons rule the world.

 

Just go on the Internet, and see for yourself that the formula, for calculating the maximum sailing speed, is still only counting for non flying sailing boats. This means that they assume that the hull is still always dragging through water. For the cavitation speed they still assume always that a sword is not moving with respect to the hull. In Spailboats, on the other hand, the water cutting part of a sword does move along with respect to the hull, so that the speed of the hull and the speed of through water dragging sword have two different values. Here in Holland at the university of Delft, a leading professor -who works on his own sailing boat, off course-, once told me in person that no matter what kind of sailing boat, or windsurfer, it could never over top the 100km/hr barrier, because of cavitation around the swords. I came to him, at one of those appointments, to inform him about the new rigging, so that spailboats are almost flying above the water and to inform him about the reason -to overcome cavitation around the water cutting profile of the sword wheels- for using circle shaped spinning swords. So, I walked through his door, showed him my work, and in stead letting me talk about my work, he did not look at my work at all. He talked for half an hour, and by the time he finished, I wanted to reply, but then he said, your time is up, leave, please. I have tried to make another appointment, but in vain. A few months later, he had a full page in one of Holland's main newspapers, the Saturday edition, in where he presented his own sailing boat. The public was misled. This sailing boat was so-called state of the art, but, it did not fly, it did still capsize, it could not operate in high seas, people, it was a worthless piece of ....... . So, I came in, and he asked, what did you study,? I said: civil engineering, and that answer was apparently wrong, because he worked at the aircraft and space department. Pyramids, remember, people, we still build them. The only thing that matters, is that I am a good sailor and windsurfer , and that I made windsurf robot. Even if I did not have any masters degree at the technical university at all, he should have asked me what my work was, and not what my title was. This story goes on, because before I talked to him, the boss so to speak, I had several meetings with his students and they were impressed. But at the moment they found out that I was working outside the university they boycotted me, right away. I had to give earlier given nice 3D pictures of wings back, and also my usb stick with several drawings had to be erased. Since then I am not welcome anymore. My own professor, Marcel Donze, then always brings calm to me, with this: Who would be the worst enemy of the Pope? Jesus Christ. No rank and bare footed, and closer to God as him.

 

It is therefore that these two new inventions fall under: the environmental revolution.

 

We, the hard working people, can easily see that windsurfers go faster than the good old sailing boats. And still, billions and billions are spend on sailing boats for the happy few, like the rich men's toys for the Volvo Ocean Race, America's cup, the immense yachts et cetera. The same thing counts for the swallowing up of our best engineers for the car industries, formula 1 racing, jet fighter plane making et cetera.

 

If only the engineers and the people who rule the world want to save this planet, then the prototypes of the turbo windmills and the spailboats will be operating within a year.

 

In the past seven years I really tried endlessly to talk with professors around the world. They are just not at home. On the phone it goes like this. Who are you? What did you study, and I say, civil engineering. Oh, that has nothing to do with planes and/or mills, we are not interested.

 

Off course, I do not talk like them, every error in the conversation means the final cut of the conversation and once such a door is closed, it never opens again.

 

So, you as reader will never read or hear about windsurf machines and turbo windmills, which can save the planet, other than in this slide show.

 

I was a good cat sailor and a good windsurfer in the eighties. From childhood on I was at sea. Above that fact, I was born in Zaandam, the place where a cluster of windmills is stacked in an open air museum. I had the kite surfing formula on the drawing board, long before it took off, because the kites are hold just the same as windsurf sails are hold, only now on wires and further away from the board. In fact, I actually kite surfed on a small wooden plank on the beach in the eighties of the past century when I was ten years old. My nephews tried it, but were to heavy, and logically, I had to try. And it worked. Kite surfing is nothing more than using a big kite to move yourself. So, who do you want to believe, me, or the universities?

 

Get úp, stand up, get up for your right. Bob Marley. He believed that music unites all people one day. Wind sounds like music, doesn't it? No more nuclear power, no more burning fossil fuels.

 

Turbo windmill, or Jet Wind Mill [JWM] / JWM is a nephew, resp. spin off, of Spailboat, the stable sailing Speed Sail Craft.

 

Stability: only when stability is firstly established, then a structure might be built tall. A sailing boat might be made endlessly strong, still, it capsizes, so that it is useless to make endlessly strong masts. A Spailboat however is stable, and therefore a Spailboat can be made big, very big, as big oceanliners, with 100 meter long masts. This is part of the windsurf formula. And remember, mass in motion implies the kinetic energy.

 

We need energy. For making fresh drinking water, for irrigation, for making electricity, making hydrogen, for moving cars, trains, planes and so on.

 

The windsurf formula is here, for everyone to use in the world, because I dropped my patents. It is free, for you, Africa, Asia, America, Europe, the south pacific continents and islands. Just have a look and run this show a few times. It is like the wheel itself, it is normal, revolutionary and it will change the world. No nuclear power is needed any longer, just usage of high winds and swell on the oceans. And the turbo windmill is spin off, because these blades are in fact circular moving steady in positioned hold windsurf sails.

The second configuration sacrifices the ability to engage in melee combat in exchange for increased firepower. It is armed with an arm-mounted twin barreled rapid-fire beam gun, an arm-mounted beam cannon, a shoulder-mounted rapid-fire beam gun, and a shoulder-mounted heavy beam cannon (which is able to fold backwards for storage).

BASIC DETAILS

Bus Company/Operator: SOUTHERN STAR BUS TRANSIT, INC.

Bus Name: SOUTHERN STAR

Fleet Number: 12154

Classification: Air Conditioned Inter Provincial Operation Bus

Route: Tagbilaran City-Tubigon via Ubay

Route: Tagbilaran City-Ubay via Jagna

Seating Configuration: 3x2 seater

Seating Capacity: 46 passengers

BUS BODY

Bus Manufacturer: Zhengzhou Yutong Bus Co., Ltd.

Bus Model: Yutong ZK6858H9 LZYTDTD6

(LZYTDTD6XE1038228)

CHASSIS

Chassis Manufacturer: Zhengzhou Yutong Bus Co., Ltd.

Chassis Model: Yutong ZK6810CRA

Suspension: Air Suspension

ENGINE

Engine Manufacturer: Guangxi Yuchai Machinery Group, Ltd./China Yuchai International, Ltd.

Engine Model: Yuchai YC6J210-20 J42YD

(YC6J21020J42YDE30016)

TRANSMISSION

Type: Manual Transmission

Gear: 6 speed forward and 1 speed reverse

 

BASIC DETAILS

Bus Company/Operator: SOUTHERN STAR BUS TRANSIT, INC.

Bus Name: SOUTHERN STAR

Fleet Number: 12419

Classification: Non-Air Conditioned Inter Provincial Operation Bus

Franchise Route: Tagbilaran City-Talibon via Ubay

Route: Tagbilaran City-Ubay via Jagna

Seating Configuration: 3x2 seater

Seating Capacity: 44 passengers

BUS BODY

Bus Manufacturer: Xiamen King Long United Automotive Industry Co., Ltd.

Bus Model: King Long XMQ6859Y

CHASSIS

Chassis Manufacturer: Xiamen King Long United Automotive Industry Co., Ltd.

Chassis Model: King Long XMQ6830R

Suspension: Leaf Spring Suspension

ENGINE

Engine Manufacturer: China Yuchai International, Ltd./Guangxi Yuchai Machinery Group, Ltd.

Engine Model: Yuchai YC4G190-30

Type: Manual Transmission

Gear: 6 speed forward and 1 speed reverse

 

Bus Company: SOUTHERN STAR BUS TRANSIT, INC.

Bus Name: SOUTHERN STAR

Fleet Number: 12194

Classification: Non-Air Conditioned Inter Provincial Operation Bus

Franchise Route: Talibon-Ubay via Jagna

Route: Tagbilaran City-Ubay via Jagna

Seating Configuration: 3x2 seater

Seating Capacity: 39 passengers

Bus Manufacturer: VTI-TEBBAP (Vallacar Transit, Inc. - Transport Engineering and Bus Body Assembly Plant)

Bus Model: VTI-TEBBAP Yanson Coaster

CHASSIS

Chassis Manufacturer: Hino Motors Ltd.

Chassis Model: Hino FB4J

Suspension: Leaf Spring Suspension

ENGINE

Engine Manufacturer: Hino Motors Ltd.

Engine Model: Hino J05C-TE

TRANSMISSION

Type: Manual Transmission

Gear: 5 speed forward and 1 speed reverse

 

Location: Dao Integrated Bus Terminal

Dao District, Tagbilaran City, Bohol, Philippines

 

Date Taken: August 30, 2018

 

* Some parts of the specifications may be subjected for verification and may be changed without prior notice.

This is a photograph from the 4th and final round of the 2017 Pat Finnerty Memorial 5KM Road League which was held in Belvedere House and Gardens, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, Ireland on Wednesday 24th May 2017 at 20:00. This is the final round and consequently some of the decisions around the final configuration of the category prizes are still open for resolution. The Road League is promoted and organised by Mulligar Harriers Athletic Club and sponsored by local sponsors including O'Brien's Renault dealership. This is a very well established as an annual event which takes place on every Wednesday night in the month of May. Tonight's weather was absolutely wonderful. Warm summer air filled the Belvedere area as the runners were treated to perfect summer weather. Just under 200 participants took part in the race which runs a traffic free course over a mix of road and hilly forest trail. Congratulations are due to all of the Mullingar Harriers club who put this excellent series together.

 

Timing and event management was provided by http://www.myrunresults.com/. Their website will contain the results to today's race.

  

The full set of photographs is available at: www.flickr.com/photos/peterm7/albums/72157684232399025

 

Can I use these photographs directly from Flickr on my social media account(s)?

 

Yes - of course you can! Flickr provides several ways to share this and other photographs in this Flickr set. You can share directly to: email, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Tumblr, LiveJournal, and Wordpress and Blogger blog sites. Your mobile, tablet, or desktop device will also offer you several different options for sharing this photo page on your social media outlets.

 

BUT..... Wait there a minute....

We take these photographs as a hobby and as a contribution to the running community in Ireland. We do not charge for our photographs. Our only "cost" is that we request that if you are using these images: (1) on social media sites such as Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter,LinkedIn, Google+, VK.com, Vine, Meetup, Tagged, Ask.fm,etc or (2) other websites, blogs, web multimedia, commercial/promotional material that you must provide a link back to our Flickr page to attribute us or acknowledge us as the original photographers.

 

This also extends to the use of these images for Facebook profile pictures. In these cases please make a separate wall or blog post with a link to our Flickr page. If you do not know how this should be done for Facebook or other social media please email us and we will be happy to help suggest how to link to us.

 

I want to download these pictures to my computer or device?

