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Plants behave in some oddly intelligent ways: fighting predators, maximizing food opportunities ... But can we think of them as actually having a form of intelligence of their own?
Are plants intelligent? Can they solve problems, communicate, and navigate their surroundings? For centuries, philosophers and scientists have argued that plants are unthinking and inert – yet discoveries over the past 50 years have challenged this idea, shedding new light on the complex interior lives of plants.Are plants intelligent? Can they solve problems, communicate, and navigate their surroundings? Or are they passive, incapable of independent action or social behavior? Philosophers and scientists have pondered these questions since ancient Greece, most often concluding that plants are unthinking and inert: they are too silent, too sedentary -- just too different from us. Yet discoveries over the past fifty years have challenged these ideas, shedding new light on the extraordinary capabilities and complex interior lives of plants.
In Brilliant Green, Stefano Mancuso, a leading scientist and founder of the field of plant neurobiology, presents a new paradigm in our understanding of the vegetal world. Combining a historical perspective with the latest in plant science, Mancuso argues that, due to cultural prejudices and human arrogance, we continue to underestimate plants. In fact, they process information, sleep, remember, and signal to one another -- showing that, far from passive machines, plants are intelligent and aware. Through a survey of plant capabilities from sight and touch to communication, Mancuso challenges our notion of intelligence, presenting a vision of plant life that is more sophisticated than most imagine.
Plants have much to teach us, from network building to innovations in robotics and man-made materials -- but only if we understand more about how they live. Part botany lesson, part manifesto, Brilliant Green is an engaging and passionate examination of the inner workings of the plant kingdom.
In Brilliant Green, leading scientist Stefano Mancuso presents a new paradigm in our understanding of the vegetal world. He argues that plants process information, sleep, remember, and signal to one another – showing that, far from passive machines, plants are intelligent and aware. Part botany lesson, part manifesto, Brilliant Green is an engaging and passionate examination of the inner workings of the plant kingdom.
www.ted.com/talks/stefano_mancuso_the_roots_of_plant_inte...
The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World is a 2001 nonfiction book by journalist Michael Pollan. Pollan presents case studies that mirror four types of human desires that are reflected in the way that we selectively grow, breed, and genetically engineer our plants. The tulip beauty, marijuana intoxication, the apple sweetness and the potato control.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Botany_of_Desire
Are plants intelligent? Can they solve problems, communicate, and navigate their surroundings? Or are they passive, incapable of independent action or social behavior? Philosophers and scientists have pondered these questions since ancient Greece, most often concluding that plants are unthinking and inert: they are too silent, too sedentary -- just too different from us. Yet discoveries over the past fifty years have challenged these ideas, shedding new light on the extraordinary capabilities and complex interior lives of plants.
In Brilliant Green, Stefano Mancuso, a leading scientist and founder of the field of plant neurobiology, presents a new paradigm in our understanding of the vegetal world. Combining a historical perspective with the latest in plant science, Mancuso argues that, due to cultural prejudices and human arrogance, we continue to underestimate plants. In fact, they process information, sleep, remember, and signal to one another -- showing that, far from passive machines, plants are intelligent and aware. Through a survey of plant capabilities from sight and touch to communication, Mancuso challenges our notion of intelligence, presenting a vision of plant life that is more sophisticated than most imagine.
Plants have much to teach us, from network building to innovations in robotics and man-made materials -- but only if we understand more about how they live. Part botany lesson, part manifesto, Brilliant Green is an engaging and passionate examination of the inner workings of the plant kingdom.
Financial support for the translation of this book has been provided by SEPS: Segretariato Europeo Per Le Pubblicazioni Scientifiche. - See more at: islandpress.org/book/brilliant-green#sthash.ThqSqcvm.dpuf
The stories range from the true story of Johnny Appleseed to Pollan's first-hand research with sophisticated marijuana hybrids in Amsterdam to the paradigm-shifting possibilities of genetically engineered potatoes. Pollan also discusses the limitations of monoculture agriculture: specifically, the adoption in Ireland of a single breed of potato (the Lumper) made the Irish vulnerable to a fungus to which it had no resistance, resulting in the Irish Potato Famine. The Peruvians from whom the Irish had gotten the potato grew hundreds of varieties, so their exposure to any given pest was slight.
Flowers can also be used to convey a message, and to share our feelings. Flowers, similar to colours are often used to convey a message, or to deliver a warning to us.Flowers and plant life have a wide range of uses from sustenance, to medicine, to gestures of affection and almost everything in between.Plant life converts carbon monoxide to oxygen, and without plants, we could not exist in our present human form.As well as traditional and modern medicines, essences and oils extracted from plant life are used for aroma therapy healing practices and the like.Plants extracts and essences are used in many Wiccan rituals.These uses of plants are valid and essential but, they are only the beginning of our understanding of the nature of plant life.
Cosmic Energy Renewal
Mostly, we attempt to obtain cosmic energy from others, either through conflict wherein we take another's cosmic energy, or through providing assistance to others who give us their cosmic energy.Cosmic energy obtained from others is short lived, and unless we can link with a partner, or a series of partners who we can dominate and draw cosmic energy from permanently, we are soon looking for another opportunity to obtain cosmic energy from others.There are many natural sources of cosmic energy which we can, and do draw upon, often unaware that we do so. We do not need to obtain energy from others, and when we discontinue seeking to obtain energy from others, we lose any desire for conflict, in any guise.One excellent and readily available source of cosmic energy is plant life. Being attached to the earth, plants draw cosmic energy directly from the earth. We are able to draw cosmic energy from plant life, which is why we will often return from spending time in a garden feeling renewed and 'up'.When we draw cosmic energy from plant life, we are assisting the plant life to renew their cosmic energy so that instead of a relatively stagnant amount of cosmic energy residing with the plant, a constant stream of renewed energy passes through the plant. This is why some people seem to have a 'green thumb', they draw energy through the plant life in their gardens.
Fairies.
Fairies have long been the subject of fantasy and debate. Fairies have been photographed and investigated, and fairies have been discounted by sceptics.Fairies have been said to have special powers, and to inhabit realms such as 'middle earth'. Fairies have been seen in dreams and reality. Fairies have been witnessed by children and adults, both intoxicated and sober.The key to understanding the truth of the existence of fairies is to consider the common denominator which is prevalent in most tales of fairies, which is the connection between fairies and plant life.There are many who know that fairies reside 'at the bottom of their garden'. Fairies do reside at the bottom of gardens, every garden.Just as we, and every living thing has a physical body and a spirit body, so too do plants. The spirit bodies of those in human form have been witnessed on astral travels, and have been labelled when unattached to a physical body as ghosts or spirits. The spirit bodies of plant life have been witnessed on many occasions, sometimes with acceptance, and other times with disbelief. The spirit bodies of plant life, have been labelled Fairies.Fairies are no different to any other spirits. Fairies exist on the spirit plane, and fairies are occasionally witnessed, more often than we realise, by those of us in a physical existence.
The Meaning Of Flowers.
Flowers can also be used to convey a message, and to share our feelings. Flowers, similar to colours are often used to convey a message, or to deliver a warning to us.We can receive a message in this way either when we encounter a flower on the physical plane, or when we encounter a flower on the spirit plane, in our 'dreams'.If we encounter a broken flower, the meaning of the flower will usually be reversed.
www.eaglespiritministry.com/works/flower.htm
The intelligent Plant. That is the title of a recent article in The New Yorker — and new research is showing that plants have astounding abilities to sense and react to the world.The Intelligent Plant. That is the title of a recent article in The New Yorker — and new research is showing that plants have astounding abilities to sense and react to the world.
This story is based on a radio interview. Listen to the full interview.But can a plant be intelligent? Some plant scientists insist they are — since they can sense, learn, remember and even react in ways that would be familiar to humans.Michael Pollan, author of such books as "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "The Botany of Desire," wrote the New Yorker piece about the developments in plant science. He says for the longest time, even mentioning the idea that plants could be intelligent was a quick way to being labeled "a whacko." But no more, which might be comforting to people who have long talked to their plants or played music for them.The new research, he says, is in a field called plant neurobiology — which is something of a misnomer, because even scientists in the field don't argue that plants have neurons or brains."They have analagous structures," Pollan explains. "They have ways of taking all the sensory data they gather in their everyday lives ... integrate it and then behave in an appropriate way in response. And they do this without brains, which, in a way, is what's incredible about it, because we automatically assume you need a brain to process information."And we assume you need ears to hear. But researchers, says Pollan, have played a recording of a caterpillar munching on a leaf to plants — and the plants react. They begin to secrete defensive chemicals — even though the plant isn't really threatened, Pollan says. "It is somehow hearing what is, to it, a terrifying sound of a caterpillar munching on its leaves."
Pollan says plants have all the same senses as humans, and then some. In addition to hearing, taste, for example, they can sense gravity, the presence of water, or even feel that an obstruction is in the way of its roots, before coming into contact with it. Plant roots will shift direction, he says, to avoid obstacles.So what about pain? Do plants feel? Pollan says they do respond to anesthetics. "You can put a plant out with a human anesthetic. ... And not only that, plants produce their own compounds that are anesthetic to us." But scientists are reluctant to go as far as to say they are responding to pain.How plants sense and react is still somewhat unknown. They don't have nerve cells like humans, but they do have a system for sending electrical signals and even produce neurotransmitters, like dopamine, serotonin and other chemicals the human brain uses to send signals."We don't know why they have them, whether this was just conserved through evolution or if it performs some sort of information processing function. We don't know. There's a lot we don't know," Pollan says.And chalk up another human-like ability — memory. Pollan describes an experiment done by animal biologist Monica Gagliano. She presented research that suggests the mimosa pudica plant can learn from experience. And, Pollan says, merely suggesting a plant could learn was so controversial that her paper was rejected by 10 scientific journals before it was finally published.Mimosa is a plant, which looks something like a fern, that collapses its leaves temporarily when it is disturbed. So Gagliano set up a contraption that would drop the mimosa plant, without hurting it. When the plant dropped, as expected, its leaves collapsed. She kept dropping the plants every five to six seconds."After five or six drops, the plants would stop responding, as if they'd learned to tune out the stimulus as irrelevent," Pollan says. "This is a very important part of learning — to learn what you can safely ignore in your environment."Maybe the plant was just getting worn out from all the dropping? To test that, Gagliano took the plants that had stopped responding to the drops and shook them instead. "They would continue to collapse," Pollan says. "They had made the distinction that [dropping] was a signal they could safely ignore. And what was more incredible is that [Gagliano] would retest them every week for four weeks and, for a month, they continued to remember their lesson."That's as far out as Gagliano tested. It's possible they remember even longer. Conversely, Pollan points out, bees that are given a similar dishabituation test forget what they've learned in as little as 48 hours.Pollan says not everyone accepts that what Gagliano describes is really learning. In fact, there are many critics with many alternative theories for explaining the response the plants are having. Still ..."Plants can do incredible things. They do seem to remember stresses and events, like that experiment. They do have the ability to respond to 15 to 20 environmental variables," Pollan says. "The issue is, is it right to call it learning? Is that the right word? Is it right to call it intelligence? Is it right, even, to call what they are conscious. Some of these plant neurobiologists believe that plants are conscious — not self-conscious, but conscious in the sense they know where they are in space ... and react appropriately to their position in space."Pollan says there is no agreed definition of intelligence. "Go to Wikipedia and look up intelligence. They despair of giving you an answer. They basically have a chart where they give you nine different definitions. And about half of them depend on a brain — they refer to abstract reasoning or judgment."And the other half merely refer to a problem-solving ability. And that's the kind of intelligence we are talking about here.... So intelligence may well be a property of life. And our difference from these other creatures may be a matter of difference of degree rather than kind. We may just have more of this problem-solving ability and we may do it in different ways."Pollan says that really freaks people out — "that the line between plants and animals might be a little softer than we traditionally think of it as."And he suggests that plants may be able to teach humans a thing or two, such as how to process information without a central command post like a brain.
