The history of the Citroën «Facile à Fabriquer, Facile à Financer», or FAF for “easy to make, easy to finance”, could be traced back to the early post-war period. Introduced in 1948, the 2CV was adapted, re-bodied and modified throughout its entire career, in particular to cope with the harsh environments of developing countries. Although Citroën introduced the Mehari in 1968 to satisfy customers on the coast or in the countryside, its plastic bodywork was not robust enough for third world countries. However, the market potential was significant, and Citroën engineers had to find a solution. The FAF project is presented in 1978 at the Dakar Fair. While the mechanical base was still derived from the 2CV, the bodywork used a unique production method. Made of sheet metal rather than plastic, the parts were cut according to a pattern and then folded along the dotted lines to form the different parts. The FAFs were to be manufactured locally, by low-skilled workers in countries without an automotive industry. Numerous versions were proposed, but without any exceptional success. In 1979, the FAF A 4x4 was presented. Equipped with a «patrol» body, it is powered by the twin-cylinder engine of the Visa and was aimed at African armies, but also at the French and Portuguese armies to replace their ageing Jeeps. A very confidential series will be produced, without any contract ever being signed. The FAF we present to you is a civilian A 4x4. Exhibited at the Porte de Versailles 4x4 and outdoor car show in September 1983, it has an original decoration, reminiscent of the “Croisières Citroën” of the 1930s. Its aesthetic is reworked: headlight grills, fake grass floor mats, specific 6 stripes paint for example. With about 2,200 km on the odometer, a dogleg gearbox and the possibility of switching between two or four wheel drive, this rare A 4x4 has only one thing to look forward to: crossing dunes, deserts or forests.

 

l'Aventure Peugeot Citroën DS, la Vente Officielle

Aguttes

Estimated : € 15.000 - 20.000

Sold for € 28.500

 

Citroen Heritage

93600 Aulnay-sous-Bois

France

September 2021

The embroidered clothing has been a very coveted form of clothing which the women of Pakistan like very much. This SME is a major source of supply for these kind of clothing and which is made at various in-house facilities where the workers prepare these stuff. The development of clothing involves great hardship and a great deal of concentration while activity is performed by the KARIGARS (skilled workers) of this industry.

 

The occasion of wedding is mostly the event which is specially considered for wearing the kind of clothing when the brides chose different colors and varieties of designs of these embroidered clothing.

A skilled worker, regardless of the job description, remains a treasure

 

(for further pictures and information please go to the end of page and by clicking on the link my modest promises will be fulfilled!)

Parliament building

The original intention was to build two separate buildings for the Imperial Council and the House of Representatives of the by the February Patent 1861 established Reichsrat (Imperial Council). After the Compromise with Hungary, however, this plan was dropped and in the year 1869 the architect Theophil von Hansen by the Ministry of the Interior entrusted with the elaboration of the monumental project for a large parliament building. The first cut of the spade followed in June 1874, the foundation stone bears the date "2nd September 1874". At the same time was worked on the erection of the imperial museums, the Town Hall and the University. Theophil Hansen took - as already mentioned - well thought out and in a very meaningful way the style of the Viennese parliament building from ancient Greece; stem important constitutional terms but also from the Greek antiquity - such as "politics", "democracy" and others. Symbolic meaning had also that from nearly all crown lands of the monarchy materials have been used for the construction of the parliament building. Thus, the structure should symbolize the confluence of all the forces "of the in the in the Reichsrat represented kingdoms and countries" in the Vienna parliament building. With the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy ended the era of the multinational Parliament in Vienna.

Since November 1918, the building is the seat of the parliamentary bodies of the Republic of Austria, first the National Assembly and later the National Council in the until its destruction in 1945 remained unchanged session hall of the former Imperial Council holding meetings. During the Second World War, the parliament building was severely affected, about half of the building fabric were destroyed. On 7th February 1945 the portico by bombing suffered serious damage. Two columns were totally destroyed, the edge ceiling construction with the richly gilded coffered ceiling and a magnificent frieze painting, which was 121 meters long and 2 meters high and the most ideal and economic roles of the Parliament representing allegorically, were seriously damaged. During reconstruction, the rebuilding did not occur in the originally from Hansen originating features: instead of Pavonazzo marble for the wall plate cover Salzburg marble was used. The frieze painting initially not could be recovered, only in the 90s it should be possible to restore single surviving parts. In addition to destructions in the Chancellery Wing at the Ring Road as well as in the portico especially the Imperial Council tract was severely affected by the effects of war. The meeting room of the Imperial Council was completely burned out, in particular the figural jewelry as well as the ruined marble statues of Lycurgus, Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Sophocles, Socrates, Pericles and Demosthenes appearing hardly recoverable. In this circumstances, it was decided not to reconstruct the old Imperial Council hall, but a new hall with a businesslike but refined and convenient furnishing for the National Council of the Republic of Austria to build. During the reconstruction of the building in the years 1945 to 1956 efforts were also made the yet by Hansen envisaged technical independence further to develop and to perfect. Thus the parliament building now has an emergency generator, which ensures, any time, adequate electricity supply of the house in case of failure of the city network, and a variety of other technical facilities, which guarantee a high supply autonomy. Not only from basic considerations in the sense of seperation of powers but also from the possibility of an extraordinary emergency, is this a compelling need. National Council and the Federal Council as the elected representative bodies of the Austrian people must at all times - especially in case of disaster - the material conditions for their activity have guaranteed. This purpose serve the mentioned facilities and many others, sometimes very complicated ones and the persons entrusted with their maintenance. To the staff of the Parliamentary Administration therefore belong not only academics, stenographers, administrators, secretaries and officials of the room service as in each parliament, but also the with the maintenance of the infrastructure of the parliament building entrusted technicians and skilled workers.

Analogous to other parliaments was for years, even decades tried to acquire or to rent one or the other object near the Parliament building. Finally one was able in 1981 to start with a basic conversion or expansion of the house Reichsratsstrasse 9 under planning by the architect Prof. Dr. Sepp Stein, in this connection was given the order the parliament building through a tunnel with the house in the Reichsratsstrasse to connect. With this tunnel not only a connection for pedestrians should be established, but also a technical integration of the two houses. In the basement of the building in which in early 1985 could be moved in, confluences the road tunnel; furthermore it serves the accommodation of technical rooms as well as of the storage, preparation and staff rooms for a restauration, a main kitchen and a restaurant for about 130 people are housed on the ground floor. On the first floor are located dining rooms for about 110 people; workrooms for MPs are in the second, offices in the third to the sixth floor housed. Ten years after the house Reichsratsstrasse 9 another building could be purchased, the house Reichsratsstrasse 1, and, again under the planning leadership of architect Prof. Dr. Sepp Stein, adapted for the purposes of the Parliament. This house also through an in the basement joining under road tunnel with the Parliament building was connected. The basement houses storage rooms, the ground floor next to an "info-shop" where information materials concerning the Austrian Parlament can be obtained, the Parliament Post Office and the printery. In the six upper floors are offices and other work spaces for different departments of the Parliamentary Administration. The previously by these departments used rooms in the Parliament building were, after it was moved into the house Reichsratsstrasse in 1994, mostly the parliamentary clubs made available. Already in 1992 by the rental of rooms in a building in the Schenkenstraße for the parliamentary staff of the deputies office premises had been created.

Pallas Athene

Parliament Vienna

The 5.5 meter high monumental statue of Pallas Athena in front of the parliament building in Vienna gives not only the outside appearance of this building a striking sculptural accent, but has almost become a symbolic figure of the Austrian parliamentarism. The Danish architect Theophil Hansen, according to which draft in the years 1874-1884 the parliament building has been built, has designed this as a "work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk)"; thus, his planning also including the figural decoration of the building. The in front of the Parliament ramp to be built monumental fountain should according to Hansen's original planning be crowned of an allegoric representation of the Austria, that is, a symbolization of Austria. In the definitive, in 1878 by Hansen submitted figure program took its place Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. The monumental statue was realized only after Hansen's death, but according to his design by sculptor Carl Kundmann in 1902.

Meeting room of the former House of Representatives

The meeting room of the former House of Representatives is largely preserved faithfully and now serves the meetings of the Federal Assembly as well as ceremonies and commemorative meetings of the National Council and the Federal Council. Architecturally, the hall is modeled on a Greek theater. Before the end wall is the presidium with the lectern and the Government Bench, in the semicircle the seats of the deputies are arranged. The from Carrara marble carved statues on the front wall - between the ​​of Unterberger marble manufactured columns and pilasters - represent Roman statesmen, the by Friedrich Eisenmenger realised frieze painting depicts the emergence of political life, and the pediment group above it should symbolize the daily routine.

Portico

The large portico, in its proportions recreating the Parthenon of the Acropolis of Athens, forms the central chamber of the parliament building and should according to the original intention serve as a meeting place between members of the House of Representatives and of the Imperial Council. Today it functions as a venue, such as for the annual reception of the President of the National Council and the President of the Federal Council for the Diplomatic Corps. When choosing materials for the parliament building, Theophil Hansen strove to use marbles and stones from the crown lands of the monarchy, thus expressing their attachment to their Parliament. For example, consist the 24 monolithic, that is, produced from one-piece, columns, each more than 16 tons of weight, of the great hypostyle hall of Adnet marble, the floor panels of Istrian karst marble. When in the last months of the Second World War the Parliament building was severely affected by bomb hits, also the portico suffered severe damage, and the two columns in the north-west corner of the hall were destroyed, the edge ceiling construction with the richly gilded coffered ceiling and below the ceiling running frieze painting by Eduard Lebiedzki have been severely damaged. The two destroyed columns in 1950 were replaced by two new ones, broken from the same quarry as the originals, but not exhibiting the same pattern. The parts of the Lebiedzki frieze which have been restorable only in the 90s could be restored.

www.wien-vienna.at/index.php?ID=1102

Checkpoint Charlie (1987)

Border between West Berlin and German Democratic Republic.

 

Photo © Eddy Westveer

www.eddywestveer.com

All rights reserved

 

Checkpoint Charlie

Checkpoint Charlie ;Checkpoint C; was the name given by the Western Allies to the most well known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Germany and West Germany during the Cold War.

The Soviet Union prompted the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 to stem the flow of Eastern Bloc emigration westward through what had become a "loophole" in the Soviet border system, preventing escape over the city sector border from East Berlin to West Berlin. Checkpoint Charlie became a symbol of the Cold War, representing the separation of east and west, and—for some East Germans—a gateway to freedom. Soviet and American tanks briefly faced off at the location during the Berlin Crisis of 1961.

After the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc and the reunification of Germany, the building at Checkpoint Charlie became a tourist attraction. It is now located in a museum in a Berlin suburb.

BACKGROUND

Emigration restrictions, the Inner German Border and Berlin loophole.

Further information: Eastern Bloc emigration and defection and Inner German border

By the early 1950s, the Soviet approach to controlling national movement, restricting emigration, was emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc, including East Germany.

However, in occupied Germany, up until 1952, the lines between East Germany and the western occupied zones remained easily crossed in most places. Consequently, the Inner German border between the two German states was closed, and a barbed-wire fence erected.

Even after the closing of the Inner German border officially in 1952, the city sector border in between East Berlin and West Berlin remained considerably more accessible than the rest of the border because it was administered by all four occupying powers. Accordingly, Berlin became the main route by which East Germans left for the West. Thus, the Berlin sector border was essentially a "loophole" through which Eastern Bloc citizens could still escape.

The 3.5 million East Germans that had left by 1961 totaled approximately 20% of the entire East German population. The emigrants tended to be young and well educated, leading to the brain drain feared by officials in East Germany.[6] The loss was disproportionately heavy among professionals—engineers, technicians, physicians, teachers, lawyers and skilled workers.

Berlin Wall constructed

The brain drain of professionals had become so damaging to the political credibility and economic viability of East Germany that the re-securing of the Soviet imperial frontier was imperative. Between 1949 and 1961, over 2 1/2 million East Germans fled to the West. The numbers swelled during the three years before construction of the Berlin Wall with 144,000 in 1959, 199,000 in 1960 and 207,000 in the first seven months of 1961 alone. The East German economy was on the verge of collapse.

On August 13, 1961, a barbed-wire barrier that would become the Berlin Wall separating East and West Berlin was erected by East Germany. Two days later, police and army engineers began to construct a more permanent concrete wall. Along with the wall, the 830 mile zonal border became 3.5 miles wide on its East German side in some parts of Germany with a tall steel-mesh fence running along a "death strip" bordered by bands of plowed earth, to slow and to reveal the prints of those trying to escape, and mined fields.

The Checkpoint

Checkpoint Charlie was a crossing point in the Berlin Wall located at the junction of Friedrichstraße with Zimmerstraße and Mauerstraße, (which for older historical reasons coincidentally means 'Wall Street'). It is in the Friedrichstadt neighborhood. Checkpoint Charlie was designated as the single crossing point (by foot or by car) for foreigners and members of the Allied forces. (Members of the Allied forces were not allowed to use the other sector crossing point designated for use by foreigners, the Friedrichstraße railway station).

The name Charlie came for the letter C in the NATO phonetic alphabet; similarly for other Allied checkpoints on the Autobahn from the West: Checkpoint Alpha at Helmstedt and its counterpart Checkpoint Bravo at Dreilinden, Wannsee in the south-west corner of Berlin. The Soviets simply called it the Friedrichstraße Crossing Point (КПП Фридрихштрассе). The East Germans officially referred to Checkpoint Charlie as the Grenzübergangsstelle ("Border Crossing Point") Friedrich-/Zimmerstraße.

As the most visible Berlin Wall checkpoint, Checkpoint Charlie is frequently featured in spy movies and books. A famous cafe and viewing point for Allied officials, Armed Forces and visitors alike, Cafe Adler ("Eagle Café"), is situated right on the checkpoint. It was an excellent viewing point to look into East Berlin, while having something to eat and drink.

The checkpoint was curiously asymmetrical. During its 28-year active life, the infrastructure on the Eastern side was expanded to include not only the wall, watchtower and zig-zag barriers, but a multi-lane shed where cars and their occupants were checked. However the Allied authority never erected any permanent buildings, and made do with the iconic wooden shed, which was replaced in the 1980s by a larger metal structure, now on display at the Allied Museum in western Berlin. Their reason was that they did not consider the inner Berlin sector boundary an international border and did not treat it as such.

Related Incidents

Stand-off between the Soviet and the US tanks in October 1961

Shortly after the erection of the Berlin Wall, a standoff occurred between U.S. and Soviet tanks on either side of Checkpoint Charlie. It began on 22 October as a dispute over whether East German guards were authorized to examine the travel documents of a U.S. diplomat passing through to East Berlin. By October 27, 10 Soviet and an equal number of American tanks stood 100 meters apart on either side of the checkpoint. The standoff ended peacefully on October 28.

Early escapes

The Berlin Wall was erected with great efficiency by the East German government in 1961, but naturally there were many means of escape that had not been anticipated. Checkpoint Charlie was initially blocked only by a gate; a citizen of the GDR (East Germany) smashed a car through it to escape, so a strong pole was erected. Another escapee approached the barrier in a convertible, took the windscreen down at the last moment and slipped under the barrier.

 

This was repeated two weeks later, so the East Germans duly lowered the barrier and added uprights.

Death of Peter Fechter

On 17 August 1962, a teenage East German, Peter Fechter, was wounded in the pelvis, shot by East German guards while trying to escape from East Berlin. His body lay tangled in a barbed wire fence, slowly bleeding to death, in full view of the world’s media. American soldiers could not rescue him because he was a few yards inside the Soviet sector. East German border guards were reluctant to approach him for fear of provoking Western soldiers, one of whom had shot an East German border guard just days earlier. Over an hour later Fechter’s body was removed by the East German guards.

A spontaneous demonstration formed on the American side of the checkpoint, protesting the actions of the East and the inactions of the West: a few days later, the crowd stoned Soviet buses driving towards the Soviet War Memorial, located in the Tiergarten in the British sector. The Soviets tried to escort the buses with Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs). Thereafter, the Soviets were only allowed to cross via the Sandkrug Bridge crossing point (which was the nearest to Tiergarten) and were prohibited from bringing in APCs.

Western units were deployed in the middle of the night in early September with live armaments and vehicles, in order to enforce the ban. None of this ammunition was ever expended, although East German border guards in 1973 opened fire with automatic weapons, leaving bulletholes in Checkpoint Charlie, but no US personnel were hurt.

Checkpoint Charlie today

Although the wall opened in November 1989, the checkpoint remained an official crossing for foreigners and diplomats until German reunification in October 1990 when the guard house was removed; it is now on display in the open-air museum of the Allied Museum in Berlin-Zehlendorf. The course of the former wall and border is now marked in the street with a line of cobblestones. A copy of the guard house and sign that once marked the border crossing was later erected where Checkpoint Charlie once stood. It resembles the first guard house erected in 1961, behind a sandbag barrier towards the border. Over the years it was replaced several times by guard houses of different sizes and layouts (see photos). The one removed in 1990 was considerably larger than the first one and had no sandbags.

Near the location of the guard house is the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, a private museum opened in 1963 by Rainer Hildebrandt, which was augmented with a new building in the 1990s. The two Soldiers (one American and one Russian) represented at the Checkpoint Memorial were both stationed in Berlin during the early 1990s.

Developers tore down the East German checkpoint watchtower in 2000. This famous symbol of the Cold War was removed in a clandestine manner so as to attract a minimum amount of attention. The watchtower, which was the last surviving original Checkpoint Charlie structure, was demolished to make way for offices and shops. The city tried to save the tower but failed as it was not classified as a historic landmark. As of January 2006, nothing has been built at this site and the original proposals for development have been shelved.

Checkpoint Charlie has become one of Berlin's primary tourist attractions. An open-air exhibit was opened in the summer of 2006. Gallery walls along the Friedrichstraße and the Zimmerstraße inform on escape attempts, how the checkpoint was expanded, and its significance as a focal point of Cold War, in particular the facing off of Soviet and American tanks in 1961. An overview of other important memorial sites and museums on the division of Germany and the wall is presented as well. Tourists can have their pictures taken for a fee with actors dressed up as allied military policemen standing in front of the guard house. Several souvenir stands and stores proliferate as well.

 

Source: WIKIPEDIA

  

spent a beautiful day downtown on a 7th grade trip centering on immigration areas

prior to the opening of Ellis island, Baltimore was the main point of entry for immigrants coming to America, many choosing to stay here due to the high number of factory jobs for low skilled workers

The Museum of Industry in South Baltimore is on the site of the old Platt Oyster Cannery

The Huddersfield Narrow Canal runs for 20 miles between Huddersfield in West Yorkshire and Ashton under Lyne in Greater Manchester, UK.

 

The summit of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal is the highest navigable waterway in Britain.

 

Standedge Tunnel on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal is Britain's longest canal tunnel.

 

The canal has a total of 74 locks. It connects end on with the Ashton Canal and the Huddersfield Broad Canal.

 

The Huddersfield Narrow Canal re-opened to navigation in May 2001

From Cottage Industry to Factory

 

Cloth merchants, for instance, would buy raw wool from the sheep owners, have it spun into yarn by farmers' wives, and take it to country weavers to be made into textiles. These country weavers could manufacture the cloth more cheaply than city craftsmen could because they got part of their living from their gardens or small farms.

 

The merchants would then collect the cloth and give it out again to finishers and dyers. Thus they controlled clothmaking from start to finish. Similar methods of organizing and controlling the process of manufacture came to prevail in other industries, such as the nail, cutlery, and leather goods.

 

Some writers call this the putting-out system. Others call it the domestic system because the work was done in the home ("domestic" comes from the Latin word for home). Another term is cottage industry, for most of the workers belonged to the class of farm laborers known as cotters and carried on the work in their cottages.

 

This system of industry had several advantages over older systems. It gave the merchant a large supply of manufactured articles at a low price. It also enabled him to order the particular kinds of items that he needed for his markets. It provided employment for every member of a craft worker's family and gave jobs to skilled workers who had no capital to start businesses for themselves. A few merchants who had enough capital had gone a step further. They brought workers together under one roof and supplied them with spinning wheels and looms or with the implements of other trades. These establishments were factories, though they bear slight resemblance to the factories of today.

 

Why the Revolution Began in England

 

English merchants were leaders in developing a commerce which increased the demand for more goods. The expansion in trade had made it possible to accumulate capital to use in industry. A cheaper system of production had grown up which was largely free from regulation.

 

There also were new ideas in England which aided the movement. One of these was the growing interest in scientific investigation and invention. Another was the doctrine of laissez-faire, or letting business alone. This doctrine had been growing in favor throughout the 18th century. It was especially popular after the British economist Adam Smith argued powerfully for it in his great work 'The Wealth of Nations' (1776).

 

For centuries the craft guilds and the government had controlled commerce and industry down to the smallest detail. Now many Englishmen had come to believe that it was better to let business be regulated by the free play of supply and demand rather than by laws. Thus the English government for the most part kept its hands off and left business free to adopt the new inventions and the methods of production which were best suited to them.

 

The most important of the machines that ushered in the Industrial Revolution were invented in the last third of the 18th century. Earlier in the century, however, three inventions had been made which opened the way for the later machines. One was the crude, slow-moving steam engine built by Thomas Newcomen (1705), which was used to pump water out of mines. The second was John Kay's flying shuttle (1733). It enabled one person to handle a wide loom more rapidly than two persons could operate it before. The third was a frame for spinning cotton thread with rollers, first set up by Lewis Paul and John Wyatt (1741). Their invention was not commercially practical, but it was the first step toward solving the problem of machine spinning.

 

Inventions in Textile Industry

 

As the flying shuttle sped up weaving, the demand for cotton yarn increased. Many inventors set to work to improve the spinning wheel. James Hargreaves, a weaver who was also a carpenter, patented his spinning jenny in 1770. It enabled one worker to run eight spindles instead of one.

 

About the same time Richard Arkwright developed his water frame, a machine for spinning with rollers operated by water power. In 1779 Samuel Crompton, a spinner, combined Hargreaves' jenny and Arkwright's roller frame into a spinning machine, called a mule. It produced thread of greater fineness and strength than the jenny or the roller frame. Since the roller frame and the mule were large and heavy, it became the practice to install them in mills, where they could be run by water power. They were tended by women and children.

 

These improvements in spinning machinery called for further improvements in weaving. In 1785 Edmund Cartwright patented a power loom. In spite of the need for it, weaving machinery came into use very slowly. First, many improvements had to be made before the loom was satisfactory. Second, the hand weavers violently opposed its adoption because it threw many of them out of work. Those who got jobs in the factories were obliged to take the same pay as unskilled workers. Thus they rioted, smashed the machines, and tried to prevent their use. The power loom was only coming into wide operation in the cotton industry by 1813. It did not completely replace the hand loom in weaving cotton until 1850. It was not well adapted to the making of some woolens. As late as 1880 many hand looms were still in use for weaving woolen cloth.

 

Many other machines contributed to the progress of the textile industry. In 1785 Thomas Bell of Glasgow invented cylinder printing of cotton goods. This was a great improvement on block printing. It made successive impressions of a design "join up" and did the work more rapidly and more cheaply. In 1793 the available supply of cotton was increased by Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin. In 1804 J.M. Jacquard, a Frenchman, perfected a loom on which patterns might be woven in fabrics by mechanical means. This loom was later adapted to the making of lace, which became available to everyone

 

Watt's Steam Engine

 

While textile machinery was developing, progress was being made in other directions. In 1763 James Watt, a Scottish mechanic, was asked to repair a model of a Newcomen steam engine. He saw how crude and inefficient it was and by a series of improvements made it a practical device for running machinery.

 

Wheels turned by running water had been the chief source of power for the early factories. These were necessarily situated on swift-running streams. When the steam engine became efficient, it was possible to locate factories in more convenient places.

 

Coal and Iron

 

The first users of steam engines were the coal and iron industries. They were destined to be basic industries in the new age of machinery. As early as 1720 many steam engines were in operation. In coal mines they pumped out the water which usually flooded the deep shafts. In the iron industry they pumped water to create the draft in blast furnaces.

 

The iron industry benefited also from other early inventions of the 18th century. Iron was scarce and costly, and production was falling off because England's forests could not supply enough charcoal for smelting the ore. Ironmasters had long been experimenting with coal as a fuel for smelting. Finally the Darby family, after three generations of effort, succeeded with coal that had been transformed into coke. This created a new demand for coal and laid the foundation for the British coal industry. The next great steps were taken in the 1780s, when Henry Cort developed the processes of puddling and rolling. Puddling produced nearly pure malleable iron. Hand in hand with the adoption of the new inventions went the rapid development of the factory system of manufacture.

 

Changing Conditions in England

 

The new methods increased the amount of goods produced and decreased the cost. The worker at a machine with 100 spindles on it could spin 100 threads of cotton more rapidly than 100 workers could on the old spinning wheels. Southern planters in the United States were able to meet the increased demand for raw cotton because they were using the cotton gin. This machine could do the job of 50 men in cleaning cotton. Similar improvements were being made in other lines of industry. British merchants no longer found it a problem to obtain enough goods to supply their markets. On the contrary, at times the markets were glutted with more goods than could be sold. Then mills were closed and workers were thrown out of employment.

 

With English factories calling for supplies, such as American cotton, and sending goods to all parts of the world, better transportation was needed. The roads of England were wretchedly poor and often impassable. Packhorses and wagons crawled along them, carrying small loads. Such slow and inadequate transportation kept the cost of goods high. Here again the need produced the invention. Thomas Telford and John MacAdam each developed a method of road construction better than any that had been known since the ancient Romans built their famous roads.

 

Building Canals and Railways

 

Many canals were dug. They connected the main rivers and so furnished a network of waterways for transporting coal and other heavy goods. A canalboat held much more than a wagon. It moved smoothly if slowly over the water, with a single horse hitched to the towline. In some places, where it was impossible to dig canals and where heavy loads of coal had to be hauled, mine owners laid down wooden or iron rails. On these early railroads one horse could haul as much coal as 20 horses could on ordinary roads.

 

Early in the 19th century came George Stephenson's locomotive and Robert Fulton's steamboat, an American invention. They marked the beginning of modern transportation on land and sea. Railroads called for the production of more goods, for they put factory-made products within reach of many more people at prices they could afford to pay.

Following the Second World War, Minerva could not design and produce a brand new car by itself and so, following their experience of building under licence, the Standard Motor Company were approached and their Vanguard model was soon being assembled in Belgium.