 

You can download this photographic image here directly to your computer or device. This version is the low resolution web-quality image. How to download will vary slight from device to device and from browser to browser. Have a look for a down-arrow symbol or the link to 'View/Download' all sizes. When you click on either of these you will be presented with the option to download the image. Remember just doing a right-click and "save target as" will not work on Flickr.

 

I want get full resolution, print-quality, copies of these photographs?

 

If you just need these photographs for online usage then they can be used directly once you respect their Creative Commons license and provide a link back to our Flickr set if you use them. For offline usage and printing all of the photographs posted here on this Flickr set are available free, at no cost, at full image resolution.

 

Please email petermooney78 AT gmail DOT com with the links to the photographs you would like to obtain a full resolution copy of. We also ask race organisers, media, etc to ask for permission before use of our images for flyers, posters, etc. We reserve the right to refuse a request.

 

In summary please remember when requesting photographs from us - If you are using the photographs online all we ask is for you to provide a link back to our Flickr set or Flickr pages. You will find the link above clearly outlined in the description text which accompanies this photograph. Taking these photographs and preparing them for online posting takes a significant effort and time. We are not posting photographs to Flickr for commercial reasons. If you really like what we do please spread the link around your social media, send us an email, leave a comment beside the photographs, send us a Flickr email, etc. If you are using the photographs in newspapers or magazines we ask that you mention where the original photograph came from.

 

I would like to contribute something for your photograph(s)?

Many people offer payment for our photographs. As stated above we do not charge for these photographs. We take these photographs as our contribution to the running community in Ireland. If you feel that the photograph(s) you request are good enough that you would consider paying for their purchase from other photographic providers or in other circumstances we would suggest that you can provide a donation to any of the great charities in Ireland who do work for Cancer Care or Cancer Research in Ireland.

 

Let's get a bit technical: We use Creative Commons Licensing for these photographs

We use the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License for all our photographs here in this photograph set. What does this mean in reality?

The explaination is very simple.

Attribution- anyone using our photographs gives us an appropriate credit for it. This ensures that people aren't taking our photographs and passing them off as their own. This usually just mean putting a link to our photographs somewhere on your website, blog, or Facebook where other people can see it.

ShareAlike – anyone can use these photographs, and make changes if they like, or incorporate them into a bigger project, but they must make those changes available back to the community under the same terms.

 

Above all what Creative Commons aims to do is to encourage creative sharing. See some examples of Creative Commons photographs on Flickr: www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

 

I ran in the race - but my photograph doesn't appear here in your Flickr set! What gives?

 

As mentioned above we take these photographs as a hobby and as a voluntary contribution to the running community in Ireland. Very often we have actually ran in the same race and then switched to photographer mode after we finished the race. Consequently, we feel that we have no obligations to capture a photograph of every participant in the race. However, we do try our very best to capture as many participants as possible. But this is sometimes not possible for a variety of reasons:

 

     ►You were hidden behind another participant as you passed our camera

     ►Weather or lighting conditions meant that we had some photographs with blurry content which we did not upload to our Flickr set

     ►There were too many people - some races attract thousands of participants and as amateur photographs we cannot hope to capture photographs of everyone

     ►We simply missed you - sorry about that - we did our best!

  

You can email us petermooney78 AT gmail DOT com to enquire if we have a photograph of you which didn't make the final Flickr selection for the race. But we cannot promise that there will be photograph there. As alternatives we advise you to contact the race organisers to enquire if there were (1) other photographs taking photographs at the race event or if (2) there were professional commercial sports photographers taking photographs which might have some photographs of you available for purchase. You might find some links for further information above.

 

Don't like your photograph here?

That's OK! We understand!

 

If, for any reason, you are not happy or comfortable with your picture appearing here in this photoset on Flickr then please email us at petermooney78 AT gmail DOT com and we will remove it as soon as possible. We give careful consideration to each photograph before uploading.

 

I want to tell people about these great photographs!

Great! Thank you! The best link to spread the word around is probably http://www.flickr.com/peterm7/sets

 

32 West 40th Street, Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

The Engineers’ Club was founded in 1888 at a time when professional engineering was becoming increasingly important to the industrial and economic development of the United States. While the city was well supplied with professional and trade associations related to engineering, the Engineers’ Club was the first purely social organization founded in the United States for engineers or those connected to the field. Prominent members have included Andrew Carnegie, Herbert C. Hoover, Thomas Edison, Charles Lindbergh, Cornelius Vanderbilt, H.H. Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla.

 

While the club originally leased space in Midtown Manhattan, it began to plan for a larger, purpose-built clubhouse around the turn of the century, acquiring land facing Bryant Park and the future home of the New York Public Library (both New York City Landmarks). Around the same time, industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie offered the sum of $1 million for a separate project - the creation of a joint headquarters for New York City’s professional engineering clubs. In 1904, Carnegie increased the amount of his proffered gift to $1.5 million in order to incorporate the plans of the Engineers’ Club. Ultimately, the decision was reached to erect two separate but related structures, allowing for a direct flow between them.

 

The design of the Engineers’ Club building was determined by an architectural competition in which the young firm of Whitfield & King bested more established names such as Carrère & Hastings and Clinton & Russell. The 12-story Renaissance Revival style building, completed in 1907, featured a tripartite configuration consisting of a three-story base clad in white marble with prominent Corinthian pilasters, a seven-story red brick shaft embellished with marble quoins and molded window enframements, and a three-story capital capped by a deeply projecting modillioned cornice. An early example of the high-rise clubhouse building type, the Engineers’ Club building also featured 66 sleeping rooms in addition to its public and social spaces.

 

The Engineers’ Club occupied the West 40th Street building until 1979, at which point the structure was converted into residential apartments. Today, the building looks almost exactly as it did more than a century ago, standing as an architectural reminder of the emergence of New York State as the engineering center of the country and of the United States as an industrial and economic power. As the last remaining club building on the block, it is also a visual reminder of the prominence of the social club and of the bachelor apartment at the turn of the 20th century.

 

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

 

West 40th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues

 

At the turn of the 20th century, West 40th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, the future site of the Engineers’ Club building, was at the crossroads of several rapidly-evolving Midtown neighborhoods. In the late 1800s, Fifth Avenue between 34th and 59th Streets had been established as one of the most fashionable addresses in Manhattan, and residential rowhouses lined the blocks to the east and to the west. By 1900, however, various real estate forces were coalescing to permanently alter the character of this part of Manhattan. Construction of Grand Central Terminal (1903-13, a designated New York City Landmark) at East 42nd Street between Madison and Lexington Avenues and the decking of the railroad tracks running north from the station accelerated the commercialization of eastern Midtown and spurred the development of an important hotel and business district. With respect to the blocks surrounding the future site of the Engineer’s Club building, considered the northwest periphery of the Murray Hill neighborhood, the construction of or conversion of private residences into exclusive retail shops, restaurants and office buildings, was already well underway by the close of the century.

 

Midtown Manhattan, west of Fifth Avenue, was being similarly transformed at the turn of the 20th century. A growing transportation hub at Herald Square (at the intersection of 34th Street, Broadway and Sixth Avenue), featured cross-town streetcars, the Sixth Avenue Elevated, and the Hudson Tubes to New Jersey, and helped secure this area’s continued commercial development. The successful openings of two department stores at Herald Square, Saks & Co. in 1900 followed by R.H. Macy’s in 1901-02, anchored a new shopping district that encouraged similar businesses to relocate northwards from Madison Square. The construction of restaurants and hotels to meet shoppers’ needs logically followed. The opening of Pennsylvania Station at 34th Street and Seventh Avenue in 1910 precipitated even higher demand for realty in the blocks surrounding the station, which had become known as the ‘Pennsylvania terminal loft zone’ due to the large number of plans filed for manufacturing and business structures.

 

In 1899, the south side of West 40th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues was still lined with the four-story rowhouses that had been built in the mid-century. In 1903, the New York Times cited how commercial forces were “already being felt in the side streets” off of Fifth Avenue by “the recent leasing for business purposes” of houses in the area. Many of the residences that were not converted for commercial use were demolished for the construction of new, larger commercial structures. In 1900-01, several smaller lots were combined for the construction of Bryant Park Studios on the southeast corner of West 40th Street and Sixth Avenue, across from Bryant Park. On the southwest corner of West 40th Street and Fifth Avenue, opposite the future home of the New York Public Library (1898-1911), the Knox Building (a designated New York City Landmark) was built in 1901-02 as the headquarters of the Knox Hat Company. In 1902, the Republican Club was erected at 54 West 40th Street, the first club building to go up on the block. Another club, the New York Club at 18-22 West 40th Street, was erected shortly thereafter – the same year as the Engineers’ Club building. By the end of the 1920s, virtually no traces of the one-time residential character of the block remained.

 

Early History of Clubhouses and Bachelor Apartments in New York City

 

Social clubs for men had been organized in New York City since the 1830s. Largely modeled after those in London, the clubs were formed along lines such as social class, politics, ethnicity, business, sports, or other shared interests. New York City has also been host to a large variety of professional clubs, the Union Club for the law (1836), Lambs Club for the theater (1874), and Friars Club for comedians (1904) being among the most prominent. By the end of the 19th century, New York had over 100 men’s clubs (second only to London), many catering particularly to young bachelors and providing alternative options for living, dining and drinking, and socializing outside of boardinghouses or restaurants.

 

Initially, most clubs were established in former rowhouses and mansions, in areas such as Madison Square and Gramercy Park. In the late 19th century, a men’s clubhouse district developed in Midtown Manhattan, most highly concentrated along West 43rd and 44th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, but extending at least as far north as 54th Street and down into the 20s. The Union League Club, constructed in 1881 at Fifth Avenue and 39th Street (demolished) is considered the city’s first purpose-built clubhouse. Others followed shortly thereafter, including the Berkeley Athletic Club at 23 West 44th Street (1890, demolished), and the Harvard Club at 27 West 44th Street (1893-94, demolished). As late as the early 1890s, however, there was not a specific architectural style or type associated with clubhouse architecture in New York.

 

A development that paralleled the emergence of the clubhouse in New York was the emergence of a distinct residential building type for men: the bachelor apartment hotel, or “bachelor flats.” Throughout the 19th century, the population of bachelors living in New York was rising with the growth and industrialization of the city during the 19th century, which was accompanied by a workforce consisting of large numbers of unmarried men. Despite their large numbers, housing options for middle-class unmarried men in New York were severely limited. As rowhouses and better hotels were expensive, bachelors were forced to find quarters in boarding or rooming houses (usually converted rowhouses) with less privacy or security, in less-than-desirable rooms in cheaper hotels or apartment buildings, or in such facilities as clubs and YMCAs. The apartment hotel provided an alternative that could accommodate unmarried men along with couples, families, and widows, but this was considered awkward as single men were seen as threatening to married couples and traditional gender roles.