Check out this video of Michael Pollan discussing time-lapse photography of bean plants looking very purposeful.
www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-intelli...
so I grew up I am? For ten years, a lively debate on the intelligence of plants animates the community of biologists of the plant world. Heresy, shout some, truth, say others.
At the head of the latter, Stefano Mancuso, founder of the International Plant Neurobiology Laboratory, confirmed and signed in his latest book, Brilliant Green (Michael Pollan, 2015, not translated): "The most recent studies of the plant world have shown that plants are sensitive (and therefore are endowed with sense), they communicate (with each other and with animals), sleep, remember and can even manipulate other species. They can be described as intelligent. "Among researchers interviewed on the subject, the discomfort is systematic. Already in 2008, Thirty-six European and North American biologists signed a manifesto published in Trends in Plant Science, led by the Italian Amedeo Alpi (University of Pisa), to denounce the use of "Neurobiology" which under -entendrait intelligence of plants.
It must be said that trauma has long shaken plant biologists. In 1973 the release of the book The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tomkins and Christopher Bird (The Secret Life of Plants, Robert Laffont ,.
www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2016/02/29/un-vif-debat-s...
**Maximize this pic**
Sorry for the horrible pic guys but its the best I could do :(
I am not going to say anything, but all I will say is Savage Opress goes to visit Darth Maul (who apparently survived!?!?) to be trained.
I don't know how he survived maybe someone found him and game him new legs :D but I dunno lol
Watch CW S3 Episode 14 "Witches of the Mist" : www.mastertoons.com/Witches-of-the-Mist.php don't worry there are no viruses on that site 09webcam and I spent hours looking for this episode in the middle of the night :P
Watch trailer for the next three episodes (including Ahsoka turning to the dark side) : www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj4NOdIqokE
I overall don't know what to think of this, it doesn't say that Dark Maul died anymore on Wookiepedia...
2018 Maximize Conference in Carlsbad, California on Tuesday, October 2, 2018. Photo by David Ahntholz, Tracy + David Stills and Motion, www.tracydavid.com
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See my main account for my photography, videos, fractal images and more here: www.flickr.com/photos/josh-rokman/
Made with the Bing Image Creator, powered by DALL-E 3.
I think that AI image generation is similar in many ways to photography. The camera itself handles all the fine details, but the photographer is in charge of curating the types of images that will be created.
Ultimately, it is all about maximizing the probability that something good will be created.
This is very similar to AI image generation, in terms of the skills involved and what the human does vs. what the machine does.
You can't compare AI image generation to the process of actually making these images from scratch with 3D software or paint/pencils, where the human controls every detail.
However, I think the process really is very similar to that of photography, as I made the case for above.
- Josh
"Maximize Mortgage Applications with Women Clients - t.co/9rf0qBiIJN (press release)" t.co/4FsmXc6hpE (via Twitter twitter.com/downpaymentaz/status/816578044433494016)
See my albums list for some of my best work: www.flickr.com/photos/200044612@N04/albums/
See my main account for my photography, videos, fractal images and more here: www.flickr.com/photos/josh-rokman/
Made with Image Creator from Microsoft Designer, formerly known as the Bing Image Creator. Powered by DALL·E 3.
I think that AI image generation is similar in many ways to photography. The camera itself handles all the fine details, but the photographer is in charge of curating the types of images that will be created.
Ultimately, it is all about maximizing the probability that something good will be created.
This is very similar to AI image generation, in terms of the skills involved and what the human does vs. what the machine does.
You can't compare AI image generation to the process of actually making these images from scratch with 3D software or paint/pencils, where the human controls every detail.
However, I think the process really is very similar to that of photography, as I made the case for above. I think that DALL-E 3 is by far the most powerful AI image generation tool currently available.
- Josh
Ilene S. Gordon, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer,.Ingredion, USA at the Annual Meeting 2017 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 19, 2017
Copyright by World Economic Forum / Christian Clavadetscher
name: Dawn Lagerstedt
school: Washington Elementary 4th and 5th Grade
town:Schiller Park
state: Illinois
The Lewis and Clark Class came to the scene in 2006, replacing the outdated auxiliary vessels of the Cold War. The 14 L&C ships were designed to maximize the space of a larger ship (as compared to their predecessors) to perform replenishment and refueling more quickly, being able to transport 1,388,000 cubic feet of cargo (food stores, spare parts, munitions, etc.) and 23,450 barrels of fuel cargo (aviation fuel and fuel for warships). The ships are powered diesel generators and propelled by a single screw and a bow thruster. They are crewed by 11 naval personnel and 124 civilians. For defense, they have mounting points for .50 cals and the reserve power to operate CIWS if installed. They have a flight deck and hangar space for two helicopters.
Just like the USAF has the Military Airlift Command, the USN has the Military Sealift Command which has jurisdiction of the Naval Fleet Auxiliary Force which the L&Cs are apart of. They transit the ocean with the strike fleets for when they are needed. It is unlikely they would run out of dry cargo at sea during a normal deployment. However, they do run out of fuel cargo and when they do, they break off from the fleet and rendezvous with a Henry Kaiser Class Oiler to top off and then return to the fleet. They also perform roles such as offshore replacement stations for landed marine forces during amphibious operations.
This model turned out larger than I expected, but the proportions are still mostly accurate.
How much can you get out of a Mokume Gane stack? I set out to find out. My answer: 58 cabochons, 13 swirly lentil beads, 32 beads, 19 sets of earrings. My secret weapon? My Simple Slicer!
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EVOLVE MAXIMIZE. EXPAND. ACTIVATE
Create Your Vision of a Better You For a Beautiful Life Live a Richer, Happier and Golden Life Style. For more info visit: evolvedlifevisions.com
Become Certified
Achieve your own profitable business safeguarded by our professional, experienced network
Clear, Comprehensive Certification gives you a recognized Life Coaching Accreditation within 6 weeks!
Certification in Evolved Visualization Techniques TM
Evolved Life Visions is an A rated member of WAOLS - World Alliance of Life coaches and Stylists.
Evolved Life Visions supports accreditation programs including those of the ICF - International Coaching Federation
Evolved Guided Visualization Techniques TM - GVT - is an accredited training program
Media and Experts - Say What!?
The latest reports from leading Universities arousing great worldwide media interest shows that neurosciences research proves that Visualization Techniques TM trick your brain into transforming your thoughts and behavior!
This means that when you have a clear Vision of what your want to Maximize and Achieve in your life you will be able to attain it.
Or social Platform
business.facebook.com/Evolved-Life-Visions-386232031583114/
plus.google.com/u/0/103901643902261086078
www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-harcourt-9351a9ab
www.pinterest.com/evolvedlifevisi/
www.youtube.com/channel/UCIwm6uaEbL1-txikirmrNvw
evolvedlifevisionsltd.tumblr.com/
www.dailymotion.com/evolvedlifevisions
www.flickr.com/photos/138201185@N07/
EVOLVE MAXIMIZE. EXPAND. ACTIVATE
Create Your Vision of a Better You For a Beautiful Life Live a Richer, Happier and Golden Life Style. For more info visit: evolvedlifevisions.com
Become Certified
Achieve your own profitable business safeguarded by our professional, experienced network
Clear, Comprehensive Certification gives you a recognized Life Coaching Accreditation within 6 weeks!
Certification in Evolved Visualization Techniques TM
Evolved Life Visions is an A rated member of WAOLS - World Alliance of Life coaches and Stylists.
Evolved Life Visions supports accreditation programs including those of the ICF - International Coaching Federation
Evolved Guided Visualization Techniques TM - GVT - is an accredited training program
Media and Experts - Say What!?
The latest reports from leading Universities arousing great worldwide media interest shows that neurosciences research proves that Visualization Techniques TM trick your brain into transforming your thoughts and behavior!
This means that when you have a clear Vision of what your want to Maximize and Achieve in your life you will be able to attain it.
Or social Platform
business.facebook.com/Evolved-Life-Visions-386232031583114/
plus.google.com/u/0/103901643902261086078
www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-harcourt-9351a9ab
www.pinterest.com/evolvedlifevisi/
www.youtube.com/channel/UCIwm6uaEbL1-txikirmrNvw
evolvedlifevisionsltd.tumblr.com/
www.dailymotion.com/evolvedlifevisions
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29525 Tudor Way Magnolia, TX 77355
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This log retreat located on a serene 9+ acre fenced property was designed to maximize it’s potential with an appropriately scaled yet fully equipped modern home. The double tongue and groove log construction is beautifully accented by hand hewn log beams, railings, large windows, and impressive vaulted ceilings offering scale and charm. Despite the quaint quality of the exterior an expansive interior awaits………
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The main level master suite features a luxurious and meticulously detailed bathroom and large walk in closet. Noteworthy features include custom designed and built cabinetry and closet systems with an abundance of hidden storage space.
The upper level features an open game room, views from every room, two large guest suites each with spacious walk-in closets and attached bathrooms. This retreat also includes a large air conditioned shop and separate living quarters.
The careful planning, creative design, and intense attention to detail make it this a highly sought after country retreat near the city.
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The Eiffel Tower (French: La Tour Eiffel, nickname La dame de fer, the iron lady) is an iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris, named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Erected in 1889 as the entrance arch to the 1889 World's Fair, it has become both a global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world. The tower is the tallest structure in Paris and the most-visited paid monument in the world; 7.1 million people ascended it in 2011. The third level observatory's upper platform is at 279.11 m the highest accessible to public in the European Union and the highest in Europe as long as the platform of the Ostankino Tower, at 360 m, remains closed as a result of the fire of August 2000. The tower received its 250 millionth visitor in 2010.
The tower stands 320 metres (1,050 ft) tall, about the same height as an 81-storey building. During its construction, the Eiffel Tower surpassed the Washington Monument to assume the title of the tallest man-made structure in the world, a title it held for 41 years, until the Chrysler Building in New York City was built in 1930. However, because of the addition, in 1957, of the antenna atop the Eiffel Tower, it is now taller than the Chrysler Building. Not including broadcast antennas, it is the second-tallest structure in France, after the Millau Viaduct.
The tower has three levels for visitors. Tickets can be purchased to ascend, by stairs or lift (elevator), to the first and second levels. The walk from ground level to the first level is over 300 steps, as is the walk from the first to the second level. The third and highest level is accessible only by lift - stairs exist but they are not usually open for public use. Both the first and second levels feature restaurants.
The tower has become the most prominent symbol of both Paris and France, often in the establishing shot of films set in the city.
History
Origin
First drawing of the Eiffel Tower by Maurice Koechlin
The design of the Eiffel Tower was originated by Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier, two senior engineers who worked for the Compagnie des Establissments Eiffel after discussion about a suitable centrepiece for the proposed 1889 Exposition Universelle, a World's Fair which would celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution. In May 1884 Koechlin, working at his home, made an outline drawing of their scheme, described by him as "a great pylon, consisting of four lattice girders standing apart at the base and coming together at the top, joined together by metal trusses at regular intervals". Initially Eiffel himself showed little enthusiasm, but he did sanction further study of the project, and the two engineers then asked Stephen Sauvestre, the head of company's architectural department, to contribute to the design. Sauvestre added decorative arches to the base, a glass pavilion to the first level and other embellishments. This enhanced version gained Eiffel's support, and he bought the rights to the patent on the design which Koechlin, Nougier and Sauvestre had taken out, and the design was exhibited at the Exhibition of Decorative Arts in the autumn of 1884 under the company name. On 30 March 1885 Eiffel read a paper on the project to the Société des Ingiénieurs Civils: after discussing the technical problems and emphasising the practical uses of the tower, he finished his talk by saying that the tower would symbolise "not only the art of the modern engineer, but also the century of Industry and Science in which we are living, and for which the way was prepared by the great scientific movement of the eighteenth century and by the Revolution of 1789, to which this monument will be built as an expression of France's gratitude."