 

Aware of the Belgian army's search for a new lightweight 4×4 vehicle, Minerva approached the Rover company in the Spring of 1951. In June 1951 the Rover company learned that a total of 2500 vehicles would be required and that Rover were competing against jeep manufacturer Willys for the contract. In October 1951 the deal was agreed, with documentation being finalised on 7th May 1952.

 

Under this deal it was agreed that Rover would supply full technical assistance to Minerva who would be granted permission to manufacture Land-Rovers under licence. Rover would supply Completely Knocked Down kits (with CKD chassis numbers) consisting of the chassis, engine, axle, transmission and other parts to the Minerva company in Antwerp who would then build its own steel body to suit the Belgian army.

 

The Minerva sales literature stated that 63% of the parts used in the vehicles were of Belgian origin. The chassis were later built in Belgium as they are different in a number of ways to the Land-Rover chassis, being box welded and lacking the PTO hole provision in the rear crossmember.

 

The Minerva assembly line employed about 500 skilled workers who could produce 50 vehicles a day. These vehicles produced were left hand drive, 80 inch wheelbase models, with the 2 litre Rover IoE engine. The most obvious differences between the Minerva and the Land-Rover Series one being that the front wings that are squared off and sloping. The bodywork, including the doors, were all steel and a narrower front grille was used with the Minerva badge affixed. Two styles of badges were used, the earlier version stating 'Land-Rover - manufactured under licence by Minerva' and the later having the oval Land-Rover badge at the bottom of the Minerva name (top pic). Slatted oval panels on either side of the grille cover the apertures and the front bumper was fitted with a single "pigtail" towing eye on the drivers side. The side lights were located at the bottom of the wings and the headlights were larger than usual. Smaller brake lights were fitted to the rear panels.

 

Other differences include the exhaust being emitted from beneath the drivers door and the door handles. The 80 inch army Minerva door handles were like those of its British counterpart with the canvas flap - although the door locks are slightly different. However, the civilian Minervas had external door handles.

 

The military vehicles look quite different from the rear; a three quarter height fixed tailgate being fitted. The police and military versions had the spare wheel mounted on the right and a jerry can holder mounted on the left hand side (the Minerva petrol tanks are a little smaller than the Land-Rover equivalent).

No centre seat was provided, a toolbox being fitted in its place which was about the same size as a seat base cushion. (The space under the seat which Series Ones often use as a toolbox housed one of two 6-volt batteries, the second being under the bonnet).

 

It is thought that the Belgian army stockpiled the vehicles and thus effectively brand new vehicles were, until quite recently, still entering service. They simply had the mileage of occasional trips around the warehouse which prevented them from seizing up!

 

An armoured / assault vehicle version was also produced, with heavy plating, armoured glass screens and machine gun mounts at both the front and back. The spare wheel for these was mounted on the front, in front of the grille. Field ambulance versions were produced, being basically the same as the standard vehicle but with the tilt extended at the rear to cover the overhanging stretchers. It is thought that this tilt could in fact be the same as used by the ambulance version of the Jeep.

 

In October 1953 a civilian version of the Minerva Land-Rover was announced. This new vehicle was different in a number of ways from the previously produced military versions. The new vehicle was fitted with three seats, a drop down tailgate and provision in the rear cross member for a rear PTO to be fitted. A choice of colours was also offered.

 

The brochure for the civilian model describes a central PTO from the main gear box to drive belts and describes the vehicle being useful for any portable apparatus - including generators, welders and water pumps. Indeed, the scenes used for the Minerva literature are virtually identical to those that Land-Rover were using - with the obvious exception of slightly different vehicles. Like our own Series Ones, Minerva versions included station wagons, hard tops, truck cabs, and tilt versions; the tilt uniquely being fitted with side windows. These vehicles were apparently well received by construction companies and farmers but are now very rare.

 

In 1954, the new 86 inch version was introduced, (as in the UK replacing the 80 inch). This vehicle was produced for the next two years, until 1956 when all contracts between Minerva and the Rover Company were terminated. During this time, only 1,100 86 inch vehicles were produced, and these are now extremely rare.

 

It is likely that these 86 inch vehicles were primarily only available as civilian models. The 86 inch model had 3 seats and rear PTO hole. The rear agricultural plate was also fitted. These vehicles had tailgates and the external door handles as fitted to the 80 inch civilian vehicles.

 

The original Belgian army order was for 2,500 vehicles although a further 3,421 were subsequently ordered. As a result, despatches for 1952 and 1953 totalled 7,859 Completely Knocked Down vehicles. However, only 200 CKD 86 inch vehicles were despatched during 1954 and this may well have contributed to the dispute between the two companies and agreement that all contracts would be terminated after a further 900 vehicles had been despatched.

 

Thus, from May 1952 until the contract between the two companies was terminated at the end of June 1956, a total of 8,959 CKD vehicles were despatched from the Rover Company to SA Societe Nouvelle Minerva of Belgium.

 

In 1956 Minerva announced the C-20 and M-20 (Civilian and Military) Tout Terrain vehicles but very few of these are believed to have been produced and the company soon experienced financial difficulties.

 

The Minerva company finally went into liquidation in 1958.

The embroidered clothing has been a very coveted form of clothing which the women of Pakistan like very much. This SME is a major source of supply for these kind of clothing and which is made at various in-house facilities where the workers prepare these stuff. The development of clothing involves great hardship and a great deal of concentration while activity is performed by the KARIGARS (skilled workers) of this industry.

 

The occasion of wedding is mostly the event which is specially considered for wearing the kind of clothing when the brides chose different colors and varieties of designs of these embroidered clothing.

Where I used to brew; where, in fact, I was this brewpub's first brewer, in 1996.

 

I've long since left, but the Manayunk Brewing Company still brews, going on twenty-one years of operation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

— Thomas Cizauskas (YFGF)

4 May 2016.

 

****************

▶ "In the 1800s, Manayunk was an exciting mill town populated by skilled workers, weavers, craftspeople, and artisans. Our building located along the heart of Main Street was built in 1822 by Ann Dawson as a cotton mill, to take advantage of the key location at the mouth of the Manayunk Canal. Surely she was one of the few, if not only, women in her time to open a factory. Nearly a hundred years later, the building was purchased by the Krook family in 1912, and transformed into a woolen mill. By this time, Manayunk had established itself on the world scene for the manufacture of truly superb textiles.

 

By the end of the 20th century, textile manufacturing had almost completely moved overseas. The Krook family operated their woolen mill until 1992, when they finally closed their doors and sold the building to local entrepreneur Harry Renner IV. He brought the lagging facility back to life as a space for retail business, and established Manayunk Brewing Company and Restaurant in the process.

 

Mr. Renner made the decision to keep the original industrial scale for weighing wool, which you can still see inside our front foyer. Our first batch of Manayunk Brewing Company beer was tapped on October 17, 1996. Since then, we have brewed more than 600 different varieties of beers, and have been selling these sought-after styles all around Philadelphia and New Jersey. Our brewers continue to explore new takes on classic styles, especially when it comes to sour ales and India Pale Ales. You will no doubt see our delivery truck bringing goods to happy customers throughout the Philadelphia region!

 

Mr. Renner’s daughter took over the building in 2004, and runs the restaurant and brewery along with her business partner Mike Rose. Since then, they have expanded the restaurant by installing a stone pizza oven and sushi bar, as well as a banquet space for weddings and meetings. "

 

***************

▶ Reprinted with permission by Yours For Good Fermentables.com.

— Follow on web: YoursForGoodFermentables.com.

— Follow on Twitter: @Cizauskas.

— Follow on Facebook: YoursForGoodFermentables.

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▶ Commercial use requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.

Maintenance activities of energy infrastructure in Tonga.

 

The Cyclone Gita Recovery Project reconstruct and climate- and disaster-proof the Nuku'alofa electricity network that was damaged by Tropical Cyclone Gita in February 2018.

 

Tonga

Energy

Cyclone Gita Recovery Project

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giza_pyramid_complex

 

The Giza pyramid complex (also called the Giza necropolis) in Egypt is home to the Great Pyramid, the Pyramid of Khafre, and the Pyramid of Menkaure, along with their associated pyramid complexes and the Great Sphinx. All were built during the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, between c. 2600 – c. 2500 BC. The site also includes several temples, cemeteries, and the remains of a workers' village.

 

The site is at the edge of the Western Desert, approximately 9 km (5.6 mi) west of the Nile River in the city of Giza, and about 13 km (8.1 mi) southwest of the city centre of Cairo. It forms the northernmost part of the 16,000 ha (160 km2; 62 sq mi) Pyramid Fields of the Memphis and its Necropolis UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed in 1979. The pyramid fields include the Abusir, Saqqara, and Dahshur pyramid complexes, which were all built in the vicinity of Egypt's ancient capital of Memphis.[1] Further Old Kingdom pyramid fields were located at the sites Abu Rawash, Zawyet El Aryan, and Meidum.

 

The Great Pyramid and the Pyramid of Khafre are the largest pyramids built in ancient Egypt, and they have historically been common as emblems of Ancient Egypt in the Western imagination They were popularised in Hellenistic times, when the Great Pyramid was listed by Antipater of Sidon as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It is by far the oldest of the Ancient Wonders and the only one still in existence.

 

Literature on ancient Giza is vast; for an overview with further references, see Manuelian[3] or Lehner and Hawass.

 

Maadi settlements

The earliest settlement of the Giza plateau predates the pyramid complexes. Four jars from the Maadi culture were found at the foot of the Great Pyramid, likely from a disturbed earlier settlement. Further Maadi settlement near the site was uncovered during work on the Greater Cairo Wastewater Project. Recent reassessment of the radiocarbon dating puts the Maadi culture's eponymous settlement to c. 3800 – c. 3400 BC, which is also the likely maximum possible range for the Giza remains.

 

The Giza pyramid complex consists of the Great Pyramid (also known as the Pyramid of Cheops or Khufu and constructed c. 2580 – c. 2560 BC), the somewhat smaller Pyramid of Khafre (or Chephren) a few hundred metres to the south-west, and the relatively modest-sized Pyramid of Menkaure (or Mykerinos) a few hundred metres farther south-west. The Great Sphinx lies on the east side of the complex. Consensus among Egyptologists is that the head of the Great Sphinx is that of Khafre. Along with these major monuments are a number of smaller satellite edifices, known as "queens" pyramids, causeways, and temples.[8] Besides the archaeological structures, the ancient landscape has also been investigated.

 

Khufu's complex

Khufu's pyramid complex consists of a valley temple, now buried beneath the village of Nazlet el-Samman; diabase paving and nummulitic limestone walls have been found but the site has not been excavated. The valley temple was connected to a causeway that was largely destroyed when the village was constructed. The causeway led to the Mortuary Temple of Khufu, which was connected to the pyramid. Of this temple, the basalt pavement is the only thing that remains. The king's pyramid has three smaller queen's pyramids associated with it and three boat pits.  The boat pits contained a ship, and the two pits on the south side of the pyramid contained intact ships when excavated. One of these ships, the Khufu ship, has been restored and was originally displayed at the Giza Solar boat museum, then subsequently moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum.

 

Khufu's pyramid still has a limited number of casing stones at its base. These casing stones were made of fine white limestone quarried at Tura.

 

Khafre's complex

Main articles: Pyramid of Khafre and Great Sphinx of Giza

Khafre's pyramid complex consists of a valley temple, the Sphinx temple, a causeway, a mortuary temple, and the king's pyramid. The valley temple yielded several statues of Khafre. Several were found in a well in the floor of the temple by Mariette in 1860. Others were found during successive excavations by Sieglin (1909–1910), Junker, Reisner, and Hassan. Khafre's complex contained five boat-pits and a subsidiary pyramid with a serdab. 

 

Khafre's pyramid appears larger than the adjacent Khufu Pyramid by virtue of its more elevated location, and the steeper angle of inclination of its construction—it is, in fact, smaller in both height and volume. Khafre's pyramid retains a prominent display of casing stones at its apex.

 

Menkaure's complex

Menkaure's pyramid complex consists of a valley temple, a causeway, a mortuary temple, and the king's pyramid. The valley temple once contained several statues of Menkaure. During the 5th Dynasty, a smaller ante-temple was added on to the valley temple. The mortuary temple also yielded several statues of Menkaure. The king's pyramid, completed c. 2510 BC, has three subsidiary or queen's pyramids.  Of the four major monuments, only Menkaure's pyramid is seen today without any of its original polished limestone casing

 

Sphinx

The Sphinx dates from the reign of king Khafre. During the New Kingdom, Amenhotep II dedicated a new temple to Hauron-Haremakhet and this structure was added onto by later rulers.

 

Tomb of Queen Khentkaus I

Main article: Pyramid of Khentkaus I

Khentkaus I was buried in Giza. Her tomb is known as LG 100 and G 8400 and is located in the Central Field, near the valley temple of Menkaure. The pyramid complex of Queen Khentkaus includes her pyramid, a boat pit, a valley temple, and a pyramid town.

 

Construction

Main article: Egyptian pyramid construction techniques

Most construction theories are based on the idea that the pyramids were built by moving huge stones from a quarry and dragging and lifting them into place. Disagreements arise over the feasibility of the different proposed methods by which the stones were conveyed and placed.

 

In building the pyramids, the architects might have developed their techniques over time. They would select a site on a relatively flat area of bedrock—not sand—which provided a stable foundation. After carefully surveying the site and laying down the first level of stones, they constructed the pyramids in horizontal levels, one on top of the other.

 

For the Great Pyramid, most of the stone for the interior seems to have been quarried immediately to the south of the construction site. The smooth exterior of the pyramid was made of a fine grade of white limestone that was quarried across the Nile. These exterior blocks had to be carefully cut, transported by river barge to Giza, and dragged up ramps to the construction site. Only a few exterior blocks remain in place at the bottom of the Great Pyramid. During the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), people may have taken the rest away for building projects in the city of Cairo.

 

To ensure that the pyramid remained symmetrical, the exterior casing stones all had to be equal in height and width. Workers might have marked all the blocks to indicate the angle of the pyramid wall and trimmed the surfaces carefully so that the blocks fit together. During construction, the outer surface of the stone was smooth limestone; excess stone has eroded over time.

 

New insights into the closing stages of the Great Pyramid building were provided by the recent find of Wadi el-Jarf papyri, especially the diary of inspector Merer, whose team was assigned to deliver the white limestone from Tura quarries to Giza. The journal was already published, as well as a popular account of the importance of this discovery.

 

Purpose

The pyramids of Giza and others are thought to have been constructed to house the remains of the deceased pharaohs who ruled Ancient Egypt. A portion of the pharaoh's spirit called his ka was believed to remain with his corpse. Proper care of the remains was necessary in order for the "former Pharaoh to perform his new duties as king of the dead". It is theorized the pyramid not only served as a tomb for the pharaoh, but also as a storage pit for various items he would need in the afterlife. "The people of Ancient Egypt believed that death on Earth was the start of a journey to the next world." The embalmed body of the King was entombed underneath or within the pyramid to protect it and allow his transformation and ascension to the afterlife.

 

Astronomy

The sides of all three of the Giza pyramids were astronomically oriented to the cardinal directions within a small fraction of a degree. According to the disputed Orion correlation theory, the arrangement of the pyramids is a representation of the constellation Orion.

 

Workers' village

The work of quarrying, moving, setting, and sculpting the huge amount of stone used to build the pyramids might have been accomplished by several thousand skilled workers, unskilled laborers and supporting workers. Bakers, carpenters, water carriers, and others were also needed for the project. Along with the methods used to construct the pyramids, there is also wide speculation regarding the exact number of workers needed for a building project of this magnitude. When Greek historian Herodotus visited Giza in 450 BC, he was told by Egyptian priests that "the Great Pyramid had taken 400,000 men 20 years to build, working in three-month shifts 100,000 men at a time." Evidence from the tombs indicates that a workforce of 10,000 laborers working in three-month shifts took around 30 years to build a pyramid.

 

The Giza pyramid complex is surrounded by a large stone wall, outside which Mark Lehner and his team discovered a town where the pyramid workers were housed. The village is located to the southeast of the Khafre and Menkaure complexes. Among the discoveries at the workers' village are communal sleeping quarters, bakeries, breweries, and kitchens (with evidence showing that bread, beef, and fish were dietary staples), a copper workshop, a hospital, and a cemetery (where some of the skeletons were found with signs of trauma associated with accidents on a building site). The metal processed at the site was the so-called arsenical copper. The same material was also identified among the copper artefacts from the "Kromer" site, from the reigns of Khufu and Khafre.

 

The workers' town appears to date from the middle 4th Dynasty (2520–2472 BC), after the accepted time of Khufu and completion of the Great Pyramid. According to Lehner and the AERA team:

 

The development of this urban complex must have been rapid. All of the construction probably happened in the 35 to 50 years that spanned the reigns of Khafre and Menkaure, builders of the Second and Third Giza Pyramids.

Using pottery shards, seal impressions, and stratigraphy to date the site, the team further concludes:

 

The picture that emerges is that of a planned settlement, some of the world's earliest urban planning, securely dated to the reigns of two Giza pyramid builders: Khafre (2520–2494 BC) and Menkaure (2490–2472 BC).

Radiocarbon data for the Old Kingdom Giza plateau and the workers' settlement were published in 2006, and then re-evaluated in 2011.

 

Cemeteries

As the pyramids were constructed, the mastabas for lesser royals were constructed around them. Near the pyramid of Khufu, the main cemetery is G 7000, which lies in the East Field located to the east of the main pyramid and next to the Queen's pyramids. These cemeteries around the pyramids were arranged along streets and avenues. Cemetery G 7000 was one of the earliest and contained tombs of wives, sons, and daughters of these 4th Dynasty rulers. On the other side of the pyramid in the West Field, the royals' sons Wepemnofret and Hemiunu were buried in Cemetery G 1200 and Cemetery G 4000, respectively. These cemeteries were further expanded during the 5th and 6th Dynasties.

 

West Field

Main article: Giza West Field

The West Field is located to the west of Khufu's pyramid. It is divided into smaller areas such as the cemeteries referred to as the Abu Bakr Excavations (1949–1950, 1950–1951, 1952, and 1953), and several cemeteries named based on the mastaba numbers such as Cemetery G 1000, Cemetery G 1100, etc. The West Field contains Cemetery G1000 – Cemetery G1600, and Cemetery G 1900. Further cemeteries in this field are: Cemeteries G 2000, G 2200, G 2500, G 3000, G 4000, and G 6000. Three other cemeteries are named after their excavators: Junker Cemetery West, Junker Cemetery East, and Steindorff Cemetery.

 

East Field

Main article: Giza East Field

The East Field is located to the east of Khufu's pyramid and contains cemetery G 7000. This cemetery was a burial place for some of the family members of Khufu. The cemetery also includes mastabas from tenants and priests of the pyramids dated to the 5th Dynasty and 6th Dynasty.

 

Cemetery GIS

This cemetery dates from the time of Menkaure (Junker) or earlier (Reisner), and contains several stone-built mastabas dating from as late as the 6th Dynasty. Tombs from the time of Menkaure include the mastabas of the royal chamberlain Khaemnefert, the King's son Khufudjedef (master of the royal largesse), and an official named Niankhre.

 

Central Field

Main article: Central Field, Giza

The Central Field contains several burials of royal family members. The tombs range in date from the end of the 4th Dynasty to the 5th Dynasty or even later.[

 

Tombs dating from the Saite and later period were found near the causeway of Khafre and the Great Sphinx. These tombs include the tomb of a commander of the army named Ahmose and his mother Queen Nakhtubasterau, who was the wife of Pharaoh Amasis II.

 

South Field

The South Field includes mastabas dating from the 1st Dynasty to 3rd Dynasty as well as later burials. Of the more significant of these early dynastic tombs are one referred to as "Covington's tomb", otherwise known as Mastaba T, and the large Mastaba V which contained artifacts naming the 1st Dynasty pharaoh Djet. Other tombs date from the late Old Kingdom (5th and 6th Dynasty). The south section of the field contains several tombs dating from the Saite period and later. 

 

Tombs of the pyramid builders

In 1990, tombs belonging to the pyramid workers were discovered alongside the pyramids, with an additional burial site found nearby in 2009. Although not mummified, they had been buried in mudbrick tombs with beer and bread to support them in the afterlife. The tombs' proximity to the pyramids and the manner of burial supports the theory that they were paid laborers who took pride in their work and were not slaves, as was previously thought. Evidence from the tombs indicates that a workforce of 10,000 laborers working in three-month shifts took around 30 years to build a pyramid. Most of the workers appear to have come from poor families. Specialists such as architects, masons, metalworkers, and carpenters were permanently employed by the king to fill positions that required the most skill.

 

Shafts

There are multiple burial-shafts and various unfinished shafts and tunnels located in the Giza complex that were discovered and mentioned prominently by Selim Hassan in his report Excavations at Giza 1933–1934. He states: "Very few of the Saitic [referring to the Saite Period) shafts have been thoroughly examined, for the reason that most of them are flooded."

 

Osiris Shaft

The Osiris Shaft is a narrow burial-shaft leading to three levels for a tomb and below it a flooded area. It was first mentioned by Hassan, and a thorough excavation was conducted by a team led by Hawass in 1999. It was opened to tourists in November 2017.

 

New Kingdom and Late Period

During the New Kingdom Giza was still an active site. A brick-built chapel was constructed near the Sphinx during the early 18th Dynasty, probably by King Thutmose I. Amenhotep II built a temple dedicated to Hauron-Haremakhet near the Sphinx. As a prince, the future pharaoh Thutmose IV visited the pyramids and the Sphinx; he reported being told in a dream that if he cleared the sand that had built up around the Sphinx, he would be rewarded with kingship. This event is recorded in the Dream Stele, which he had installed between the Sphinx's front legs.

 

During the early years of his reign, Thutmose IV, together with his wife Queen Nefertari, had stelae erected at Giza.

 

Pharaoh Tutankhamun had a structure built, which is now referred to as the king's resthouse.

 

During the 19th Dynasty, Seti I added to the temple of Hauron-Haremakhet, and his son Ramesses II erected a stela in the chapel before the Sphinx and usurped the resthouse of Tutankhamun. 

 

During the 21st Dynasty, the Temple of Isis Mistress-of-the-Pyramids was reconstructed. During the 26th Dynasty, a stela made in this time mentions Khufu and his Queen Henutsen.

 

Division of the 1903–1905 excavation of the Giza Necropolis

In 1903, rights to excavate the West Field and Pyramids of the Giza Necropolis were divided by three institutions from Italy, Germany, and the United States of America.

 

Background

Prior to the division of the Giza Plateau into three institutional concessions in 1903, amateur and private excavations at the Giza Necropolis had been permitted to operate. The work of these amateur archaeologists failed to meet high scientific standards. Montague Ballard, for instance, excavated in the Western Cemetery (with the hesitant permission of the Egyptian Antiquities Service) and neither kept records of his finds nor published them.

 

Italian, German, and American Concessions at Giza

In 1902, the Egyptian Antiquities Service under Gaston Maspero resolved to issue permits exclusively to authorized individuals representing public institutions. In November of that year, the Service awarded three scholars with concessions on the Giza Necropolis. They were the Italian Ernesto Schiaparelli from the Turin Museum, the German Georg Steindorff from the University of Leipzig who had funding from Wilhelm Pelizaeus, and the American George Reisner from the Hearst Expedition. Within a matter of months, the site had been divided between the concessionaires following a meeting at the Mena House Hotel involving Schiaparelli, Ludwig Borchardt (Steindorff's representative in Egypt), and Reisner.

 

Division of the West Field

By the turn of the 20th century, the three largest pyramids on the Giza plateau were considered mostly exhausted by previous excavations, so the Western Cemetery and its collection of private mastaba tombs were thought to represent the richest unexcavated part of the plateau. George Reisner's wife, Mary, drew names from a hat to assign three long east-west plots of the necropolis among the Italian, German, and American missions. Schiaparelli was assigned the southernmost strip, Borchardt the center, and Reisner the northernmost.

 

Division of the Pyramids

Rights to excavate the Pyramids were then also negotiated between Schiaparelli, Borchardt, and Reisner. Schiaparelli gained rights to excavate the Great Pyramid of Khufu along with its three associated queens' pyramids and most of its Eastern Cemetery. Borchardt received Khafre's pyramid, its causeway, the Sphinx, and the Sphinx's associated temples. Reisner claimed Menkaure's pyramid as well as its associated queens' pyramids and pyramid temple, along with a portion of Schiaparelli's Eastern Cemetery. Any future disputes were to be resolved by Inspector James Quibell, as per a letter from Borchardt to Maspero.

 

Immediate Aftermath

This arrangement lasted until 1905, when, under the supervision of Schiaparelli and Francesco Ballerini, the Italian excavations ceased at Giza. As the Italians were more interested in sites which might yield more papyri, they turned their concession of the southern strip of the Western Cemetery over to the Americans under Reisner.

 

Modern usage

In 1978, the Grateful Dead played a series of concerts later released as Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978. In 2007, Colombian singer Shakira performed at the complex to a crowd of approximately 100,000 people. The complex was used for the final draw of the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations and the 2021 World Men's Handball Championship.

 

Egypt's Minister of Tourism unveiled plans for a €17,000,000 revamp of the complex by the end of 2021, in order to boost tourism in Egypt as well as make the site more accessible and tourist-friendly. According to Lonely Planet, the refurbishment includes a new visitors' centre, an environmentally-friendly electric bus, a restaurant (the 9 Pyramids Lounge), as well as a cinema, public toilets, site-wide signage, food trucks, photo booths, and free Wi-Fi. The new facility is part of a wider plan to renovate the 4,500 year old site.

June 8, 2015 - LUXOR, Egypt. Egypt Emergency Labor Intensive project aims at creating short term employment opportunities for unemployed unskilled and semi skilled workers and provide access to basic infrastructure services. These construction workers are building stronger river banks along the Nile river to protect it from erosion. Photo © Dominic Chavez/World Bank

 

Photo ID: Egypt_Luxor_Final_Edit_0007

  

Global corporations have discovered the rich lime goo makes for great rocket fuel! The race is on the exploit the Agreon's natural resource for personal gain. With skilled workers highly sought after from many planets, it's likely you might see someone you recognise.

 

The mountain contains a black light to illuminate the alien barracks.

 

Plasmo's franchises are deploying to all major planetary systems, call today to find out how you can be a part of the interstellar grog syndicate!

 

Hope you like my biggest layout to date. It was too large to set up at home unless I clear the garage out. I had a little help from Taz-maniac, Bricktron and Intrastella on the left side of the display.