 

Between 1880 and 1915, the real estate market began to catch up with demand and hundreds of bachelor apartment hotels were erected. By 1905, buildings of this type could be found mostly along Fifth Avenue south of Central Park, on the adjacent cross streets, on Broadway, and in other locations south to 23rd Street. Many of the purpose-built social and professional clubs erected around this time also began to include proper accommodations for bachelors. The Yale Club of New York building (a designated New York City Landmark), for example, constructed in 1900-01, devoted more than half of its floors to bachelor apartments. Similarly, the central seven stories of the Engineers’ Club building were designed to accommodate 66 bachelor apartments that could be used either in combination as a suite, or independently.

 

Early History of Professional Engineering and of the Engineers’ Club

 

New York State is often credited as the birthplace of professional engineering within the United States, the growth and development of which was a significant factor in the rise of the country as a major industrial and economic power during the 19th century. New York State was home to the first school in the country to offer engineering as an academic subject (civil engineering at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, beginning in 1801), and also to the first university to offer a degree in engineering (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, beginning in 1838). Moreover, the number and complexity of both private and public works projects throughout the state during the 19th century, including construction of the Erie Canal (1817-25) and the Croton Aqueduct system (1837-1842), relied heavily on advancements in the engineering fields – from civil engineering, commonly associated with public works projects, to those branches more allied with industry, such as mining, mechanical or electrical engineering. Construction of the Erie Canal, alone, has been cited as responsible for doubling the number of engineers in the country. New York City’s own emergence as a grand metropolis during this era was also dependent on the engineering innovations of the era, culminating in achievements such as the Brooklyn Bridge, the extensive subway system, and the city’s myriad towering skyscrapers.

 

By the mid-19th century, American engineers had begun to organize professionally, with the principal aim of educating peers by means of publications and conferences. The first such organization, the Association of Civil Engineers (ASCE) was formed in 1852 in New York City. Other emerging disciplines followed with their own professional organizations, including the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineering (AIME), organized in 1871, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), organized in 1880, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), organized in 1884, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), organized in 1908, and the Institute of Radio Engineers (AIRE), organized in 1912. Many of these organizations, including ASME, AIEE and AIRE, were also formed in New York City.

 

The Engineers’ Club was organized in 1888 within the rooms of the ASCE clubhouse on East 23rd Street. While the city, by then, was well supplied with professional and trade associations related to engineering, the Engineers’ Club was the first purely social organization founded in the United States for engineers or those connected to the field. As would be spoken by President Arthur T. Hadley of Yale at the 1907 opening exercises for the completed Engineers’ Club building, “it is not enough to know the special sciences on which the practice of a profession is based. A man ought to have a clear conception of the public service which his profession can render, and the public duties that its members owe.”

 

The Engineers’ Club formally opened its doors on April 27, 1889, at a building it leased at 10 West 29th Street. Among its founding members was President James A. Burden of the Burden Iron Works in Troy, New York, Vice Presidents Henry R. Towne of the Yale & Towne Manufacturing Company and James C. Bayles of the Spiral Weld Tube Company, Treasurer

 

A.C. Rand of the Rand Rock Drill Company, and Secretary David Williams, publisher of the Iron Age. Though located in New York, the club was in no sense local, embracing members from “all the States of the Union, as well as Canada and Mexico.” Initially there were two classes of members – resident and non-resident – though both had the same privileges. Any candidate wishing to become a member of the club had to be proposed, seconded and endorsed by the other members of the club.

 

The Planning of the Engineers’ Club Building

 

Three years after its founding, the membership of the Engineers’ Club totaled nearly 550 members. Although the constitution of the organization limited total membership to 1,000 members, the club was growing rapidly, reaching 650 members by the close of 1896. In 1897, the club relocated to larger rented quarters at 374 Fifth Avenue but continued to swell in size, reaching 769 members by the close of 1898. Around this time, the club began to discuss plans to construct a purpose-built clubhouse to meet the demands of a steadily increasing membership. A survey was circulated to members in 1898 concerning the “advisability of taking up the matter of a new house.” Although there was unanimous agreement by the Board of Management in 1902 as to the desirability of the club “to have a house of its own,” sufficient funds needed to be raised. In 1903, the Engineers’ Realty Company was formed and its stock made available for purchase by members of the Engineers’ Club. Every member of the Engineers’ Club was expected to subscribe in the company’s stock.

 

By 1903, the Engineers’ Club reached 1,000 members and had conclusively outgrown its Fifth Avenue quarters. That same year, enough of the Engineering Realty Company’s stock had been sold to purchase an available site on West 40th Street. The site consisted of two adjacent tax lots at 32 and 34 West 40th Street, together measuring 50 feet wide by 100 feet deep. The site was reported in Architects’ and Builders’ Magazine as an ideal location overlooking both Bryant Park and the future home of the New York Public Library, already under construction. In their annual report of 1903, the Board of Management of the Engineers’ Club said of the lot:

 

This location is the most desirable in the city of New York for a Club House. Fifth Avenue; the elevated railroad station; the station of the new underground road; the Broadway, Sixth Avenue, Forty-second street and Fourth Avenue surface railroads are all near the site. It is near the Theatre district and convenient to the New York Central Railroad Station, and near to the proposed station of the Pennsylvania Railroad at 33d Street, making it readily accessible to those arriving at either of those depots.

 

At the turn of the 20th century, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) was one of the wealthiest men in the world. He had sold his holdings in the Carnegie Steel Company to the newly-formed

 

U.S. Steel Corporation and consequently amassed a considerable fortune. Carnegie, by this time, was already known for his extensive philanthropic activities, the focus of which were largely within the realm of education. In 1895, Carnegie was approached by W.D. Weaver of the AIEE about creating a joint headquarters for the city’s numerous engineering societies. Nothing came of this initial suggestion, and in 1903 the proposal was made again. By this time, Carnegie had already contributed to a library fund for the AIEE and had even spoken of “co-operation among engineers” at a dinner held by the organization in honor of the library’s opening. Carnegie, it seemed, had come to agree that the engineering disciplines needed to be better unified and that housing the independent clubs in a centralized home would help achieve this goal.

 

In early 1903, Carnegie offered the sum of $1 million for the purpose of providing a suitable professional building for the various engineering societies already centered in New York City. As reported in the New York Times, Carnegie’s objective was to make “New York a sort of intellectual engineering centre [sic], at least of the Western Hemisphere.” Carnegie, made aware of the existence of the Engineers’ Club and its plans to construct a new club house at West 40th Street, declared the location to be wholly appropriate for a central engineering building. In order to incorporate the plans of the Engineers’ Club, Carnegie increased the amount of his proffered gift to $1.5 million in 1904. He invited three of the largest professional clubs – AIEE, ASME and AIME – to participate alongside the Engineers’ Club. Hoping to ensure the success of his enterprise, he made his gift contingent on the participation of each of the professional clubs, which had a combined, rapidly rising membership of approximately 9,000 members. The chief opposition was expected to come from AIME, who expressed concerns that any appearance of localism might diminish the national standing of the organization. AIME’s fears were apparently overcome and in 1904 the professional groups formed the United Engineering Society. Soon thereafter, a joint Conference Committee was formed to carry the construction of the proposed building through to completion. This committee consisted of 12 men, three from each of the aforementioned organizations, and was headed by William R. Ware, founder of the school of architecture at Columbia University.

 

Shortly after beginning its work, the committee determined that it would be too difficult to purchase the amount of land required to combine all of the social and technical requirements of the unified engineering organizations into one building. Instead, the decision was made to erect two separate structures – one for the Engineers’ Club on the existing West 40th Street lot, and a second for the professional societies, to be located on West 39th Street. The completed buildings would abut one another at the rear, allowing for a direct flow between them. A larger allotment of $1.05 million was allocated for the proposed building for the professional organizations, which would be known as the Engineering Societies’ building, while the remaining $450,000 was assigned to the smaller Engineers’ Club building.

 

In 1905, the Trustees of the Engineers’ Club published a pamphlet for its members titled The New Club House of the Engineers’ Club: Being a Preliminary Description of the Plans and Details. Alongside a color rendering of the proposed exterior and detailed plans of each of the building’s 12 stories, the organization printed its anticipation that “the Engineers’ Club will shortly be in the enjoyment of one of the finest and most luxurious clubhouses in the United States” and one that every member “can take individual and professional pride in.” The cornerstone of the building was laid in 1905 by Louise Whitfield Carnegie – Andrew Carnegie’s wife and sister of one of the two architects. The new building opened its doors on April 25, 1907, despite “the delay of general contractors in completing their work, strikes, and other labor troubles.” In the end, the project far exceeded original cost estimates, with construction of the building alone, exclusive of the land or interior furnishings, costing approximately $550,000. In total, the project is said to have cost closer to $870,000, with Carnegie’s grant covering only the initially promised $450,000. Upon the opening of the building, the Board of Management of the Engineers’ Club pronounced it to be “one of the most comfortable and convenient Club Houses in New York City, the center of American club life.”

 

The Architecture of the Engineers’ Club Building

 

As noted in The American Architect and Building News in 1907, the worldwide fame of the donor, coupled with the magnitude of the gift and the national character of the organizations involved, made the selection of an architect for the two proposed buildings a semi-public matter of “more than ordinary importance.” The selection process for the Engineers’ Club and Engineering Societies’ buildings took the form of a competition in which six well-known and established architects were invited to participate. Each was to be paid $1,000 for his submission, whether it was accepted or not. A number of other architects were also invited to present plans, though without compensation. Additionally, the competition was made open to any architect in New York City who had been in actual practice for two or more years under his own name, incentivized by cash prizes to be awarded to the four best submissions among this open class. All plans were to be submitted anonymously.

 

In July 1904, the Conference Committee examined 28 sets of plans for the two buildings, comprising more than 500 drawings. The award for the Engineers’ Club building went to the firm of Whitfield & King, a young partnership who had, implausibly, been invited to participate as one of the six well-known and established firms, and who were selected over some of architecture’s most renowned names at the time, including Carrère & Hastings and Clinton & Russell. The award for the Engineering Societies’ building went to the firm of Hale & Rogers, with H.G. Morse as associate. Despite the measures purportedly taken to ensure an open and democratic selection process, it is difficult not to question the determinations – most notably, the fact that James Gable Hale, of Hale & Rogers, was the son of Edward Everett Hale, president of the Engineers’ Club, while Henry D. Whitfield, of Whitfield & King, was Carnegie’s own brother-in law.

 

In 1904, the New York Times reported on the winning designs, writing “it is doubtful if anywhere in the world there will be two buildings more perfectly fitted for their respective needs and more artistic in conception and execution than these two structures.” The article went on to describe the design for the Engineers’ Club building as “sumptuous in the extreme,” which is consistent with the notion that, while the buildings erected east of Fifth Avenue after the turn of the 20th century tended to exhibit a more subdued architectural and social atmosphere, those constructed west of Fifth Avenue were typically more exuberantly ornamented. Upon completion in 1907, the 12-story Engineers’ Club building featured an impressive three-story marble base with prominent Corinthian pilasters separating three round-arched windows and supporting an ornate frieze and cornice. The seven-story red brick shaft of the building featured marble quoins at its sides and marble trim surrounding its windows. A three-story capital was highlighted by an ornamental balcony, Ionic columns, round-arched windows, and a deeply projecting modillioned cornice.