Little happened until the beginning of 1886, when Jules Grévy was re-elected as President and Édouard Lockroy was appointed as Minister for Trade. A budget for the Exposition was passed and on 1 May Lockroy announced an alteration to the terms of the open competition which was being held for a centerpiece for the exposition, which effectively made the choice of Eiffel's design a foregone conclusion: all entries had to include a study for a 300 m (980 ft) four-sided metal tower on the Champ de Mars. On 12 May a commission was set up to examine Eiffel's scheme and its rivals and on 12 June it presented its decision, which was that all the proposals except Eiffel's were either impractical or insufficiently worked out. After some debate about the exact site for the tower, a contract was finally signed on 8 January 1887. This was signed by Eiffel acting in his own capacity rather than as the representative of his company, and granted him one and a half million francs toward the construction costs: less than a quarter of the estimated cost of six and a half million francs. Eiffel was to receive all income from the commercial exploitation of the tower during the exhibition and for the following twenty years. Eiffel later established a separate company to manage the tower, putting up half the necessary capital himself.
The "Artists Protest"
Caricature of Gustave Eiffel comparing the Eiffel tower to the Pyramids.
The projected tower had been a subject of some controversy, attracting criticism both from those who did not believe that it was feasible and also from those who objected on artistic grounds. Their objections were an expression of a longstanding debate about relationship between architecture and engineering. This came to a head as work began at the Champ de Mars: A "Committee of Three Hundred" (one member for each metre of the tower's height) was formed, led by the prominent architect Charles Garnier and including some of the most important figures of the French arts establishment, including Adolphe Bouguereau, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Gounod and Jules Massenet: a petition was sent to Charles Alphand, the Minister of Works and Commissioner for the Exposition, and was published by Le Temps.
"We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection…of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower … To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream. And for twenty years … we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal"
Gustave Eiffel responded to these criticisms by comparing his tower to the Egyptian Pyramids : "My tower will be the tallest edifice ever erected by man. Will it not also be grandiose in its way ? And why would something admirable in Egypt become hideous and ridiculous in Paris ?" These criticisms were also masterfully dealt with by Édouard Lockroy in a letter of support written to Alphand, ironically saying "Judging by the stately swell of the rhythms, the beauty of the metaphors, the elegance of its delicate and precise style, one can tell that …this protest is the result of collaboration of the most famous writers and poets of our time", and going on to point out that the protest was irrelevant since the project had been decided upon months before and was already under construction. Indeed, Garnier had been a member of the Tower Commission that had assessed the various proposals, and had raised no objection. Eiffel was similarly unworried, pointing out to a journalist that it was premature to judge the effect of the tower solely on the basis of the drawings, that the Champ de Mars was distant enough from the monuments mentioned in the protest for there to be little risk of the tower overwhelming them, and putting the aesthetic argument for the Tower: "Do not the laws of natural forces always conform to the secret laws of harmony?"
Some of the protestors were to change their minds when the tower was built: others remained unconvinced. Guy de Maupassant[20] supposedly ate lunch in the Tower's restaurant every day. When asked why, he answered that it was the one place in Paris where one could not see the structure. Today, the Tower is widely considered to be a striking piece of structural art.
Construction
Foundations of the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower under construction between 1887 and 1889
Work on the foundations started in January 1887. Those for the east and south legs were straightforward, each leg resting on four 2 m (6.6 ft) concrete slabs, one for each of the principal girders of each leg but the other two, being closer to the river Seine were more complicated: each slab needed two piles installed by using compressed-air caissons 15 m (49 ft) long and 6 m (20 ft) in diameter driven to a depth of 22 m (72 ft)[21] to support the concrete slabs, which were 6 m (20 ft) thick. Each of these slabs supported a block built of limestone each with an inclined top to bear a supporting shoe for the ironwork. Each shoe was anchored into the stonework by a pair of bolts 10 cm (4 in) in diameter and 7.5 m (25 ft) long. The foundations were complete by 30 June and the erection of the ironwork began. The very visible work on-site was complemented by the enormous amount of exacting preparatory work that was entailed: the drawing office produced 1,700 general drawings and 3,629 detailed drawings of the 18,038 different parts needed:
The task of drawing the components was complicated by the complex angles involved in the design and the degree of precision required: the position of rivet holes was specified to within 0.1 mm (0.04 in) and angles worked out to one second of arc. The finished components, some already riveted together into sub-assemblies, arrived on horse-drawn carts from the factory in the nearby Parisian suburb of Levallois-Perret and were first bolted together, the bolts being replaced by rivets as construction progressed. No drilling or shaping was done on site: if any part did not fit it was sent back to the factory for alteration. In all there were 18,038 pieces of puddle iron using two and a half million rivets.
At first the legs were constructed as cantilevers but about halfway to the first level construction was paused in order to construct a substantial timber scaffold. This caused a renewal of the concerns about the structural soundness of the project, and sensational headlines such as "Eiffel Suicide!" and "Gustave Eiffel has gone mad: he has been confined in an Asylum" appeared in the popular press. At this stage a small "creeper" crane was installed in each leg, designed to move up the tower as construction progressed and making use of the guides for the lifts which were to be fitted in each leg. The critical stage of joining the four legs at the first level was complete by March 1888. Although the metalwork had been prepared with the utmost precision, provision had been made to carry out small adjustments in order to precisely align the legs: hydraulic jacks were fitted to the shoes at the base of each leg, each capable of exerting a force of 800 tonnes, and in addition the legs had been intentionally constructed at a slightly steeper angle than necessary, being supported by sandboxes on the scaffold.
No more than three hundred workers were employed on site, and because Eiffel took safety precautions, including the use of movable stagings, guard-rails and screens, only one man died during construction.
Inauguration and the 1889 Exposition
The 1889 Exposition Universelle for which the Eiffel Tower was built
The main structural work was completed at the end of March 1889 and on the 31st Eiffel celebrated this by leading a group of government officials, accompanied by representatives of the press, to the top of the tower. Since the lifts were not yet in operation, the ascent was made by foot, and took over an hour, Eiffel frequently stopping to make explanations of various features. Most of the party chose to stop at the lower levels, but a few, including Nouguier, Compagnon, the President of the City Council and reporters from Le Figaro and Le Monde Illustré completed the climb. At 2.35 Eiffel hoisted a large tricolore, to the accompaniment of a 25-gun salute fired from the lower level. There was still work to be done, particularly on the lifts and the fitting out of the facilities for visitors, and the tower was not opened to the public until nine days after the opening of the Exposition on 6 May, and even then the lifts had not been completed.
The tower was an immediate success with the public, and lengthy queues formed to make the ascent. Tickets cost 2 francs for the first level, 3 for the second and 5 for the top, with half-price admission on Sundays, and by the end of the exhibition there had been nearly two million visitors.
Eiffel had a permit for the tower to stand for 20 years; it was to be dismantled in 1909, when its ownership would revert to the City of Paris. The City had planned to tear it down (part of the original contest rules for designing a tower was that it could be easily demolished) but as the tower proved valuable for communication purposes, it was allowed to remain after the expiry of the permit. In the opening weeks of the First World War the powerful radio transmitters using the tower were used to jam German communications, seriously hindering their advance on Paris and contributing to the Allied victory at the First Battle of the Marne.
Subsequent events
10 September 1889 Thomas Edison visited the tower. He signed the guestbook with the following message— To M Eiffel the Engineer the brave builder of so gigantic and original specimen of modern Engineering from one who has the greatest respect and admiration for all Engineers including the Great Engineer the Bon Dieu, Thomas Edison.
19 October 1901 Alberto Santos-Dumont in his Dirigible No.6 won a 10,000-franc prize offered by Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe for the first person to make a flight from St Cloud to the Eiffel tower and back in less than half an hour.
1910 Father Theodor Wulf measured radiant energy at the top and bottom of the tower. He found more at the top than expected, incidentally discovering what are today known as cosmic rays.[28]
4 February 1912 Austrian tailor Franz Reichelt died after jumping 60 metres from the first deck of Eiffel tower with his home-made parachute.
1914 A radio transmitter located in the tower jammed German radio communications during the lead-up to the First Battle of the Marne.
1925 The con artist Victor Lustig "sold" the tower for scrap metal on two separate, but related occasions.
1930 The tower lost the title of the world's tallest structure when the Chrysler Building was completed in New York City.
1925 to 1934 Illuminated signs for Citroën adorned three of the tower's four sides, making it the tallest advertising space in the world at the time.
1940–1944 Upon the German occupation of Paris in 1940, the lift cables were cut by the French so that Adolf Hitler would have to climb the steps to the summit. The parts to repair them were allegedly impossible to obtain because of the war. In 1940 German soldiers had to climb to the top to hoist the swastika[citation needed], but the flag was so large it blew away just a few hours later, and was replaced by a smaller one. When visiting Paris, Hitler chose to stay on the ground. It was said that Hitler conquered France, but did not conquer the Eiffel Tower. A Frenchman scaled the tower during the German occupation to hang the French flag. In August 1944, when the Allies were nearing Paris, Hitler ordered General Dietrich von Choltitz, the military governor of Paris, to demolish the tower along with the rest of the city. Von Choltitz disobeyed the order. Some say Hitler was later persuaded to keep the tower intact so it could later be used for communications. The lifts of the Tower were working normally within hours of the Liberation of Paris.
3 January 1956 A fire damaged the top of the tower.
1957 The present radio antenna was added to the top.
1980s A restaurant and its supporting iron scaffolding midway up the tower was dismantled; it was purchased and reconstructed on St. Charles Avenue and Josephine Street in the Garden District of New Orleans, Louisiana, by entrepreneurs John Onorio and Daniel Bonnot, originally as the Tour Eiffel Restaurant, later as the Red Room and now as the Cricket Club (owned by the New Orleans Culinary Institute). The restaurant was re-assembled from 11,000 pieces that crossed the Atlantic in a 40-foot (12 m) cargo container.
31 March 1984 Robert Moriarty flew a Beechcraft Bonanza through the arches of the tower.
1987 A.J. Hackett made one of his first bungee jumps from the top of the Eiffel Tower, using a special cord he had helped develop. Hackett was arrested by the Paris police upon reaching the ground.
27 October 1991 Thierry Devaux, along with mountain guide Hervé Calvayrac, performed a series of acrobatic figures of bungee jumping (not allowed) from the second floor of the Tower. Facing the Champ de Mars, Thierry Devaux was using an electric winch between each figure to go back up. When firemen arrived, he stopped after the sixth bungee jump.
New Year's Eve 1999 The Eiffel Tower played host to Paris's Millennium Celebration. On this occasion, flashing lights and four high-power searchlights were installed on the tower, and fireworks were set off all over it. An exhibition above a cafeteria on the first floor commemorates this event. Since then, the light show has become a nightly event. The searchlights on top of the tower make it a beacon in Paris's night sky, and the 20,000 flash bulbs give the tower a sparkly appearance every hour on the hour.