The knights of Columbus musem in New Haven, Connecticut is currently displaying a collection if etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi.

 

According to their website:

 

"The exhibition examines several early prints of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome).

 

The 18th-century artist’s etchings celebrate the diverse richness of imperial Rome in its architectural design. A draftsman by training and ambition, Piranesi hoped that his renderings of these popular ruins (the Colosseum, the Pantheon, Castel Sant’Angelo, the Piazza del Popolo, etc.), would inspire what he considered an unimaginative state of architecture in his time.

 

His works advocated for the cultural and artistic supremacy of ancient Rome, which was being challenged by a growing appreciation of the functional simplicity of Greek architecture.

 

In his era, printmaking was essentially treated as a mechanical means by which to produce multiple copies of an image.

 

Most printmakers at the time were not artists in their own right, but rather as skilled workers who copied drawings of others onto copper plates. In the hands of Piranesi, printmaking was elevated to the level of fine art.

 

He was intimately involved in the process from its initial conception through its final execution onto the printed page."

  

The Cathedral of San Vigilio – the Duomo di Trento - was erected on an area which housed an ancient temple dedicated to the city's Patron Saint. A church built in the Padania style was probably found here before the death of the Saint. In the 11th century, the Prince-Bishop Uldarico II began works on the cathedral. In 1212 this first building was almost completely demolished by Federico Vanga - one of the Bishops who contributed the most to the city's urban-artistic development - to make room for a cathedral in the Romanesque-Lombard style. The Bishop entrusted the project to a team of Campione-based skilled workers, headed by Adamo d'Arogno. At the end of the 13th century, the cathedral's Northern transept was decorated with an allegorical rose window known as the Wheel of Fortune. In the 14th century, the church got expanded, and Gothic features were added to it. In 1628, the Crucifix Chapel was planned by Giuseppe Alberti. Built in the Baroque style, it houses a group of wooden sculptures at whose feet the decrees of the Council of Trent (1545-1563) were issued.

 

Знаменитый романский храм с тремя нефами является сокровищницей сакрального искусства с живописными и скульптурными свидетельствами от раннего христианского века до девятнадцатого века. Здание собора начали строить еще в 1130 году. Ранее на этом месте находилась римская базилика, однако, к 12 столетию она была почти полностью разрушена и местные власти решили построить тут католический храм. Кстати, часть древнеримской базилики до сих пор сохранилась здесь, однако просто так ее увидеть нельзя, ведь она спрятана в подземной крипте. В 1545 году в именно в здании Кафедрального собора Сан-Виджилио прошел известный Тридентский собор — важнейшее собрание в истории католицизма, когда главные представители католической церкви во главе с Папой решали как им остановить столь масштабное распространение протестантизма в мире.

The Commercial Cable Building is valued for its age; its role in the development of the community; its enduring importance in maintaining the heritage character of Hazel Hill; for its role in the development of global communications technology; and as one of the few surviving trans-Atlantic cable stations in North America.

 

The Commercial Cable Company established operations outside Canso in the early 1880s. The area was favoured by the Company as the closest point of land to run their cable from Europe to mainland North America. Built at the beginning of the hey-day of cable communications, the station carried messages (daily average of three thousand) from all over the world, including important breaking news such as the sinking of the “Titanic,” and the end of World War I, making the station a vital link in communication for North American newspapers. The station was also a key part of communication between the London and New York stock exchanges.

 

To operate the station, engineers, skilled workers and their families were brought from England. To support this influx a small, formally planned community surrounding the station was established. Hazel Hill was one of the few planned ‘white collar’ communities in North America. To support its highly educated workforce, the Commercial Cable Company not only built its employees new and stylish homes, but amenities such as a tennis court, cricket field, curling rink, and a manager’s home complete with a ballroom. The community differed greatly from the nearby fishing community of Canso, which often lead to conflicts between the two communities.

 

The Commercial Cable Building is one of the few surviving trans-Atlantic cable stations. Built in 1888, it is Neo-classical in style and is a sharp departure from the mainly vernacular surrounding architecture of the Canso area. In 1899 an addition was added that kept within the form and massing of the original building, however the addition does not follow the arched window openings of the original portion of the building. Instead they consist of granite caps and sills. The size, attention to detail, and cutting edge elements such as a suspended concrete floor, illustrates the vital role of the industry at the time and the success of the Company in the global marketplace.

 

The Company ceased operations in 1962 and the building slowly fell into disrepair; however many original elements remain, including the trans-Atlantic cables, arched windows, masonry work, and arched entrance. The building remains a landmark in the area and together with the remaining company houses provides a tangible link to a period in the area’s history when it was at the centre of global communications.

 

Source: Municipality of the District of Guysborough Heritage Property files, Commercial Cable Building.

Character-Defining Elements

 

Character-defining elements of the Commercial Cable Building include:

 

- form and massing;

- location over-looking Hazel Hill Lake;

- granite foundation;

- brick building materials;

- metal seamed roof;

- granite sills and caps in 1899 section;

- cast iron gutters;

- hipped roof.

 

Character-defining elements of the Commercial Cable Building relate to its Neo-classical style and include:

 

- arched main entrance;

- arched windows (1888 section);

- corbelled brick and gutter;

- arched windows in gabled second storey forming enclosed main entrance;

- arched transom above main door.

 

Interior character-defining elements of the Commercial Cable Building relate to its original use as a trans-Atlantic cable station and include:

 

- remnants of trans-Atlantic cable;

- remains of mosaic tile floor;

- pressed metal ceiling;

- mantles;

- remnants of original trim;

- arched interior walls and doorways;

- remnants of suspended concrete floor in addition.

八取物語 - 木造師傅知道先生 / 每一個人都是一部小說故事 - 世事浮沉如醉如醒一言難盡

The story of the Eight Take - The wood makes skilled worker Mr. Knew / Each people are a novel story - The humans affair vicissitude like is drunk like awakes the words is endless

八取の物語 - ぼうっとしてい先生"知っている"先生をつくります / すべての人はすべて1部の小説のストーリです - もし世事の浮き沈みは酔ってもし目が覚めて訴えて言い終わらないならばならば

La historia de la toma ocho - La madera hace a Sr. Knew del trabajado cualificado / Cada pueblo es una historia de la novela - La vicisitud asunto de los humanos como se bebe como despierta las palabras no tiene fin

Die Geschichte des Nehmens acht - Das Holz bildet gelernter Arbeiter Herrn Knew / Jedes Volk ist ein Roman Geschichte - Die Menschen Affäre Wandel wie betrunken ist wie die Worte erwacht ist endlos

L'histoire de la prise huit - Le bois fait M. Knew de travailleur qualifié / Chaque peuple est une histoire romanesque - La vicissitude affaire des êtres humains comme on boit comme réveille les mots est sans fin

 

Anping Tainan Taiwan / Anping Tainan Taiwán / 台灣台南安平

 

向八取知道先生致敬 / Saluting to Mr. Knew

八取知道先生に向って敬意を表します / Saluting to Mr. Knew

Begrüßung zu Herrn Knew / Salutation à M. Knew

 

心茫茫 / 古早夜曲

My mind is boundless / Ancient early tune

{ Homeward tune / 古代早い調子 }

 

{View large size on fluidr}

 

{My Blog / 台南運河風情-歷史與生活}

{My Blog / The character and style of the Tainan transport river-The history and life}

{Mi blog el carácter de / The y el estilo de la Tainan transportan el río - La historia y la vida}

{My Blog / 台南運河の風情-歴史と生活}

{Mein Blog / The-Buchstabe und Art des Tainans transportieren Fluss - Die Geschichte und das Leben}

{Mon blog / Le caractère et le modèle de Tainan transportent le fleuve - L'histoire et la vie}

  

家住安南鹽溪邊

The family lives in nearby the Annan salt river

 

隔壁就是聽雨軒

The next door listens to the rain porch

 

一旦落日照大員

The sunset Shineing to the Taiwan at once

 

左岸青龍飛九天

The left bank white dragon flying in the sky

ТАНКОВЫЙ МУЗЕЙ В КУБИНКЕ

KUBINKA TANK MUSEUM. Moscow

 

The Infantry Tank Mark II known as the Matilda II (sometimes referred to as Matilda senior or simply an 'I' tank) was a British infantry tank of the Second World War. It was also identified from its General Staff Specification A12.

 

It served from the start of the war to its end and became particularly associated with the North Africa Campaign. It was replaced in service by the Infantry Tank Mk III Valentine.

 

When the earlier Infantry Tank Mark I which was also known as "Matilda" was removed from service the Infantry Tank Mk II simply became known as the Matilda.

 

Development history

The first suggestion for a larger Infantry Tank was made in 1936, with specification A12 and contractor decided around the end of the year.

The Infantry Tank Mk II was designed at the Royal Arsenal, to General Staff specification A.12 and built by the Vulcan Foundry. The design was based on the A7 (which had started development in 1929) rather than on the Infantry Tank Mk I, which was a two-man tank with a single machine gun for armament.

When war was recognised as imminent, production of the Matilda II was ordered and that of the Matilda I curtailed. The first order was placed shortly after trials were completed with 140 order from Vulcan Foundry in mid 1938.

Design

The Matilda Senior weighed around 27 tons (27 tonnes or 60,000 lb) more than twice as much as its predecessor, and was armed with a QF 2 pounder (40 mm) tank gun in a three-man turret. The turret traversed by hydraulic motor or by hand through 360 degrees; the gun itself could be elevated through an arc from -15[nb 2] to +20 degrees. One of the most serious weaknesses of the Matilda II was the lack of a high-explosive round for its main gun. A high-explosive shell was designed for the 2 pounder but for reasons never explained it was never placed in production. With its heavy armour the Matilda II was an excellent infantry support tank, but had to rely on its machine gun when operating with infantry units.

Like many other British infantry tanks, it was heavily armoured; from 20 mm at the thinnest it was 78 mm (3.1-inch) at the front, much more than most contemporaries. The turret armour was 75 millimetres (3.0 in) all round, the hull side armour was 65 to 70 millimetres (2.6 to 2.8 in), and the rear armour, covering the engine, was 55 millimetres (2.2 in). The frontal armour was 75 millimetres (3.0 in), although the nose plates top and bottom were thinner but angled. The turret roof was the same thickness as the hull roof and engine deck: 20 millimetres (0.79 in). The German Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks, of the same period, had 30 to 50 millimetres (1.2 to 2.0 in) thick hull armour. The shape of the nose armour was based on the US Christie design, and came to a narrow point with storage lockers added on either side. The heavy armour of the Matilda's cast turret became legendary; for a time in 1940–41 the Matilda earned the nickname "Queen of the Desert". The sheer thickness of its armour made the tank impervious to the 37 mm and 50 mm calibre anti-tank guns that were then commonly used by the Germans, as well as the 47 mm used by the Italians in North Africa; only the 75 mm PAK 40 anti-tank gun and 88 mm anti-aircraft gun could penetrate its armour reliably.

While the Matilda possessed a degree of protection that was then unmatched in the North African theatre, the sheer weight of the armour mounted on the vehicle contributed to a very low average speed of about 6 mph (9.7 km/h) on desert terrain. At the time, this was not thought to be a problem since British infantry tank doctrine prioritized heavy armour and trench-crossing ability over speed and cross-country mobility (which was considered to be characteristic of cruiser tanks such as the Crusader). This was further exacerbated by a troublesome suspension and a comparatively weak power unit, the latter of which was actually created using two bus engines linked to a single shaft. This arrangement was both complicated and time-consuming to maintain, as it required technician crews had to work on each engine separately and subjected automotive components to uneven wear-and-tear. It did however, provide some mechanical redundancy, since failure in one engine would not prevent the Matilda from travelling under its own power using the other.

The tank was carried by 5 double wheel bogies on each side. Four of the bogies were paired on a common coil spring. The fifth, rearmost, bogie was sprung against a hull bracket. Between the first bogie and the idler wheel was a "jockey wheel". The first Matildas had return rollers; these were replaced in later models by track skids, which were far easier to manufacture.

The turret carried the main armament with the machine gun to the right in a rotating internal mantlet. Two smoke grenade launchers were carried on the right side of the turret. The grenade launcher mechanisms were cut down Lee-Enfield rifles, each firing a single smoke grenade.

 

Production history

The first Matilda was produced in 1937 but only two were in service when war broke out in September 1939. Following the initial order from Vulcan Foundry, a second order was placed shortly after with Ruston & Hornsby.[21] Some 2,987 tanks were produced by the Vulcan Foundry, John Fowler & Co. of Leeds, Ruston & Hornsby, and later by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway at Horwich Works; Harland and Wolff, and the North British Locomotive Company Glasgow. The last were delivered in August 1943. Peak production was 1,330 in 1942, the most common model being the Mark IV.[22]

The Matilda was difficult to manufacture. For example, the pointed nose was a single casting that, upon initial release from the mould, was thicker than required in some areas. To avoid a needless addition to the tank's weight, the thick areas were ground away. This process required highly skilled workers and additional time. The complex suspension and multi-piece hull side coverings also added time to manufacturing.

French Campaign of 1940

The Matilda was first used in combat by the 7th Royal Tank Regiment in France in 1940. Only 23 of the unit's tanks were Matilda IIs; the rest of the British Infantry Tanks in France were A11 Matildas. Its 2-pounder gun was comparable to other tank guns in the 37 to 45 mm range. Due to the thickness of its armour, it was largely immune to the guns of the German tanks and anti-tank guns in France. The famous 88 mm anti-aircraft guns were pressed into service as the only effective counter. In the counter-attack at Arras, although British Matilda IIs (and Matilda Is) were able briefly to disrupt German progress, being unsupported their losses were high. All vehicles surviving the battles around Dunkirk were abandoned when the BEF evacuated.

North Africa 1940 to 1942

Up to early 1942, in the war in North Africa, the Matilda proved highly effective against Italian and German tanks, although vulnerable to the larger calibre and medium calibre anti-tank guns.

  

In late 1940, during Operation Compass, Matildas of the British 7th Armoured Division wreaked havoc among the Italian forces in Egypt. The Italians were equipped with L3 tankettes and M11/39 medium tanks, neither of which had any chance against the Matildas. Italian gunners were to discover that the Matildas were impervious to a wide assortment of artillery. Matildas continued to confound the Italians as the British pushed them out of Egypt and entered Libya to take Bardia and Tobruk. Even as late as November 1941, German infantry combat reports show the impotence of ill-equipped infantry against the Matilda.[25]

Ultimately, in the rapid manoeuvre warfare often practised in the open desert of North Africa, the Matilda's low speed and unreliable steering mechanism became major problems. Another problem was the lack of a high-explosive shell (the appropriate shell existed but was not issued). When the German Afrika Korps arrived in North Africa, the 88 mm anti-aircraft gun was again pressed into service against the Matilda, causing heavy losses during Operation Battleaxe, when sixty-four Matildas were lost. The arrival of the more powerful 50mm Pak 38 anti-tank gun also provided a means for the German infantry to engage Matilda tanks at combat ranges. Nevertheless, during Operation Crusader Matilda tanks of 1st and 32nd Army Tank Brigades were instrumental in the breakout from Tobruk and the capture of the Axis fortress of Bardia .[26] The operation was decided by the infantry tanks after the failure of the cruiser tank equipped 7th Armoured Division to overcome the Axis tank forces in the open desert.

  

As the German army received new tanks with more powerful guns, as well as more powerful anti-tank guns and ammunition, the Matilda proved less and less effective. Firing tests conducted by the Afrikakorps showed that the Matilda had become vulnerable to a number of German weapons at ordinary combat ranges .[28] Due to the "painfully small" size of its turret ring - 54 inches (1.37 m) - the tank could not be up-gunned sufficiently to continue to be effective against more heavily armoured enemy tanks. It was also somewhat expensive to produce. Vickers proposed an alternative the Valentine tank, which had the same gun and a similar level of armour protection but on a faster and cheaper chassis derived from that of their "heavy cruiser" tank. With the arrival of the Valentine in autumn 1941, the Matilda was phased out by the British Army through attrition, with lost vehicles no longer replaced. By the time of the battle of El Alamein (October 1942), few Matildas were in service, with many having been lost during Operation Crusader and then the Gazala battles in early summer of 1942. Around twenty-five took part in the battle as mine-clearing, Matilda Scorpion mine flail tanks.

Minor campaigns

In early 1941, a small number of Matildas were used during the East Africa Campaign at the Battle of Keren. However, the mountainous terrain of East Africa did not allow the tanks of B Squadron 4th Royal Tank Regiment to be as effective as the tanks of the 7th Royal Tank Regiment had been in Egypt and Libya.

A few Matildas of the 7th RTR were present on Crete during the German invasion, and all of them were lost

Pacific Theatre

 

In the Pacific Japanese forces were lacking in heavy anti-tank guns and the Matilda remained in service with several Australian regiments in the Australian 4th Armoured Brigade, in the South West Pacific Area. They first saw active service in the Huon Peninsula campaign in October 1943. Matilda II tanks remained in action until the last day of the war in the Wewak, Bougainville and Borneo campaigns, which made the Matilda the only British tank to remain in service throughout the war

Foreign use

The Red Army received 1,084 Matildas.[3] The Soviet Matildas saw action as early as the Battle of Moscow and became fairly common during 1942. Unsurprisingly, the tank was found to be too slow and unreliable. Crews often complained that snow and dirt were accumulating behind the "skirt" panels, clogging the suspension. The slowness and heavy armour made them comparable to the Red Army's KV-1 heavy tanks, but the Matilda had nowhere near the firepower of the KV. Most Soviet Matildas were expended during 1942 but a few served on as late as 1944. The Soviets modified the tanks with the addition of sections of steel welded to the tracks to give better grip

Production history Designer Mechanization Board and Messrs Vulcan[1] Designed 1937[1] Manufacturer Vulcan Foundry and others Produced 1937–1943 Number built 2,987 Variants see Variants below

 

Type Infantry tank[1] Place of origin United Kingdom[1] Service history In service 1939-1945 Used by United Kingdom

Australia

Soviet Union Wars Second World War

1948 Arab–Israeli War Production history Designer Mechanization Board and Messrs Vulcan[1] Designed 1937[1] Manufacturer Vulcan Foundry and others Produced 1937–1943 Number built 2,987 Variants see Variants below Specifications Weight 25 tons[2] Length 15 ft 11 in (6.0 m) Width 8 ft 6 in (2.6 m)[3] Height 8 ft 3 in (2.5 m) Crew 4 [3] (Driver, gunner, loader, commander)

 

Armour 20 to 78 mm max Main

armament 2 pounder (40 mm),

93 armour-piercing rounds[5] Secondary

armament 7.92 mm

2,925 rounds[5] Engine 2 diesel, AEC 6-cylinder engines[nb 1][5] or 2 diesel Leyland engines[2]

94 Brake horsepower – 95 Brake horsepower[6] Power/weight 6.55 hp/tonne Transmission Wilson epicyclic pre-selector gearbox, 6 speeds[4] Suspension Coil spring[2] Operational

range 160 miles (257 km) [3] Speed 16 miles per hour (26 km/h) (on road)[3

9 miles per hour (14 km/h) (off road) Steering

system Rackham clutch

 

The Adler Planetarium is a public museum dedicated to the study of astronomy and astrophysics. It was founded in 1930 by Chicago business leader Max Adler. Located on the northeastern tip of Northerly Island on Lake Michigan in Chicago, Illinois, the Adler was the first planetarium in the United States and is part of Chicago's Museum Campus, which includes the John G. Shedd Aquarium and The Field Museum. The Adler's mission is to inspire exploration and understanding of the universe.

 

The Adler Planetarium opened to the public on May 12, 1930. For its design, architect Ernest A. Grunsfeld Jr. was awarded the gold medal of the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1931. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

 

The Adler has three theaters, space science exhibitions, including the Gemini 12 space capsule, and a collection of antique scientific instruments and print materials. In addition, the Adler hosts the Doane Observatory, a research-active, public urban observatories.

 

Outdoor sculptures at the planetarium include the following: Man Enters the Cosmos by Henry Moore (1980); Spiral Galaxy by John David Mooney (1998); and America's Courtyard by Ary Perez and Denise Milan.

 

In 1913, Oskar von Miller of the Deutsches Museum commissioned Carl Zeiss Works to design a mechanism that projects an image of celestial bodies onto a dome. This was achieved by Walther Bauersfeld and the invention became known as a planetarium when it debuted in 1923. Its popularity quickly spread, and by 1929, there were fifteen planetariums in Germany, two in Italy, one in Russia, and one in Austria.[8] Max Adler, a former executive with Sears, Roebuck & Co. in Chicago, Illinois, had recently retired to focus on philanthropic endeavors, primarily on behalf of musical and Jewish communities. However, after listening to a friend describe a Munich planetarium, Adler decided that a planetarium would fit in well within the emerging Museum Campus in Chicago. Adler visited the Munich planetarium with his cousin, architect Ernest Grunsfeld Jr., whom Adler commissioned to design the Chicago structure. He also learned about a sale of astronomical instruments and antiques by W. M. Mensing in Amsterdam, which he purchased the following year. The Mensing Collection became the focus of the Astronomical Museum. Adler offered $500,000 in 1928 for the construction of the first planetarium in the Western Hemisphere.

 

The Adler Planetarium was originally planned as a part of the Museum of Science and Industry.

The planetarium was originally considered for part of the Museum of Science and Industry, an endeavor led by Adler's brother-in-law Julius Rosenwald. Rosenwald was determined to convert the former Palace of Fine Arts of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition into a museum, but was struggling to manage the many required renovations.

 

The delays caused Adler to look elsewhere for a location. The South Park Commissioners, the precursor to the Chicago Park District, had just completed Northerly Island, the first of five intended (but otherwise never executed) recreational islands that were to be consistent with Daniel Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago. The Adler Planetarium and Astronomical Museum opened on Adler's birthday, May 12, 1930. The Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects awarded Grunsfield a gold medal for his design. The planetarium hosted the 44th meeting of the American Astronomical Society later that year.

 

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the seat of Cook County, the second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, which is often colloquially called "Chicagoland".

 

Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but Chicago's population continued to grow. Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and architecture, such as the Chicago School, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, and the steel-framed skyscraper.

 

Chicago is an international hub for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications, and transportation. It has the largest and most diverse derivatives market in the world, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures alone. O'Hare International Airport is routinely ranked among the world's top six busiest airports by passenger traffic, and the region is also the nation's railroad hub. The Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products (GDP) of any urban region in the world, generating $689 billion in 2018. Chicago's economy is diverse, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.

 

Chicago is a major tourist destination. Chicago's culture has contributed much to the visual arts, literature, film, theater, comedy (especially improvisational comedy), food, dance, and music (particularly jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel, and electronic dance music, including house music). Chicago is home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, while the Art Institute of Chicago provides an influential visual arts museum and art school. The Chicago area also hosts the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Chicago, among other institutions of learning. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams.

 

In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by the Potawatomi, an indigenous tribe who had succeeded the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples in this region.

 

The first known permanent settler in Chicago was trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African descent, perhaps born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and established the settlement in the 1780s. He is commonly known as the "Founder of Chicago."

 

In 1795, following the victory of the new United States in the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part of Chicago was turned over to the U.S. for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the U.S. Army constructed Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed during the War of 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn by the Potawatomi before being later rebuilt.

 

After the War of 1812, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago and sent west of the Mississippi River as part of the federal policy of Indian removal.

 

On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 6,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as Receiver of Public Monies. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, and for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city.

 

As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicago's first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848. The canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River.

 

A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad. Manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade (established 1848) listed the first-ever standardized "exchange-traded" forward contracts, which were called futures contracts.

 

In the 1850s, Chicago gained national political prominence as the home of Senator Stephen Douglas, the champion of the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the "popular sovereignty" approach to the issue of the spread of slavery. These issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage. Lincoln was nominated in Chicago for U.S. president at the 1860 Republican National Convention, which was held in a purpose-built auditorium called the Wigwam. He defeated Douglas in the general election, and this set the stage for the American Civil War.

 

To accommodate rapid population growth and demand for better sanitation, the city improved its infrastructure. In February 1856, Chicago's Common Council approved Chesbrough's plan to build the United States' first comprehensive sewerage system. The project raised much of central Chicago to a new grade with the use of jackscrews for raising buildings. While elevating Chicago, and at first improving the city's health, the untreated sewage and industrial waste now flowed into the Chicago River, and subsequently into Lake Michigan, polluting the city's primary freshwater source.

 

The city responded by tunneling two miles (3.2 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. In 1900, the problem of sewage contamination was largely resolved when the city completed a major engineering feat. It reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that the water flowed away from Lake Michigan rather than into it. This project began with the construction and improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and was completed with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal that connects to the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi River.

 

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed an area about 4 miles (6.4 km) long and 1-mile (1.6 km) wide, a large section of the city at the time. Much of the city, including railroads and stockyards, survived intact, and from the ruins of the previous wooden structures arose more modern constructions of steel and stone. These set a precedent for worldwide construction. During its rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's first skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction.

 

The city grew significantly in size and population by incorporating many neighboring townships between 1851 and 1920, with the largest annexation happening in 1889, with five townships joining the city, including the Hyde Park Township, which now comprises most of the South Side of Chicago and the far southeast of Chicago, and the Jefferson Township, which now makes up most of Chicago's Northwest Side. The desire to join the city was driven by municipal services that the city could provide its residents.

 

Chicago's flourishing economy attracted huge numbers of new immigrants from Europe and migrants from the Eastern United States. Of the total population in 1900, more than 77% were either foreign-born or born in the United States of foreign parentage. Germans, Irish, Poles, Swedes, and Czechs made up nearly two-thirds of the foreign-born population (by 1900, whites were 98.1% of the city's population).

 

Labor conflicts followed the industrial boom and the rapid expansion of the labor pool, including the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886, and in 1894 the Pullman Strike. Anarchist and socialist groups played prominent roles in creating very large and highly organized labor actions. Concern for social problems among Chicago's immigrant poor led Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to found Hull House in 1889. Programs that were developed there became a model for the new field of social work.

 

During the 1870s and 1880s, Chicago attained national stature as the leader in the movement to improve public health. City laws and later, state laws that upgraded standards for the medical profession and fought urban epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and yellow fever were both passed and enforced. These laws became templates for public health reform in other cities and states.