 

While the Engineering Societies’ building was designed to meet the professional requirements of the engineers who would occupy the space, the interior configuration of the Engineers’ Club building was designed to meet the social needs of club members. The interior of the building (not part of this designation) featured a broad hallway and stairway leading to social rooms on the second and third stories. The fourth through ninth stories contained 66 bedrooms, planned in such a way as to be used either in combination as a suite or separately. On the 11th story, the main dining room, or banquet hall, contained room for 300 and was accessible by means of a service bridge across the dumbbell-shaped building’s east court. Associated facilities, including two large private dining rooms, were divided among the 10th through 12th stories. A half-story penthouse located at the rear of the building while a garden occupied the front portion of the roof. The tripartite exterior configuration of the main elevation of the Engineers’ Club building is a direct reflection of each of these interior functions: the prominent exterior columns of the base enframe the windows of the large “club” and billiard rooms, while the stories devoted to bedrooms, at the shaft of the building, are treated in a red brick and accentuated by the marble quoins; lastly, the ornamental balcony at the building’s capital serves to denote the location of the 11th-story banquet hall, overlooking the park.

 

Subsequent History

 

The increased size and prominence of the Engineers’ Club’s accommodations contributed to a significant growth in membership in the years following construction of the new building. Between 1906 and 1909, the club’s membership rose nearly 35% to 2,000 members. By 1910, just three years after the club opened, the Board of Management declared that it would be forced to consider the provision of additional facilities to meet the “reasonable requirements of the members.” To satisfy the growing demands, the Engineers’ Club began construction in 1913 of a five-story building at 23 West 39th Street (not part of this designation), directly abutting the Engineers’ Club building to the rear and the Engineering Societies’ building to the east. The space, formerly utilized as a carriage entrance for the complex, opened for use by the club in April 1915. A decade later, in need of further expansion, the Engineers’ Club purchased the buildings located on both sides of it – 28 and 36 West 40th Street. No. 28 was used for additional bedrooms and a lounge area, while no. 36 was used as office space. Today the Engineers’ Club building continues to tower over its diminutive neighbors, rising almost nine stories above the rooflines of the smaller buildings.

 

For nearly six decades, the Engineers’ Club and the Engineering Societies’ buildings served as the epicenter of American engineering, with each establishment frequented by some of the world’s most renowned engineers and scientists. Among its most prominent members, the Engineers’ Club has counted Andrew Carnegie, President Herbert C. Hoover, Thomas Edison, Charles Lindbergh, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Henry Clay Frick, H.H. Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla. Countless national and international engineering conferences were held regularly in the buildings, with some of the country’s largest corporations as participants. In 1960, the United Engineering Society sold its West 39th Street property and relocated to the new United Engineering Center building at 345 East 47th Street, opposite the United Nations. With that action, the engineering center was officially disbanded. As of 1972, the Engineers’ Club was also the only remaining club on West 40th Street.

 

By the mid-1970s, the Engineers’ Club was facing serious financial difficulties which culminated in the club declaring bankruptcy in 1977. Among the assets the club was forced to put up for sale were the Engineers’ Club building at 32 West 40th Street, and each of the three associated buildings at 28 and 36 West 40th Street and 23 West 39th Street. In 1979, the Engineers’ Club building and its three associated structures were purchased by a developer who converted the buildings for residential use. Changes were also made around this time to the penthouse units, which were expanded to cover a greater portion of the roof. Upon completion, the now-apartment building also featured ground floor retail and was advertised as “The Columns,” probably in reference to the four prominent columns which adorn the base of the building. The celebrated history of the Engineers’ Club was used in advertisements that appeared in the New York Times boasting: “CARNEGIE BUILT IT! Edison & Nobel Lived Here! NOW… SO CAN YOU!” The building was converted into a cooperative apartment house in 1983, and remains one today.

 

In the mid-1990s, it was discovered that the exterior of the Engineers’ Club was suffering from physical deterioration, particularly of the ornamental marble and metal elements. The architectural firm Midtown Preservation Architecture & Engineering, P.C. was hired to assess the condition of the building and make necessary repairs. The firm proceeded to repair elements including the marble arches and keystones of the 12th story, and replaced much of the original material, particularly at the building’s base and at the 11th-story balcony, with lightweight fiberglass replicas due to the advanced state of deterioration of the existing marble and metal cornices. Both the cornices at the third and at the 12th stories have been replaced with fiberglass replicas. Further repairs to the exterior facade were also made c. 2001.

 

Today, the Engineers’ Club is known as Bryant Park Place and continues to thrive as a cooperative apartment house. The building looks almost exactly as it did when it was constructed more than a century ago, standing as an architectural reminder of the commercial transformation of this part of Midtown Manhattan and of the emergence of New York State as the engineering center of the country and of the United States as an industrial and economic power. As the last remaining club building on the block, the Engineers’ Club is also a prominent early example of the high-rise clubhouse building type and a visual reminder of the prominence of the social club and of bachelor apartment at the turn of the 20th century. The building also significantly contributes to the recognizable south street wall of Bryant Park. A commemorative plaque celebrating the history of the building as the Engineers’ Club was placed to the left of the primary entrance by the Co-op Board in 2007. The Engineers’ Club building and the adjacent Engineering Societies’ building were jointly listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places in 2007.

 

The Architects: Whitfield & King

 

It us unknown when the partnership of Henry D. Whitfield (1876-1949) and Beverly S. King (1879-1935), architects of the Engineers’ Club building, was formed. The first known work of the firm was the parish house of the Flatbush Congregation Church, completed in 1899, an unusual polygonal Shingle-style structure (part of the Ditmas Park Historic District). The partnership appears to have benefited greatly from Whitfield’s familial relationship with Andrew Carnegie. Prior to their work on the Engineers’ Club building, Whitfield & King were probably best known for the neo-Federal style parking garage designed in 1904 for Carnegie, Whitfield’s brother-in-law. The garage, erected at 55 East 90th Street (part of the Expanded Carnegie Hill Historic District), near Carnegie’s Fifth Avenue mansion (a designated New York City Landmark), was one of the first structures erected in Manhattan specifically as a private automobile garage. Following completion of the Engineers’ Club, Whitfield & King went on to complete at least two more commissions associated with Carnegie, including the Cleveland Public Library in Ohio (1911) and Taylor Hall, Lehigh University’s first dormitory building (1907). Whitfield & King are also credited with the c. 1906 design of the Phipps Houses, model tenements constructed between West 63rd and 64th Streets at West End Avenue in Manhattan, underwritten by Henry Phipps, a former partner of Carnegie’s.

 

King began working as an architect in New York City before the turn of the century and appears to have worked both independently and as part of various architectural partnerships over the course of his career. In 1909, King was noted as having formed the partnership of King & Walker with Henry Leslie Walker. Pomander Walk (a designated New York City Landmark), a complex of 27 two- and three-story houses organized around a private walk on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, is probably King’s best known project outside of the Engineers’ Club building. The complex was designed in 1921 while King was associated with the partnership of King & Campbell. In the 1920s, King moved his practice to White Plains, New York and was responsible for several public buildings in Westchester, including the White Plains Public Library, financed by Carnegie. At the end of his career (c. 1933), King went to Washington, D.C. where he served as deputy administrator of the National Recovery Administration (NRA), one of the New Deal agencies created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

 

Whitfield graduated from Harvard University in 1898 and served as an Army officer in World War I. Whitfield appears to have practiced largely independently from 1910 to 1924, following the dissolution of his partnership with King. He worked on numerous Carnegie-funded projects throughout the country, including several libraries, such as the Muskogee Carnegie Library in Oklahoma (1914) and the Hawai’i State Library in Honolulu (1911-13), as well as several university science buildings including the Carnegie Hall of Chemistry at Allegheny College (1915-18), the applied science building at the University of Rochester (c. 1913), and the Carnegie Science Hall at Bates University (1913). Shortly following completion of the library in Honolulu, Whitfield was commissioned to design the Federal Building, U.S. Post Office and Courthouse in Hilo, Hawaii, one the first buildings in Hawaii to use reinforced concrete, already common on the mainland. Within New York City, Whitfield is probably best known as the architect of the National Collection of Heads and Horns (1922, later the Security, Education and International Conservation Offices, a designated New York City Landmark) located on the east side of Astor Court at the New York Zoological Park (later the Bronx Zoo). Andrew Carnegie and his wife Louise were great supporters of the New York Zoological Society (later the Wildlife Conservation Society), and may have helped initiate contact between Whitfield and the society.

 

Description

 

North (West 40th Street) Facade:

 

Twelve stories; Renaissance Revival style; one visible and two partially visible elevations; tripartite vertical composition; three bays at each story; dumbbell-shaped plan above third story; three-story base with marble facing and marble ornament; seven-story shaft with red brick in an English bond, marble quoins and other marble ornament; two-story capital with brick and marble facing and marble ornament; possibly original multi-paned windows with arched upper sashes at 11th-story window openings.

 

East and West Facades:

 

Partially visible; largely not designed; red brick laid in a Common bond; 11th-story service bridge at east facade.

 

Alterations:

 

Fiberglass replica cornices at third and 12th-stories (originally metal cornices; c. 1994-95); fiberglass replacements also at some areas of base, 11th-story balcony, and 12th-story (originally marble; c. 1994-95); aluminum replacement windows throughout (except where noted; first story originally one-over-one double-hung with arched upper sashes, replaced after c. 1940 New York City Tax Photograph; second story originally one-over-one double hung sashes with single-pane transoms; third story originally fixed multi-paned round-arched windows; fourth through ninth stories originally one-over-one double-hung sashes; 10th story originally one-over-one double-hung sashes with single-pane rectangular transoms; one-over-one double-hung sashes throughout east and west facades); original penthouse units altered and enlarged (c. 1980; penthouse units along West 40th Street further expanded into duplex units c. 1992); awnings at first-story window openings; metal globe lamps on painted metal armatures at primary door opening; plaque to left of primary door opening (2007); brass number “32” to right of primary door opening; security camera at first story; security lights at first story.

 

- From the 2011 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Keep designs underwent a significant change in the 12th century when square configurations gave way to more rounded forms. But at Chateau Gaillard, Richard the Lionheart’s donjon is in a shape of its own. Its exterior walls are sloped outward. At the front they join and project forward at a sharp angle. This unique form makes it more resistant to projectiles. On the opposite side, the keep backs onto a sheer cliff, making any approach from this side virtually impossible. Inside, Richard I’s last line of defence is a mere eight metres in diameter. The current point of entry is believed to date from a later period, as the original door would have almost certainly been positioned above ground and reached by a ladder or stairway. With no evidence of a fireplace, well, or latrine, it appears that this particular keep was built exclusively for defence.