28 November 2002 The tower received its 200,000,000th guest.
2004 The Eiffel Tower began hosting an ice skating rink on the first floor each winter.
Design of the tower
Material
The Eiffel Tower from below
The puddle iron structure of the Eiffel Tower weighs 7,300 tonnes, while the entire structure, including non-metal components, is approximately 10,000 tonnes. As a demonstration of the economy of design, if the 7,300 tonnes of the metal structure were melted down it would fill the 125-metre-square base to a depth of only 6 cm (2.36 in), assuming the density of the metal to be 7.8 tonnes per cubic metre. Depending on the ambient temperature, the top of the tower may shift away from the sun by up to 18 cm (7.1 in) because of thermal expansion of the metal on the side facing the sun.
Wind considerations
At the time the tower was built many people were shocked by its daring shape. Eiffel was criticised for the design and accused of trying to create something artistic, or inartistic according to the viewer, without regard to engineering. Eiffel and his engineers, however, as experienced bridge builders, understood the importance of wind forces and knew that if they were going to build the tallest structure in the world they had to be certain it would withstand the wind. In an interview reported in the newspaper Le Temps, Eiffel said:
Now to what phenomenon did I give primary concern in designing the Tower? It was wind resistance. Well then! I hold that the curvature of the monument's four outer edges, which is as mathematical calculation dictated it should be […] will give a great impression of strength and beauty, for it will reveal to the eyes of the observer the boldness of the design as a whole.[37]
Researchers have found that Eiffel used empirical and graphical methods accounting for the effects of wind rather than a specific mathematical formula. Careful examination of the tower shows a basically exponential shape; actually two different exponentials, the lower section overdesigned to ensure resistance to wind forces. Several mathematical explanations have been proposed over the years for the success of the design; the most recent is described as a nonlinear integral equation based on counterbalancing the wind pressure on any point on the tower with the tension between the construction elements at that point. As a demonstration of the tower's effectiveness in wind resistance, it sways only 6–7 cm (2–3 in) in the wind.
Accommodation
When built, the first level contained two restaurants: an "Anglo-American Bar", and a 250 seat theatre. A 2.6 m (8 ft 6 in) promenade ran around the outside.
On the second level, the French newspaper Le Figaro had an office and a printing press, where a special souvenir edition, Le Figaro de la Tour, was produced. There was also a pâtisserie.
On the third level were laboratories for various experiments and a small apartment reserved for Gustave Eiffel to entertain guests. This is now open to the public, complete with period decorations and lifelike models of Gustave and some guests.
Engraved names
Gustave Eiffel engraved on the tower seventy-two names of French scientists, engineers and other notable people. This engraving was painted over at the beginning of the twentieth century but restored in 1986–1987 by the Société Nouvelle d'exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, a company contracted to operate business related to the Tower.
Maintenance
Maintenance of the tower includes applying 50 to 60 tonnes of paint every seven years to protect it from rust. The height of the Eiffel Tower varies by 15 cm due to temperature.
Aesthetic considerations
In order to enhance the impression of height, three separate colours of paint are used on the tower, with the darkest on the bottom and the lightest at the top. On occasion the colour of the paint is changed; the tower is currently painted a shade of bronze. On the first floor there are interactive consoles hosting a poll for the colour to use for a future session of painting.
The only non-structural elements are the four decorative grillwork arches, added in Stephen Sauvestre's sketches, which served to reassure visitors that the structure was safe, and to frame views of other nearby architecture.
One of the great Hollywood movie clichés is that the view from a Parisian window always includes the tower. In reality, since zoning restrictions limit the height of most buildings in Paris to 7 storeys, only a very few of the taller buildings have a clear view of the tower.
Popularity
More than 200,000,000 people have visited the tower since its construction in 1889, including 6,719,200 in 2006. The tower is the most-visited paid monument in the world.
Passenger lifts
Ground to the second level
The original lifts (elevators) to the first and second floors were provided by two companies. Both companies had to overcome many technical obstacles as neither company (or indeed any company) had experience with installing lifts climbing to such heights with large loads. The slanting tracks with changing angles further complicated the problems. The East and West lifts were supplied by the French company Roux Combaluzier Lepape, using hydraulically powered chains and rollers. The North and South lifts were provided by the American company Otis using car designs similar to the original installation but using an improved hydraulic and cable scheme. The French lifts had a very poor performance and were replaced with the current installations in 1897 (West Pillar) and 1899 (East Pillar) by Fives-Lille using an improved hydraulic and rope scheme. Both of the original installations operated broadly on the principle of the Fives-Lille lifts.
The Fives-Lille lifts from ground level to the first and second levels are operated by cables and pulleys driven by massive water-powered pistons. The hydraulic scheme was somewhat unusual for the time in that it included three large counterweights of 200 tonnes each sitting on top of hydraulic rams which doubled up as accumulators for the water. As the lifts ascend the inclined arc of the pillars, the angle of ascent changes. The two lift cabs are kept more or less level and indeed are level at the landings. The cab floors do take on a slight angle at times between landings.
The principle behind the lifts is similar to the operation of a block and tackle but in reverse. Two large hydraulic rams (over 1 metre diameter) with a 16 metre travel are mounted horizontally in the base of the pillar which pushes a carriage (the French word for it translates as chariot and this term will be used henceforth to distinguish it from the lift carriage) with 16 large triple sheaves mounted on it. There are 14 similar sheaves mounted statically. Six wire ropes are rove back and forth between the sheaves such that each rope passes between the 2 sets of sheaves 7 times. The ropes then leave the final sheaves on the chariot and pass up through a series of guiding sheaves to above the second floor and then through a pair of triple sheaves back down to the lift carriage again passing guiding sheaves.
This arrangement means that the lift carriage, complete with its cars and passengers, travels 8 times the distance that the rams move the chariot, the 128 metres from the ground to the second floor. The force exerted by the rams also has to be 8 times the total weight of the lift carriage, cars and passengers, plus extra to account for various losses such as friction. The hydraulic fluid was water, normally stored in three accumulators, complete with counterbalance weights. To make the lift ascend, water was pumped using an electrically driven pump from the accumulators to the two rams. Since the counterbalance weights provided much of the pressure required, the pump only had to provide the extra effort. For the descent, it was only necessary to allow the water to flow back to the accumulators using a control valve. The lifts were operated by an operator perched precariously underneath the lift cars. His position (with a dummy operator) can still be seen on the lifts today.
The Fives-Lille lifts were completely upgraded in 1986 to meet modern safety requirements and to make the lifts easier to operate. A new computer-controlled system was installed which completely automated the operation. One of the three counterbalances was taken out of use, and the cars were replaced with a more modern and lighter structure. Most importantly, the main driving force was removed from the original water pump such that the water hydraulic system provided only a counterbalancing function. The main driving force was transferred to a 320 kW electrically driven oil hydraulic pump which drives a pair of hydraulic motors on the chariot itself, thus providing the motive power. The new lift cars complete with their carriage and a full 92 passenger load weigh 22 tonnes.
Owing to elasticity in the ropes and the time taken to get the cars level with the landings, each lift in normal service takes an average of 8 minutes and 50 seconds to do the round trip, spending an average of 1 minute and 15 seconds at each floor. The average journey time between floors is just 1 minute.
The original Otis lifts in the North and South pillars in their turn proved to be inferior to the new (in 1899) French lifts and were scrapped from the South pillar in 1900 and from the North pillar in 1913 after failed attempts to repower them with an electric motor. The North and South pillars were to remain without lifts until 1965 when increasing visitor numbers persuaded the operators to install a relatively standard and modern cable hoisted system in the north pillar using a cable-hauled counterbalance weight, but hoisted by a block and tackle system to reduce its travel to one third of the lift travel. The counterbalance is clearly visible within the structure of the North pillar. This latter lift was upgraded in 1995 with new cars and computer controls.
The South pillar acquired a completely new fairly standard electrically driven lift in 1983 to serve the Jules Verne restaurant. This was also supplied by Otis. A further four-ton service lift was added to the South pillar in 1989 by Otis to relieve the main lifts when moving relatively small loads or even just maintenance personnel.
The East and West hydraulic (water) lift works are on display and, at least in theory, are open to the public in a small museum located in base of the East and West tower, which is somewhat hidden from public view. Because the massive mechanism requires frequent lubrication and attention, public access is often restricted. However, when open, the wait times are much less than the other, more popular, attractions. The rope mechanism of the North tower is visible to visitors as they exit from the lift.
Second to the third level
The original spiral stairs to the third floor which were only 80 centimetres wide. Note also the small service lift in the background.
The original lifts from the second to the third floor were also of a water-powered hydraulic design supplied by Léon Edoux. Instead of using a separate counterbalance, the two lift cars counterbalanced each other. A pair of 81-metre-long hydraulic rams were mounted on the second level reaching nearly halfway up to the third level. A lift car was mounted on top of the rams. Ropes ran from the top of this car up to a sheave on the third level and back down to a second car. The result of this arrangement was that each car only travelled half the distance between the second and third levels and passengers were required to change lifts halfway walking between the cars along a narrow gangway with a very impressive and relatively unobstructed downward view. The ten-ton cars held 65 passengers each or up to four tons.
One interesting feature of the original installation was that the hoisting rope ran through guides to retain it on windy days to prevent it flapping and becoming damaged. The guides were mechanically moved out of the way of the ascending car by the movement of the car itself. In spite of some antifreeze being added to the water that operated this system, it nevertheless had to close to the public from November to March each year.
The original lifts complete with their hydraulic mechanism were completely scrapped in 1982 after 97 years of service. They were replaced with two pairs of relatively standard rope hoisted cars which were able to operate all the year round. The cars operate in pairs with one providing the counterbalance for the other. Neither car can move unless both sets of doors are closed and both operators have given a start command. The commands from the cars to the hoisting mechanism are by radio obviating the necessity of a control cable. The replacement installation also has the advantage that the ascent can be made without changing cars and has reduced the ascent time from 8 minutes (including change) to 1 minute and 40 seconds. This installation also has guides for the hoisting ropes but they are electrically operated. The guide once it has moved out of the way as the car ascends automatically reverses when the car has passed to prevent the mechanism becoming snagged on the car on the downward journey in the event it has failed to completely clear the car. Unfortunately these lifts do not have the capacity to move as many people as the three public lower lifts and long lines to ascend to the third level are common. Most of the intermediate level structure present on the tower today was installed when the lifts were replaced and allows maintenance workers to take the lift halfway.
The replacement of these lifts allowed the restructuring of the criss-cross beams in upper part of the tower and further allowed the installation of two emergency staircases. These replaced the dangerous winding stairs that were installed when the tower was constructed.
Restaurants
The tower has two restaurants: Le 58 tour Eiffel, on the first floor 311 ft (95 m) above sea level; and the Le Jules Verne, a gastronomical restaurant on the second floor, with a private lift. This restaurant has one star in the Michelin Red Guide. In January 2007, the multi-Michelin star chef Alain Ducasse was brought in to run Jules Verne.
Attempted relocation
According to interviews given in the early 1980s, Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau negotiated a secret agreement with French President Charles de Gaulle for the tower to be dismantled and temporarily relocated to Montreal to serve as a landmark and tourist attraction during Expo 67. The plan was allegedly vetoed by the company which operated the tower out of fear that the French government could refuse permission for the tower to be restored to its original location.
Economics
The American TV show Pricing the Priceless speculates that in 2011 the tower would cost about $480,000,000 to build, that the land under the tower is worth $350,000,000, and that the scrap value of the tower is worth $3,500,000. The TV show estimates the tower makes a profit of about $29,000,000 per year, though it is unlikely that the Eiffel Tower is managed so as to maximize profit.