 

The city established many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities. The chief advocate for improving public health in Chicago was John H. Rauch, M.D. Rauch established a plan for Chicago's park system in 1866. He created Lincoln Park by closing a cemetery filled with shallow graves, and in 1867, in response to an outbreak of cholera he helped establish a new Chicago Board of Health. Ten years later, he became the secretary and then the president of the first Illinois State Board of Health, which carried out most of its activities in Chicago.

 

In the 1800s, Chicago became the nation's railroad hub, and by 1910 over 20 railroads operated passenger service out of six different downtown terminals. In 1883, Chicago's railway managers needed a general time convention, so they developed the standardized system of North American time zones. This system for telling time spread throughout the continent.

 

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered the most influential world's fair in history. The University of Chicago, formerly at another location, moved to the same South Side location in 1892. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects the Washington and Jackson Parks.

 

During World War I and the 1920s there was a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted African Americans from the Southern United States. Between 1910 and 1930, the African American population of Chicago increased dramatically, from 44,103 to 233,903. This Great Migration had an immense cultural impact, called the Chicago Black Renaissance, part of the New Negro Movement, in art, literature, and music. Continuing racial tensions and violence, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919, also occurred.

 

The ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution in 1919 made the production and sale (including exportation) of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. This ushered in the beginning of what is known as the gangster era, a time that roughly spans from 1919 until 1933 when Prohibition was repealed. The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era. Chicago was the location of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when Al Capone sent men to gun down members of a rival gang, North Side, led by Bugs Moran.

 

Chicago was the first American city to have a homosexual-rights organization. The organization, formed in 1924, was called the Society for Human Rights. It produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. Police and political pressure caused the organization to disband.

 

The Great Depression brought unprecedented suffering to Chicago, in no small part due to the city's heavy reliance on heavy industry. Notably, industrial areas on the south side and neighborhoods lining both branches of the Chicago River were devastated; by 1933 over 50% of industrial jobs in the city had been lost, and unemployment rates amongst blacks and Mexicans in the city were over 40%. The Republican political machine in Chicago was utterly destroyed by the economic crisis, and every mayor since 1931 has been a Democrat.

 

From 1928 to 1933, the city witnessed a tax revolt, and the city was unable to meet payroll or provide relief efforts. The fiscal crisis was resolved by 1933, and at the same time, federal relief funding began to flow into Chicago. Chicago was also a hotbed of labor activism, with Unemployed Councils contributing heavily in the early depression to create solidarity for the poor and demand relief; these organizations were created by socialist and communist groups. By 1935 the Workers Alliance of America begun organizing the poor, workers, the unemployed. In the spring of 1937 Republic Steel Works witnessed the Memorial Day massacre of 1937 in the neighborhood of East Side.

 

In 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in Miami, Florida, during a failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933 and 1934, the city celebrated its centennial by hosting the Century of Progress International Exposition World's Fair. The theme of the fair was technological innovation over the century since Chicago's founding.

 

During World War II, the city of Chicago alone produced more steel than the United Kingdom every year from 1939 – 1945, and more than Nazi Germany from 1943 – 1945.

 

The Great Migration, which had been on pause due to the Depression, resumed at an even faster pace in the second wave, as hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South arrived in the city to work in the steel mills, railroads, and shipping yards.

 

On December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. This led to the creation of the atomic bomb by the United States, which it used in World War II in 1945.

 

Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat, was elected in 1955, in the era of machine politics. In 1956, the city conducted its last major expansion when it annexed the land under O'Hare airport, including a small portion of DuPage County.

 

By the 1960s, white residents in several neighborhoods left the city for the suburban areas – in many American cities, a process known as white flight – as Blacks continued to move beyond the Black Belt. While home loan discriminatory redlining against blacks continued, the real estate industry practiced what became known as blockbusting, completely changing the racial composition of whole neighborhoods. Structural changes in industry, such as globalization and job outsourcing, caused heavy job losses for lower-skilled workers. At its peak during the 1960s, some 250,000 workers were employed in the steel industry in Chicago, but the steel crisis of the 1970s and 1980s reduced this number to just 28,000 in 2015. In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Raby led the Chicago Freedom Movement, which culminated in agreements between Mayor Richard J. Daley and the movement leaders.

 

Two years later, the city hosted the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which featured physical confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall, with anti-war protesters, journalists and bystanders being beaten by police. Major construction projects, including the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower, which in 1974 became the world's tallest building), University of Illinois at Chicago, McCormick Place, and O'Hare International Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure. In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She was notable for temporarily moving into the crime-ridden Cabrini-Green housing project and for leading Chicago's school system out of a financial crisis.

 

In 1983, Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago. Washington's first term in office directed attention to poor and previously neglected minority neighborhoods. He was re‑elected in 1987 but died of a heart attack soon after. Washington was succeeded by 6th ward alderperson Eugene Sawyer, who was elected by the Chicago City Council and served until a special election.

 

Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was elected in 1989. His accomplishments included improvements to parks and creating incentives for sustainable development, as well as closing Meigs Field in the middle of the night and destroying the runways. After successfully running for re-election five times, and becoming Chicago's longest-serving mayor, Richard M. Daley declined to run for a seventh term.

 

In 1992, a construction accident near the Kinzie Street Bridge produced a breach connecting the Chicago River to a tunnel below, which was part of an abandoned freight tunnel system extending throughout the downtown Loop district. The tunnels filled with 250 million US gallons (1,000,000 m3) of water, affecting buildings throughout the district and forcing a shutdown of electrical power. The area was shut down for three days and some buildings did not reopen for weeks; losses were estimated at $1.95 billion.

 

On February 23, 2011, Rahm Emanuel, a former White House Chief of Staff and member of the House of Representatives, won the mayoral election. Emanuel was sworn in as mayor on May 16, 2011, and won re-election in 2015. Lori Lightfoot, the city's first African American woman mayor and its first openly LGBTQ mayor, was elected to succeed Emanuel as mayor in 2019. All three city-wide elective offices were held by women (and women of color) for the first time in Chicago history: in addition to Lightfoot, the city clerk was Anna Valencia and the city treasurer was Melissa Conyears-Ervin.

 

On May 15, 2023, Brandon Johnson assumed office as the 57th mayor of Chicago.

 

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Great Lakes to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south. Its largest metropolitan areas are Chicago and the Metro East region of Greater St. Louis. Other metropolitan areas include Peoria and Rockford, as well as Springfield, its capital, and Champaign-Urbana, home to the main campus of the state's flagship university. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-largest land area.

 

Illinois has a highly diverse economy, with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its central location and favorable geography, the state is a major transportation hub: the Port of Chicago has access to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River via the Illinois Waterway. Chicago has been the nation's railroad hub since the 1860s, and its O'Hare International Airport has been among the world's busiest airports for decades. Illinois has long been considered a microcosm of the United States and a bellwether in American culture, exemplified by the phrase Will it play in Peoria?.

 

Present-day Illinois was inhabited by various indigenous cultures for thousands of years, including the advanced civilization centered in the Cahokia region. The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi and Illinois River in the 17th century in the region they called Illinois Country, as part of the sprawling colony of New France. Following U.S. independence in 1783, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky via the Ohio River, and the population grew from south to north. Illinois was part of the United States' oldest territory, the Northwest Territory, and in 1818 it achieved statehood. The Erie Canal brought increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes, and the small settlement of Chicago became one of the fastest growing cities in the world, benefiting from its location as one of the few natural harbors in southwestern Lake Michigan. The invention of the self-scouring steel plow by Illinoisan John Deere turned the state's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. In the mid-19th century, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and a sprawling railroad network greatly facilitated trade, commerce, and settlement, making the state a transportation hub for the nation.

 

By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois became one of America's most industrialized states and remains a major manufacturing center. The Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans, particularly in Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago became a leading cultural, economic, and population center and is today one of the world's major commercial centers; its metropolitan area, informally referred to as Chicagoland, holds about 65% of the state's 12.8 million residents.

 

Two World Heritage Sites are in Illinois, the ancient Cahokia Mounds, and part of the Wright architecture site. Major centers of learning include the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, and Northwestern University. A wide variety of protected areas seek to conserve Illinois' natural and cultural resources. Historically, three U.S. presidents have been elected while residents of Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama; additionally, Ronald Reagan was born and raised in the state. Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

During wartime condiitons and due to the vast number of homes destroyed a programme of constructing prefabricated houses was begun in the UK in an effort to start to deal with displaced persons housing needs in a way that was efficient to deliver. In the post-war years of austerity this need was even greater, allied to a shortage of materials such as steel and of skilled workers, and the idea behind pre-fabrication as a constructional technique was heavily promoted. The idea of being able to easily assemble housing units, largely works built and including basic interior finishes and components, appeared compelling as it allowed a uniformity of construction standards and a lesser need for 'wet trades' to fit them out. I recall this debate continuing to this day in London Underground where the search for 'standardised components' for construction and finishes continues as it does on the railways.

 

The idea was sound and indeed many Continental countries and to an extent the US perservered, whereas in the UK many were constructed but seemed destined to problematic life span and constructional issues, such as around insulation. Indeed, the programme of tower block construction using a similar 'panel' construction in the 1960s and '70s came to an abrupt end given the massive structural failure following the blast at Ronan Point, in east London, where defective and poor workmanship played a major part in the disaster.

 

This article in the May 1948 issue of Architectural Review, and of very period appearance in terms of typography and graphic design, looks at the Arcon permanent home that seems to have been a continuation of the construction of the Arcon pre-fabricated home. As can be seen this two-story home, in terrace, used a mix of on-site wet trades and supplied components. I'm sure Taylor Woodrow were the company behind this, but I'm not sure. The article shows a prototype group at Cranford Park, Southall, Middlesex. I can find little mention of the Arcon permanent method so I'm not sure how may were constructed or if this group survive? They appear to have used relatively lightweight materials (no doubt to eke out materials and construction time) and also used asbestos in various forms, the latter history of which we are all to sadly aware.

Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume (1,180 cu mi (4,900 km3)) and the third-largest by surface area (22,404 sq mi (58,030 km2)), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that of Lake Huron through the 3+1⁄2 miles (5.6 kilometers) wide, 295 feet (90 meters; 49 fathoms) deep, Straits of Mackinac, giving it the same surface elevation as its easterly counterpart; the two are technically a single lake.

 

Lake Michigan is the world's largest lake by area in one country. Located in the United States, it is shared, from west to east, by the states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. Ports along its shores include Milwaukee and the City of Green Bay in Wisconsin; Chicago in Illinois; Gary in Indiana; and Muskegon in Michigan. Green Bay is a large bay in its northwest, and Grand Traverse Bay is in the northeast. The word "Michigan" is believed to come from the Ojibwe word ᒥᓯᑲᒥ (michi-gami or mishigami) meaning "great water".

 

Some of the most studied early human inhabitants of the Lake Michigan region were the Hopewell Native Americans. Their culture declined after 800 AD and for the next few hundred years, the region was the home of peoples known as the Late Woodland Native Americans. In the early 17th century, when western European explorers made their first forays into the region, they encountered descendants of the Late Woodland Native Americans: the historic Chippewa; Menominee; Sauk; Fox; Winnebago; Miami; Ottawa; and Potawatomi peoples. The French explorer Jean Nicolet is believed to have been the first European to reach Lake Michigan, possibly in 1634 or 1638. In the earliest European maps of the region, the name of Lake Illinois has been found in addition to that of "Michigan", named for the Illinois Confederation of tribes. During the 1640s and 1650s, the Beaver Wars over the fur trade with the European colonies, initiated by the Iroquois, forced a massive demographic shift as their western neighbors fled the violence. They sought refuge west and north of Lake Michigan.

 

Lake Michigan is joined via the narrow, open-water Straits of Mackinac with Lake Huron, and the combined body of water is sometimes called Michigan–Huron (also Huron–Michigan). The Straits of Mackinac were an important Native American and fur trade route. Located on the southern side of the straits is the town of Mackinaw City, Michigan, the site of Fort Michilimackinac, a reconstructed French fort founded in 1715, and on the northern side is St. Ignace, Michigan, site of a French Catholic mission to the Indians, founded in 1671. In 1673, Jacques Marquette, Louis Jolliet and their crew of five Métis voyageurs followed Lake Michigan to Green Bay and up the Fox River, nearly to its headwaters, in their search for the Mississippi River. By the late 18th century, the eastern end of the straits was controlled by Fort Mackinac on Mackinac Island, a British colonial and early American military base and fur trade center, founded in 1781.

 

With the advent of European exploration into the area in the late 17th century, Lake Michigan became used as part of a line of waterways leading from the Saint Lawrence River to the Mississippi River and thence to the Gulf of Mexico. French coureurs des bois and voyageurs established small ports and trading communities, such as Green Bay, on the lake during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. In the 19th century, Lake Michigan was integral to the development of Chicago and the Midwestern United States west of the lake. For example, 90% of the grain shipped from Chicago traveled by ships east over Lake Michigan during the antebellum years. The volume rarely fell below 50% after the Civil War even with the major expansion of railroad shipping.

 

The first person to reach the deep bottom of Lake Michigan was J. Val Klump, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1985. Klump reached the bottom via submersible as part of a research expedition. In 2007, a row of stones paralleling an ancient shoreline was discovered by Mark Holley, professor of underwater archeology at Northwestern Michigan College. This formation lies 40 feet (12 m) below the surface of the lake. One of the stones is said to have a carving resembling a mastodon. The formation needed more study before it could be authenticated. The warming of Lake Michigan was the subject of a 2018 report by Purdue University. In each decade since 1980, steady increases in obscure surface temperature have occurred. This is likely to lead to decreasing native habitat and to adversely affect native species survival, including game fish.

 

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the seat of Cook County, the second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, which is often colloquially called "Chicagoland".

 

Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but Chicago's population continued to grow. Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and architecture, such as the Chicago School, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, and the steel-framed skyscraper.

 

Chicago is an international hub for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications, and transportation. It has the largest and most diverse derivatives market in the world, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures alone. O'Hare International Airport is routinely ranked among the world's top six busiest airports by passenger traffic, and the region is also the nation's railroad hub. The Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products (GDP) of any urban region in the world, generating $689 billion in 2018. Chicago's economy is diverse, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.

 

Chicago is a major tourist destination. Chicago's culture has contributed much to the visual arts, literature, film, theater, comedy (especially improvisational comedy), food, dance, and music (particularly jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel, and electronic dance music, including house music). Chicago is home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, while the Art Institute of Chicago provides an influential visual arts museum and art school. The Chicago area also hosts the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Chicago, among other institutions of learning. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams.

 

In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by the Potawatomi, an indigenous tribe who had succeeded the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples in this region.

 

The first known permanent settler in Chicago was trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African descent, perhaps born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and established the settlement in the 1780s. He is commonly known as the "Founder of Chicago."

 

In 1795, following the victory of the new United States in the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part of Chicago was turned over to the U.S. for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the U.S. Army constructed Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed during the War of 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn by the Potawatomi before being later rebuilt.

 

After the War of 1812, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago and sent west of the Mississippi River as part of the federal policy of Indian removal.

 

On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 6,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as Receiver of Public Monies. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, and for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city.

 

As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicago's first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848. The canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River.

 

A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad. Manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade (established 1848) listed the first-ever standardized "exchange-traded" forward contracts, which were called futures contracts.

 

In the 1850s, Chicago gained national political prominence as the home of Senator Stephen Douglas, the champion of the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the "popular sovereignty" approach to the issue of the spread of slavery. These issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage. Lincoln was nominated in Chicago for U.S. president at the 1860 Republican National Convention, which was held in a purpose-built auditorium called the Wigwam. He defeated Douglas in the general election, and this set the stage for the American Civil War.

 

To accommodate rapid population growth and demand for better sanitation, the city improved its infrastructure. In February 1856, Chicago's Common Council approved Chesbrough's plan to build the United States' first comprehensive sewerage system. The project raised much of central Chicago to a new grade with the use of jackscrews for raising buildings. While elevating Chicago, and at first improving the city's health, the untreated sewage and industrial waste now flowed into the Chicago River, and subsequently into Lake Michigan, polluting the city's primary freshwater source.

 

The city responded by tunneling two miles (3.2 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. In 1900, the problem of sewage contamination was largely resolved when the city completed a major engineering feat. It reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that the water flowed away from Lake Michigan rather than into it. This project began with the construction and improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and was completed with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal that connects to the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi River.

 

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed an area about 4 miles (6.4 km) long and 1-mile (1.6 km) wide, a large section of the city at the time. Much of the city, including railroads and stockyards, survived intact, and from the ruins of the previous wooden structures arose more modern constructions of steel and stone. These set a precedent for worldwide construction. During its rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's first skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction.

 

The city grew significantly in size and population by incorporating many neighboring townships between 1851 and 1920, with the largest annexation happening in 1889, with five townships joining the city, including the Hyde Park Township, which now comprises most of the South Side of Chicago and the far southeast of Chicago, and the Jefferson Township, which now makes up most of Chicago's Northwest Side. The desire to join the city was driven by municipal services that the city could provide its residents.

 

Chicago's flourishing economy attracted huge numbers of new immigrants from Europe and migrants from the Eastern United States. Of the total population in 1900, more than 77% were either foreign-born or born in the United States of foreign parentage. Germans, Irish, Poles, Swedes, and Czechs made up nearly two-thirds of the foreign-born population (by 1900, whites were 98.1% of the city's population).

 

Labor conflicts followed the industrial boom and the rapid expansion of the labor pool, including the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886, and in 1894 the Pullman Strike. Anarchist and socialist groups played prominent roles in creating very large and highly organized labor actions. Concern for social problems among Chicago's immigrant poor led Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to found Hull House in 1889. Programs that were developed there became a model for the new field of social work.

 

During the 1870s and 1880s, Chicago attained national stature as the leader in the movement to improve public health. City laws and later, state laws that upgraded standards for the medical profession and fought urban epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and yellow fever were both passed and enforced. These laws became templates for public health reform in other cities and states.

 

The city established many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities. The chief advocate for improving public health in Chicago was John H. Rauch, M.D. Rauch established a plan for Chicago's park system in 1866. He created Lincoln Park by closing a cemetery filled with shallow graves, and in 1867, in response to an outbreak of cholera he helped establish a new Chicago Board of Health. Ten years later, he became the secretary and then the president of the first Illinois State Board of Health, which carried out most of its activities in Chicago.

 

In the 1800s, Chicago became the nation's railroad hub, and by 1910 over 20 railroads operated passenger service out of six different downtown terminals. In 1883, Chicago's railway managers needed a general time convention, so they developed the standardized system of North American time zones. This system for telling time spread throughout the continent.

 

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered the most influential world's fair in history. The University of Chicago, formerly at another location, moved to the same South Side location in 1892. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects the Washington and Jackson Parks.

 

During World War I and the 1920s there was a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted African Americans from the Southern United States. Between 1910 and 1930, the African American population of Chicago increased dramatically, from 44,103 to 233,903. This Great Migration had an immense cultural impact, called the Chicago Black Renaissance, part of the New Negro Movement, in art, literature, and music. Continuing racial tensions and violence, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919, also occurred.

 

The ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution in 1919 made the production and sale (including exportation) of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. This ushered in the beginning of what is known as the gangster era, a time that roughly spans from 1919 until 1933 when Prohibition was repealed. The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era. Chicago was the location of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when Al Capone sent men to gun down members of a rival gang, North Side, led by Bugs Moran.

 

Chicago was the first American city to have a homosexual-rights organization. The organization, formed in 1924, was called the Society for Human Rights. It produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. Police and political pressure caused the organization to disband.

 

The Great Depression brought unprecedented suffering to Chicago, in no small part due to the city's heavy reliance on heavy industry. Notably, industrial areas on the south side and neighborhoods lining both branches of the Chicago River were devastated; by 1933 over 50% of industrial jobs in the city had been lost, and unemployment rates amongst blacks and Mexicans in the city were over 40%. The Republican political machine in Chicago was utterly destroyed by the economic crisis, and every mayor since 1931 has been a Democrat.

 

From 1928 to 1933, the city witnessed a tax revolt, and the city was unable to meet payroll or provide relief efforts. The fiscal crisis was resolved by 1933, and at the same time, federal relief funding began to flow into Chicago. Chicago was also a hotbed of labor activism, with Unemployed Councils contributing heavily in the early depression to create solidarity for the poor and demand relief; these organizations were created by socialist and communist groups. By 1935 the Workers Alliance of America begun organizing the poor, workers, the unemployed. In the spring of 1937 Republic Steel Works witnessed the Memorial Day massacre of 1937 in the neighborhood of East Side.

 

In 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in Miami, Florida, during a failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933 and 1934, the city celebrated its centennial by hosting the Century of Progress International Exposition World's Fair. The theme of the fair was technological innovation over the century since Chicago's founding.

 

During World War II, the city of Chicago alone produced more steel than the United Kingdom every year from 1939 – 1945, and more than Nazi Germany from 1943 – 1945.

 

The Great Migration, which had been on pause due to the Depression, resumed at an even faster pace in the second wave, as hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South arrived in the city to work in the steel mills, railroads, and shipping yards.

 

On December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. This led to the creation of the atomic bomb by the United States, which it used in World War II in 1945.

 

Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat, was elected in 1955, in the era of machine politics. In 1956, the city conducted its last major expansion when it annexed the land under O'Hare airport, including a small portion of DuPage County.

 

By the 1960s, white residents in several neighborhoods left the city for the suburban areas – in many American cities, a process known as white flight – as Blacks continued to move beyond the Black Belt. While home loan discriminatory redlining against blacks continued, the real estate industry practiced what became known as blockbusting, completely changing the racial composition of whole neighborhoods. Structural changes in industry, such as globalization and job outsourcing, caused heavy job losses for lower-skilled workers. At its peak during the 1960s, some 250,000 workers were employed in the steel industry in Chicago, but the steel crisis of the 1970s and 1980s reduced this number to just 28,000 in 2015. In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Raby led the Chicago Freedom Movement, which culminated in agreements between Mayor Richard J. Daley and the movement leaders.

 

Two years later, the city hosted the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which featured physical confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall, with anti-war protesters, journalists and bystanders being beaten by police. Major construction projects, including the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower, which in 1974 became the world's tallest building), University of Illinois at Chicago, McCormick Place, and O'Hare International Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure. In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She was notable for temporarily moving into the crime-ridden Cabrini-Green housing project and for leading Chicago's school system out of a financial crisis.

 

In 1983, Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago. Washington's first term in office directed attention to poor and previously neglected minority neighborhoods. He was re‑elected in 1987 but died of a heart attack soon after. Washington was succeeded by 6th ward alderperson Eugene Sawyer, who was elected by the Chicago City Council and served until a special election.

 

Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was elected in 1989. His accomplishments included improvements to parks and creating incentives for sustainable development, as well as closing Meigs Field in the middle of the night and destroying the runways. After successfully running for re-election five times, and becoming Chicago's longest-serving mayor, Richard M. Daley declined to run for a seventh term.

 

In 1992, a construction accident near the Kinzie Street Bridge produced a breach connecting the Chicago River to a tunnel below, which was part of an abandoned freight tunnel system extending throughout the downtown Loop district. The tunnels filled with 250 million US gallons (1,000,000 m3) of water, affecting buildings throughout the district and forcing a shutdown of electrical power. The area was shut down for three days and some buildings did not reopen for weeks; losses were estimated at $1.95 billion.

 

On February 23, 2011, Rahm Emanuel, a former White House Chief of Staff and member of the House of Representatives, won the mayoral election. Emanuel was sworn in as mayor on May 16, 2011, and won re-election in 2015. Lori Lightfoot, the city's first African American woman mayor and its first openly LGBTQ mayor, was elected to succeed Emanuel as mayor in 2019. All three city-wide elective offices were held by women (and women of color) for the first time in Chicago history: in addition to Lightfoot, the city clerk was Anna Valencia and the city treasurer was Melissa Conyears-Ervin.

 

On May 15, 2023, Brandon Johnson assumed office as the 57th mayor of Chicago.

 

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Great Lakes to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south. Its largest metropolitan areas are Chicago and the Metro East region of Greater St. Louis. Other metropolitan areas include Peoria and Rockford, as well as Springfield, its capital, and Champaign-Urbana, home to the main campus of the state's flagship university. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-largest land area.

 

Illinois has a highly diverse economy, with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its central location and favorable geography, the state is a major transportation hub: the Port of Chicago has access to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River via the Illinois Waterway. Chicago has been the nation's railroad hub since the 1860s, and its O'Hare International Airport has been among the world's busiest airports for decades. Illinois has long been considered a microcosm of the United States and a bellwether in American culture, exemplified by the phrase Will it play in Peoria?.

 

Present-day Illinois was inhabited by various indigenous cultures for thousands of years, including the advanced civilization centered in the Cahokia region. The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi and Illinois River in the 17th century in the region they called Illinois Country, as part of the sprawling colony of New France. Following U.S. independence in 1783, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky via the Ohio River, and the population grew from south to north. Illinois was part of the United States' oldest territory, the Northwest Territory, and in 1818 it achieved statehood. The Erie Canal brought increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes, and the small settlement of Chicago became one of the fastest growing cities in the world, benefiting from its location as one of the few natural harbors in southwestern Lake Michigan. The invention of the self-scouring steel plow by Illinoisan John Deere turned the state's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. In the mid-19th century, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and a sprawling railroad network greatly facilitated trade, commerce, and settlement, making the state a transportation hub for the nation.

 

By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois became one of America's most industrialized states and remains a major manufacturing center. The Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans, particularly in Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago became a leading cultural, economic, and population center and is today one of the world's major commercial centers; its metropolitan area, informally referred to as Chicagoland, holds about 65% of the state's 12.8 million residents.

 

Two World Heritage Sites are in Illinois, the ancient Cahokia Mounds, and part of the Wright architecture site. Major centers of learning include the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, and Northwestern University. A wide variety of protected areas seek to conserve Illinois' natural and cultural resources. Historically, three U.S. presidents have been elected while residents of Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama; additionally, Ronald Reagan was born and raised in the state. Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

Skilled worker @ Ladder Street , Zeiss Planar 80mmf/2.8 0n 503CW

All workers rights and benefits that workers enjoy today were fought for and not given out of the goodness and kindness of corporations. Remember that!

 

Lawrence textile strike

 

Founded in 1845, Lawrence was a flourishing but deeply troubled textile city. By 1900 the mechanization and deskilling of labor in the textile industry enabled factory owners to eliminate skilled workers and employ large numbers of unskilled immigrant workers, the majority of whom were women. Work in a textile mill took place at a grueling pace. The labor was repetitive and dangerous. A number of children under the age of fourteen worked in the mills. Half of the workers in the four Lawrence mills of the American Woolen Company, the leading employer in the industry and the town, were girls between fourteen and eighteen.