 

Battle Castle is an action documentary series starring Dan Snow that is now airing on History Television and is scheduled to premiere on Discovery Knowledge in the UK in Spring 2012 and on various BBC-affiliated channels in the near future.

 

For the latest air dates, Like us on Facebook (www.battlecastle.com/facebook) or follow us on Twitter (www.twitter.com/battlecastle)

 

This show brings to life mighty medieval fortifications and the epic sieges they resist: clashes that defy the limits of military technology, turn empires to dust, and transform mortals into legends.

 

Website: www.battlecastle.tv/

 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/battlecastle

 

YouTube: www.youtube.com/battlecastle

 

Flickr: www.flicker.com/battlecastle

 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/battlecastle

   

Castles conjure thoughts of romantic tales, but make no mistake, they are built for war.

 

Dover: Prince Louis' key to England. Malaga: the Granadans final stronghold. And Crac des Chevaliers: Crown Jewel of Crusader castles. Through dynamic location footage and immersive visual effects, Battle Castle reveals a bloody history of this epic medieval arms race.

 

As siege weapons and technology become more ruthless, the men who design and built these castles reply ... or perish. Follow host Dan Snow as he explores the military engineering behind these medieval megastructures and the legendary battles that became testaments to their might.

 

Each episode will climax in the ultimate test of the castle's military engineering -- a siege that will change the course of history. Which castles will be conquered and which will prevail? You'll have to watch to find out.

 

But the journey doesn't end there --in fact, it's just beginning. Battle Castle extends into a multi-platform quest, taking us deep into the secret world of medieval warfare and strategy. Become the ultimate 'Castle Master'. Stay tuned for more on the Battle Castle experience.

City Centre 1 (to be completed in 2018) will include 5 000m2 of retail space including convenience shops. A residential component consisting of approximately 740 apartments will feature eleven different configurations of one to three bedroom units and penthouses.

Bus L95

 

Manufactured 02/2020

Special Needs Configuration

 

-Cummins B6.7

-Ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel

-Allison Transmission

-100 gallon fuel tank

-Single-wire Clearance lights

-DEF System

-pedal adjuster

-55 pssgr

-Kenwood PA System

-Navy Blue seating

-1-piece (curved) windshield

-extended rubrails

-5-hole variation rim

-Cooper 11R 22.5" Tires

-Bendix Electronic Stability Control

-LED- flash Strobe Light

-LED Lighting

-Sound off Side panel turn signals

-Incandescent Warning Lights

-Hydraulic Brakes

-Roscoe Eye-Max LP cross-view mirrors (heated) w/ tiger grip

- Rosco 8912H 8x10' motorized flat mirrors (heated)

-Rosco convex mirrors (heated)

-Dual stop signs

- High-pitch Fast backup alarm

-New low-maintenance headlamps

-Warning Light Highlighter

-Doran Sleeping Child Check🔈

-Clarion AM/FM Radio

-E Z Light Check System

-Manual Doors

-4 pushout Windows

-Strobe Light Brush Guard

-Blacked-out window borders

Keep designs underwent a significant change in the 12th century when square configurations gave way to more rounded forms. But at Chateau Gaillard, Richard the Lionheart’s donjon is in a shape of its own. Its exterior walls are sloped outward. At the front they join and project forward at a sharp angle. This unique form makes it more resistant to projectiles. On the opposite side, the keep backs onto a sheer cliff, making any approach from this side virtually impossible. Inside, Richard I’s last line of defence is a mere eight metres in diameter. The current point of entry is believed to date from a later period, as the original door would have almost certainly been positioned above ground and reached by a ladder or stairway. With no evidence of a fireplace, well, or latrine, it appears that this particular keep was built exclusively for defence.

 

Battle Castle is an action documentary series starring Dan Snow that is now airing on History Television and is scheduled to premiere on Discovery Knowledge in the UK in Spring 2012 and on various BBC-affiliated channels in the near future.

 

For the latest air dates, Like us on Facebook (www.battlecastle.com/facebook) or follow us on Twitter (www.twitter.com/battlecastle)

 

This show brings to life mighty medieval fortifications and the epic sieges they resist: clashes that defy the limits of military technology, turn empires to dust, and transform mortals into legends.

 

Website: www.battlecastle.tv/

 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/battlecastle

 

YouTube: www.youtube.com/battlecastle

 

Flickr: www.flicker.com/battlecastle

 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/battlecastle

   

Castles conjure thoughts of romantic tales, but make no mistake, they are built for war.

 

Dover: Prince Louis' key to England. Malaga: the Granadans final stronghold. And Crac des Chevaliers: Crown Jewel of Crusader castles. Through dynamic location footage and immersive visual effects, Battle Castle reveals a bloody history of this epic medieval arms race.

 

As siege weapons and technology become more ruthless, the men who design and built these castles reply ... or perish. Follow host Dan Snow as he explores the military engineering behind these medieval megastructures and the legendary battles that became testaments to their might.

 

Each episode will climax in the ultimate test of the castle's military engineering -- a siege that will change the course of history. Which castles will be conquered and which will prevail? You'll have to watch to find out.

 

But the journey doesn't end there --in fact, it's just beginning. Battle Castle extends into a multi-platform quest, taking us deep into the secret world of medieval warfare and strategy. Become the ultimate 'Castle Master'. Stay tuned for more on the Battle Castle experience.

jsc2025e064749 (07-16-2025) --- Photographic documentation of Artemis Lunar Imaging Orion Crew Configuration with Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Andre Douglas

Photo Credit: NASA/James Blair

Keep designs underwent a significant change in the 12th century when square configurations gave way to more rounded forms. But at Chateau Gaillard, Richard the Lionheart’s donjon is in a shape of its own. Its exterior walls are sloped outward. At the front they join and project forward at a sharp angle. This unique form makes it more resistant to projectiles. On the opposite side, the keep backs onto a sheer cliff, making any approach from this side virtually impossible. Inside, Richard I’s last line of defence is a mere eight metres in diameter. The current point of entry is believed to date from a later period, as the original door would have almost certainly been positioned above ground and reached by a ladder or stairway. With no evidence of a fireplace, well, or latrine, it appears that this particular keep was built exclusively for defence.

 

Battle Castle is an action documentary series starring Dan Snow that is now airing on History Television and is scheduled to premiere on Discovery Knowledge in the UK in Spring 2012 and on various BBC-affiliated channels in the near future.

 

For the latest air dates, Like us on Facebook (www.battlecastle.com/facebook) or follow us on Twitter (www.twitter.com/battlecastle)

 

This show brings to life mighty medieval fortifications and the epic sieges they resist: clashes that defy the limits of military technology, turn empires to dust, and transform mortals into legends.

 

Website: www.battlecastle.tv/

 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/battlecastle

 

YouTube: www.youtube.com/battlecastle

 

Flickr: www.flicker.com/battlecastle

 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/battlecastle

   

Castles conjure thoughts of romantic tales, but make no mistake, they are built for war.

 

Dover: Prince Louis' key to England. Malaga: the Granadans final stronghold. And Crac des Chevaliers: Crown Jewel of Crusader castles. Through dynamic location footage and immersive visual effects, Battle Castle reveals a bloody history of this epic medieval arms race.

 

As siege weapons and technology become more ruthless, the men who design and built these castles reply ... or perish. Follow host Dan Snow as he explores the military engineering behind these medieval megastructures and the legendary battles that became testaments to their might.

 

Each episode will climax in the ultimate test of the castle's military engineering -- a siege that will change the course of history. Which castles will be conquered and which will prevail? You'll have to watch to find out.

 

But the journey doesn't end there --in fact, it's just beginning. Battle Castle extends into a multi-platform quest, taking us deep into the secret world of medieval warfare and strategy. Become the ultimate 'Castle Master'. Stay tuned for more on the Battle Castle experience.

Blue hour after sunset

 

Blaue Stunde nach Sonnenuntergang

 

The Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile (UK: /ˌɑːrk də ˈtriːɒmf, - ˈtriːoʊmf/, US: /- triːˈoʊmf/, French: [aʁk də tʁijɔ̃f də letwal]; "Triumphal Arch of the Star"), often simply called the Arc de Triomphe, is one of the most famous monuments in Paris, France. It is located at the western end of the Champs-Élysées, at the centre of the Place Charles de Gaulle—formerly known as the Place de l'Étoile—named for the star-shaped configuration formed by the convergence of twelve radiating avenues. The monument is situated at the intersection of three arrondissements: the 16th (to the south and west), the 17th (to the north), and the 8th (to the east). Commissioned to honor those who fought and died for France during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Arc bears the names of French victories and generals engraved on its inner and outer surfaces. Beneath its vault lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I, marked by an eternal flame commemorating unidentified fallen soldiers.

 

The central cohesive element of the Axe historique ("historical axis", a sequence of monuments and grand thoroughfares on a route running from the courtyard of the Louvre to the Grande Arche de la Défense), the Arc de Triomphe was designed by Jean-François Chalgrin in 1806; its iconographic programme depicts heroically nude warriors and set the tone for public monuments with triumphant patriotic messages. Inspired by the Arch of Titus in Rome, the Arc de Triomphe has an overall height of 49.54 m (162.5 ft), width of 44.82 m (147.0 ft) and depth of 22.21 m (72.9 ft), while its large vault is 29.19 m (95.8 ft) high and 14.62 m (48.0 ft) wide. The smaller transverse vaults are 18.68 m (61.3 ft) high and 8.44 m (27.7 ft) wide.

 

Paris's Arc de Triomphe was the tallest triumphal arch until the completion of the Monumento a la Revolución in Mexico City in 1938, which is 67 m (220 ft) high. The Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang, completed in 1982, is modeled on the Arc de Triomphe and is slightly taller at 60 m (197 ft). The Grande Arche in La Défense near Paris is 110 m (361 ft) high, and, if considered to be a triumphal arch, is the world's tallest.

 

History

 

Construction and late 19th century

 

The Arc de Triomphe is located on the right bank of the Seine at the centre of a dodecagonal configuration of twelve radiating avenues.

 

It was commissioned in 1806, after the victory at Austerlitz by Emperor Napoleon at the peak of his fortunes. Laying the foundations alone took two years and, in 1810, when Napoleon entered Paris from the west with his new bride, Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria, he had a wooden mock-up of the completed arch constructed. The architect, Jean-François Chalgrin, died in 1811 and the work was taken over by Louis-Robert Goust.

 

During the Bourbon Restoration, construction was halted until 1823, and it would not be completed until the reign of Louis Philippe I in 1836, by architects Louis-Robert Goust and Jean-Nicolas Huyot, under the direction of Louis-Étienne Héricart de Thury, then by Guillaume-Abel Blouet. The final cost was reported at about 10 million francs (equivalent to an estimated €65 million or $75 million in 2020).