It costs $5,300,000 to repaint the tower, which is done once every seven years. The electric bill is $400,000 per year for 7.5 million kilowatt-hours.
The Tokyo Tower in Japan is a very similar structure of very similar size. It was finished in 1958 at a final cost of ¥2.8 billion ($8.4 million in 1958).
Source Wikipedia
The Philadelphia Museum Of Art’s recent upgrades gave a lot of thought to maximizing their space. (That’s sarcasm)
Ilene S. Gordon, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer,.Ingredion, USA at the Annual Meeting 2017 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 19, 2017
Copyright by World Economic Forum / Christian Clavadetscher
Experiment with converted IR camera using a polarizing filter and HDR software. AEB +/-2 total 3 exposures processed with Photomatix.
High Dynamic Range (HDR)
High-dynamic-range imaging (HDRI) is a high dynamic range (HDR) technique used in imaging and photography to reproduce a greater dynamic range of luminosity than is possible with standard digital imaging or photographic techniques. The aim is to present a similar range of luminance to that experienced through the human visual system. The human eye, through adaptation of the iris and other methods, adjusts constantly to adapt to a broad range of luminance present in the environment. The brain continuously interprets this information so that a viewer can see in a wide range of light conditions.
HDR images can represent a greater range of luminance levels than can be achieved using more 'traditional' methods, such as many real-world scenes containing very bright, direct sunlight to extreme shade, or very faint nebulae. This is often achieved by capturing and then combining several different, narrower range, exposures of the same subject matter. Non-HDR cameras take photographs with a limited exposure range, referred to as LDR, resulting in the loss of detail in highlights or shadows.
The two primary types of HDR images are computer renderings and images resulting from merging multiple low-dynamic-range (LDR) or standard-dynamic-range (SDR) photographs. HDR images can also be acquired using special image sensors, such as an oversampled binary image sensor.
Due to the limitations of printing and display contrast, the extended luminosity range of an HDR image has to be compressed to be made visible. The method of rendering an HDR image to a standard monitor or printing device is called tone mapping. This method reduces the overall contrast of an HDR image to facilitate display on devices or printouts with lower dynamic range, and can be applied to produce images with preserved local contrast (or exaggerated for artistic effect).
In photography, dynamic range is measured in exposure value (EV) differences (known as stops). An increase of one EV, or 'one stop', represents a doubling of the amount of light. Conversely, a decrease of one EV represents a halving of the amount of light. Therefore, revealing detail in the darkest of shadows requires high exposures, while preserving detail in very bright situations requires very low exposures. Most cameras cannot provide this range of exposure values within a single exposure, due to their low dynamic range. High-dynamic-range photographs are generally achieved by capturing multiple standard-exposure images, often using exposure bracketing, and then later merging them into a single HDR image, usually within a photo manipulation program). Digital images are often encoded in a camera's raw image format, because 8-bit JPEG encoding does not offer a wide enough range of values to allow fine transitions (and regarding HDR, later introduces undesirable effects due to lossy compression).
Any camera that allows manual exposure control can make images for HDR work, although one equipped with auto exposure bracketing (AEB) is far better suited. Images from film cameras are less suitable as they often must first be digitized, so that they can later be processed using software HDR methods.
In most imaging devices, the degree of exposure to light applied to the active element (be it film or CCD) can be altered in one of two ways: by either increasing/decreasing the size of the aperture or by increasing/decreasing the time of each exposure. Exposure variation in an HDR set is only done by altering the exposure time and not the aperture size; this is because altering the aperture size also affects the depth of field and so the resultant multiple images would be quite different, preventing their final combination into a single HDR image.
An important limitation for HDR photography is that any movement between successive images will impede or prevent success in combining them afterwards. Also, as one must create several images (often three or five and sometimes more) to obtain the desired luminance range, such a full 'set' of images takes extra time. HDR photographers have developed calculation methods and techniques to partially overcome these problems, but the use of a sturdy tripod is, at least, advised.
Some cameras have an auto exposure bracketing (AEB) feature with a far greater dynamic range than others, from the 3 EV of the Canon EOS 40D, to the 18 EV of the Canon EOS-1D Mark II. As the popularity of this imaging method grows, several camera manufactures are now offering built-in HDR features. For example, the Pentax K-7 DSLR has an HDR mode that captures an HDR image and outputs (only) a tone mapped JPEG file. The Canon PowerShot G12, Canon PowerShot S95 and Canon PowerShot S100 offer similar features in a smaller format.. Nikon's approach is called 'Active D-Lighting' which applies exposure compensation and tone mapping to the image as it comes from the sensor, with the accent being on retaing a realistic effect . Some smartphones provide HDR modes, and most mobile platforms have apps that provide HDR picture taking.
Camera characteristics such as gamma curves, sensor resolution, noise, photometric calibration and color calibration affect resulting high-dynamic-range images.
Color film negatives and slides consist of multiple film layers that respond to light differently. As a consequence, transparent originals (especially positive slides) feature a very high dynamic range
Tone mapping
Tone mapping reduces the dynamic range, or contrast ratio, of an entire image while retaining localized contrast. Although it is a distinct operation, tone mapping is often applied to HDRI files by the same software package.
Several software applications are available on the PC, Mac and Linux platforms for producing HDR files and tone mapped images. Notable titles include
Adobe Photoshop
Aurora HDR
Dynamic Photo HDR
HDR Efex Pro
HDR PhotoStudio
Luminance HDR
MagicRaw
Oloneo PhotoEngine
Photomatix Pro
PTGui
Information stored in high-dynamic-range images typically corresponds to the physical values of luminance or radiance that can be observed in the real world. This is different from traditional digital images, which represent colors as they should appear on a monitor or a paper print. Therefore, HDR image formats are often called scene-referred, in contrast to traditional digital images, which are device-referred or output-referred. Furthermore, traditional images are usually encoded for the human visual system (maximizing the visual information stored in the fixed number of bits), which is usually called gamma encoding or gamma correction. The values stored for HDR images are often gamma compressed (power law) or logarithmically encoded, or floating-point linear values, since fixed-point linear encodings are increasingly inefficient over higher dynamic ranges.
HDR images often don't use fixed ranges per color channel—other than traditional images—to represent many more colors over a much wider dynamic range. For that purpose, they don't use integer values to represent the single color channels (e.g., 0-255 in an 8 bit per pixel interval for red, green and blue) but instead use a floating point representation. Common are 16-bit (half precision) or 32-bit floating point numbers to represent HDR pixels. However, when the appropriate transfer function is used, HDR pixels for some applications can be represented with a color depth that has as few as 10–12 bits for luminance and 8 bits for chrominance without introducing any visible quantization artifacts.
History of HDR photography
The idea of using several exposures to adequately reproduce a too-extreme range of luminance was pioneered as early as the 1850s by Gustave Le Gray to render seascapes showing both the sky and the sea. Such rendering was impossible at the time using standard methods, as the luminosity range was too extreme. Le Gray used one negative for the sky, and another one with a longer exposure for the sea, and combined the two into one picture in positive.
Mid 20th century
Manual tone mapping was accomplished by dodging and burning – selectively increasing or decreasing the exposure of regions of the photograph to yield better tonality reproduction. This was effective because the dynamic range of the negative is significantly higher than would be available on the finished positive paper print when that is exposed via the negative in a uniform manner. An excellent example is the photograph Schweitzer at the Lamp by W. Eugene Smith, from his 1954 photo essay A Man of Mercy on Dr. Albert Schweitzer and his humanitarian work in French Equatorial Africa. The image took 5 days to reproduce the tonal range of the scene, which ranges from a bright lamp (relative to the scene) to a dark shadow.
Ansel Adams elevated dodging and burning to an art form. Many of his famous prints were manipulated in the darkroom with these two methods. Adams wrote a comprehensive book on producing prints called The Print, which prominently features dodging and burning, in the context of his Zone System.
With the advent of color photography, tone mapping in the darkroom was no longer possible due to the specific timing needed during the developing process of color film. Photographers looked to film manufacturers to design new film stocks with improved response, or continued to shoot in black and white to use tone mapping methods.
Color film capable of directly recording high-dynamic-range images was developed by Charles Wyckoff and EG&G "in the course of a contract with the Department of the Air Force". This XR film had three emulsion layers, an upper layer having an ASA speed rating of 400, a middle layer with an intermediate rating, and a lower layer with an ASA rating of 0.004. The film was processed in a manner similar to color films, and each layer produced a different color. The dynamic range of this extended range film has been estimated as 1:108. It has been used to photograph nuclear explosions, for astronomical photography, for spectrographic research, and for medical imaging. Wyckoff's detailed pictures of nuclear explosions appeared on the cover of Life magazine in the mid-1950s.
Late 20th century
Georges Cornuéjols and licensees of his patents (Brdi, Hymatom) introduced the principle of HDR video image, in 1986, by interposing a matricial LCD screen in front of the camera's image sensor, increasing the sensors dynamic by five stops. The concept of neighborhood tone mapping was applied to video cameras by a group from the Technion in Israel led by Dr. Oliver Hilsenrath and Prof. Y.Y.Zeevi who filed for a patent on this concept in 1988.
In February and April 1990, Georges Cornuéjols introduced the first real-time HDR camera that combined two images captured by a sensor3435 or simultaneously3637 by two sensors of the camera. This process is known as bracketing used for a video stream.
In 1991, the first commercial video camera was introduced that performed real-time capturing of multiple images with different exposures, and producing an HDR video image, by Hymatom, licensee of Georges Cornuéjols.
Also in 1991, Georges Cornuéjols introduced the HDR+ image principle by non-linear accumulation of images to increase the sensitivity of the camera: for low-light environments, several successive images are accumulated, thus increasing the signal to noise ratio.
In 1993, another commercial medical camera producing an HDR video image, by the Technion.
Modern HDR imaging uses a completely different approach, based on making a high-dynamic-range luminance or light map using only global image operations (across the entire image), and then tone mapping the result. Global HDR was first introduced in 19931 resulting in a mathematical theory of differently exposed pictures of the same subject matter that was published in 1995 by Steve Mann and Rosalind Picard.
On October 28, 1998, Ben Sarao created one of the first nighttime HDR+G (High Dynamic Range + Graphic image)of STS-95 on the launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. It consisted of four film images of the shuttle at night that were digitally composited with additional digital graphic elements. The image was first exhibited at NASA Headquarters Great Hall, Washington DC in 1999 and then published in Hasselblad Forum, Issue 3 1993, Volume 35 ISSN 0282-5449.
The advent of consumer digital cameras produced a new demand for HDR imaging to improve the light response of digital camera sensors, which had a much smaller dynamic range than film. Steve Mann developed and patented the global-HDR method for producing digital images having extended dynamic range at the MIT Media Laboratory. Mann's method involved a two-step procedure: (1) generate one floating point image array by global-only image operations (operations that affect all pixels identically, without regard to their local neighborhoods); and then (2) convert this image array, using local neighborhood processing (tone-remapping, etc.), into an HDR image. The image array generated by the first step of Mann's process is called a lightspace image, lightspace picture, or radiance map. Another benefit of global-HDR imaging is that it provides access to the intermediate light or radiance map, which has been used for computer vision, and other image processing operations.
21st century
In 2005, Adobe Systems introduced several new features in Photoshop CS2 including Merge to HDR, 32 bit floating point image support, and HDR tone mapping.
On June 30, 2016, Microsoft added support for the digital compositing of HDR images to Windows 10 using the Universal Windows Platform.
HDR sensors
Modern CMOS image sensors can often capture a high dynamic range from a single exposure. The wide dynamic range of the captured image is non-linearly compressed into a smaller dynamic range electronic representation. However, with proper processing, the information from a single exposure can be used to create an HDR image.