  

A new Massachusetts law reduced the maximum number of hours of work per week for women and children from fifty-six to fifty-four, effective January 1, 1912. On January 11, workers discovered what many of them had feared would happen: their employers had reduced their weekly pay to match the reduction in their hours. That difference in wages would amount to several loaves of bread for hard-pressed workers.

 

When Polish women weavers at Everett Cotton Mills realized that their employer had reduced their pay by thirty two cents they stopped their looms and left the mill, shouting "short pay, short pay!" Workers at other mills joined the next day; within a week more than 20,000 workers were on strike.

 

Joseph Ettor of the IWW had been organizing in Lawrence for some time before the strike; he and Arturo Giovannitti of the IWW quickly assumed leadership of the strike, forming a strike committee made up of two representatives from each ethnic group in the mills, which took responsibility for all major decisions. The committee, which arranged for its strike meetings to be translated into twenty-five different languages, put forward a set of demands; a fifteen percent increase in wages for a fifty-four-hour work week, double time for overtime work, and no discrimination against workers for their strike activity.

 

The City responded to the strike by ringing the city's alarm bell for the first time in its history; the Mayor ordered a company of the local militia to patrol the streets. The strikers responded with mass picketing. When mill owners turned fire hoses on the picketers gathered in front of the mills, they responded by throwing ice at the plants, breaking a number of windows. The court sentenced thirty-six workers to a year in jail for throwing ice; as the judge stated, "The only way we can teach them is to deal out the severest sentences". The governor then ordered out the state militia and state police. Mass arrests followed.

 

At the same time the United Textile Workers attempted to break the strike, claiming to speak for the workers of Lawrence. The workers ignored them and the AFL, while opposed to the IWW, did not press the point, offering rhetorical support for the strikers' rights.

A local undertaker and a member of the Lawrence school board attempted to frame the strike leadership by planting dynamite in several locations in town a week after the strike began. He was fined $500 and released without jail time. William Wood, the owner of the American Woolen Company, who had made a large payment to the defendant under unexplained circumstances shortly before the dynamite was found, was not charged.

 

The authorities later charged Ettor and Giovannitti with murder for the death of striker Anna LoPizzo, likely shot by the police. Ettor and Giovannitti had been three miles away, speaking to another group of workers at the time. They and a third defendant, who had not even heard of either Ettor or Giovannitti at the time of his arrest, were held in jail for the duration of the strike and several months thereafter. The authorities declared martial law, banned all public meetings and called out twenty-two more militia companies to patrol the streets.

 

The IWW responded by sending Bill Haywood, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and a number of other organizers to Lawrence. The union established an efficient system of relief committees, soup kitchens, and food distribution stations, while volunteer doctors provided medical care. The IWW raised funds on a nation-wide basis to provide weekly benefits for strikers and dramatized the strikers' needs by arranging for several hundred children to go to supporters' homes in New York City for the duration of the strike. When city authorities tried to prevent another hundred children from going to Philadelphia on February 24 by sending police and the militia to the station to detain the children and arrest their parents, the police began clubbing both the children and their mothers while dragging them off to be taken away by truck; one pregnant mother miscarried. The press, there to photograph the event, reported extensively on the attack.

 

The police assault on the children and their mothers sparked a national outrage. Congress convened investigative hearings, eliciting testimony from teenaged workers who described how they had to pay for their drinking water and to do unpaid work on Saturdays. Helen Herron Taft, the wife of President Taft, attended the hearings; Taft later ordered a nationwide investigation of factory conditions.

The national attention had an effect: the owners offered a five percent pay raise on March 1; the workers rejected it. American Woolen Company agreed to all the strikers' demands on March 12, 1912. The rest of the manufacturers followed by the end of the month; other textile companies throughout New England, anxious to avoid a similar confrontation, followed suit. The children who had been taken in by supporters in New York City came home on March 30.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_textile_strike

“He who leads the green economy will lead the world economy"

 

“Our competitors are waging a historic effort to build clean energy sources. China and Germany are right now building facilities just like this one. No one is playing for second place."

 

“The Tesla-NUMMI partnership is a symbol of progress… Tesla is joining with Toyota in a venture to put a thousand skilled workers back to work manufacturing an all-electric car. And this is only the beginning.”

 

"The spill in the gulf, which is heartbreaking, only underscores the necessity of seeking alternative fuel sources"

 

"We're not going to transition out of oil next year, or 10 years from now, but think about it — part of what's happening in the gulf is that oil companies are drilling a mile under water before they hit ground, and then a mile below that before they hit oil. ... We're not going to be able to sustain this kind of fossil fuel use. This planet can't sustain it."

 

"We are making progress, but we still have more work to do. That’s why I am going to fight to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation in Washington, and we’re going to get it done this year. I want to create incentives that will fully unleash the potential to grow technology and jobs in this sector.”

 

Some other sights below…

Kharkhorin, Mongolia

Back in the 13th Century, Kharkhorin was constructed as a capital city of Mongol Empire (Yuan Dynasty) which attracted traders, dignitaries and skilled workers from across Asia and even Europe.

Yuan was the first dynasty to make Beijing (called Dadu by the Yuan) its capital, moving it there from Karakorum (now in Mongolia) in 1267.

哈爾和林, 蒙古古都

早在 13 世紀，哈爾和林就被建成為蒙古帝國（元朝）的首都，吸引了來自亞洲乃至歐洲的商人、政要和技術工人。

元朝是第一個將北京（元朝稱為大都）定都的朝代，並於 1267 年從喀喇崑崙（今蒙古境內）遷至北京。

Mongolia

2023/6/22

hx24617

dans.photo@gmail.com

Ada Dorothy, a Belfast registered tug is being completed at Richard Dunston's ship building yard in Thorne, South Yorkshire.

It was one of the over fifteen hundred vessels built at this yard over the years and was still hard at work certainly until 2017. It is now based south of the border in Dublin. A great credit to the skilled workers who constructed this vessel almost fifty years ago.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giza_pyramid_complex

 

The Giza pyramid complex (also called the Giza necropolis) in Egypt is home to the Great Pyramid, the Pyramid of Khafre, and the Pyramid of Menkaure, along with their associated pyramid complexes and the Great Sphinx. All were built during the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, between c. 2600 – c. 2500 BC. The site also includes several temples, cemeteries, and the remains of a workers' village.

 

The site is at the edge of the Western Desert, approximately 9 km (5.6 mi) west of the Nile River in the city of Giza, and about 13 km (8.1 mi) southwest of the city centre of Cairo. It forms the northernmost part of the 16,000 ha (160 km2; 62 sq mi) Pyramid Fields of the Memphis and its Necropolis UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed in 1979. The pyramid fields include the Abusir, Saqqara, and Dahshur pyramid complexes, which were all built in the vicinity of Egypt's ancient capital of Memphis.[1] Further Old Kingdom pyramid fields were located at the sites Abu Rawash, Zawyet El Aryan, and Meidum.

 

The Great Pyramid and the Pyramid of Khafre are the largest pyramids built in ancient Egypt, and they have historically been common as emblems of Ancient Egypt in the Western imagination They were popularised in Hellenistic times, when the Great Pyramid was listed by Antipater of Sidon as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It is by far the oldest of the Ancient Wonders and the only one still in existence.

 

Literature on ancient Giza is vast; for an overview with further references, see Manuelian[3] or Lehner and Hawass.

 

Maadi settlements

The earliest settlement of the Giza plateau predates the pyramid complexes. Four jars from the Maadi culture were found at the foot of the Great Pyramid, likely from a disturbed earlier settlement. Further Maadi settlement near the site was uncovered during work on the Greater Cairo Wastewater Project. Recent reassessment of the radiocarbon dating puts the Maadi culture's eponymous settlement to c. 3800 – c. 3400 BC, which is also the likely maximum possible range for the Giza remains.

 

The Giza pyramid complex consists of the Great Pyramid (also known as the Pyramid of Cheops or Khufu and constructed c. 2580 – c. 2560 BC), the somewhat smaller Pyramid of Khafre (or Chephren) a few hundred metres to the south-west, and the relatively modest-sized Pyramid of Menkaure (or Mykerinos) a few hundred metres farther south-west. The Great Sphinx lies on the east side of the complex. Consensus among Egyptologists is that the head of the Great Sphinx is that of Khafre. Along with these major monuments are a number of smaller satellite edifices, known as "queens" pyramids, causeways, and temples.[8] Besides the archaeological structures, the ancient landscape has also been investigated.

 

Khufu's complex

Khufu's pyramid complex consists of a valley temple, now buried beneath the village of Nazlet el-Samman; diabase paving and nummulitic limestone walls have been found but the site has not been excavated. The valley temple was connected to a causeway that was largely destroyed when the village was constructed. The causeway led to the Mortuary Temple of Khufu, which was connected to the pyramid. Of this temple, the basalt pavement is the only thing that remains. The king's pyramid has three smaller queen's pyramids associated with it and three boat pits.  The boat pits contained a ship, and the two pits on the south side of the pyramid contained intact ships when excavated. One of these ships, the Khufu ship, has been restored and was originally displayed at the Giza Solar boat museum, then subsequently moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum.

 

Khufu's pyramid still has a limited number of casing stones at its base. These casing stones were made of fine white limestone quarried at Tura.

 

Khafre's complex

Main articles: Pyramid of Khafre and Great Sphinx of Giza

Khafre's pyramid complex consists of a valley temple, the Sphinx temple, a causeway, a mortuary temple, and the king's pyramid. The valley temple yielded several statues of Khafre. Several were found in a well in the floor of the temple by Mariette in 1860. Others were found during successive excavations by Sieglin (1909–1910), Junker, Reisner, and Hassan. Khafre's complex contained five boat-pits and a subsidiary pyramid with a serdab. 

 

Khafre's pyramid appears larger than the adjacent Khufu Pyramid by virtue of its more elevated location, and the steeper angle of inclination of its construction—it is, in fact, smaller in both height and volume. Khafre's pyramid retains a prominent display of casing stones at its apex.

 

Menkaure's complex

Menkaure's pyramid complex consists of a valley temple, a causeway, a mortuary temple, and the king's pyramid. The valley temple once contained several statues of Menkaure. During the 5th Dynasty, a smaller ante-temple was added on to the valley temple. The mortuary temple also yielded several statues of Menkaure. The king's pyramid, completed c. 2510 BC, has three subsidiary or queen's pyramids.  Of the four major monuments, only Menkaure's pyramid is seen today without any of its original polished limestone casing

 

Sphinx

The Sphinx dates from the reign of king Khafre. During the New Kingdom, Amenhotep II dedicated a new temple to Hauron-Haremakhet and this structure was added onto by later rulers.

 

Tomb of Queen Khentkaus I

Main article: Pyramid of Khentkaus I

Khentkaus I was buried in Giza. Her tomb is known as LG 100 and G 8400 and is located in the Central Field, near the valley temple of Menkaure. The pyramid complex of Queen Khentkaus includes her pyramid, a boat pit, a valley temple, and a pyramid town.

 

Construction

Main article: Egyptian pyramid construction techniques

Most construction theories are based on the idea that the pyramids were built by moving huge stones from a quarry and dragging and lifting them into place. Disagreements arise over the feasibility of the different proposed methods by which the stones were conveyed and placed.

 

In building the pyramids, the architects might have developed their techniques over time. They would select a site on a relatively flat area of bedrock—not sand—which provided a stable foundation. After carefully surveying the site and laying down the first level of stones, they constructed the pyramids in horizontal levels, one on top of the other.

 

For the Great Pyramid, most of the stone for the interior seems to have been quarried immediately to the south of the construction site. The smooth exterior of the pyramid was made of a fine grade of white limestone that was quarried across the Nile. These exterior blocks had to be carefully cut, transported by river barge to Giza, and dragged up ramps to the construction site. Only a few exterior blocks remain in place at the bottom of the Great Pyramid. During the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), people may have taken the rest away for building projects in the city of Cairo.

 

To ensure that the pyramid remained symmetrical, the exterior casing stones all had to be equal in height and width. Workers might have marked all the blocks to indicate the angle of the pyramid wall and trimmed the surfaces carefully so that the blocks fit together. During construction, the outer surface of the stone was smooth limestone; excess stone has eroded over time.

 

New insights into the closing stages of the Great Pyramid building were provided by the recent find of Wadi el-Jarf papyri, especially the diary of inspector Merer, whose team was assigned to deliver the white limestone from Tura quarries to Giza. The journal was already published, as well as a popular account of the importance of this discovery.

 

Purpose

The pyramids of Giza and others are thought to have been constructed to house the remains of the deceased pharaohs who ruled Ancient Egypt. A portion of the pharaoh's spirit called his ka was believed to remain with his corpse. Proper care of the remains was necessary in order for the "former Pharaoh to perform his new duties as king of the dead". It is theorized the pyramid not only served as a tomb for the pharaoh, but also as a storage pit for various items he would need in the afterlife. "The people of Ancient Egypt believed that death on Earth was the start of a journey to the next world." The embalmed body of the King was entombed underneath or within the pyramid to protect it and allow his transformation and ascension to the afterlife.

 

Astronomy

The sides of all three of the Giza pyramids were astronomically oriented to the cardinal directions within a small fraction of a degree. According to the disputed Orion correlation theory, the arrangement of the pyramids is a representation of the constellation Orion.

 

Workers' village

The work of quarrying, moving, setting, and sculpting the huge amount of stone used to build the pyramids might have been accomplished by several thousand skilled workers, unskilled laborers and supporting workers. Bakers, carpenters, water carriers, and others were also needed for the project. Along with the methods used to construct the pyramids, there is also wide speculation regarding the exact number of workers needed for a building project of this magnitude. When Greek historian Herodotus visited Giza in 450 BC, he was told by Egyptian priests that "the Great Pyramid had taken 400,000 men 20 years to build, working in three-month shifts 100,000 men at a time." Evidence from the tombs indicates that a workforce of 10,000 laborers working in three-month shifts took around 30 years to build a pyramid.

 

The Giza pyramid complex is surrounded by a large stone wall, outside which Mark Lehner and his team discovered a town where the pyramid workers were housed. The village is located to the southeast of the Khafre and Menkaure complexes. Among the discoveries at the workers' village are communal sleeping quarters, bakeries, breweries, and kitchens (with evidence showing that bread, beef, and fish were dietary staples), a copper workshop, a hospital, and a cemetery (where some of the skeletons were found with signs of trauma associated with accidents on a building site). The metal processed at the site was the so-called arsenical copper. The same material was also identified among the copper artefacts from the "Kromer" site, from the reigns of Khufu and Khafre.

 

The workers' town appears to date from the middle 4th Dynasty (2520–2472 BC), after the accepted time of Khufu and completion of the Great Pyramid. According to Lehner and the AERA team:

 

The development of this urban complex must have been rapid. All of the construction probably happened in the 35 to 50 years that spanned the reigns of Khafre and Menkaure, builders of the Second and Third Giza Pyramids.

Using pottery shards, seal impressions, and stratigraphy to date the site, the team further concludes:

 

The picture that emerges is that of a planned settlement, some of the world's earliest urban planning, securely dated to the reigns of two Giza pyramid builders: Khafre (2520–2494 BC) and Menkaure (2490–2472 BC).

Radiocarbon data for the Old Kingdom Giza plateau and the workers' settlement were published in 2006, and then re-evaluated in 2011.

 

Cemeteries

As the pyramids were constructed, the mastabas for lesser royals were constructed around them. Near the pyramid of Khufu, the main cemetery is G 7000, which lies in the East Field located to the east of the main pyramid and next to the Queen's pyramids. These cemeteries around the pyramids were arranged along streets and avenues. Cemetery G 7000 was one of the earliest and contained tombs of wives, sons, and daughters of these 4th Dynasty rulers. On the other side of the pyramid in the West Field, the royals' sons Wepemnofret and Hemiunu were buried in Cemetery G 1200 and Cemetery G 4000, respectively. These cemeteries were further expanded during the 5th and 6th Dynasties.

 

West Field

Main article: Giza West Field

The West Field is located to the west of Khufu's pyramid. It is divided into smaller areas such as the cemeteries referred to as the Abu Bakr Excavations (1949–1950, 1950–1951, 1952, and 1953), and several cemeteries named based on the mastaba numbers such as Cemetery G 1000, Cemetery G 1100, etc. The West Field contains Cemetery G1000 – Cemetery G1600, and Cemetery G 1900. Further cemeteries in this field are: Cemeteries G 2000, G 2200, G 2500, G 3000, G 4000, and G 6000. Three other cemeteries are named after their excavators: Junker Cemetery West, Junker Cemetery East, and Steindorff Cemetery.

 

East Field

Main article: Giza East Field

The East Field is located to the east of Khufu's pyramid and contains cemetery G 7000. This cemetery was a burial place for some of the family members of Khufu. The cemetery also includes mastabas from tenants and priests of the pyramids dated to the 5th Dynasty and 6th Dynasty.

 

Cemetery GIS

This cemetery dates from the time of Menkaure (Junker) or earlier (Reisner), and contains several stone-built mastabas dating from as late as the 6th Dynasty. Tombs from the time of Menkaure include the mastabas of the royal chamberlain Khaemnefert, the King's son Khufudjedef (master of the royal largesse), and an official named Niankhre.

 

Central Field

Main article: Central Field, Giza

The Central Field contains several burials of royal family members. The tombs range in date from the end of the 4th Dynasty to the 5th Dynasty or even later.[

 

Tombs dating from the Saite and later period were found near the causeway of Khafre and the Great Sphinx. These tombs include the tomb of a commander of the army named Ahmose and his mother Queen Nakhtubasterau, who was the wife of Pharaoh Amasis II.

 

South Field

The South Field includes mastabas dating from the 1st Dynasty to 3rd Dynasty as well as later burials. Of the more significant of these early dynastic tombs are one referred to as "Covington's tomb", otherwise known as Mastaba T, and the large Mastaba V which contained artifacts naming the 1st Dynasty pharaoh Djet. Other tombs date from the late Old Kingdom (5th and 6th Dynasty). The south section of the field contains several tombs dating from the Saite period and later. 

 

Tombs of the pyramid builders

In 1990, tombs belonging to the pyramid workers were discovered alongside the pyramids, with an additional burial site found nearby in 2009. Although not mummified, they had been buried in mudbrick tombs with beer and bread to support them in the afterlife. The tombs' proximity to the pyramids and the manner of burial supports the theory that they were paid laborers who took pride in their work and were not slaves, as was previously thought. Evidence from the tombs indicates that a workforce of 10,000 laborers working in three-month shifts took around 30 years to build a pyramid. Most of the workers appear to have come from poor families. Specialists such as architects, masons, metalworkers, and carpenters were permanently employed by the king to fill positions that required the most skill.

 

Shafts

There are multiple burial-shafts and various unfinished shafts and tunnels located in the Giza complex that were discovered and mentioned prominently by Selim Hassan in his report Excavations at Giza 1933–1934. He states: "Very few of the Saitic [referring to the Saite Period) shafts have been thoroughly examined, for the reason that most of them are flooded."

 

Osiris Shaft

The Osiris Shaft is a narrow burial-shaft leading to three levels for a tomb and below it a flooded area. It was first mentioned by Hassan, and a thorough excavation was conducted by a team led by Hawass in 1999. It was opened to tourists in November 2017.

 

New Kingdom and Late Period

During the New Kingdom Giza was still an active site. A brick-built chapel was constructed near the Sphinx during the early 18th Dynasty, probably by King Thutmose I. Amenhotep II built a temple dedicated to Hauron-Haremakhet near the Sphinx. As a prince, the future pharaoh Thutmose IV visited the pyramids and the Sphinx; he reported being told in a dream that if he cleared the sand that had built up around the Sphinx, he would be rewarded with kingship. This event is recorded in the Dream Stele, which he had installed between the Sphinx's front legs.

 

During the early years of his reign, Thutmose IV, together with his wife Queen Nefertari, had stelae erected at Giza.

 

Pharaoh Tutankhamun had a structure built, which is now referred to as the king's resthouse.

 

During the 19th Dynasty, Seti I added to the temple of Hauron-Haremakhet, and his son Ramesses II erected a stela in the chapel before the Sphinx and usurped the resthouse of Tutankhamun. 

 

During the 21st Dynasty, the Temple of Isis Mistress-of-the-Pyramids was reconstructed. During the 26th Dynasty, a stela made in this time mentions Khufu and his Queen Henutsen.

 

Division of the 1903–1905 excavation of the Giza Necropolis

In 1903, rights to excavate the West Field and Pyramids of the Giza Necropolis were divided by three institutions from Italy, Germany, and the United States of America.

 

Background

Prior to the division of the Giza Plateau into three institutional concessions in 1903, amateur and private excavations at the Giza Necropolis had been permitted to operate. The work of these amateur archaeologists failed to meet high scientific standards. Montague Ballard, for instance, excavated in the Western Cemetery (with the hesitant permission of the Egyptian Antiquities Service) and neither kept records of his finds nor published them.

 

Italian, German, and American Concessions at Giza

In 1902, the Egyptian Antiquities Service under Gaston Maspero resolved to issue permits exclusively to authorized individuals representing public institutions. In November of that year, the Service awarded three scholars with concessions on the Giza Necropolis. They were the Italian Ernesto Schiaparelli from the Turin Museum, the German Georg Steindorff from the University of Leipzig who had funding from Wilhelm Pelizaeus, and the American George Reisner from the Hearst Expedition. Within a matter of months, the site had been divided between the concessionaires following a meeting at the Mena House Hotel involving Schiaparelli, Ludwig Borchardt (Steindorff's representative in Egypt), and Reisner.

 

Division of the West Field

By the turn of the 20th century, the three largest pyramids on the Giza plateau were considered mostly exhausted by previous excavations, so the Western Cemetery and its collection of private mastaba tombs were thought to represent the richest unexcavated part of the plateau. George Reisner's wife, Mary, drew names from a hat to assign three long east-west plots of the necropolis among the Italian, German, and American missions. Schiaparelli was assigned the southernmost strip, Borchardt the center, and Reisner the northernmost.

 

Division of the Pyramids

Rights to excavate the Pyramids were then also negotiated between Schiaparelli, Borchardt, and Reisner. Schiaparelli gained rights to excavate the Great Pyramid of Khufu along with its three associated queens' pyramids and most of its Eastern Cemetery. Borchardt received Khafre's pyramid, its causeway, the Sphinx, and the Sphinx's associated temples. Reisner claimed Menkaure's pyramid as well as its associated queens' pyramids and pyramid temple, along with a portion of Schiaparelli's Eastern Cemetery. Any future disputes were to be resolved by Inspector James Quibell, as per a letter from Borchardt to Maspero.

 

Immediate Aftermath

This arrangement lasted until 1905, when, under the supervision of Schiaparelli and Francesco Ballerini, the Italian excavations ceased at Giza. As the Italians were more interested in sites which might yield more papyri, they turned their concession of the southern strip of the Western Cemetery over to the Americans under Reisner.

 

Modern usage

In 1978, the Grateful Dead played a series of concerts later released as Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978. In 2007, Colombian singer Shakira performed at the complex to a crowd of approximately 100,000 people. The complex was used for the final draw of the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations and the 2021 World Men's Handball Championship.

 

Egypt's Minister of Tourism unveiled plans for a €17,000,000 revamp of the complex by the end of 2021, in order to boost tourism in Egypt as well as make the site more accessible and tourist-friendly. According to Lonely Planet, the refurbishment includes a new visitors' centre, an environmentally-friendly electric bus, a restaurant (the 9 Pyramids Lounge), as well as a cinema, public toilets, site-wide signage, food trucks, photo booths, and free Wi-Fi. The new facility is part of a wider plan to renovate the 4,500 year old site.

Two engineers Arif Sheikh (left) and and Haris Bin Khalid at the Foundation Wind Energy-I Limited (FWEL-I) wind power generation plant located in KhuttiKun New Island, Taluka Mirpur Sakro, Thatta District, Pakistan.

 

Read more on:

Pakistan

Energy

Foundation Wind Energy I And II Projects

Old Post Office Bldg, 7th Sts between F and G NW

 

Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American, the inventor of the Morse Code and a painter of portraits and historic scenes.

 

Early years

Samuel Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the first child of geographer and pastor Jedidiah Morse and Elizabeth Ann Breese Morse. After attending Phillips Academy as a child, he started attending college at 14. He devoted himself to art and became a pupil of Washington Allston, a well known American painter. While at Yale University, he attended lectures on electricity from Benjamin Silliman and Jeremiah Day. He earned money by painting portraits. In 1810, he graduated from Yale University. Morse later accompanied Allston to Europe in 1811.

 

Middle years

In 1832, Morse adopted magnetism to electromagnetic telegraphy, and a signaling alphabet known as Morse Code in his sketchbook during conversations with Dr. Charles Thomas Jackson. It was the concept of a binary code (only a long or a short signal) to represent letters that was his invention (or that of Alfred Vail). He did not invent the electromagnetic telegraph, but successfully won a trial on the ownership of the US Patent of his Morse Code. His fame stems from the success his Morse Code had inside and outside the USA.

 

Since Claude Chappe, telegraphs were being enhanced, though Chappe's invention of 1792 was an optical telegraph system that required many skilled workers progressing a signal combination from a post to the next. It was used throughout Europe. Although the electrical telegraph would probably not have been the sudden success it was without the Code by Samuel Morse, in 1837 he could never acknowledge not to have been the inventor of the electrical telegraph, after the successful electromagnetic telegraph by Carl Friedrich Gauß and Wilhelm Eduard Weber in Göttingen, 1833, and the invention of a needle telegraph by Carl August von Steinheil in München, Germany, in 1837, which both were discussed in the scientific magazines throughout Europe. Also, he did not understand electricity enough to build a prototype until 1836. Joseph Henry had built a prototype before Morse as well, working in what today is Princeton University. Henry also had scientific papers, which Morse could not produce even when he was sued--Morse vs. O'Reilly. During the patent trial, Morse's lawyer claimed that the scientific papers that Morse put in writing with his own hand, were burned in a recent fire. Joseph Henry was the open source promoter of the time and Morse took advantage of the openness and patented the devices in 1837.