 

Various designs were proposed to crown the monument with a monumental sculptural group, yet none was permanently realized. In 1838, Bernard Seurre submitted La France victorieuse ("Victorious France"), depicting a chariot drawn by six horses. In 1840, this proposal gave way to a temporary sculptural group representing Napoleon I, installed above the arch by the architect Guillaume-Abel Blouet for the return of the Emperor's remains. In preparing this installation, Blouet returned to a scheme he had drafted in 1834, modifying it by substituting the originally intended allegorical figure of France with that of the Emperor.

 

From 1882 to 1886, a quadriga by Alexandre Falguière was erected above the arch. The work, entitled Triomphe de la Révolution ("The Triumph of the Revolution"), depicted a chariot drawn by horses advancing "to crush Anarchy and Despotism". Executed in plaster, the group was hoisted to the summit of the monument in order to assess its visual effect. The result was judged unconvincing; although the sculpture remained in place for four years, its material deteriorated under exposure to the elements and it was ultimately removed. Following this episode, the proposal to crown the monument was ultimately abandoned.

 

20th century

 

It is said that on the day the Battle of Verdun began in 1916, the sword carried by the figure of the Republic in La Marseillaise sculptural group broke off. The relief was immediately hidden by tarpaulins to conceal the accident and avoid any undesired ominous interpretations. On 7 August 1919, three weeks after the Paris victory parade marking the end of hostilities in World War I, Charles Godefroy flew his Nieuport biplane under the arch's primary vault, with the event captured on newsreel. Jean Navarre was the pilot who was tasked to make the flight, but he died on 10 July 1919 when he crashed near Villacoublay while training for the flight.

 

Following its construction, the Arc de Triomphe became the rallying point of French troops parading after successful military campaigns and for the annual Bastille Day military parade. Famous victory marches around or under the Arc have included the Germans in 1871, the French and Allies in 1919, the Germans in 1940, and the French and Allies in 1944[16] and 1945. After the interment of the Unknown Soldier, however, all military parades (including the aforementioned post-1919) have avoided marching through the actual arch. The route taken is up to the arch and then around its side, out of respect for the tomb and its symbolism. Both Adolf Hitler in 1940 and Charles de Gaulle in 1944 observed this custom.

 

By the early 1960s, the monument had grown very blackened from coal soot and automobile exhaust, and during 1965–1966 it was cleaned through bleaching. In the prolongation of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, a new arch, the Grande Arche de la Défense, was built in 1982, completing the line of monuments that forms Paris's Axe historique. After the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, the Grande Arche is the third arch built on the same perspective.

 

In 1995, the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria placed a bomb near the Arc de Triomphe which wounded 17 people as part of a campaign of bombings.

 

On 12 July 1998, when France won the FIFA World Cup for the first time after defeating Brazil 3–0 at the Stade de France, images of the players including double goal scorer Zinedine Zidane and their names along with celebratory messages were projected onto the arch.

 

21st century

 

In late 2018, the Arc de Triomphe suffered acts of vandalism during the yellow vests protests. A crowd of demonstrators sprayed the monument with graffiti and ransacked its museum. In September 2021, the Arc was wrapped in a silvery blue fabric and red rope, as part of L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, a posthumous project planned by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude since the early 1960s.

 

Design

 

Monument

 

The astylar design is by Jean-François Chalgrin (1739–1811), in the Neoclassical version of ancient Roman architecture. Among the major French academic sculptors represented on the Arc de Triomphe are Jean-Pierre Cortot, François Rude, Antoine Étex, James Pradier, and Henri Lemaire.

 

The main sculptures are not integral friezes but are treated as independent trophies applied to the vast ashlar masonry masses, not unlike the gilt-bronze appliqués on Empire furniture. The four sculptural groups at the base of the Arc are The Triumph of 1810 (by Jean-Pierre Cortot), The Resistance of 1814 and The Peace of 1815 (both by Antoine Étex), and the most renowned of them all, The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792, commonly called La Marseillaise (by François Rude). The face of the allegorical representation of France calling forth her people on this last was used as the belt buckle for the honorary rank of Marshal of France. The sculptures representing Triumph, Resistance and Peace commemorate Napoleon's victories, the invasion of France in 1814, and the end of hostilities in 1815.

 

On the attic above the richly sculptured frieze of soldiers are 30 shields engraved with the names of major French victories in the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars. The inside walls of the monument list the names of 660 officers, among which are 558 French generals of the First French Empire; the names of those killed in battle are underlined. Also inscribed, on the shorter sides of the four supporting columns, are the names of the major French victories in the Napoleonic Wars. Battles that took place during the Hundred Days are not included.

 

Inside the monument, a permanent exhibition, conceived by artist Maurice Benayoun and architect Christophe Girault, opened in February 2007.

 

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

 

Beneath the Arc is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I. Interred on Armistice Day 1920, an eternal flame burns in memory of the dead who were never identified (now in both world wars).

 

A ceremony is held at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier every 11 November on the anniversary of the Armistice of 11 November 1918 signed by the Entente Powers and Germany in 1918. It was originally decided on 12 November 1919 to bury the unknown soldier's remains in the Panthéon, but a public letter-writing campaign led to the decision to bury him beneath the Arc de Triomphe. The coffin was put in the chapel on the first floor of the Arc on 10 November 1920, and put in its final resting place on 28 January 1921. The slab on top bears the inscription: Ici repose un soldat français mort pour la Patrie, 1914–1918 ("Here rests a French soldier who died for the Fatherland, 1914–1918").

 

In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy paid their respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, accompanied by President Charles de Gaulle. After the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, Mrs. Kennedy remembered the eternal flame at the Arc de Triomphe and requested that an eternal flame be placed next to her husband's grave at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

 

Details

 

The four main sculptural groups on each of the Arc's pillars are:

 

The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792, also called La Marseillaise, by François Rude (southern façade, right). This sculptural group celebrates the cause of the French First Republic during the Battle of Valmy. Above the volunteers is the winged personification of Liberty. The group served as a recruitment tool in the early months of World War I and encouraged the French to invest in war loans in 1915–1916.

 

The Triumph of 1810, by Jean-Pierre Cortot (southern façade, left). This group celebrates the Treaty of Schönbrunn and features Napoleon, crowned by the goddess of Victory.

 

The Resistance of 1814, by Antoine Étex (northern façade, right). This group commemorates the French Resistance to the Allied Armies during the War of the Sixth Coalition.

 

The Peace of 1815, by Antoine Étex (northern façade, left). This group commemorates the Treaty of Paris, concluded in that year.

 

Six reliefs sculpted on the façades of the arch, representing important moments of the French Revolution and of the Napoleonic era include:

 

The Battle of Aboukir, 25 July 1799, by Bernard Seurre (southern façade, left).

 

The Funeral of General Marceau, 21 September 1796, by Henri Lemaire (southern façade, right).

 

The Battle of Jemappes, 6 November 1792, by Carlo Marochetti (eastern façade).

 

The Capture of Alexandria, 3 July 1798, by John-Étienne Chaponnière (northern façade, left).

 

The Crossing of the Arcole Bridge, 15 November 1796, by Jean-Jacques Feuchère (northern façade, right).

 

The Battle of Austerlitz, 2 December 1805, by Théodore Gechter (western façade).

 

The names of 158 battles fought by the French First Republic and the First French Empire are engraved on the monument. Among them, 30 battles are engraved on the attic.

 

96 battles are engraved on the inner façades, under the great arches.

 

The names of 660 military leaders who served during the French First Republic and the First French Empire are engraved on the inner façades of the small arches. Underlined names signify those who died on the battlefield.

 

The spandrels of the great arches are decorated with allegorical figures representing characters in Roman mythology (by James Pradier).

 

Access

 

The Arc de Triomphe is accessible by the RER and Métro, with the closest stop being the Charles de Gaulle–Étoile station. Due to heavy traffic on the roundabout of which the Arc is the centre, pedestrians use two underpasses accessible from the Champs-Élysées and the Grande Armée avenues. A spiral stairway with 240 steps leads visitors to the museum level in the attic of the monument, where large models of the Arc and interactive exhibits on its history, construction, and cultural significance are displayed. Another 40 steps lead to the rooftop terrace, offering a panoramic view of Paris. Elevators providing access to the museum and rooftop terrace are available.

 

The location of the Arc, as well as the Place de l'Étoile, is shared between three arrondissements: the 16th (to the south and west), the 17th (to the north), and the 8th (to the east).

 

Replicas

 

While many structures around the world resemble the Arc de Triomphe, some were actually inspired by it. Replicas that used its design as a model include the Rosedale World War I Memorial Arch in Kansas City, United States (1924); the Arcul de Triumf in Bucharest, Romania (1936); the Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang, North Korea (1982); a miniature version at the Paris Casino in Las Vegas, United States (1999); and the Simpang Lima Gumul Monument in Kediri, Indonesia (2008).

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Der Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile (dt. Triumphbogen an der Place de l’Étoile) oder kurz Arc de Triomphe ist ein von 1806 bis 1836 errichtetes Denkmal im Zentrum der Place Charles de Gaulle in Paris.

 

Das Bauwerk gehört zu den Wahrzeichen der Metropole und wird vom Centre des monuments nationaux (dt. Zentrum für nationale Monumente) verwaltet, das dem Ministerium für Kultur untersteht.

 

Unter dem Triumphbogen liegt das Grabmal des unbekannten Soldaten aus dem Ersten Weltkrieg mit der täglich gewarteten Ewigen Flamme, im Französischen Flamme du Souvenir (dt. Flamme der Erinnerung) genannt, im Gedenken an die Toten, die nie identifiziert wurden. Das ganze Jahr hindurch finden Kranzniederlegungen und Ehrungen statt, die ihren Höhepunkt in der Parade am 11. November finden, dem Jahrestag des Waffenstillstands von Compiègne im Jahr 1918.

 

Für Fußgänger ist der Arc de Triomphe nur durch eine Unterführung erreichbar; der Triumphbogen verfügt über eine Aussichtsplattform.

 

Der Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile ist nicht zu verwechseln mit dem weniger bekannten und kleineren Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, der sich zwischen dem Palais du Louvre und dem Jardin des Tuileries befindet.

 

Geschichte

 

Der Triumphbogen diente dem Ruhm der kaiserlichen Armeen und wird von manchen pathetisch als „Altar des Vaterlandes“ bezeichnet, denn an diesem Ort finden die feierlichsten staatlichen Zeremonien Frankreichs statt; häufig führen Festumzüge von hier aus die Avenue des Champs Élysées hinunter oder enden mit dem Arc de Triomphe als Ziel.