Such HDR imaging is used in extreme dynamic range applications like welding or automotive work. Some other cameras designed for use in security applications can automatically provide two or more images for each frame, with changing exposure. For example, a sensor for 30fps video will give out 60fps with the odd frames at a short exposure time and the even frames at a longer exposure time. Some of the sensor may even combine the two images on-chip so that a wider dynamic range without in-pixel compression is directly available to the user for display or processing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-dynamic-range_imaging
Infrared Photography
In infrared photography, the film or image sensor used is sensitive to infrared light. The part of the spectrum used is referred to as near-infrared to distinguish it from far-infrared, which is the domain of thermal imaging. Wavelengths used for photography range from about 700 nm to about 900 nm. Film is usually sensitive to visible light too, so an infrared-passing filter is used; this lets infrared (IR) light pass through to the camera, but blocks all or most of the visible light spectrum (the filter thus looks black or deep red). ("Infrared filter" may refer either to this type of filter or to one that blocks infrared but passes other wavelengths.)
When these filters are used together with infrared-sensitive film or sensors, "in-camera effects" can be obtained; false-color or black-and-white images with a dreamlike or sometimes lurid appearance known as the "Wood Effect," an effect mainly caused by foliage (such as tree leaves and grass) strongly reflecting in the same way visible light is reflected from snow. There is a small contribution from chlorophyll fluorescence, but this is marginal and is not the real cause of the brightness seen in infrared photographs. The effect is named after the infrared photography pioneer Robert W. Wood, and not after the material wood, which does not strongly reflect infrared.
The other attributes of infrared photographs include very dark skies and penetration of atmospheric haze, caused by reduced Rayleigh scattering and Mie scattering, respectively, compared to visible light. The dark skies, in turn, result in less infrared light in shadows and dark reflections of those skies from water, and clouds will stand out strongly. These wavelengths also penetrate a few millimeters into skin and give a milky look to portraits, although eyes often look black.
Until the early 20th century, infrared photography was not possible because silver halide emulsions are not sensitive to longer wavelengths than that of blue light (and to a lesser extent, green light) without the addition of a dye to act as a color sensitizer. The first infrared photographs (as distinct from spectrographs) to be published appeared in the February 1910 edition of The Century Magazine and in the October 1910 edition of the Royal Photographic Society Journal to illustrate papers by Robert W. Wood, who discovered the unusual effects that now bear his name. The RPS co-ordinated events to celebrate the centenary of this event in 2010. Wood's photographs were taken on experimental film that required very long exposures; thus, most of his work focused on landscapes. A further set of infrared landscapes taken by Wood in Italy in 1911 used plates provided for him by CEK Mees at Wratten & Wainwright. Mees also took a few infrared photographs in Portugal in 1910, which are now in the Kodak archives.
Infrared-sensitive photographic plates were developed in the United States during World War I for spectroscopic analysis, and infrared sensitizing dyes were investigated for improved haze penetration in aerial photography. After 1930, new emulsions from Kodak and other manufacturers became useful to infrared astronomy.
Infrared photography became popular with photography enthusiasts in the 1930s when suitable film was introduced commercially. The Times regularly published landscape and aerial photographs taken by their staff photographers using Ilford infrared film. By 1937 33 kinds of infrared film were available from five manufacturers including Agfa, Kodak and Ilford. Infrared movie film was also available and was used to create day-for-night effects in motion pictures, a notable example being the pseudo-night aerial sequences in the James Cagney/Bette Davis movie The Bride Came COD.
False-color infrared photography became widely practiced with the introduction of Kodak Ektachrome Infrared Aero Film and Ektachrome Infrared EIR. The first version of this, known as Kodacolor Aero-Reversal-Film, was developed by Clark and others at the Kodak for camouflage detection in the 1940s. The film became more widely available in 35mm form in the 1960s but KODAK AEROCHROME III Infrared Film 1443 has been discontinued.
Infrared photography became popular with a number of 1960s recording artists, because of the unusual results; Jimi Hendrix, Donovan, Frank and a slow shutter speed without focus compensation, however wider apertures like f/2.0 can produce sharp photos only if the lens is meticulously refocused to the infrared index mark, and only if this index mark is the correct one for the filter and film in use. However, it should be noted that diffraction effects inside a camera are greater at infrared wavelengths so that stopping down the lens too far may actually reduce sharpness.
Most apochromatic ('APO') lenses do not have an Infrared index mark and do not need to be refocused for the infrared spectrum because they are already optically corrected into the near-infrared spectrum. Catadioptric lenses do not often require this adjustment because their mirror containing elements do not suffer from chromatic aberration and so the overall aberration is comparably less. Catadioptric lenses do, of course, still contain lenses, and these lenses do still have a dispersive property.
Infrared black-and-white films require special development times but development is usually achieved with standard black-and-white film developers and chemicals (like D-76). Kodak HIE film has a polyester film base that is very stable but extremely easy to scratch, therefore special care must be used in the handling of Kodak HIE throughout the development and printing/scanning process to avoid damage to the film. The Kodak HIE film was sensitive to 900 nm.
As of November 2, 2007, "KODAK is preannouncing the discontinuance" of HIE Infrared 35 mm film stating the reasons that, "Demand for these products has been declining significantly in recent years, and it is no longer practical to continue to manufacture given the low volume, the age of the product formulations and the complexity of the processes involved." At the time of this notice, HIE Infrared 135-36 was available at a street price of around $12.00 a roll at US mail order outlets.
Arguably the greatest obstacle to infrared film photography has been the increasing difficulty of obtaining infrared-sensitive film. However, despite the discontinuance of HIE, other newer infrared sensitive emulsions from EFKE, ROLLEI, and ILFORD are still available, but these formulations have differing sensitivity and specifications from the venerable KODAK HIE that has been around for at least two decades. Some of these infrared films are available in 120 and larger formats as well as 35 mm, which adds flexibility to their application. With the discontinuance of Kodak HIE, Efke's IR820 film has become the only IR film on the marketneeds update with good sensitivity beyond 750 nm, the Rollei film does extend beyond 750 nm but IR sensitivity falls off very rapidly.
Color infrared transparency films have three sensitized layers that, because of the way the dyes are coupled to these layers, reproduce infrared as red, red as green, and green as blue. All three layers are sensitive to blue so the film must be used with a yellow filter, since this will block blue light but allow the remaining colors to reach the film. The health of foliage can be determined from the relative strengths of green and infrared light reflected; this shows in color infrared as a shift from red (healthy) towards magenta (unhealthy). Early color infrared films were developed in the older E-4 process, but Kodak later manufactured a color transparency film that could be developed in standard E-6 chemistry, although more accurate results were obtained by developing using the AR-5 process. In general, color infrared does not need to be refocused to the infrared index mark on the lens.
In 2007 Kodak announced that production of the 35 mm version of their color infrared film (Ektachrome Professional Infrared/EIR) would cease as there was insufficient demand. Since 2011, all formats of color infrared film have been discontinued. Specifically, Aerochrome 1443 and SO-734.
There is no currently available digital camera that will produce the same results as Kodak color infrared film although the equivalent images can be produced by taking two exposures, one infrared and the other full-color, and combining in post-production. The color images produced by digital still cameras using infrared-pass filters are not equivalent to those produced on color infrared film. The colors result from varying amounts of infrared passing through the color filters on the photo sites, further amended by the Bayer filtering. While this makes such images unsuitable for the kind of applications for which the film was used, such as remote sensing of plant health, the resulting color tonality has proved popular artistically.
Color digital infrared, as part of full spectrum photography is gaining popularity. The ease of creating a softly colored photo with infrared characteristics has found interest among hobbyists and professionals.
In 2008, Los Angeles photographer, Dean Bennici started cutting and hand rolling Aerochrome color Infrared film. All Aerochrome medium and large format which exists today came directly from his lab. The trend in infrared photography continues to gain momentum with the success of photographer Richard Mosse and multiple users all around the world.
Digital camera sensors are inherently sensitive to infrared light, which would interfere with the normal photography by confusing the autofocus calculations or softening the image (because infrared light is focused differently from visible light), or oversaturating the red channel. Also, some clothing is transparent in the infrared, leading to unintended (at least to the manufacturer) uses of video cameras. Thus, to improve image quality and protect privacy, many digital cameras employ infrared blockers. Depending on the subject matter, infrared photography may not be practical with these cameras because the exposure times become overly long, often in the range of 30 seconds, creating noise and motion blur in the final image. However, for some subject matter the long exposure does not matter or the motion blur effects actually add to the image. Some lenses will also show a 'hot spot' in the centre of the image as their coatings are optimised for visible light and not for IR.
An alternative method of DSLR infrared photography is to remove the infrared blocker in front of the sensor and replace it with a filter that removes visible light. This filter is behind the mirror, so the camera can be used normally - handheld, normal shutter speeds, normal composition through the viewfinder, and focus, all work like a normal camera. Metering works but is not always accurate because of the difference between visible and infrared refraction. When the IR blocker is removed, many lenses which did display a hotspot cease to do so, and become perfectly usable for infrared photography. Additionally, because the red, green and blue micro-filters remain and have transmissions not only in their respective color but also in the infrared, enhanced infrared color may be recorded.
Since the Bayer filters in most digital cameras absorb a significant fraction of the infrared light, these cameras are sometimes not very sensitive as infrared cameras and can sometimes produce false colors in the images. An alternative approach is to use a Foveon X3 sensor, which does not have absorptive filters on it; the Sigma SD10 DSLR has a removable IR blocking filter and dust protector, which can be simply omitted or replaced by a deep red or complete visible light blocking filter. The Sigma SD14 has an IR/UV blocking filter that can be removed/installed without tools. The result is a very sensitive digital IR camera.
While it is common to use a filter that blocks almost all visible light, the wavelength sensitivity of a digital camera without internal infrared blocking is such that a variety of artistic results can be obtained with more conventional filtration. For example, a very dark neutral density filter can be used (such as the Hoya ND400) which passes a very small amount of visible light compared to the near-infrared it allows through. Wider filtration permits an SLR viewfinder to be used and also passes more varied color information to the sensor without necessarily reducing the Wood effect. Wider filtration is however likely to reduce other infrared artefacts such as haze penetration and darkened skies. This technique mirrors the methods used by infrared film photographers where black-and-white infrared film was often used with a deep red filter rather than a visually opaque one.
Another common technique with near-infrared filters is to swap blue and red channels in software (e.g. photoshop) which retains much of the characteristic 'white foliage' while rendering skies a glorious blue.
Several Sony cameras had the so-called Night Shot facility, which physically moves the blocking filter away from the light path, which makes the cameras very sensitive to infrared light. Soon after its development, this facility was 'restricted' by Sony to make it difficult for people to take photos that saw through clothing. To do this the iris is opened fully and exposure duration is limited to long times of more than 1/30 second or so. It is possible to shoot infrared but neutral density filters must be used to reduce the camera's sensitivity and the long exposure times mean that care must be taken to avoid camera-shake artifacts.
Fuji have produced digital cameras for use in forensic criminology and medicine which have no infrared blocking filter. The first camera, designated the S3 PRO UVIR, also had extended ultraviolet sensitivity (digital sensors are usually less sensitive to UV than to IR). Optimum UV sensitivity requires special lenses, but ordinary lenses usually work well for IR. In 2007, FujiFilm introduced a new version of this camera, based on the Nikon D200/ FujiFilm S5 called the IS Pro, also able to take Nikon lenses. Fuji had earlier introduced a non-SLR infrared camera, the IS-1, a modified version of the FujiFilm FinePix S9100. Unlike the S3 PRO UVIR, the IS-1 does not offer UV sensitivity. FujiFilm restricts the sale of these cameras to professional users with their EULA specifically prohibiting "unethical photographic conduct".