 

When studying in Rome in 1830, he became acquainted with the Danish/Icelandic sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen; the two artists would sometimes take walks at night among the ancient ruins. Morse also painted Thorvaldsen's portrait. In the fall of 1835, Morse built and demonstrated a recording telegraph with a moving paper ribbon. At the beginning of 1836, Morse demonstrated his recording telegraph to Dr. Leonard Gale. Also in 1836, Morse ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York on a Nativist ticket, receiving 1,496 votes.

 

In 1836, Morse finished his first own working telegraph prototype. It used a one-element battery and a simple electromagnet. This prototype worked only over short distances of about 40 feet or less. In the winter of 1836-1837 Morse showed his prototype to Leonard Gale, professor of chemistry at New York University, where Morse taught painting. Gale was aware of the works of Joseph Henry on electromagnetic relays. Based on this knowledge Gale suggested several improvements and also urged Morse to read Henry's 1831 paper, which described these improvements. With these improvements Morse and Gale were able to record messages through ten miles of wire. In September of the same year, Alfred Vail, then student at New York University, witnessed a demonstration of Morse's telegraph. Vail's father Stephen Vail was a well-connected tinkerer, inventor, lawyer, community leader, and technology investor. He helped to finance the work on the telegraph.

 

In 1838, Morse changed the telegraphic cipher, from a telegraphic dictionary with number code to a code for each letter. Whether Alfred Vail was the actual inventor of this simpler code has been debated since the earliest days. According to much of the literature on the subject, Vail was indeed the actual inventor of the Code, although Morse and his descendants claimed otherwise. In any case, the code was named after Morse and continues to be known as Morse Code to this day.

 

On January 24, Morse demonstrated the telegraph to colleges. On February 8, 1838, Morse first publicly demonstrated his electric telegraph to a scientific committee at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (The first time it worked was on January 6). On February 21, Morse demonstrated the telegraph to President Martin Van Buren and his cabinet. Shortly afterwards, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Commerce chairman F. O. J. Smith of Maine became a partner with Morse and proposed a bill in Congress, which didn't pass, for a $30,000 telegraph line project.

 

Later years

In the 1850s, Morse went to Copenhagen and visited the Thorvaldsen Museum, where the sculptor's grave is in the inner courtyard. He was received by King Frederick VII, and he expressed his wish to donate his portrait from 1830 to the king. The Thorvaldsen portrait today belongs to Margaret II of Denmark.

 

In the 1860s, Morse became well-known as an active defender of America's institution of slavery, considering it to be divinely sanctioned.

 

Morse also at one time adopted Charles Wheatstone and Carl August von Steinheil's idea of broadcasting a telegraph signal through a body of water or down steel railroad tracks or anything conductive.

 

He died in April 1872 at his home at 5 West 22nd Street, New York, New York, at the age of eighty, and was buried in the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

 

Trivia

Morse invented a marble-cutting machine that could carve three dimensional sculptures in marble or stone. Morse couldn't patent it, however, because of an existing 1820 Thomas Blanchard design.

 

New York University's core curriculum and list of requirements is know as the Morse Academic Plan (MAP).

 

A letter to a friend describing the challenge of defending his patents. (1848).[1]

I have been so constantly under the necessity of watching the movements of the most unprincipled set of pirates I have ever known, that all my time has been occupied in defense, in putting evidence into something like legal shape that I am the inventor of the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph!! Would you have believed it ten years ago that a question could be raised on that subject?

 

Juanita E. Gray is shown at work in the Washington Navy Yard circa 1942.

 

Gray was initially hired as a helper at about $23 per week, but by the time the photo was taken was earning $45 per week in a more skilled position.

 

At the time of the photo, more than 300 black women had been trained by the National Youth Administration War Production and Training Center with more being added monthly.

 

Washington, D.C. had “Rosies” at the Washington Navy Yard with influxes of women beginning in World War I, though they were nearly all in clerical or cleaning-type jobs. However in World War II, more than 3,000 women were hired at the gun factory into semi-skilled and skilled work with yet another wave during the Korean War of the early 1950s.

 

These included black women who were initially hired in the lowest grade jobs. However, during World War II, black women trained through the National Youth Administration were brought on into semi-skilled positions with a few moving up into skilled work such as machinist.

 

Most women left these jobs after each war, but some stayed on and made careers at the Naval Gun Factory (NGF).

 

The following are excerpts from History of the Washington Navy Yard Civilian Workforce: 1799-1962, by John G. Sharp that traces the history of women at the NGF:

 

Women Enter the Workforce

 

During World War I (1917-1918), NGF expanded in size and ran twenty- four hours each day, seven days a week. Because of the acute wartime shortage of civilian workers, the Navy looked to women and created the Yeoman “F” (Female) rating.

 

This new rating allowed for the first time thousands of women to volunteer for the wartime service.

 

Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who created the Yeoman (F) rating, did so because it allowed the Navy to call up women specifically to relieve officers and men for sea duty, rather than as a substitute for male civilian employees who were serving in the armed forces.

 

This wartime experiment proved so successful that many women were kept on after the armistice as civilian employees.

 

Some like Nellie M. Stein and Ann Tapscott served as Yeoman (F) in the Naval Gun Factory for the duration of the war then immediately went to work as a civilian employee under the civil service as clerks in the same division. Tapscott later became a supervisor in the Accounting Department.

 

African –American women too began to enter the yard labor force during the war. Most of these new workers, such Mrs. Mabel Brown who began her 36 year career as a “Charwomen” (a title later changed to laborer), worked cleaning offices, laboratories and industrial spaces.

 

Their work was often hard and physically demanding, but the work was also steady and better compensated than most positions available to them in the private sector.

 

According to a memo in the Naval Records and Archives Administrations, Nellie Stein began her long federal career in 1912 as a Printers Assistant with the Government Printing Office. When war broke out, Stein volunteered for active duty as a Yeoman F and was stationed at the Naval Gun Factory.

 

After the Armistice, she was hired as “typewriter” at NGF. In 1932 Stein moved into the new Industrial Relations Division where she “constantly studied laws, directives, comptroller general decisions and books on personnel administration for 14 years.”

 

Stein and others like her often had to overcome a great deal of skepticism from her male supervisors and coworkers.

 

Here is one example of the challenges that Stein and other women faced in establishing a place for themselves in the Yard’s work force.

 

The memo stated, “Ordinarily the Personnel Officer would not recommend a Civil Service female employee to an administrative position. He would not so recommend women to be in complete charge of a division for he does not believe that women are emotionally equipped to meet the demands of such a position.”

 

Despite his considerable reservations, NGF’s Personnel Officer CDR. Davis did recommend Stein for the job and by the time of her retirement in 1948 Nellie Stein was NGF’s Assistant Personnel Officer (CAF-11), one of the highest graded positions at the factory.

 

By the 1920s, some factory organizations, such as the Accounting and Supply Departments, not only had large numbers of women but they in fact outnumbered men.

 

Women Ask for the Equal Pay

In 1919, the National Women’s Trade Union League asked Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, for the same pay as men working in the Yards.

 

The committee protested to the Secretary against rating women as seamstresses and flag makers in the Navy Yards at the pay of common laborers.

 

Sewing, the committee contented, was a skilled trade and none of the ratings for male skilled trades were as low. They also complained that seamstress and flag maker inspectors did not receive the same pay as men.

 

Despite this and other appeals, comparable pay did not become a reality for another four decades.

 

Women go to War at the Navy Yard and Gun Factory

 

WW II greatly expanded employment opportunities for women. While hundreds of thousands of men were being drafted into military service,

If vital war production was to continue, women were needed in the factories and offices.

 

In January 1943, Yard Commandant, Rear Admiral, Ferdinand L. Reichmuth invited the Washington press corps to tour the Yard. Here reporters from the two major papers could view first-hand the work that women were accomplishing at the Gun Factory and other locations.

 

This tour was the first time that the Yard had been opened to the press in over a year due to wartime security. Reporters were told there were now 1,400 female workers employed in ordnance manufacture. These new entrants ranged in age from 18 to 50.

 

They came from all walks of life having worked as housewives, dry-cleaners and laundry workers, beauticians, office workers, maids and one, Mrs. Arbutus Howlett, who was previously employed as a farmer.

 

As demand for labor grew NGF and other munitions producers advertised widely for Woman Ordnance Worker (WOW). The women working in ordnance production were classified into three grades: ordnance worker, ordnance operative and precision operative.

 

Entry-level pay was 57 cents per hour rising to a high of 108 cents per hour.

 

The world of the female employee was not free of stereotyping and bias. Most of these women worked long hours and also frequently worked Saturday and Sunday.

 

Captain J. R. Palmer, Production Officer, reflected some of the views of

the time, when he described the ideal female employee: “She is between 25 and 35 years of age, single and without local family connections.”

 

“She is a person who has to earn a living and is endowed with a natural mechanical bent and a high degree of adaptability. In her work-a-day world relationships with men in the shops she does not expect the small gallantries a man shows a woman in a social relationship.”

 

Captain Palmer went on to relate to the reporters: “Women are doing the work usually done by apprentices and some had sufficient skill to work as machinist.”

 

One top ranking officer summed up the contribution that female employees were making to the workforce as:

 

“These women are doing a grand job to win the war and win it as quickly as possible. They step into men’s places at the machines and keep them turning without a stop as the men go off to the fighting fronts. Today’s women workers at the Washington Navy Yard produce an ever growing flow of ordnance material.”

 

The Star reported the biggest problem for the new female workers was finding childcare.

 

One female reporter who actually worked in Gun Factory ordnance production took a more jaundiced view:

 

“Equal pay and promotions for women are one of the government standards of employment supported in writing by the Navy Department ....The Navy Yards themselves seem to be unaware of the fact; .... Navy Yard women start at $4.65 a day which with time and a half for the sixth day is $ 29.64 a week. Deduct the 20-percent withholding tax, and you find we luxuriate on $23 a week.”

 

“The highest pay women on production in our shop receive $6.95 a day, a peak she attained after two years of service at the yard. Men get as high as $22 a day.”

 

Many of the women working at the factory may have agreed with Mrs. Robert T. Withers, a milling machine operator in the Breech Mechanism Shop with over two years on the production line’s 4-12 shift: “I feel I am helping my husband and my country and keeping busy so that when this war is over I can be a housewife again.”

 

Women Ordnance Workers Once Again

 

The Korean War meant a heighten demand for NGF to increase munitions production. This combined with the loss of skilled workers to the reserve call-up motivated NGF to begin a serious effort to hire female ordnance workers. Starting in late 1950 NGF hired hundreds of women.

 

All of the new workers were given a two-week indoctrination course. Each new employee was provided practical shop training and instruction in how to operate the various machines and tools, how to read blue prints, and the use of measuring instruments.

 

Some like Mary L. Johnson had previous experience at NGF during WWII and were keen to return. “I worked here once before during the last war and I know something about the work. I honestly feel the work I am doing is important.”

 

Irene Hunter also had worked three years for NGF in World War II. She welcomed a chance to return, saying, “when I was notified that the NGF was hiring women to work on machines again, I quit my job with the picture company and came here. The work that I do is very exciting and takes steady nerves. I believe had I the opportunity, I would like to work here permanently.”

 

Kathleen Siggman, who previously had been a model, an assistant buyer of women’s apparel and worked in a private sector machine shop, was enthusiastic: “this is the best job I ever had!”

 

Daphene Dyer, a war bride from England, related; “I was born in England and spent the last war driving ambulances. That is why I could not go back to office work. I feel that the work I am doing here is essential for my new country and naturally I am anxious to do a job.”

 

In 1961, the last production runs were completed, shops were dismantled and cleaned, and forges and boilers banked. Over $200 million dollars of equipment such as machine tools, industrial cranes and barges were disposed of primarily to other government agencies.

 

By the beginning of 1962, NGF workers, who epitomized the rich heritage of the nation’s trade and craft traditions and who had served their country well in the all the major wars of the 20th century, said quiet goodbyes to their friends and shop mates.

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmLe4fB5

 

Photo by Roger Smith. The image is an Office of War Information photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress. The image was published in January 1943.

 

The embroidered clothing has been a very coveted form of clothing which the women of Pakistan like very much. The SME is a major source of supply for these kind of clothing and which made at various in-house facilities and where the workers prepare these stuff. The development of clothing involves great hardship and very minutely the activity is performed by the KARIGARS (skilled workers) of this industry.

    

The occasion of wedding is the even which is specially considered for wearing the kind of clothing when and where the brides chose different colors and varieties of designs of embroidered clothing.

Photo, c. 1887 of the Finlay Ross home at 821 North Waco Avenue in Wichita, KS. This residence is confirmed to have been built by William Henry Sternberg (1832 - 1906) and many of

Sternberg's design influences can be seen in this home. Sternberg was the leading designer and builder of fine homes such as this one in the Wichita area in the last quarter century of the 1800s. Finlay Ross was a prominent businessman in Wichita and later on became Mayor of Wichita during which time he established Riverside Park - ever popular today. While headquartered in Wichita KS, Sternberg did branch out and build fine homes and buildings throughout southern Kansas and Missouri. To wit, in the late 1800s, Sternberg built the original limestone City Hall in Springfield MO (now the Greene County Historical Museum), still standing today and on the National Register of Historic Places.

 

Sternberg was a highly skilled and popular builder during Wichita’s boom years of the 1870s and 1880s. Mr. Sternberg came to Kansas from New York in 1875. He grew up on a family farm in Norwich, New York helping his father in the family saw mill, felling and hauling trees, cutting lumber, woodworking and working as a carpenter on local homes and buildings. As years passed and Sternberg continued working as a contractor and a carpenter, his skills in building grew and he became well-known throughout New York State for his elegant and innovative building designs, his integrity, work quality and prudent approach to costs. People far and wide knew of his reputation for quality and knew him as a fair man in his dealings with customers. Partly as a result of his reputation for being a fair and honest man, he was elected Mayor of Norwich for a period of several years. Although comfortable with his life in New York, Mr. Sternberg increasingly heard about Wichita, Kansas ~ a rapidly growing nucleus on the plains. Indeed the growth bubble (from the late 1870’s until about 1890) was so significant that Wichita was by some estimates the fastest growing city in the country. At one point, the absolute value of real estate transactions in Wichita ranked it the third highest in the nation in terms of dollars transacted. This was behind only New York City and Kansas City! People were speculating on land and buildings and making handsome profits in return.

 

“In the first five months of 1887 real estate transactions

totaled $34,893,565 according to Dunn and Bradstreet’s

reports. Wichita was third in the nation in total real estate

transactions. Only New York and Kansas City were ahead

of Wichita (in terms of volume). Chicago was fourth having

$33,173,950 in transactions.”

 

However... in terms of the dollar value PER CAPITA (dollars per person), Wichita was first in the nation for a period of several years in the mid-late 1880s. New York and Kansas City had much larger populations than Wichita to produce a higher absolute volume of real estate transactions. But their dollar volumes per capita were in fact lower than Wichita, KS. With its new found wealth, Wichita was progressive in its early days and news of its budding wealth traveled the country. Evidence of its progressive spirit was noted with much fanfare on May 23, 1873 when Wichita’s first regularly-scheduled electrified street cars (trolley cars) began shuttling people between the bustling downtown and the outskirts of the city. Three years later, Wichita installed several hundred nighttime electric street lamps throughout downtown, while still retaining some of its existing gas and “vapor” lamps. And in the Spring of 1883, Wichita's new underground water system with 60 fire hydrants spread throughout the City was tested, on-line and ready-to-go. One of the things Wichita did with this wealth is invest in public systems and buildings to the tune of over ten million dollars per year in some years in the 1880s. This was W.H. Sternberg's hey-day. Impressive buildings were going up... literally as fast as they could possibly build. Between July 1, 1886 and June 30, 1887 almost 3,000 new completed structures were erected in Wichita and all of this with a population of only about 12,000.

 

Spying an opportunity for building, Mr. Sternberg moved his family to Wichita in 1875 and after only a few months, was successfully bidding contracts, hiring workers and constructing buildings at a frenzied pace. The economic bubble of Wichita in the 1880s was perhaps the most dynamic growth spurt of any city in American history. Wealth sprung up practically overnight and people such as: C.N. Lewis, Albert. W. Oliver (Businessman), Aaron Katz (Merchant), Mark J. Oliver (Atty), Hiram Imboden (Businessman), M.W. Levy (Bank President), Peter Getto (Capitalist), Reuben H. Roys (Atty), Finlay Ross (Mayor & Businessman), William H. Whitman, Jacob Henry Aley (Businessman), Robert E. Gutherie, J.R. Van Zandt (prominent businessman), George Pratt (lumber baron), Charles W. Bitting (prominent Businessman), Alfred W. Bitting (Prominent Businessman), Judge James L. Dyer (Judge), Charles M Jones, Dr. G.E. McAdams (physician), Capt. Charles Smyth, Dr. J. Russell (physician), Kos Harris (Atty), William Greiffenstein (Mayor), Russell Harding (Railroad Superintendent), Ben Aldrich (Mayor & prominent businessman) and many others... displayed their newly found wealth by building palatial mansions of the highest quality and most extraordinary craftsmanship. When Wichita’s well-to-do wanted homes or buildings, W.H. Sternberg was the builder of choice by a wide margin. The 1888 book, Portrait and Biographical Album of Sedgwick County, Kansas (Chapman Brothers; Chicago, 1888) in which Sternberg is noted states about him,

 

“Ninety brick stores in Wichita stand as monuments of

his skill and industry, besides numberless other

buildings, probably twice as many as have been put

up by any other contractor in the city.”

 

Not long after coming to Wichita, Mr. Sternberg used a marketing approach – common today, but relatively unheard of at the time, called a “spec home”. The spec home he built was his own home and it was a huge 7,500 sq. ft. showcase home that contained virtually every ornamental and stylish feature that he and his crews could muster. He located his home on the most elite street in Wichita at the time ~ Waco Avenue ("Waco Street" as it was then and "Waco Avenue" as it was to become). Before Waco became the “elite street” of Wichita, city planners named it “Waco Street”. As elegant mansions continued to appear on Waco, property owners in this well-dressed district became dissatisfied with the designation of “Street” and so local residents petitioned the City to officially have the name changed to “Avenue” to be more in keeping with the fashionable tone of the neighborhood. Today, the official name of Waco is still "Waco Avenue". Mr. Sternberg reckoned that showcasing the capabilities and ornate building skills of the construction trade would draw customers to him, and it proved to be a very successful technique. Even back in 1886 when he completed his Victorian gingerbread mansion people acknowledged it was something extraordinary. His worthy showcase mansion was written up in the newspapers as well as the 1888 Portrait and Biographical Album of Sedgwick, County, Kansas as follows,

 

“The residence of Mr. Sternberg, a handsome and costly structure,

is beautifully located on a rise of ground commanding a fine view

of its surroundings. Within and without it bears the evidence of

refined tastes and ample means, and it is universally admired

by all who have occasion to pass it.”

 

Even before the Sternberg’s mansion was finished, people were remarking about it as the September 6, 1886 edition of the Wichita Beacon commented,

 

“Mr. Sternberg is building for his own use a fine residence

on the corner of 10th and Waco Streets. Judging by the

foundation it will be one of the largest and finest in the city.”

 

Within weeks after finishing his home at 1065 North Waco Avenue, Mr. Sternberg was flooded with requests to build other fine mansions for Wichita’s “polite society”. And in 1887 and 1888, Sternberg and his crews built first-class mansions and buildings all over Wichita as quickly as they could. Sternberg was one of the largest employers in Wichita with a skilled crew of approximately 40 full-time persons working at various locations.

 

Sternberg set precedence in building design at a time when style and social status was everything and people had the money (and the willingness) to express it. Sternberg (unlike other builders of the day) built custom features into his homes that allowed the occupants to enjoy their home more. In addition to an extensive use of smaller more intimate porches in his homes and particularly romantic highly corbelled chimney flues, Sternberg was also the first builder in Wichita to construct a very practical laundry chute into a home (the first home in Wichita to have a laundry chute was the Pratt house at 1313 North Emporia). The idea of such a feature so that people didn’t have to climb up and down stairs was new and unheard of in 1887, but Sternberg believed a home should be both beautiful and comfortable. It was new and trend-setting features such laundry chutes, ornate porches and his ability to create exceptional milled gingerbread work that brought acclaim and respect to Sternberg. Other builders simply didn’t offer such features, and most didn’t have the expertise to do so. In New York state where Sternberg grew up and worked for many years before coming to Wichita, he is credited with being the first person to build a Mansard-style roof. The concept was made popular at the 1850’s World's Fair in Paris . A mansard roof is a French style that allows more unencumbered space on the attic level than a traditional pitched roof does. Although not an architect by training, Sternberg often had considerable input into the design and layout of the homes he built. Many of his customers, unaware of the need for an architect at the time when deciding to building a house, would contact Sternberg first when they wanted to build and then it was Sternberg who would usually contact an architect of his choice and advise the architect on what the home-owner wanted and could afford. Sternberg was the first recorded builder to use an “outside” (New York) architect purely for style and design in upscale an upscale Wichita residence. That residence designed by both Stanford White and William Sternberg and built by Sternberg was the Charles R. Miller residence at 509 S. Lawrence Rd (now Broadway). Miller affectionately chistened the home, "Lyndhurst". Stanford White although building a national reputation would a few years later would receive national acclaim for his designs including Madison Square Garden in New York and homes for the ultra wealthy in Newport RI and New York. The design and construction of this Sternberg-built home that Stanford White-designed was eye-catching and charming to Wichitans of the day and the local Wichita Beacon in April 18, 1883 commented about the house,

 

“It will be of brick, 40 x 44 feet in area, with basement

eight feet, two stories above that, and a ten foot mansard

attic. The basement will be used for a steam heater,

laundry, coal, etc. The facades will be broken by swells,

bay windows and porches. It will be one of the finest

in southern Kansas.”

 

Obviously, Sternberg felt that for some exceptional projects, local architects were not up to the task, and Sternberg liked the press attention. What's more and another “first” for Sternberg is that he was the only builder during the 1870s-1880s working in Wichita to have also built major public and private buildings in at least two other states. In addition, he’s the only builder during Wichita’s boom period to have his works from three states (Kansas Missouri and New York) listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Additionally his 30 years of experience in the lumber business grading qualities of woods and knowing the particular characteristics of various woods allowed Sternberg to build with exceptional quality. Arguably he was the highest quality builder and most highly skilled builder of the day in Wichita. An article from November 2, 1969 in the Eagle-Beacon newspaper noted the quality of the Sternberg Mansion,

 

“It was built to last with joists

of 2 by 8-inch timbers, and wood-

work of pine so hard it will not take

a regular nail and one interior

wall that is 15 inches thick.”

 

In all W. H. Sternberg built well over 100 buildings and homes in Wichita alone after coming in 1875. Other homes and buildings he is known to have built before coming to Wichita include: (1) the Methodist Church in Guilford, New York, (2) the Chenango County Poor House in Norwich, New York, (3) the Methodist Episcopal Church in Norwich, New York at a cost of $47,000, he later completed the beautiful case inside this church for the church organ, (4) the residence of Charles Merritt in Norwich, New York at a cost of $35,000, (5) the store of John O. Hill & Co. at a cost of $23,000, (6) the residence of Warren Newton in New York and (7) “an elegant mansion for himself” which had the first mansard roof in the town.

 

Mr. Sternberg was a remarkable man. In 1888, Chapman Brothers in Chicago, Illinois printed an expensive first-class volume of notable persons in Sedgwick County, Kansas ~ a sort of “Who’s Who” of the time. The book, entitled “Portrait and Biographical Album of Sedgwick County, Kan.” Contained “Full Page Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens of the County together with Portraits and biographies of all the governors of Kansas, and of the Presidents of the United States.” Mr. Sternberg is listed on pages 190 – 191 in the Album. His biography notes:

 

“William H. Sternberg, who is one of the prominent citizens

of Wichita, arrived here in time to assist in the building up of

the town, the growth of which has been phenomenal. He has

been one of the most interested witnesses of its progress

and development, and no unimportant factor in bringing it to

its present proud position. As a man of influence, public

spirit and liberal, this brief record of his history will be more

than ordinarily interesting to those who are identified in any

way with the business or industrial interests of one of the

leading cities of the West.”

 

In addition the biography noted that,

 

“Ninety brick stores in Wichita stand as monuments of

his skill and industry, besides numberless other

buildings, probably twice as many as have been

put up by any other contractor in the city.”

 

And as always, whatever the job, W. H. Sternberg was noted for work of the finest quality and expertise. Mr. Sternberg had a reputation for only hiring the best workers which sometimes was hard to do as the building boom created quite a shortage of workers, never-the-less, he was known for the fact that he and “his workmen should be persons of the highest skill and reliability.” In 1888, just two years after Sternberg personally built and constructed his own “showcase” mansion for himself, it was written up in the Portrait and Biographical Album as though it was undeniably a special residence in Wichita . . . .

 

“The residence of Mr. Sternberg, a handsome and costly

structure is beautifully located on a rise of ground

commanding a fine view of its surroundings. Within and

without it bears the evidence of refined tastes and ample

means, and is universally admired by all who have

occasion to pass it.”

 

Today, historical authorities who know the Sternberg Mansion lay accolades on it for its style, its authentic representation of Victorian influence, its extreme ornamentation and its first-rate quality throughout. It has appeared in numerous books, magazines and approximately 30 different newspaper articles over the past 125 years. The following is an excerpt from the City of Wichita’s Historic Landmark website (www.wichitagov.org/Residents/History/Listing51-60) about the Sternberg Mansion:

 

“William H. Sternberg, a prominent builder during Wichita's

economic boom days of the 1880's built his own resi-

dence in 1886, incorporating the Victorian penchant

for "gingerbread" millwork with this extravagantly gabled

Queen Anne-styled home. This house is one of a few

remaining homes of this elaborate style in the city and

is regarded as a quintessential product of the late

Queen Anne residential design and stylistic features.

From its native stone foundation to the four corbelled

brick chimneys with their decorative flues, the house

served as a showcase for the builder's trade including

colored glass window panes, stained glass windows in

the ornate stairway, several fireplaces and combination

gas/electric chandeliers. The two and one-half story

residence also has porches projecting from each of

the three main elevations.”

 

A quote in the Wichita Eagle-Beacon from Wichita’s Historic Preservation Officer, Marian Cone on April 10, 1977 stated about the mansion,

 

“The Sternberg Mansion…is unusual in that its

eclectic style incorporates all the elements Stern-

berg could fabricate…Sternberg used his own

home as a sort of ‘model home,’ a tangible ex-

ample of his expertise for prospective customers…

it is the only remaining Queen Anne-style man-

sion of its size in the city and it is a magnificent

example of architecture…The use of exterior

wood in patterns is most unusual as are the var-

iations of the use of colored and plain glass.