 

Er steht im Zentrum der Place Charles de Gaulle (bis 1970 Place de l’Étoile), am westlichen Ausläufer der Avenue des Champs Élysées. Er ist Teil der „historischen Achse“, einer Reihe von Monumenten und großen Straßen, die aus Paris herausführen. Zwölf Avenuen gehen sternförmig von diesem Triumphbogen ab. Die heutige Form des Platzes entstand 1854, war in Grundzügen aber bereits seit dem späten 18. Jahrhundert so ähnlich angelegt worden, wenn auch nur mit vier Straßen.

 

Der Triumphbogen selbst wurde von Kaiser Napoleon I. nach der Schlacht bei Austerlitz zur Verherrlichung seiner Siege 1806 in Auftrag gegeben. Am 15. August 1806 wurde der Grundstein zum Bau gelegt. Zwei Jahre dauerte der Bau der Fundamente. 1810 erhoben sich die vier Pylonen des Triumphbogens aber erst bis zu einer Höhe von 1 m. Napoleon heiratete am 1. April 1810 die habsburgische Prinzessin Marie-Louise; er ließ dazu ein provisorisches Modell des Triumphbogens aus Holz und Stuck in originaler Größe errichten. Ähnlich dem Elefanten der Bastille stand diese Ehrenpforte längere Zeit. Der Triumphbogen wurde (anders als der Elefant) letztlich fertiggestellt.

 

Als der zuständige Architekt Jean-François Chalgrin im Januar 1811 gestorben war und Napoleon am 6. April 1814 abdankte, wurden die Bauarbeiten gestoppt. Louis XVIII. ließ sie 1824 unter der Leitung von Héricart de Thury fortsetzen. 1830 entschied sich König Louis-Philippe I. (oft Bürgerkönig genannt), zur napoleonischen Konzeption zurückzukehren. Er und Adolphe Thiers entschieden über den figurativen Schmuck und seine Ausführenden. Der Bogen wurde 1836 von Huyot und Blouet fertiggestellt. Am 25. Juni 1836 schoss ein 26-jähriger Anarchist namens Louis Alibaud auf die Kutsche des Königs und verfehlte ihn nur knapp. Der König beschloss daraufhin, nicht an der geplanten großen Militärparade teilzunehmen, die am 29. Juli zur Erinnerung an den sechsten Jahrestag der Julirevolution von 1830 und zur Einweihung des Bogens stattfinden sollte.

 

Jean Navarre, ein Fliegerass im Ersten Weltkrieg, hatte den Plan, am 14. Juli 1919 bei einer Siegesparade durch den Triumphbogen zu fliegen. Navarre stürzte aber am 10. Juli 1919 beim Üben für diesen Flug ab und starb. Am 7. August 1919 durchflog Charles Godefroy mit einer Nieuport 11 „Bébé“ den Triumphbogen. Im Oktober 1981 flog Alain Marchand durch den Triumphbogen.

 

Der Rundkurs der letzten Kilometer der Schlussetappe der Tour de France, die seit 1975 auf der Avenue des Champs Élysées endet, umrundet den Arc de Triomphe. Bis 2013 führte der Rundkurs direkt vor dem Arc de Triomphe eine Wende aus (und umkreiste ihn somit nicht).

 

Am Abend des 9. Januar 2015 wurden die Worte „Paris est Charlie“ auf den Triumphbogen projiziert. Die Parole, eine Abwandlung von „Je suis Charlie“, war ein Bekenntnis zu den demokratischen Werten der Meinungs- und Pressefreiheit und eine Solidaritätsbekundung mit den Mitarbeitern des Satiremagazins Charlie Hebdo, die von islamistischen Attentätern erschossen worden waren.

 

Am 1. Dezember 2018 wurde die Figur der Marianne am Triumphbogen schwer beschädigt, als es im Zuge der Protestaktionen der Gelbwestenbewegung zu schweren Ausschreitungen kam.

 

Beschreibung

 

Der Triumphbogen ist 49,54 m hoch, 44,82 m breit und 22,21 m tief. Der große Gewölbebogen misst 29,19 m in der Höhe und 14,62 m in der Breite, der kleine Bogen 18,68 m in der Höhe und 8,44 m in der Breite. Der Entwurf ist im Stil der antiken römischen Architektur gehalten. Die vier Figurengruppen an der Basis des Bogens zeigen Der Auszug der Freiwilligen von 1792, allgemein bekannt als Die Marseillaise (von François Rude), Der Triumph von 1810 (Jean-Pierre Cortot), Der Widerstand von 1814 und Der Frieden von 1815 (Antoine Étex). Oben sind auf den Flächen rund um den Bogen Flachreliefs mit Nachbildungen von wichtigen revolutionären und napoleonischen Siegen eingelassen. Die Innenwände des Triumphbogens beherbergen ein kleines Museum.

 

Inschriften

 

Die Innenwände des Triumphbogens führen die Namen von:

 

660 Militärs – Die meisten davon waren Generäle der Ersten Französischen Republik (1792–1804) und des Ersten Kaiserreichs (1804–1815). Unterstrichene Namen kennzeichnen Personen, die im Kampf gefallen sind.

 

158 Schlachten – Die 30 bedeutendsten Schlachten Napoleons beginnend mit Valmy sind zuoberst auf dem Fries in fast 50 Metern Höhe zu sehen, während 128 weitere Kriegsereignisse auf den Pfeilern zu finden sind. Verzeichnet sind nur siegreiche Schlachten.

 

Reliefs

 

Berühmt ist der Triumphbogen auch wegen der bedeutenden Reliefs, die er trägt. Sie wurden 1833 bei den Bildhauern Antoine Étex, Jean-Pierre Cortot und vor allem François Rude in Auftrag gegeben.

 

Die Ostfassade zeigt das berühmteste Relief, die Marseillaise (dt. Auszug der Freiwilligen von 1792) von Rude, die auch Le chant du départ, also das Abschiedslied, genannt wird. Es stellt eine Gruppe ausziehender Krieger dar, die in offensichtlich revolutionärer oder erhoben nationaler Gesinnung – zumindest kann man das in dieser Szene vermuten – das neue Revolutionslied der Marseillaise auf den Lippen haben, das erst am 25. April 1792 komponiert worden war.

 

François Rude übertrifft mit dem heroischen Schwung seiner Darstellung die seiner Konkurrenten auf diesem Triumphbogen bei weitem. Er begann als akademischer Klassizist, aber mit diesem seinem bekanntesten Werk vollzog Rude als einer der ersten die Abkehr vom Klassizismus und die Hinwendung zur Romantik, zu einer neuen heroischen Leidenschaftlichkeit in der Bildhauerei, ähnlich wie Eugène Delacroix in der Malerei.

 

Interessant ist ein Vergleich der beiden Reliefs dieser Seite. Es handelt sich auf der anderen Seite um den „Triumph Napoleons nach dem Frieden von 1810“ (der „Triumph“ verherrlicht den Frieden von Wien) von Jean-Pierre Cortot. Das Relief von Cortot steht noch ganz in der Tradition der klassizistischen Statik, der gemessenen Heldenverehrung, des symmetrischen, wohlproportionierten Bildaufbaus – mit anderen Worten der „erhabenen Langeweile“.

 

Auch bei den Reliefs von Antoine Etex auf der Westseite ist diese Atmosphäre deutlich zu spüren, beispielsweise beim „Frieden“. Hier hat man noch den Eindruck, dass die Themen von einer Schauspielertruppe auf einer Theaterbühne dargestellt werden, dass hier Motive aus dem Arsenal zusammengestellt worden sind.

 

Auf den vier Außenseiten des Bogens befinden sich sechs Flachreliefs, die jeweils berühmte Schlachten zeigen. Unter den sechs Bildhauern ist auch Jean-Jacques Feuchère mit einer Darstellung des Übergangs über die Brücke von Arcole zu sehen.

 

Kunst

 

Das Künstlerpaar Christo und Jeanne-Claude beabsichtigte, das Bauwerk im Zeitraum vom 19. September 2020 für 16 Tage bis zum 4. Oktober 2020 für seine Kunstaktion L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped (Project for Paris, Place de l’Étoile – Charles de Gaulle) zu verhüllen. Christo verstarb jedoch am 31. Mai 2020. Seinem Wunsch gemäß wurde das Projekt, dessen erste Pläne aus den 1960er Jahren stammten, von seinem Neffen postum umgesetzt. Die Verhüllung war nach zweimonatiger Vorbereitungsarbeit am 18. September fertiggestellt und dauerte bis zum 3. Oktober 2021. Eingesetzt wurden 25.000 Quadratmeter Stoff und 3.000 Meter rote Seile, die jeweils weiterverwendet werden.

 

Rezeption

 

Während viele Bauwerke auf der ganzen Welt dem Arc de Triomphe ähneln, wurden einige tatsächlich von ihm inspiriert. Bekannte Beispiele sind der Triumphbogen in Bukarest und der Triumphbogen in Pjöngjang. Zusätzlich zu diesen Nachahmungen gibt es noch weitere Bögen und Denkmäler weltweit, die vom Arc de Triomphe beeinflusst wurden, sei es in Bezug auf das Design, die Größe oder die verwendete Architektur.

 

(Wikipedia)

Keep designs underwent a significant change in the 12th century when square configurations gave way to more rounded forms. But at Chateau Gaillard, Richard the Lionheart’s donjon is in a shape of its own. Its exterior walls are sloped outward. At the front they join and project forward at a sharp angle. This unique form makes it more resistant to projectiles. On the opposite side, the keep backs onto a sheer cliff, making any approach from this side virtually impossible. Inside, Richard I’s last line of defence is a mere eight metres in diameter. The current point of entry is believed to date from a later period, as the original door would have almost certainly been positioned above ground and reached by a ladder or stairway. With no evidence of a fireplace, well, or latrine, it appears that this particular keep was built exclusively for defence.

 

Battle Castle is an action documentary series starring Dan Snow that is now airing on History Television and is scheduled to premiere on Discovery Knowledge in the UK in Spring 2012 and on various BBC-affiliated channels in the near future.

 

For the latest air dates, Like us on Facebook (www.battlecastle.com/facebook) or follow us on Twitter (www.twitter.com/battlecastle)

 

This show brings to life mighty medieval fortifications and the epic sieges they resist: clashes that defy the limits of military technology, turn empires to dust, and transform mortals into legends.

 

Website: www.battlecastle.tv/

 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/battlecastle

 

YouTube: www.youtube.com/battlecastle

 

Flickr: www.flicker.com/battlecastle

 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/battlecastle

   

Castles conjure thoughts of romantic tales, but make no mistake, they are built for war.

 

Dover: Prince Louis' key to England. Malaga: the Granadans final stronghold. And Crac des Chevaliers: Crown Jewel of Crusader castles. Through dynamic location footage and immersive visual effects, Battle Castle reveals a bloody history of this epic medieval arms race.

 

As siege weapons and technology become more ruthless, the men who design and built these castles reply ... or perish. Follow host Dan Snow as he explores the military engineering behind these medieval megastructures and the legendary battles that became testaments to their might.