Phase One digital camera backs can be ordered in an infrared modified form.
Remote sensing and thermographic cameras are sensitive to longer wavelengths of infrared (see Infrared spectrum#Commonly used sub-division scheme). They may be multispectral and use a variety of technologies which may not resemble common camera or filter designs. Cameras sensitive to longer infrared wavelengths including those used in infrared astronomy often require cooling to reduce thermally induced dark currents in the sensor (see Dark current (physics)). Lower cost uncooled thermographic digital cameras operate in the Long Wave infrared band (see Thermographic camera#Uncooled infrared detectors). These cameras are generally used for building inspection or preventative maintenance but can be used for artistic pursuits as well.
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Midtown Manhattan, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
200 West 57th Street, Midtown, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
The Rodin Studios building, built in 1916-17, was designed by Cass Gilbert specifically for artists. Named for the most innovative living artist of the time, it represents a refinement on the earlier essays in what was a relatively new building type. The two principal elevations of this fourteen-story, reinforced concrete frame building, are sheathed in rough brick, polychromatic — buff to gray, laid in American bond. The elaborate and extensive terra cotta and iron trim is molded and cast in the late Gothic-early Classical motifs which characterize the French Renaissance style, the style of the neighboring Arts Students League as well as a style Gilbert thought appropriate for- artists. The studio windows on the West 57th Street elevation with their cast iron canopies are particularly noteworthy. The brickwork is remarkable also; the broad and narrow bay reveals, linking the building's base and cap, give this elevation a distinct visual coherence.
Background of the Studio Building Type
The Rodin Studios building is prominent in the development of the studio building type in the early years of this century. The Van Dyck Studios, c.1889, 939 Eighth Avenue, and the studios in Carnegie Hall, 1894, at 881 Seventh Avenue, were mixed use buildings. The first studio buildings designed in this century specifically for artists were built on West 67th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.
In an effort to provide satisfactory space for artists, Henry Ward Ranger , the successful landscape painter, rallying a group of artists agreeable to renting space in any building erected for that purpose, approached potential investors to underwrite the financing of such a building. Because so novel a concept found little support, the artists themselves raised the necessary capital.
They elected officers and formed a corporation to which each contributed and, in return, became an owner with the exclusive right to occupy or sublet one of the studio apartments within the building. Maintenance costs were assessed according to the amount of space each artist owned. Not all the studios were sold; it was decided to hold a few for rental. The income thus produced provided capital to maintain the building.
The earliest West 67th Street studio buildings were designed by Pollard & Steinam . Inevitably any new concept is evaluated against existing standards and the initial building, The Sixty-seventh Street Studios, was found to be in violation of the city's tenement law. To qualify for reclassification from tenement to Class A Hotel, a public restaurant was introduced on the ground floor, and as a result of building code requirements subsequent studio buildings were constructed on avenues, not streets.
Securing capital to construct the Rodin Studios building was, like its predecessors on West 67th Street and Central Park South, done through a corporation of artists. The president of Rodin Studios, Inc. was Lawton S. Parker , the vice-president was Georgia Timken Fry , and her husband John Hemming Fry was treasurer. All three were painters and all three had travelled from early training in the Midwest to study in Paris: Parker from Michigan to the Academie Julian, Fry from Indiana also to the Academie Julian, and Mrs. Fry from Saint Louis to work with Aimee Morot and Jules Cazin Both Mr. and Mrs. Fry had attended the Saint Louis School of Fine Arts in the early 1880s where Parker was later to teach in 1892. Though not one of them is well-known today, the least obscure of the three in the second decade of this century was Parker.
Lawton S. Parker was identified in the early 1910s with the small group of Americans in Paris calling themselves The Giverny Group. Frederick Carl Frieseke is by far the best known of these Monet devotees. Like Frieseke, Parker had turned from his academic training in the late 1880s and embraced Impressionism. Back in New York" he studied with Harry Siddons Mowbray and William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League in 1897. He exhibited with the Giverny Group at New York's MacBeth Gallery in 1910 and was accorded a one man show at the Art Institute of Chicago two years later.
Georgia Timken Fry's strength was landscape in which she synthesized the humble subject matter of Francois Millet with the misty Impressionism of her teacher Cazin; the painting Harvest in Normandy was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1885.
John Fry appears to have remained true to the academic principles first established by Poussin and as this pedagogy deteriorated, he was given to diatribes against contemporary art — "a bedlam of confusion." Fry had formed a small teaching collection, leaving it to the Canton Art Institute with the conviction — no doubt founded on his own experience — that a sound national culture could only develop in the Midwest far from the vulgarization and novelty of New York and Hollywood-
Included was the small Rodin bronze Maternity, which Fry purchased three years after his wife's death-
Parker and the Frys were but part of the wave of young American artists who, from the mid-seventies on, had been drawn to Paris and who, upon their return to New York, populated the area near the Art Students League. The League was housed in Henry H. J. Hardenburgh's recently completed American Fine Arts Society Building, 1892, at 215 West 57th Street, just half a block from the new Carnegie Hall, 1891. Harderbergh's use of the Francois I style for the building's West 57th Street facade was in keeping with the League's French sympathies. From the late nineties until the First World War, Parker was back and forth between Paris and this country, teaching and painting.
The Frys returned to New York about 1902 and resided in several studio buildings until, nine years later, they moved to 222 Central Park South, the Gainsborough Studios. They remained at the Gainsborough for at least seven years in which time John Fry became vice-president of the Gainsborough corporation, no doubt learning the responsibilities of running a studio building corporation.
The Architect
In retrospect, the Rodin corporation officers' choice of Cass Gilbert as architect for their new studio building should not surprise us. Gilbert was known to be sympathetic to artists. Had he not shewn himself a worthy inheritor of McKim's ideal of the unity of the arts when he selected at least a dozen nationally known artists to embellish his well -publicized Minnesota State Capitol ?
This patronage continued throughout his professional career; however, following his Minnesota Capitol and New York Customs House commissions he often contracted the interior work out to a firm of architectural decorators. One such firm with when Gilbert collaborated frequently was Paris £ Wiley .
Like Gilbert, William Francklyn Paris was an unabashed francophile. It was Paris who initiated the Hall of American Artists at New York University's Gould Memorial Library in 1917. Based on the Institute de France, it has served as a pantheon in which the most accomplished artists of the so-called American Renaissance — the academic tradition that bred Lawton and the Frys — are honored. Supported through an agency of volunteer patrons committees, both Cass Gilbert and John Hemming Fry were committee chairmen.' Paris also admired Albert Besnard, the French painter and etcher, in whose atelier Lawton Parker had worked.
These mutually cherished, aesthetic sympathies suggest that Parker, the Frys, William Francklyn- Paris and Cass Gilbert were acquainted or could easily become so.
Certainly by 1915 Gilbert's reputation as an architect was not unknown to Lawton Parker and to John and Georgia Timken Fry. Not only had the Wool worth Building , a "cathedral for commerce," been his design, but Gilbert's training, though not identical, approximated theirs. He had studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Eugene Letang — whom William Ware had brought from the Ecole des Beaux Arts — and though he did not study at the Ecole himself, Gilbert admired the national French school's principles and method.
After travel abroad in 1881 he returned to New York to work for McKim, Mead & White within the same year. Like the Rodin Studios' corporate officers, Gilbert had cone from the Midwest as well — Zanesville, Ohio and St. Paul, Minnesota. And again like the Rodin's officers Gilbert thought of himself as an artist.
Gilbert returned to St. Paul in 1883 where he opened an office, joining James Knox Taylor in partnership the following year — an arrangement which continued until Taylor became Supervising Architect of the Treasury in 1892. But seven years later Gilbert's Broadway Chambers
project brought him back to New York. Models and drawings of this building were featured at the International Universal Exposition held in Paris in 1900, garnering Gilbert some recognition abroad and useful publicity at home.
Meanwhile, his design for the New York Customs House won the national competition . Gilbert then turned to commercial office building design in New York; the West Street Building and the Wool worth Building are the best known of these. Both, though steel frame structures, are articulated in the late Gothic style characteristic of 15th century France. Net only was this style considered an appropriate one for - tall building, but it evoked for Gilbert the dawn of the French Renaissance, an epoque exemplary for the conscientiousness of its craftsmen and the reawakening of classical values. These allusions he would see as equally valid for his artist contemporaries. And there is no reason to doubt that the Rodin corporation officers were in accord.
The Building
In choosing a name for their building and corporation in 1916, Parker and the Frys chose to honor Auguste Rodin - a Frenchman, a sculptor and a living artist. The Frys bad occupied the studio buildings named in honor of Van Dyck and Gainsborough, painters associated with the English School. Although their francophilia has been acknowledged, we must rely upon contemporary evaluations of Rodin to understand the significance of the corporate officers' choice.
Towards the end of his lifetime Auguste Rodin was recognized as an undisputed genius. His dedication to his craft triumphed over the adverse criticism that attended his early production so that Rodin had become a symbol to American artists trained in France. In 1905 Kenyon Cox discussed the essential character of Rodin's work — his reverence for the quality of his material was as important as his romantic realism.
So too, these Americans, immersed in Impressionism, returned to the challenge of acceptance in their own land. , Rodin's was an appropriate name to grace their efforts and distinguish their abode.
The site of the Rodin Studios building would have been familiar to former tenants at Carnegie Hall. Originally- .part of the Cornelius Cozine farm devised to his gran-daughter Rebecca Cozine and conveyed into lots in 1833, this parcel on the southwest corner of Seventh Avenue and West 57th Street saw several owners until 1881 when it was purchased by William F. Croft.
Croft secured John D. Prague to design and construct a seven story, brick and stone building of French flats to house twenty-four families. It was called "The Inverness" and subsequently "The Grenoble." The Inverness/Grenoble changed hands three times before 1916 when Rodin Studios, Inc. purchased it from the executors of Mary Chisholm and were issued a demolition permit. This corner site with its adjacent broad street widths was well-chosen; any of the problems which Ranger's corporation had incurred on West 67th Street were precluded.
The Rodin officers were looking for a new and homogeneous expression of the several functions their building would serve. Gilbert's program for the Rodin Studios building called for stores on the first floor and business offices on the second and part of the third floor. Simplex apartments and two sizes of duplex studio were to occupy the balance of the third floor and the eleven floors above.
The studios were either working studios or studios with adjacent living apartments. All of the duplex studios were to be positioned across the building's northern front — a room height and orientation which provided the maximum light with minimum shadow, the conditions necessary to a painter's work.
To maximize this important orientation fully, Gilbert repeated Buckham's solution at the Gainsborough Studies, one he could easily have seen upon a visit to the Frys' Gainsborough studio. The Rodin's broad corner site allowed him to place five studios abreast across the West 57th Street elevation rather than the two to which the Gainsborough's narrower mid-block site had limited Buckham.
But, as Buckham had, Gilbert isolated the smaller, working studios in the central three bays of this elevation, staggering the studies of the center bay so that a portion of each studio unit, a bathroom or kitchenette, overlapped that of its neighbor — as in an interlocking joint. The building's corner studios were the ones with apartment accomodations behind them . The simplex apartments were behind these.
As a consequence, in plan the Rodin Studios building does not fill its let but roughly approximates the letter F. Two wings extend south from the F's staff — the building's full northern front on West 57th Street . The longer wing along Seventh Avenue reaches to within ten feet of the southern lot line. The shorter is separated from the longer to the east and the western lot line by open light wells and extends almost as far into the lot. These wings contain the simplex apartments.