The leaded and stained glass windows on the

landing of the very ornate staircase are most

unusual in that they are of a geometric pattern

not common until the 1920s.”

 

Yet another article about the Sternberg Mansion in the Eagle-Beacon in November 16, 1976 states,

 

“The house, built in 1886 by William H. Stern-

berg, one of Wichita’s foremost builders during

the city’s early boom days, is the only remaining

Queen Anne style mansion of this size in the city.

It is seen as a magnificent example of Victorian

architecture, with most of the original detailing

and gingerbread on the exterior, a large walnut

staircase, wood paneling, and four fireplaces.”

 

And Mr. Sternberg located his first-rate mansion in Wichita’s finest district at the time (on Waco Avenue). Yet another article appearing in the Wichita Evening Eagle on August 3, 1933 comments,

 

“in the early ‘70s (1870s)…Waco avenue was

‘the elite’ street. Waco avenue in the very early

day was considered to be the best residential street

and many believed that when the city grew large it

would be the choice residence district of the city.”

 

Indeed, W. H. Sternberg was an extraordinary person in Wichita at a time when the rest of the country was curiously taking note of this fast-growing prairie town. His work as a contractor, his involvement in civic groups, his reputation for doing the highest quality work possible, his reputation for being hard-working and fair to all, his diligence to hire only the most highly skilled workers, his generosity to lesser causes and his pioneering ideas in building style and function bestowed to the people of Wichita and beyond an authentic Victorian legacy to be enjoyed by all for generations to come.

 

Your comments, thoughts, stories, ideas and/or additional information about this photo or this place are welcomed and appreciated!!

 

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

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

  

Some Background:

The Ki-38 fighter was designed by the Tachikawa Aircraft Company Limited (立川飛行機株式会社, Tachikawa Hikōki Kabushiki Kaisha) near Tokyo, an aircraft manufacturer in the Empire of Japan, specializing primarily in aircraft for the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force. The Ki-38 prototype was produced in response to a December 1937 specification for a successor to the popular fixed-gear Nakajima Ki-27 Nate. The specification called for a top speed of 500 km/h (310 mph), a climb rate of 5,000 m (16,000 ft) in five minutes and a range of 800 km (500 mi). Maneuverability was to be at least as good as that of Ki-27.

 

When first flown in early January 1939, the Ki-38 prototype was a disappointment. Japanese test pilots complained that it was less maneuverable than the Ki-27 Nate and not much faster. Even though the competition was eventually won by the Ki-43, service trials determined the aircraft to hold sufficient promise to warrant further work, leading to the adoption of an expanded and strengthened wing and a more refined Mitsubishi Ha-102 (Army Type 100 1,050hp Air Cooled Radial) 14-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine. During spring 1939, following the completion of further proving trials, an order for a pre-production batch of 25 aircraft was placed.

 

As a whole, the Ki-38 was an all-modern design consisting of all-metal skin and understructure construction with low-set monoplane wing appendages. The wings were straight in their general design with rounded tips and set well-forward of amidships. The engine was fitted to the extreme forward section of the fuselage in a traditional manner, powering a three-bladed propeller installation. Interestingly, the cockpit was also situated well-forward in the design, shortening the visual obstacle that was the engine compartment to some extent. However, views were still obstructed by the short engine housing to the front and the wings to the lower sides. The fuselage tapered at the rear to which a single vertical tail fin was affixed along with mid-mounted horizontal tailplanes. The undercarriage was retractable and of the "tail-dragger" arrangement consisting of two main single-wheeled landing gear legs and a fixed, diminutive tail wheel leg at the rear.

 

The series-production Ki-38-I was further modified to enhance its performance. These changes involved a major weight saving program, a slimmer and longer fuselage with bigger tail surfaces and a new, more streamlined bubble-style canopy that offered, even while bearing many struts, the pilot a very good all-round field of view.

 

In addition to good maneuverability, the Ki-38-I had a good top speed of more than 500 km/h (310 mph). The initial Ki-38 was armed with four 7.7 mm (0.303 in) Type 89 machine guns in the wings, but this soon turned out to be insufficient against armored Allied fighters and bombers. Quickly, the inner pair of weapons was, after just 50 aircraft, replaced with 12.7 mm (0.50 in) Ho-103 machine guns in the Ki-38-Ib (the initial version subsequently became the Ki-38-Ia), of which 75 were built. On board of the following Ki-38-Ic, the inner weapons were replaced with a pair of even heavier and more effective 20 mm (0.787 in) Ho-5 cannon, which required fairings for the ammunition under the wings and made this version easy to identify. The Ki-38-Ic became the most frequent variant, with 150 examples built.

 

All types also featured external hardpoints for a drop tank under the fuselage or a pair of bombs of up to 250 kg (550 lb) caliber under the wings. Late production aircraft were designated Ki-38-II. The pilot enjoyed a slightly taller canopy and a reflector gunsight in place of the earlier telescopic gunsight. The revised machines were also fitted with a 13 mm (0.51 in) armor plate for the pilot's head and back, and the aircraft's fuel tanks were coated in rubber to form a crude self-sealing tank. This was later replaced by a 3-layer rubber bladder, 8mm core construction, with 2mm oil-proof lamination. Some earlier aircraft were retrofitted with these elements, when available to the field workshops, and they dramatically improved the aircraft’s resilience to enemy fire. However, the bladder proved to be highly resistant only against light 7.7 mm (0.303 in) bullets but was not as effective against larger calibers. The Ki-38-II’s armament was the same as the Ki-38-Ic’s and 120 aircraft were built.

 

Ki-38 production started in November 1939 at the Tachikawa Hikoki KK and at the 1st Army Air Arsenal (Tachikawa Dai-Ichi Rikugun Kokusho) plants, also at Tachikawa. Although Tachikawa Hikoki successfully managed to enter into large-scale production of the Ki-38, the 1st Army Air Arsenal was less successful – hampered by a shortage of skilled workers, it was ordered to stop production after 49 Ki-38 were built, and Tachikawa ceased production of the Ki-38 altogether in favor of the Ki-43 in mid-1944.

 

Once it was identified and successfully distinguished from the IJA’s new Ki-43 “Oscar” and the IJN’s A6M “Zero” (Oscar), which both had very similar outlines, the Ki-38 received the Allied code name “Brad”. Even though it was not produced in the numbers of the Ki-43 or the A6M, the Ki-38 fought in China, Burma, the Malay Peninsula, New Guinea, the Philippines, South Pacific islands and the Japanese home islands. Like the Oscar and the Zero, the Ki-38 initially enjoyed air superiority in the skies of Malaya, Netherlands East Indies, Burma and New Guinea. This was partly due to the better performance of the Brad and partly due to the relatively small numbers of combat-ready Allied fighters, mostly the Curtiss P-36 Hawk, Curtiss P-40, Brewster Buffalo, Hawker Hurricane and Curtiss-Wright CW-21 in Asia and the Pacific during the first months of the war.

 

As the war progressed, however, the fighter suffered from the same weaknesses as its slower, fixed-gear Ki-27 "Nate" predecessor and the more advanced naval A6M Zero: light armor and less-than-effective self-sealing fuel tanks, which caused high casualties in combat. Its armament of four light machine guns also proved inadequate against the more heavily armored Allied aircraft. Both issues were more or less mended with improved versions, but the Ki-38 could never keep up with the enemy fighters’ development and potential. And as newer Allied aircraft were introduced, the Japanese were forced into a defensive war and most aircraft were flown by inexperienced pilots.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 8.96 m (29 ft 4 in)

Wingspan: 10.54 m (34 ft 7 in)

Height: 3.03 m (9 ft 11 in)

Wing area: 17.32 m² (186.4 sq ft)

Empty weight: 2,158 kg (4,758 lb)

Gross weight: 2,693 kg (5,937 lb)

Max takeoff weight: 2,800 kg (6,173 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1× Mitsubishi Ha-102 14-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine with 1,050hp (755 kW),

driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller

 

Performance

Maximum speed: 509 km/h (316 mph, 275 kn)

Cruise speed: 450 km/h (280 mph, 240 kn)

Range: 600 km (370 mi, 320 nmi)

Service ceiling: 10,000 m (33,000 ft)

Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,600 ft) in 3 minutes 24 seconds

Wing loading: 155.4 kg/m2 (31.8 lb/sq ft)

Power/mass: 0.182 hp/lb (0.299 kW/kg)

 

Armament:

2× 20 mm (0.787 in) Ho-5 cannon with 150 rpg

2× 7.7 mm (0.303 in) Type 89 machine guns with 500 rpg

2× underwing hardpoints for single 30 kg (66 lb) or 2 × 250 kg (550 lb) bombs

1× ventral hardpoint for a 200 l (53 US gal; 44 imp gal) drop tank

  

The kit and its assembly:

I always thought that the French Bloch MB 150 had some early WWII Japanese look to it, and with this idea I recently procured a relatively cheap Heller kit for this conversion project that would yield the purely fictional Tachikawa Ki-38 for the IJA – even though the Ki-38 existed as a Kawasaki project and eventually became the Ki-45, so that the 38 as kitai number was never actively used.

 

The Heller MB 150 is a vintage kit, and it is not a good one. You get raised panel lines, poor details (the engine is a joke) and mediocre fit. If you want a good MB 150 in 1:72, look IMHO elsewhere.

For the Ki-38 I wanted to retain most of the hull, the first basic change was the integration of a cowling from a Japanese Mitsubishi Ha-102 two-row radial (left over from an Airfix Ki-46 “Dinah”), which also received a new three-blade propeller with a different spinner on a metal axis inside. The engine also received some more interior details, even though the spinner blocks most sight.

 

The next, more radical move was to replace the MB 150’s spinal cockpit fairing with a bubble canopy and a lowered back – I found a very old and glue-tinted canopy from a Matchbox A6M in the spares box, and it turned out to be very suitable for the Ki-38. However, cleaning the clear piece was quite challenging, because all raised struts had to be sanded away to get rid of the old glue and paint residues, and re-polishing it back to a more or less translucent state took several turns with ever finer sandpaper, polishing paste and soft polishing mops on a mini drill. The spine was re-created with 2C-putty and the canopy was blended into it and into the fuselage with several PSR turns.

 

Inside, I used a different pilot figure (which would later be hard to see, though), added a fuel tank behind the seat with some supporting struts and inserted a piece of styrene sheet to separate the landing gear well from the cockpit – OOB it’s simply open.

The landing gear was basically taken OOB, I just replaced the original tail skid with a wheel and modified the wheels with hub covers, because the old kit wants you to push them onto long axis’ with knobs at their tips so that they remain turnable. Meh!

The fairings under the guns in the wings (barrels scratched from the MB 150’s OOB parts) are conformal underwing fuel tanks from a late Seafire (Special Hobby kit).

  

Painting and markings:

The initial plan was a simple green/grey IJA livery, but the model looked SO much like an A6M that I rather decided to give it a more elaborate paint scheme. I eventually found an interesting camouflage on a Mitsubishi Ki-51 “Sonia” attack plane, even though without indications concerning its unit, time frame or theater of operations (even though I assume that it was used in the China-Burma-India theater): an overall light grey base, onto which opaque green contrast fields/stripes had been added, and the remaining light grey upper areas were overpainted with thin sinuous lines of the same green. This was adapted onto the Ki-38 with a basis in Humbrol 167 (RAF Barley Grey) and FS 34102 (Humbrol 117) for the green cammo. I also wanted to weather the model considerably, as a measure to hide some hardware flaws, so that a partial “primer coat” with Aluminum (Revell 99) was added to several areas, to shine through later. The yellow ID markings on the wings’ leading edges were painted with Humbrol 69. The propeller blades were painted with Humbrol 180, the spinner in a slightly lighter mix of 180 and 160.

Interior surfaces were painted with a dull yellowish green, a mix of Revell 16 and 42, just the inside of the landing gear covers became grey as the outside, in a fashion very similar to early Ki-43s.

 

The decals came form various sources, including a Hasegawa Ki-61 sheet for the unit markings and some stencils and hinomaru in suitable sizes from a generic roundel sheet.

 

Some dry-brushing with light grey was done to emphasize edges and details, and some soot stains were added with graphite to the exhausts and the guns. Finally, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish, some more dry-brushing with aluminum was done, esp. around the cockpit, and position lights were added with translucent paint.

  

An unexpected result – I was not prepared that the modified MB 150 looks THAT much like a Mitsubishi A6M or the Ki-43! There’s even an Fw 190-ish feel to it, from certain angles. O.K., the canopy actually comes from a Zero and the cowling looks very similar, too. But the overall similarity is baffling, just the tail is the most distinguishing feature! However, due to the poor basis and the almost blind canopy donor, the model is far from stellar or presentable – but some in-flight shots look pretty convincing, and even the camouflage appears to be quite effective over wooded terrain.

Juanita Gray is shown at the National Youth Administration War Production and Training Center in Washington, D.C. circa 1942.

 

Twenty year old Miss Juanita E. Gray of 226 59th Street NE, Washington, D.C. was working as a domestic when she heard about the local training center.

 

With uncertain earnings which sometimes drop as low as $4.50 a week, she decided to register for NYA training. Mrs. Lela M. Richmond and Mrs. Sadie M. Franklin enrolled her at the center.

 

After graduation she would go onto work at the Navy Yard, initially at $4.50 per day as a helper (5 times what she earned sometimes as a domestic) before moving into skilled work that paid $45 per week.

 

Washington, D.C. had “Rosies” at the Washington Navy Yard with influxes of women beginning in World War I, though they were nearly all in clerical or cleaning-type jobs. However in World War II, more than 3,000 women were hired at the gun factory into semi-skilled and skilled work with yet another wave during the Korean War of the early 1950s.

 

These included black women who were initially hired in the lowest grade jobs. However, during World War II, black women trained through the National Youth Administration were brought on into semi-skilled positions with a few moving up into skilled work such as machinist.

 

Most women left these jobs after each war, but some stayed on and made careers at the Naval Gun Factory (NGF)

 

The following are excerpts from History of the Washington Navy Yard Civilian Workforce: 1799-1962, by John G. Sharp that traces the history of women at the NGF:

 

Women Enter the Workforce

 

During World War I (1917-1918), NGF expanded in size and ran twenty- four hours each day, seven days a week. Because of the acute wartime shortage of civilian workers, the Navy looked to women and created the Yeoman “F” (Female) rating.

 

This new rating allowed for the first time thousands of women to volunteer for the wartime service.

 

Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who created the Yeoman (F) rating, did so because it allowed the Navy to call up women specifically to relieve officers and men for sea duty, rather than as a substitute for male civilian employees who were serving in the armed forces.

 

This wartime experiment proved so successful that many women were kept on after the armistice as civilian employees.

 

Some like Nellie M. Stein and Ann Tapscott served as Yeoman (F) in the Naval Gun Factory for the duration of the war then immediately went to work as a civilian employee under the civil service as clerks in the same division. Tapscott later became a supervisor in the Accounting Department.

 

African –American women too began to enter the yard labor force during the war. Most of these new workers, such Mrs. Mabel Brown who began her 36 year career as a “Charwomen” (a title later changed to laborer), worked cleaning offices, laboratories and industrial spaces.

 

Their work was often hard and physically demanding, but the work was also steady and better compensated than most positions available to them in the private sector.

 

According to a memo in the Naval Records and Archives Administrations, Nellie Stein began her long federal career in 1912 as a Printers Assistant with the Government Printing Office. When war broke out, Stein volunteered for active duty as a Yeoman F and was stationed at the Naval Gun Factory.

 

After the Armistice, she was hired as “typewriter” at NGF. In 1932 Stein moved into the new Industrial Relations Division where she “constantly studied laws, directives, comptroller general decisions and books on personnel administration for 14 years.”

 

Stein and others like her often had to overcome a great deal of skepticism from her male supervisors and coworkers.

 

Here is one example of the challenges that Stein and other women faced in establishing a place for themselves in the Yard’s work force.

 

The memo stated, “Ordinarily the Personnel Officer would not recommend a Civil Service female employee to an administrative position. He would not so recommend women to be in complete charge of a division for he does not believe that women are emotionally equipped to meet the demands of such a position.”

 

Despite his considerable reservations, NGF’s Personnel Officer CDR. Davis did recommend Stein for the job and by the time of her retirement in 1948 Nellie Stein was NGF’s Assistant Personnel Officer (CAF-11), one of the highest graded positions at the factory.

 

By the 1920s, some factory organizations, such as the Accounting and Supply Departments, not only had large numbers of women but they in fact outnumbered men.

 

Women Ask for the Equal Pay

 

In 1919, the National Women’s Trade Union League asked Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, for the same pay as men working in the Yards.

 

The committee protested to the Secretary against rating women as seamstresses and flag makers in the Navy Yards at the pay of common laborers.

 

Sewing, the committee contented, was a skilled trade and none of the ratings for male skilled trades were as low. They also complained that seamstress and flag maker inspectors did not receive the same pay as men.

 

Despite this and other appeals, comparable pay did not become a reality for another four decades.

 

Women go to War at the Navy Yard and Gun Factory

 

WW II greatly expanded employment opportunities for women. While hundreds of thousands of men were being drafted into military service,

If vital war production was to continue, women were needed in the factories and offices.

 

In January 1943, Yard Commandant, Rear Admiral, Ferdinand L. Reichmuth invited the Washington press corps to tour the Yard. Here reporters from the two major papers could view first-hand the work that women were accomplishing at the Gun Factory and other locations.

 

This tour was the first time that the Yard had been opened to the press in over a year due to wartime security. Reporters were told there were now 1,400 female workers employed in ordnance manufacture. These new entrants ranged in age from 18 to 50.

 

They came from all walks of life having worked as housewives, dry-cleaners and laundry workers, beauticians, office workers, maids and one, Mrs. Arbutus Howlett, who was previously employed as a farmer.

 

As demand for labor grew NGF and other munitions producers advertised widely for Woman Ordnance Worker (WOW). The women working in ordnance production were classified into three grades: ordnance worker, ordnance operative and precision operative.

 

Entry-level pay was 57 cents per hour rising to a high of 108 cents per hour.

 

The world of the female employee was not free of stereotyping and bias. Most of these women worked long hours and also frequently worked Saturday and Sunday.

 

Captain J. R. Palmer, Production Officer, reflected some of the views of

the time, when he described the ideal female employee: “She is between 25 and 35 years of age, single and without local family connections.”

 

“She is a person who has to earn a living and is endowed with a natural mechanical bent and a high degree of adaptability. In her work-a-day world relationships with men in the shops she does not expect the small gallantries a man shows a woman in a social relationship.”

 

Captain Palmer went on to relate to the reporters: “Women are doing the work usually done by apprentices and some had sufficient skill to work as machinist.”

 

One top ranking officer summed up the contribution that female employees were making to the workforce as:

“These women are doing a grand job to win the war and win it as quickly as possible. They step into men’s places at the machines and keep them turning without a stop as the men go off to the fighting fronts. Today’s women workers at the Washington Navy Yard produce an ever growing flow of ordnance material.”

 

The Star reported the biggest problem for the new female workers was finding childcare.

 

One female reporter who actually worked in Gun Factory ordnance production took a more jaundiced view:

 

“Equal pay and promotions for women are one of the government standards of employment supported in writing by the Navy Department ....The Navy Yards themselves seem to be unaware of the fact; .... Navy Yard women start at $4.65 a day which with time and a half for the sixth day is $ 29.64 a week. Deduct the 20-percent withholding tax, and you find we luxuriate on $23 a week.”

 

“The highest pay women on production in our shop receive $6.95 a day, a peak she attained after two years of service at the yard. Men get as high as $22 a day.”

 

Many of the women working at the factory may have agreed with Mrs. Robert T. Withers, a milling machine operator in the Breech Mechanism Shop with over two years on the production line’s 4-12 shift: “I feel I am helping my husband and my country and keeping busy so that when this war is over I can be a housewife again.”

 

Women Ordnance Workers Once Again

 

The Korean War meant a heighten demand for NGF to increase munitions production. This combined with the loss of skilled workers to the reserve call-up motivated NGF to begin a serious effort to hire female ordnance workers. Starting in late 1950 NGF hired hundreds of women.

 

All of the new workers were given a two-week indoctrination course. Each new employee was provided practical shop training and instruction in how to operate the various machines and tools, how to read blue prints, and the use of measuring instruments.

 

Some like Mary L. Johnson had previous experience at NGF during WWII and were keen to return. “I worked here once before during the last war and I know something about the work. I honestly feel the work I am doing is important.”

 

Irene Hunter also had worked three years for NGF in World War II. She welcomed a chance to return, saying, “when I was notified that the NGF was hiring women to work on machines again, I quit my job with the picture company and came here. The work that I do is very exciting and takes steady nerves. I believe had I the opportunity, I would like to work here permanently.”

 

Kathleen Siggman, who previously had been a model, an assistant buyer of women’s apparel and worked in a private sector machine shop, was enthusiastic: “this is the best job I ever had!”

 

Daphene Dyer, a war bride from England, related; “I was born in England and spent the last war driving ambulances. That is why I could not go back to office work. I feel that the work I am doing here is essential for my new country and naturally I am anxious to do a job.”

 

In 1961, the last production runs were completed, shops were dismantled and cleaned, and forges and boilers banked. Over $200 million dollars of equipment such as machine tools, industrial cranes and barges were disposed of primarily to other government agencies.

 

By the beginning of 1962, NGF workers, who epitomized the rich heritage of the nation’s trade and craft traditions and who had served their country well in the all the major wars of the 20th century, said quiet goodbyes to their friends and shop mates.

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmLe4fB5

 

Photo by Roger Smith. The image is an Office of War Information photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress. It was published in January 1943.

 

The Store

  

Silver Islet refers to both a small rocky island and a small community located at the tip of the Sibley Peninsula in northwestern Ontario, Canada.

 

A rich vein of pure silver was discovered on this small island in 1868 by the Montreal Mining Company. At that time, the island was approximately [50 m²] in size and only 2.5 metres above the waters of Lake Superior. In 1870, the site was developed by Alexander H. Sibley's Silver Islet Mining Company which built wooden breakwaters around the island to hold back the lake's waves and increased the island's area substantially with crushed rock. The islet was expanded to over 10 times its original size and a small mining town was built up on the shore nearby.

 

After most of the purest ore from the original site had been removed, a second vein was discovered in 1878. By 1883, most of the highest quality silver had been extracted and the price of silver had declined. The final straw came when a shipment of coal did not arrive before the end of the shipping season. The pumps holding back the waters of the lake stopped and in early 1884 the islet's mine shafts, which had reached a depth of 384 metres, were flooded. They would never be de-watered, and the mine's underground operations would never be reopened.

 

Over the 16 years that the mine was in operation, $3.25 million worth of silver was extracted.

 

The houses originally built to house miners are now used as private summer cottages. The general store has been restored, and serves light meals in its tea-room, in addition to selling a variety of knicknacks and basic foodstuffs.

 

This is an article written by Syd Hancock, January 21, 1972 on the occasion of Julian Cross's death.

 

As recounted by Syd Hancock, Silver Islet is the home of Julian (Jules) Cross, founder of Steep Rock Iron Mine in Atikokan, Ontario. Outside the Atikokan Library & museum is a bronze plaque erected by the Ontario Department of Public Records and Archives to mark the historical significance of the Steep Rock Iron Range. On December 29, 1971, the man who unveiled this plaque, and made possible the Steep Rock story, Julian Gifford Cross, died at the age of 83. Born at Silver Islet on July 25, 1888, only four years after the closing of that historic silver mine, his destiny and the future of many others was inevitably associated with mining.

 

Silver Islet General Store

12h

·

Kiss my A** !!!

- The story behind KMA Blue ...

The Silver Islet Store was built in 1871 by the skilled workers of the Silver Islet Mining Company with timber harvested from virgin white pine stands of nearby Sawyers Bay.

When construction was complete, like many of the company buildings, the Store was finished with a coat of brown fire retardant barium infused paint.

It remained brown for well over 100 years.

In or around 1992, the Saxberg family hired Sorensen Carpentry of the neighbouring town of Pass Lake, to re-side the building with 7” cedar slat siding purchased from Wanson Lumber in Thunder Bay. It was an exciting time for the much loved General Store and for the summer residents of the Islet as they watched Eric and his young son Dennis Sorensen reface the exterior of this community cornerstone.

Like any small town, when there is a new project underway the locals are close by to lend a hand, monitor progress and sometimes to offer suggestions on “...how they would do it”.

Once the siding was complete, the wood needed to be sealed. Questions began as residents were curious what colour the store would and in some instances, "should" be painted. Lorne Saxberg Jr had his mind set on “heritage blue” - a lively blue echoing the awesome hues of Superior. The vibrant, Newfoundland-esq colour also stood as a tribute to his mother, Joan Saxberg’s maritime roots.

With long ladders, family and volunteers in place, so began the daunting task of painting the massive timber frame Silver Islet General Store. Brother Bob Saxberg was the only one brave enough to scale the tallest of ladders and paint the top of the building, while Lorne Jr and others worked the lower levels and chatted with passerbys. The activity naturally captured the attention of visitors and locals alike.

From 10 feet up, Lorne Jr popped and stirred the first can of stain as family friend and long time Silver Islet local Jim Coslett called from below, “what colour have you got there?” ...to which Lorne leaned over, lowering the can for Jim to see inside and replied, “it's called KMA Blue! You're going to love it” which based on Jim's reaction, couldn't be further from the truth LOL. Overtime, the change was embraced by most, and those that were unsure seem to have now warmed up to KMA blue.

Over the years, Lorne and Jim's conversation has turned into a frequently heard joke around Silver Islet. If you're an Isleter, you know the meaning of KMA. To this day, the official Silver Islet Store “KMA blue” acrylic stain is available at Dulux Paints on Memorial Avenue in Thunder Bay. Now that you know...be sure to ask for it by name!

———

Fast forward 30 years and the extreme conditions of the Sibley Penninsula dictate

the building is in need of a fresh sealing. Thunder Bay paint gurus, Top Rung Painting, (TRP) was hired to complete the work and in mid October, the day after the store closed for the season, David and the good folks from TRP arrived at the islet and secured the location, armed with spray washers, compressors, sanders, rollers, brushes, ladders, 60’ lifts and a boat load of KMA Blue.