 

Each episode will climax in the ultimate test of the castle's military engineering -- a siege that will change the course of history. Which castles will be conquered and which will prevail? You'll have to watch to find out.

 

But the journey doesn't end there --in fact, it's just beginning. Battle Castle extends into a multi-platform quest, taking us deep into the secret world of medieval warfare and strategy. Become the ultimate 'Castle Master'. Stay tuned for more on the Battle Castle experience.

Siller S-64 in a fire configuration, departing SBD.

just on time...

 

Bus No: 789

Year released: 2001

Capacity: 53; 2x2 seating configuration

Route: Pasay/Cubao-San Carlos via Marquee Mall/SCTEX-Concepcion/Capas/Tarlac/Camiling/Bayambang/Malasiqui

Body: Five Star Bus Body (rebodied)

Previous Body: 2001 SR-EXFOH AC RE Series

Chassis: Nissan Diesel RB46S

Engine: Nissan Diesel PE6T

Fare: Airconditioned

Transmission System: M/T

Plate No.: TWC-511 (NCR- National Capital Region)

Taken on: July 3, 2013

Location: Romulo Highway., Brgy. Malacampa, Camiling, Tarlac

 

Note: Any individual or representative of this subjected bus who wants to use this picture for commercial or personal purposes, pls coordinate me by sending a private message in my FB Account:

www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004753955265&ref=t...

Thank you and have a good day.....

The church dedicated to the Saviour's Configuration ("Metamorfosi tou Sotira") is built in the middle of "Palio Chorio" ("Old Village"). It was constructed in the 16th century (1520) and it has the same architectural style as the other two small churches of the village, that of "Panagia Theotokos" and that of Saint George "Perachoritis". Up until 1994, liturgies were conducted daily since it was considered as the village's main church.

It is a rectangular church of the Basilica style and with elements of the Byzantine style. It can accommodate up to 100-150 faithful. Externally it is made of stone and whitewashed.

The inhabitants built extensions to the church in 1880 and 1960 because the village was continuously growing. When they dug the floor they discovered many pieces of frescoes, which surely came from this church. Indeed, they were able to read the name of the hagiographer who was named Symeon Afxentis. He is known for his frescoes of the "Panagia Theotokos" and "Archangel" churches in the village of Galata.

The icon screen is woodcut, as also are the two Psalters that can be found in the church.

There are various remarkable representations dating back to the 16th and 17th century. The icon screen is of various different chronologies.

www.kakopetriavillage.com/churches.html

 

The settlement of Kakopetria, although mentioned by the mediaeval annalists, existed -at least- since the Frank domination era. The village's region was inhabited around the 6th - 7th century and the various excavations that have been conducted in 1938 around the old village of Kakopetria (in the Ailades venue) prove this. During the excavations a dispenser of an ancient shrine -most probably belonging to the goddess Athena- came to light. A large number of movable findings were found, mainly terra-cotta, many of which depict the goddess Athena, as well as small, limestone, statues and parts of statues and bronze and iron shafts from spearheads and arrows. The findings most probably date back to the Archaic and Classic eras of Cyprus. Other statuettes represent Hercules and are an indication that he was also worshiped in the area along with the goddess Athena. These findings are found in the Archaeological Museum of Nicosia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakopetria

 

In 2012 we received from NASA an order for 6 new models of International Space Station. NASA requested to modify our current model in order to represent the latest changes and additions to ISS so the model will depict the most current and updated configuration.

The foam lining in the transit cases for modified models was adjusted accordingly to accommodate the models and new separate elements.

 

Along with the order of 6 modified models for NASA we also produced one model in luxury edition for CERN, which was shipped to Geneva, Switzerland and receive excellent feedbacks for its accuracy and versatility.

 

Visit www.lifeinscale.net/ISS_model-2012_configuration.asp for more information.

Dover Castle reveals another striking difference in tower design – geometry. Originally, castle towers were predominately square. Unfortunately, this configuration leaves the castle vulnerable to areas that archers can’t cover. In the 12th century, medieval engineers begin to design circular and semicircular towers to solve this problem. Because it was built over several decades, Dover boasts square and circular towers – the former being attributed to construction under Henry II, the latter to work that’s believed to have been carried out several years later under his son John. Additionally, the castle has several polygonal towers, including the Avranches Tower, which was specifically designed to maximize the garrison’s firepower.

 

Battle Castle is an action documentary series starring Dan Snow that is now airing on History Television and is scheduled to premiere on Discovery Knowledge in the UK in Spring 2012 and on various BBC-affiliated channels in the near future.

 

For the latest air dates, Like us on Facebook (www.battlecastle.com/facebook) or follow us on Twitter (www.twitter.com/battlecastle)

 

This show brings to life mighty medieval fortifications and the epic sieges they resist: clashes that defy the limits of military technology, turn empires to dust, and transform mortals into legends.

 

Website: www.battlecastle.tv/

 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/battlecastle

 

YouTube: www.youtube.com/battlecastle

 

Flickr: www.flicker.com/battlecastle

 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/battlecastle

   

Castles conjure thoughts of romantic tales, but make no mistake, they are built for war.

 

Dover: Prince Louis' key to England. Malaga: the Granadans final stronghold. And Crac des Chevaliers: Crown Jewel of Crusader castles. Through dynamic location footage and immersive visual effects, Battle Castle reveals a bloody history of this epic medieval arms race.

 

As siege weapons and technology become more ruthless, the men who design and built these castles reply ... or perish. Follow host Dan Snow as he explores the military engineering behind these medieval megastructures and the legendary battles that became testaments to their might.

 

Each episode will climax in the ultimate test of the castle's military engineering -- a siege that will change the course of history. Which castles will be conquered and which will prevail? You'll have to watch to find out.

 

But the journey doesn't end there --in fact, it's just beginning. Battle Castle extends into a multi-platform quest, taking us deep into the secret world of medieval warfare and strategy. Become the ultimate 'Castle Master'. Stay tuned for more on the Battle Castle experience.

How to configure Raspberry Pi for the first time

 

If you would like to use this photo, be sure to place a proper attribution linking to xmodulo.com

This project is part of the Ars electronica Garden Lima. As we immerse ourselves in the network of alliances, approximations and relationships currently experienced through computers, we are enveloped in an innate need to connect / communicate and stay current in the virtual world; a simulacrum of life itself further established by a pandemic that has confined us to a “flat prison cell”. It is this virtual architecture precisely that makes it possible to place the world at a remove, shortening time and distances thanks to technologies that underpin an ecosystem for discussion and exchange with multiple agents.

 

For more informations please visit:

ars.electronica.art/keplersgardens/en/lima/

 

Credit: Edi Hirose

My ride home after the party..

 

Bus No: 1566

Year released: 1997

Capacity: 49; 2x2 seating configuration

Route: Cubao- Alaminos via Camiling/Tarlac/Dau/Mangatarem/Socony

Body: Santarosa Philippines(semi-rehab by Victory Bus Body)

Model:1997 flxtar series

Engine: Nissan Diesel PE6T

Fare: Airconditioned

Aircon System: Zexel rear a/c

Transmission System: M/T

Plate No.: CWB-712

Taken on: August 12, 2008; 7:45pm

Location: Siesta Bus Stop, Brgy. San Roque, Tarlac City, Tarlac

 

Let The Official Records Show...that I **NEVER** allow BUILDINGS, WIRES, TELEPHONE POLES and such enter into my Cloud Configuration photos....

 

But this configuration was SO *BRILL*...This Expatriate Chicagoan COULDN'T let it GET AWAY...albeit I *HAD* to give my PERSONAL COMMENTARY on the DISRUPTIVE and NOT AT ALL APPRICIATED ELEMENTS therein!

 

"Development", "Progress"...and all stuff like that there....oft times GETS my *GOAT!*

 

'Nuff Said!!!!

Image Disclaimer - Please note that all of the images shown are for illustrative purposes only. The rooms pictured are not necessarily typical of the accommodation available at Queen Margaret, which can vary in terms of size, configuration, and finish.

This was a fun compartment to design. The map background is a playing card. The skull and crossbones is from a new Tim Holtz die-cut. I printed the merchant ship from a Google image and then carefully fit into one of Tim's mini bottles.

The Hull Bed in configuration 28 from the configuration grid.

We will pilot a couple of configurations -- RMHC_0002 iPad has a small set of apps pre-loaded for the target uses. We collected input from our pilot team members.

 

Anticipated Uses for iPads in RMHs

Families:

1.Entertainment

oGames for patients and parents to keep busy

oWatching movies & Reading eBooks for parents and patients

2.Research

oMedical research for parents to learn more about their child’s illness

3.Communication

a.Emailing/ updating family and friends about their child

b.Social Media Websites (e.g., CareBridge or various specialty blogs)

4.Personal iPad Purchases

a.(games, eBooks, apps)

 

Visit www.RightStart4Kids.org to learn more.

INSTRUCTIONS AVAILABLE FOR P558 SUPERDUTY - MULTIPLE CONFIGURATIONS

 

On September 24, 2015, Ford unveiled the 2017 Ford Super Duty line at the 2015 State Fair of Texas. he frame is made from 95% high strength steel and the body (like the contemporary F-150) is made from 6000 series aluminum alloy. For the first time since 1999, both the Super Duty and F-150 lines are constructed using the same cab.

 

For 2017 production, the Super Duty line shares its powertrain lineup with its 2016 predecessor: a 6.2L gasoline V8, 6.8L V10 (F-450 and above), with a 6.7L diesel V8 available in all versions. The 6.2L gasoline V8 engine remains at 385 hp but torque rises from 405 lb-ft to 430 lb-ft. Additionally, the gasoline V8 produces its max torque at over 700 rpm less than the previous 405 lb-ft engine. The 6.7L diesel engine also remains at the same 440 hp (323 kW) but torque increases from 860 lb-ft upwards to 925 lb-ft.

 

The 2020 Super Duty debuted at the 2019 Chicago Auto Show. It features a revised grille and tailgate design, new wheel options, and higher-quality interior materials for the Limited trim. A new 7.3-liter gasoline engine is available. Nicknamed "Godzilla", it makes 430 horsepower and 475 lb-ft of torque.

 

Cab configurations continue to be 2-Door Regular Cab, 4-Door Super Cab, and 4-Door Super Crew Cab, with Short Box (6' 9") and Long Box (8') bed lengths. The truck will be available in F-250, F-350, and F-450 pickup truck models, and F-350, F-450, and F-550 chassis cab models. All will be available in both 4X2 and 4X4 configurations. The F-350 will be the only model available in either Single Rear Wheel (SRW) or Dual Rear Wheel (DRW) configurations, the F-450 and F-550 will only be available in a Dual Rear Wheel (DRW) configuration, and the F-250 will only be available in a Single Rear Wheel configuration.