The fourteen-story structure is of reinforced concrete and the walls are faced with rough, subtly varicolored brick, predominantly buff, rising from a base faced with granite. The comprehensive ornamental program is iron and terra cotta. The building's principal elevations, on West 57th Street and on Seventh Avenue , follow the traditional tall building canon: a two story base, ten story shaft, and a cap consisting of the upper two stories and the cornice. An alternating rhythm of broad and narrow bays, articulated both at the base and the top by the building's decorative program, is spread horizontally across the two elevations.
The West 57th Street Elevation
The building's base is comprised of five broad bays with a central entrance and four shop windows; the narrow bays contain shop doors or smaller shew windows. A row of five double-hung sash windows fill the five bays on the second story.
Single, double-hung sash windows fill the narrow bays. The five broad bays within the building's main-section contain the duplex studio windows . The staggered studio windows within the center bay are the only exterior clue to the system of interlocking units within. Instead of five, the center bay contains four duplex windows; single story windows compensate for the interlocking arrangement.
The four narrow bays contain single double-hung windows on each story, lighting the overlapping bathrooms and kitchenettes of the interlocked studio units in the building's three center bays. Within the building's cap the five broad bays contain duplex studio windows and the narrow bays, as below, single windows at each of the cap's two stories, repeating the interlocked system below.
The Seventh Avenue Elevation
Here , as on the West 57th Street facade, the broad bays at the building's base contain four shop windows, though not all the narrow bays contain these shops' entrances. On the second story paired double-hung sash windows fill the broad bays and single, double-hung sash windows the narrow bays. This pattern is repeated across the building's main-section although, originally, there were no windows on the fourth, sixth, eighth, tenth and twelfth stories of the northernmost broad bay .
The left-hand windows in the southernmost broad bay, again on the fourth, sixth, eighth, tenth and twelfth stories, remain blind . In the building's two-story cap, the pattern of paired and single windows is retained, though the paired windows in the northernmost bay on the fourteenth story, as well as the single window in the niche to the right and the left-hand window in the southernmost broad bay, are blind.
South Elevation
Looking north on Seventh Avenue from West 56th Street, several bays of the building's southern elevation are apparent but only the first contains a window type unlike those in either of the preceding elevations. These windows are tripartite, a broad, central double-hung sash flanked by narrower fixed lights. The face brick here is uniformly buff; there are neither polychrome brick nor other decorative elements.
West Elevation
The visible portion of the western elevation, a lot line wall, is faced with stucco over brick and contains a vertical row of windows.
Ornamental Program
Much of the building's original ground story ornament was removed by its second owner, especially at the base. However, these portions of the building had been photographically recorded by Gilbert's firm and are described below. The building's architectural ornament is expressed in three materials, the brickwork itself, terra cotta and cast and wrought iron.
The Brickwork
The binding's rough, face brick is laid in common, or American, bend . On the two principal facades a tight range of polychromatic hue was specified. Though predominantly buff in color, there are stretchers of gray and headers of a burnt gold color randomly placed throughout the bond, a combination giving the surface a particularly rich texture.
The correspondence between building parts does not rely so ley on the building's more conspicuous decorative materials; where there is little terra cotta and no cast iron, the continuity of the building's decorative program is continued in the brickwork- Hie reveals , a column of headers next to a column of stretchers, separating the broad and narrow bays on both elevations are more visible on the Seventh Avenue facade where, without the duplex winders to offer contrast, they function visually as piers, connecting the building's base to its cap.
Some of the ornamental brickwork can still be seen below the shop windows' terra cotta corbel table cornices. The terra-cotta panels in the bread bay spandrels between the thirteenth and fourteenth stories are framed in two borders of brick : a border of headers inside a border of stretchers.
Terra Cotta Ornament
Like the Broadway Chambers, West Street and Woolworth Buildings, the Rodin Studios attests to Gilbert's predilection for terra cotta. It is the rich combination of classical motives and late Gothic tracery molded in terra cotta which gives the building its early French Renaissance character. On closer inspection the brittle character of the ornament make it very much of this century. It is remarkable for two reasons: much of it has been molded in high relief and the consequent shading and deep shadow offer a striking contrast to the building's planar surfaces; and the mythic animal and human representations are rendered in vivid caricature. The repetition of motifs emphasizes the cohesion of the building's decorative scheme.
Adjacent to the gateway south of the building's Seventh Avenue elevation are a broad terra-cotta molding — fluted molding between cable moldings — just above the granite base and a string course , suggesting the top rail of a dado, a bit above it. The building's entrance is arched and now faced with travertine.
At present the travertine revetment extends to and around the building's northeastern corner to the second broad bay from its southeastern corner, incorporating the building's rhythm of broad and narrow bays. The broad bays are square headed and glazed with narrow, bronzed metal framing; a horizontal mull ion, bearing the shop's name , separates the lower plate glass window and door from the upper. Two openings, one above -the other, articulate the narrow bays including those at the building's" northeast corner.
The lower openings contain a single plate glass window set in bronzed metal framing. The upper contain gold color metal grilles pierced with a symmetrical pattern incorporating the building's West 57th Street number, 200, right side up, upside down and inverted. Only on the Seventh Avenue elevation has the integrity of the broad and narrow bays been compromised; the second narrow bay from the building's northeast corner has a doorway flanked by glazed, single pane windows abutting the plate glass windows of the adjacent, broad bays. The horizontal muntin extends south across the travertine to include a broad bay, a narrow bay and a portion of the second southernmost bay, an arrangement necessitated by the BMT Subway staircase.
The original corbel table cornices above the broad bay show windows remain . The twelve corbel arches are supported by a series of five antic figures, or "marmosets": a frog, a rapt reader, a sky gazer, a frontal supporting figure and a supporting figure in profile, repeated as necessary. Above the corbel arches the cornice comprises a fluted frieze and Roman molding. The cornice carries a long paneled sill the width of the paired windows above.
In a wall extending from the building's south wall to the southern lot line, a few feet back from the building line along Seventh Avenue, there is an arched gateway , originally permitting access to the building's basement and rear yard but new the service entrance to the one-story restaurant addition of 1932-33. The gateway's foliated surround and ogee drip molding terminate in a crocketed accolade. Still in place within the arch's head is the original wrought-iron tympanum and lantern. Above the arch, three rectangular plaques containing a tracery design — a circle and four mouchettes — ornament the wall surface. The accolade's finial becomes the central element in the design of the middle plaque. The wall's coping is supported on a corbel table cornice like those above the shop windows.
Most of the ornament in the building's main-section is on the West 57th Street elevation and most of this is iron. Terra cotta is limited to two string courses and five drip moldings. The string courses run the breadth of the 57th Street and Seventh Avenue elevations : the thinner just above the second story windows, the thicker above it at the third-story windows' sill. These separated the building's base from its main-section. Above each of the adjacent windows in the northernmost broad bay of the Seventh Avenue facade — at the third, fifth, seventh and eleventh stories — there is an ogee, drip molding and accolade, borne on "marmoset" corbels. Not unlike the gateway diagonally below, the accolade finial is incorporated into the tracery design — a circle and four mouchettes — of the rectangular plaque above the window.
The terra cotta of the building's two-story cap is largely intact and the arched corbel motif from over the shop windows below is reintroduced in great variety. An arched corbel course and frieze between the twelfth and thirteenth stories on both the 57th Street and Seventh Avenue elevations separates the building's cap from its main-section.
Across the broad bays the corbelled course comprises twelve arches, like the shop window cornices, and thirteen marmosets; the narrow bays course have only four arches and five "marmosets." The Marmosets" are not a repetition of those below. There are three: one wears a head band, another is hooded, and the third bears an expression of stress. In both the broad and narrow bays all but the narrow panels at the extreme ends of the deeply molded frieze depict paired dolphins supporting a disk above a reeded basin? the narrower panels contain flambeaux in lew relief.
Corbelled pilasters corresponding to the brick reveals below mark the broad and narrow bays in the building's cap. Like the masks of comedy and tragedy the '•marmosets" alternate in expression: one depicts a grinning ancient grasping a palette; the other a distraught ancient pointing to a slender statuette. Each "marmoset" supports a paneled plinth faced with an urn in low relief.
The pilaster rises from this plinth and, like the plinth is paneled. Its lower portion is fluted. like the "marmosets," the pilaster capitals alternate also, though both are early Renaissance variations of the Corinthian order. The volutes of one are griffins; instead of a fleuron, a flambeau appears between them. The griffin capital crowns the pilaster resting on the "marmoset" of the grinning painter. The volutes of the other capital are cornucopia flanking a palmette; instead of the fleuron there is a mask of a hooded gnome. The "marmoset" of the distraught sculptor supports the pilaster with the cornucopia capital.
Terra cotta plaques in brick borders face the spandrels between the paired windows of the thirteenth and fourteenth stories.
Canopies of small pendant arches articulate the tops of the broad bays, above the duplex windows of the 57th Street elevation and the paired fourteenth story windows of the Seventh Avenue elevation. All of the single windows on the fourteenth story in both elevations , have become niches with corbelled sills articulated with escutcheons bearing fleur de lys and flanked by antic eagles. Repeated above each face of the tri-faceted canopies is the mask of the hooded gnome.
The cornice itself is an elaborate corbel table ; the small arches therein incorporate the shell motif and are supported on modillions. Between each of these modillions, on the bottom face of the corbel table, the winged heads of putty are molded in low relief. The cornice cymatium is articulated in a variation of a Roman molding; the acanthus leaves alternate with fleur de lys. A parapet originally rested on the cornice; it carried a pattern, most likely, akin to that of the frieze between the twelfth and thirteenth stories.
Cast and Wrought Iron Ornament
Cast and wrought iron in combination are also used within the building's decorative program. Except for the tympanum in the gateway adjacent to the Seventh Avenue elevation, most of the iron is found on the West 57th facade . Iron is used exclusively for the canopies which project from between the duplex windows. Gothic choir stall canopies appear to have been the model for these elements. Each is five bays wide, corresponding to the windows below and above, and each bay is separated by a thin rib and pinnacle. It is on these pinnacles that the winged finial figures perch.
One of these iron canopies should -be described from bottom to top . A narrow ivy frieze runs across the top. The thin ribs correspond with the mull ions between windows and rise across the ivy to become brackets supporting the canopy; the top of the bracket is attached to the back of the pendant pinnacle.
The panel above the window and be lew the canopy is divided in half vertically by a thinner rib. Running behind the canopy pinnacles are three horizontal moldings: the lowest one of pendant arches; a broad rinceaux; and a cable molding on top. Each pinnacle carries a winged creature finial; a foliate boss is the pinnacle's lower terminal feature.
Iron grilles once covered the second story, narrow bay windows . Ten stories above there were once balconies fronting the single windows on the West 57th Street elevation .
Conclusion
The Rodin Studios , commissioned by a corporation of artists — the painters Lawton S. Parker, Georgia Timken Fry and her husband John Hemming Fry— was designed by Cass Gilbert for a site in the heart of what once was Manhattan's artistic community. Not only did he refine the existing studio building type for them but he gave them a building comprising the best of contemporary building technology. And because he empathized with the earlier tradition of fifteenth-century French artists and artisans he gave his clients a building articulated in the French Renaissance style. Handsome and elaborate molded terra cotta and cast iron were the mediums of the style and where the building's function and its style came together, imaginative solutions, like the cast-iron canopies between studio windows on the West 57th Street elevation, were introduced. And for their building the corporate officers chose the name of the most innovative and revered contemporary artist, the sculptor Auguste Rodin .
- From the 1988 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report