Fortunately, weather cooperated and the crew was able to complete the job on time and on budget. The next time you drive the penninsula and come over the last hill at the end of the road, you’ll see the store proudly sporting a fresh coat of KMA Blue as it once again rests, and patiently awaits the busy summer season ahead.

...

Thank you to Dave and boys from Top Rung Painting for a job well done and to Lyle Knudsen and his crew at Equipment World for their assistance with the lifts. Also thank you to Wally Peterson and co, of Thunder Country Diving and The Lakehead Transportation Museum Society for their continued enthusiasm and support of the historic Silver Islet General Store.

 

Qingdao Blossom Furnishings limited

 

Qingdao Blossom Furnishings limited is one of biggest party chairs manufacturer in Qingdao, has great partner in the USA and UK. Since 2011, we producing not only wooden wedding chairs but also resin party chairs. In 5 future years, our goal is that we will visit our main customer and meet face to face, and become the leader of party rental chairs in the China. Let us make the cake bigger together.

In 2006， Mr. Bob Tan established the small factory in Weifang city for wooden chiavari chairs and bought 3 machines for spare parts of wooden chiavari chairs that year, we only can produceabout 1000 pieces of wooden chiavari chairs monthly.

We use handmade and hand painting workers. The production condition was quite hard that time.The main buyers mostly come from Chinese trading companies.

We own a independent office for customer reception,documents and computer work.Our experienced saleman constantly contact with customer through e-mail and telephone to confirm details of order,which can guarantee the smooth transit.

Our production team is composed of nearly 200 skilled workers who have a good command in making traditional banquet chiavari chairs tables.They are also good at making resin products like resin thonet chairs and ghost chairs.

Please put your trust in us.We are looking forward to your visit any time!

 

Website:http://www.blossomfurnishings.com

Location:No.2 Heilongjiang Road Qingdao,China

Phone Number:0532-68995656

Fax:0532-68995757

Web contact:info@blossomfurnishings.com

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Man with Fish is an outdoor fountain and sculpture by German artist Stephan Balkenhol, installed outside Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, in the U.S. state of Illinois. It is made from bronze that was then painted, and is 16 feet tall.

 

Stephan Balkenhol was born in 1957 in Fritzlar, Germany. He lives and works in Kassel, Germany.

 

Balkenhol studied at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg from 1976-82. His focus on the human form and his intention to reintroduce figuration into contemporary art was a divergent response to the abstract, minimalist and conceptual approaches of the school during the 1970s.

 

Balkenhol’s anonymous figures are painted in simple colour combinations that appear timeless yet familiar, both living and inanimate. They retain the grooves, cracks, chips and fissures that represent the sculpting process, demonstrating the artist’s raw and spontaneous treatment of the material. Balkenhol’s practice advances the longstanding tradition of woodcarving in Germany, inviting comparisons to expressionist sculptors such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Ernst Barlach.

 

Balkenhol has completed a significant number of public commissions throughout his career, with installations in front of the Blackfriars Bridge in London, at the entrance of the Hamburg Zoo, Germany; at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt, Germany; in Le Havre, France; and in Kassel and Leipzig, Germany.

 

A solo exhibition of recent sculptures by Balkenhol opened at Stephen Friedman Gallery in January 2023. Other notable solo presentations include: ‘Stephan Balkenhol: Window in Time’, Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, Germany (2023 – 2024); ‘Stephan Balkenhol’, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany (2020–2021); ‘Stephan Balkenhol’, Museum Jorn, Silkeborg, Denmark (2020); ‘Le Prévu et l'Imprévu’, Palais d'Iéna, Paris, France (2020); ‘Stephan Balkenhol’, Museum of Sepulchral Culture, Kassel, Germany (2019); ‘Stephan Balkenhol’, Kunsthalle Emden, Emden, Germany (2018); ‘30 Years Stephan Balkenhol’, Deweer Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (2017); ‘Stephan Balkenhol’, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Palais Gogolevski, Moscow, Russia (2016); ‘Stephan Balkenhol and Philippe Cognée’, Fondation Fernet-Branca, Saint-Louis, France (2016, two-person); ‘New Sculptures’, Akinci, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2015); ‘Stephan Balkenhol’ Landes Museum, Linz, Austria (2015-2014); ‘Stephan Balkenhol’, Kunstmuseum Ravensburg, Ravensburg, Germany (2014); ‘Stephan Balkenhol’, ‘Unlimited Bodies – Corps Sans Limite,’ Palais d'Iéna, Paris, France (2012); ‘Stephan Balkenhol,’ Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble, France (2010); ‘Stephan Balkenhol,’ Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany (2008-2009); ‘Stephan Balkenhol,’ Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden, Germany (2006); ‘Stephan Balkenhol,’ National Museum of Contemporary Art, Osaka, Japan (2005); ‘Stephan Balkenhol,’ Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel (2005); Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany (2003); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, USA (1995); The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland (1991).

 

Balkenhol’s works are included in prominent collections internationally, including the Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal, Quebec, Canada; Smithsonian Institution, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., USA; Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble, France and National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan.

 

Shedd Aquarium (formally the John G. Shedd Aquarium) is an indoor public aquarium in Chicago. Opened on May 30, 1930, the 5 million US gal (19,000,000 L; 4,200,000 imp gal) aquarium holds about 32,000 animals and is the third largest aquarium in the Western Hemisphere, after the Georgia Aquarium and Monterey Bay Aquarium.

 

The Shedd Aquarium is a highly-ranked world aquarium and at one time was the largest indoor facility in the world. It is the first inland aquarium with a permanent saltwater fish collection. The aquarium is located along Lake Michigan in the city's Museum Campus, which also includes other highly-ranked institutions such as Adler Planetarium and the Field Museum of Natural History.

 

In 2015, the Shedd Aquarium had 2.02 million visitors. It was the most visited aquarium in the Western Hemisphere in 2005, and in 2007, became the most visited cultural institution in Chicago. The aquarium contains 1,500 species, including fish, marine mammals, birds, snakes, amphibians, and insects. The aquarium received awards for "best exhibit" from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) for Seahorse Symphony in 1999, Amazon Rising in 2001, and Wild Reef in 2004. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

 

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the seat of Cook County, the second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, which is often colloquially called "Chicagoland".

 

Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but Chicago's population continued to grow. Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and architecture, such as the Chicago School, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, and the steel-framed skyscraper.

 

Chicago is an international hub for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications, and transportation. It has the largest and most diverse derivatives market in the world, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures alone. O'Hare International Airport is routinely ranked among the world's top six busiest airports by passenger traffic, and the region is also the nation's railroad hub. The Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products (GDP) of any urban region in the world, generating $689 billion in 2018. Chicago's economy is diverse, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.

 

Chicago is a major tourist destination. Chicago's culture has contributed much to the visual arts, literature, film, theater, comedy (especially improvisational comedy), food, dance, and music (particularly jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel, and electronic dance music, including house music). Chicago is home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, while the Art Institute of Chicago provides an influential visual arts museum and art school. The Chicago area also hosts the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Chicago, among other institutions of learning. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams.

 

In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by the Potawatomi, an indigenous tribe who had succeeded the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples in this region.

 

The first known permanent settler in Chicago was trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African descent, perhaps born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and established the settlement in the 1780s. He is commonly known as the "Founder of Chicago."

 

In 1795, following the victory of the new United States in the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part of Chicago was turned over to the U.S. for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the U.S. Army constructed Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed during the War of 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn by the Potawatomi before being later rebuilt.

 

After the War of 1812, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago and sent west of the Mississippi River as part of the federal policy of Indian removal.

 

On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 6,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as Receiver of Public Monies. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, and for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city.

 

As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicago's first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848. The canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River.

 

A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad. Manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade (established 1848) listed the first-ever standardized "exchange-traded" forward contracts, which were called futures contracts.

 

In the 1850s, Chicago gained national political prominence as the home of Senator Stephen Douglas, the champion of the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the "popular sovereignty" approach to the issue of the spread of slavery. These issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage. Lincoln was nominated in Chicago for U.S. president at the 1860 Republican National Convention, which was held in a purpose-built auditorium called the Wigwam. He defeated Douglas in the general election, and this set the stage for the American Civil War.

 

To accommodate rapid population growth and demand for better sanitation, the city improved its infrastructure. In February 1856, Chicago's Common Council approved Chesbrough's plan to build the United States' first comprehensive sewerage system. The project raised much of central Chicago to a new grade with the use of jackscrews for raising buildings. While elevating Chicago, and at first improving the city's health, the untreated sewage and industrial waste now flowed into the Chicago River, and subsequently into Lake Michigan, polluting the city's primary freshwater source.

 

The city responded by tunneling two miles (3.2 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. In 1900, the problem of sewage contamination was largely resolved when the city completed a major engineering feat. It reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that the water flowed away from Lake Michigan rather than into it. This project began with the construction and improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and was completed with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal that connects to the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi River.

 

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed an area about 4 miles (6.4 km) long and 1-mile (1.6 km) wide, a large section of the city at the time. Much of the city, including railroads and stockyards, survived intact, and from the ruins of the previous wooden structures arose more modern constructions of steel and stone. These set a precedent for worldwide construction. During its rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's first skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction.

 

The city grew significantly in size and population by incorporating many neighboring townships between 1851 and 1920, with the largest annexation happening in 1889, with five townships joining the city, including the Hyde Park Township, which now comprises most of the South Side of Chicago and the far southeast of Chicago, and the Jefferson Township, which now makes up most of Chicago's Northwest Side. The desire to join the city was driven by municipal services that the city could provide its residents.

 

Chicago's flourishing economy attracted huge numbers of new immigrants from Europe and migrants from the Eastern United States. Of the total population in 1900, more than 77% were either foreign-born or born in the United States of foreign parentage. Germans, Irish, Poles, Swedes, and Czechs made up nearly two-thirds of the foreign-born population (by 1900, whites were 98.1% of the city's population).

 

Labor conflicts followed the industrial boom and the rapid expansion of the labor pool, including the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886, and in 1894 the Pullman Strike. Anarchist and socialist groups played prominent roles in creating very large and highly organized labor actions. Concern for social problems among Chicago's immigrant poor led Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to found Hull House in 1889. Programs that were developed there became a model for the new field of social work.

 

During the 1870s and 1880s, Chicago attained national stature as the leader in the movement to improve public health. City laws and later, state laws that upgraded standards for the medical profession and fought urban epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and yellow fever were both passed and enforced. These laws became templates for public health reform in other cities and states.

 

The city established many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities. The chief advocate for improving public health in Chicago was John H. Rauch, M.D. Rauch established a plan for Chicago's park system in 1866. He created Lincoln Park by closing a cemetery filled with shallow graves, and in 1867, in response to an outbreak of cholera he helped establish a new Chicago Board of Health. Ten years later, he became the secretary and then the president of the first Illinois State Board of Health, which carried out most of its activities in Chicago.

 

In the 1800s, Chicago became the nation's railroad hub, and by 1910 over 20 railroads operated passenger service out of six different downtown terminals. In 1883, Chicago's railway managers needed a general time convention, so they developed the standardized system of North American time zones. This system for telling time spread throughout the continent.

 

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered the most influential world's fair in history. The University of Chicago, formerly at another location, moved to the same South Side location in 1892. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects the Washington and Jackson Parks.

 

During World War I and the 1920s there was a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted African Americans from the Southern United States. Between 1910 and 1930, the African American population of Chicago increased dramatically, from 44,103 to 233,903. This Great Migration had an immense cultural impact, called the Chicago Black Renaissance, part of the New Negro Movement, in art, literature, and music. Continuing racial tensions and violence, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919, also occurred.

 

The ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution in 1919 made the production and sale (including exportation) of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. This ushered in the beginning of what is known as the gangster era, a time that roughly spans from 1919 until 1933 when Prohibition was repealed. The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era. Chicago was the location of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when Al Capone sent men to gun down members of a rival gang, North Side, led by Bugs Moran.

 

Chicago was the first American city to have a homosexual-rights organization. The organization, formed in 1924, was called the Society for Human Rights. It produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. Police and political pressure caused the organization to disband.

 

The Great Depression brought unprecedented suffering to Chicago, in no small part due to the city's heavy reliance on heavy industry. Notably, industrial areas on the south side and neighborhoods lining both branches of the Chicago River were devastated; by 1933 over 50% of industrial jobs in the city had been lost, and unemployment rates amongst blacks and Mexicans in the city were over 40%. The Republican political machine in Chicago was utterly destroyed by the economic crisis, and every mayor since 1931 has been a Democrat.

 

From 1928 to 1933, the city witnessed a tax revolt, and the city was unable to meet payroll or provide relief efforts. The fiscal crisis was resolved by 1933, and at the same time, federal relief funding began to flow into Chicago. Chicago was also a hotbed of labor activism, with Unemployed Councils contributing heavily in the early depression to create solidarity for the poor and demand relief; these organizations were created by socialist and communist groups. By 1935 the Workers Alliance of America begun organizing the poor, workers, the unemployed. In the spring of 1937 Republic Steel Works witnessed the Memorial Day massacre of 1937 in the neighborhood of East Side.

 

In 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in Miami, Florida, during a failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933 and 1934, the city celebrated its centennial by hosting the Century of Progress International Exposition World's Fair. The theme of the fair was technological innovation over the century since Chicago's founding.

 

During World War II, the city of Chicago alone produced more steel than the United Kingdom every year from 1939 – 1945, and more than Nazi Germany from 1943 – 1945.

 

The Great Migration, which had been on pause due to the Depression, resumed at an even faster pace in the second wave, as hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South arrived in the city to work in the steel mills, railroads, and shipping yards.

 

On December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. This led to the creation of the atomic bomb by the United States, which it used in World War II in 1945.

 

Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat, was elected in 1955, in the era of machine politics. In 1956, the city conducted its last major expansion when it annexed the land under O'Hare airport, including a small portion of DuPage County.

 

By the 1960s, white residents in several neighborhoods left the city for the suburban areas – in many American cities, a process known as white flight – as Blacks continued to move beyond the Black Belt. While home loan discriminatory redlining against blacks continued, the real estate industry practiced what became known as blockbusting, completely changing the racial composition of whole neighborhoods. Structural changes in industry, such as globalization and job outsourcing, caused heavy job losses for lower-skilled workers. At its peak during the 1960s, some 250,000 workers were employed in the steel industry in Chicago, but the steel crisis of the 1970s and 1980s reduced this number to just 28,000 in 2015. In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Raby led the Chicago Freedom Movement, which culminated in agreements between Mayor Richard J. Daley and the movement leaders.

 

Two years later, the city hosted the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which featured physical confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall, with anti-war protesters, journalists and bystanders being beaten by police. Major construction projects, including the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower, which in 1974 became the world's tallest building), University of Illinois at Chicago, McCormick Place, and O'Hare International Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure. In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She was notable for temporarily moving into the crime-ridden Cabrini-Green housing project and for leading Chicago's school system out of a financial crisis.

 

In 1983, Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago. Washington's first term in office directed attention to poor and previously neglected minority neighborhoods. He was re‑elected in 1987 but died of a heart attack soon after. Washington was succeeded by 6th ward alderperson Eugene Sawyer, who was elected by the Chicago City Council and served until a special election.

 

Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was elected in 1989. His accomplishments included improvements to parks and creating incentives for sustainable development, as well as closing Meigs Field in the middle of the night and destroying the runways. After successfully running for re-election five times, and becoming Chicago's longest-serving mayor, Richard M. Daley declined to run for a seventh term.

 

In 1992, a construction accident near the Kinzie Street Bridge produced a breach connecting the Chicago River to a tunnel below, which was part of an abandoned freight tunnel system extending throughout the downtown Loop district. The tunnels filled with 250 million US gallons (1,000,000 m3) of water, affecting buildings throughout the district and forcing a shutdown of electrical power. The area was shut down for three days and some buildings did not reopen for weeks; losses were estimated at $1.95 billion.

 

On February 23, 2011, Rahm Emanuel, a former White House Chief of Staff and member of the House of Representatives, won the mayoral election. Emanuel was sworn in as mayor on May 16, 2011, and won re-election in 2015. Lori Lightfoot, the city's first African American woman mayor and its first openly LGBTQ mayor, was elected to succeed Emanuel as mayor in 2019. All three city-wide elective offices were held by women (and women of color) for the first time in Chicago history: in addition to Lightfoot, the city clerk was Anna Valencia and the city treasurer was Melissa Conyears-Ervin.

 

On May 15, 2023, Brandon Johnson assumed office as the 57th mayor of Chicago.

 

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Great Lakes to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south. Its largest metropolitan areas are Chicago and the Metro East region of Greater St. Louis. Other metropolitan areas include Peoria and Rockford, as well as Springfield, its capital, and Champaign-Urbana, home to the main campus of the state's flagship university. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-largest land area.

 

Illinois has a highly diverse economy, with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its central location and favorable geography, the state is a major transportation hub: the Port of Chicago has access to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River via the Illinois Waterway. Chicago has been the nation's railroad hub since the 1860s, and its O'Hare International Airport has been among the world's busiest airports for decades. Illinois has long been considered a microcosm of the United States and a bellwether in American culture, exemplified by the phrase Will it play in Peoria?.

 

Present-day Illinois was inhabited by various indigenous cultures for thousands of years, including the advanced civilization centered in the Cahokia region. The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi and Illinois River in the 17th century in the region they called Illinois Country, as part of the sprawling colony of New France. Following U.S. independence in 1783, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky via the Ohio River, and the population grew from south to north. Illinois was part of the United States' oldest territory, the Northwest Territory, and in 1818 it achieved statehood. The Erie Canal brought increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes, and the small settlement of Chicago became one of the fastest growing cities in the world, benefiting from its location as one of the few natural harbors in southwestern Lake Michigan. The invention of the self-scouring steel plow by Illinoisan John Deere turned the state's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. In the mid-19th century, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and a sprawling railroad network greatly facilitated trade, commerce, and settlement, making the state a transportation hub for the nation.

 

By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois became one of America's most industrialized states and remains a major manufacturing center. The Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans, particularly in Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago became a leading cultural, economic, and population center and is today one of the world's major commercial centers; its metropolitan area, informally referred to as Chicagoland, holds about 65% of the state's 12.8 million residents.

 

Two World Heritage Sites are in Illinois, the ancient Cahokia Mounds, and part of the Wright architecture site. Major centers of learning include the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, and Northwestern University. A wide variety of protected areas seek to conserve Illinois' natural and cultural resources. Historically, three U.S. presidents have been elected while residents of Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama; additionally, Ronald Reagan was born and raised in the state. Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

Congress of Industrial Union (CIO) United Construction Workers Organizing Committee workers picket an American Federation of Labor (AFL) job site February 21, 1940 at the Jelleff’s addition at 1216 F Street NW in retaliation for AFL pickets of CIO construction sites.

 

The AFL unions charged that the CIO was performing the work at substandard wages—a charge denied by the CIO union that said its members received the same wages as those at AFL non-government construction jobs.

 

A block away the AFL picketed a CIO job site at the Knickerbocker Hat Store at 1225 F Street NW. The CIO union retaliated by picketing AFL job sites.

 

The United Construction Workers were a brief-lived (1939-46) attempt by the Congress of Industrial Organizations to organize construction workers across craft lines into an industrial union.

 

Building trades unions have traditionally been organized into separate crafts of skilled workers dating back to the 1800s.

 

While the group obtained some contracts with employers, it was never able to achieve widespread success and the effort was abandoned after World War II.

 

In more recent times, the Carpenters Union split with the AFL-CIO and the rest of the building trades in 2001, largely over jurisdictional awards that went against them. The Carpenters position was that they spent resources and organized the workers, but other unions gained them as members. The other building trades unions accused the Carpenters of raiding them.

 

Meanwhile the percentage of construction work performed under union contract has continued to decline.over the years.

 

Note: There is damage around the edges of this image.

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/p/2gXB7oi

 

The photographer is unknown. The image is a Washington Daily News photograph courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE: WHAT’S AHEAD FOR EMERGING MARKETS? Over the last decade, the majority of the growth has occurred in the so-called BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—but growth has slowed. What’s the outlook for these economies and can they sustain growth? Who are the new leaders and how can multinational corporations capitalize on these increasingly important markets? Which factor is most likely to slow progress in emerging markets: a shortage of skilled workers, too much red tape and corruption, or fierce local competition?

 

Confirmed panelists:

John Faraci, Chairman and CEO, International Paper Co.

Joseph Jimenez, Chief Executive Officer, Novartis AG

Peter Sands, Group Chief Executive, Standard Chartered PLC

Michael Smith, Chief Executive Officer, ANZ Bank

Moderator: Rana Foroohar, Assistant Managing Editor, TIME Magazine

What is Multiple Clipping Path?

 

Multiple Clipping Path or Color Path is an extension to the use of clipping path. Multiple Clipping Path is the process of using clipping path/silo/silhouetting to change the color of an individual or parts of an image/photo, make color correction or add an extra color effect. Multiple clipping path or color path/color correction is used for those images that require isolation of parts and change the color around individual components. It is also done to split some parts of the image for further image editing/manipulation in Photoshop or do swatches match.

 

If you looking for Clipping Path or Background remove services in any quantity ? Clipping Path Advance (CPA) think then you have found the right place for it. Clipping Clipping Path Advance (CPA) have more Photoshop experts, skilled workers, advisers all are here to help you! If you send your job we will confirm to you best quality results! Outsourcing is a popular concept these days for such type of works which are not very complicated but needs a lot of time and manpower too.

 

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Color Separation for Multi path

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Companies or individuals those are involved in professional photography, photographic studios, magazine companies, advertising agencies, photographic studios, print press, graphic design companies and web development etc.

 

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Normally we provide a quotation after review the job as per clients instruction and we reply quotation within 1 hour or less. Also, we provide average pricing on bulk volume of images. Price will depend on the image and work complexity. But don’t worry, if you are not sure about the actual cost, and we will get back within an hour with the most reasonable price.

 

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.... The mosaic ceiling was designed to reflect the breadth of the collections, being adorned with patterns and symbols representing cultures throughout the ages and around the world.

The ceiling is made from thousands of sheets of imported Venetian glass, cut into more than a million tiny coloured squares. A team of skilled workers laboured for eight months to install the ceiling. Its sparkling gold, rust and bronze background is inset with red, blue and turquoise patterns, recalling the magnificent mosaics of the Byzantine world and Eastern Europe. Worked out on the golden field are geometrical borders and panels which frame decorative floral designs. The central panel is inscribed with a passage from the Book of Job in the Old Testament: “That all men may know his work”....

 

Yes indeed, we're still on the glacially abraded outcrop of North Shore Volcanic Group basalt on the Lake Superior coast at Kitchi Gammi Park. And for good reason. It's subject matter worth embellishing. This is one of the best places to see, study, and obsessively photograph a superb collection of glacial abrasion features.

 

The pen provides scale.

 

So far as I know, there are two really effective ways of polishing the kinds of stone that really will take a high-gloss shine.

 

One is to quarry it, cut it to desired size and shape, and then send it to a processing facility where skilled workers, using abrasives (diamond-surfaced pads, steel shot, or a slurry of emery grit and water) turn rough rock faces into smooth, reflective, and well-sealed surfaces resistant to weathering.

 

The other method is even more labor- and time-intensive. No quarrying is necessary, but you do have to figure out a way to reverse the current spate of anthropogenic global warming and throw the whole process in the opposite direction.

 

If you manage to cool the Earth sufficiently and trigger its next glacial phase, and if you live at sufficient high latitude or altitude, you'll eventually have an ice sheet roll over your desired rock outcrop and do what the Pleistocene-epoch Superior Lobe did to the North Shore Volcanic Group basalt here.

 

In this photo, the sunshine reflecting off the smooth, sculpted, and streamlined surface highlights the natural glacial polish that was applied between 15 and 10 ky ago. Also present is a striking set of linear striations.

 

If you look closely, you'll also spot some crescentic gouges, which also indicate the direction of glacial advance. The origin of both these features and the striations is treated in Part 11 of this set.

 

To see the other photos and descriptions of this series, visit

my Integrative Natural History of Minnesota's North Shore album.

The Homestead Strike, also known as the Homestead Steel Strike, was an industrial lockout and strike which began on June 30, 1892, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents on July 6, 1892. The battle was one of the most serious disputes in U.S. labor history, second only to the Battle of Blair Mountain. The dispute occurred at the Homestead Steel Works in the Pittsburgh area town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (the AA) and the Carnegie Steel Company. The final result was a major defeat for the union and a setback for efforts to unionize steelworkers.

Carnegie Steel made major technological innovations in the 1880s, especially the installation of the open-hearth system at Homestead in 1886. It now became possible to make steel suitable for structural beams and for armor plate for the United States Navy, which paid far higher prices for the premium product. In addition, the plant moved increasingly toward the continuous system of production. Carnegie installed vastly improved systems of material-handling, like overhead cranes, hoists, charging machines, and buggies. All of this greatly sped up the process of steelmaking, and allowed the production of vastly larger quantities of the product. As the mills expanded, the labor force grew rapidly, especially with less skilled workers. In response, the more-skilled union members reacted with a strike designed to protect their historic position.

The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (AA) was an American labor union formed in 1876. It was a craft union representing skilled iron and steel workers. The AA's membership was concentrated in ironworks west of the Allegheny Mountains. The union negotiated national uniform wage scales on an annual basis; helped regulate working hours, workload levels and work speeds; and helped improve working conditions. It also acted as a hiring hall, helping employers find scarce puddlers and rollers.

The AA organized the independently-owned Pittsburgh Bessemer Steel Works in Homestead in 1881. The AA engaged in a bitter strike at the Homestead works on January 1, 1882 in an effort to prevent management from forcing yellow-dog contracts on all workers. Violence occurred on both sides, and the plant brought in numerous strikebreakers. The strike ended on March 20 in a complete victory for the union.

The AA struck the steel plant again on July 1, 1889, when negotiations for a new three-year collective bargaining agreement failed. The strikers seized the town and once again made common cause with various immigrant groups. Backed by 2,000 townspeople, the strikers drove off a trainload of strikebreakers on July 10. When the sheriff returned with 125 newly deputized agents two days later, the strikers rallied 5,000 townspeople to their cause. Although victorious, the union agreed to significant wage cuts that left tonnage rates less than half those at the nearby Jones and Laughlin works, where technological improvements had not been made.

Carnegie officials conceded that the AA essentially ran the Homestead plant after the 1889 strike. The union contract contained 58 pages of footnotes defining work-rules at the plant and strictly limited management's ability to maximize output.

For its part, the AA saw substantial gains after the 1889 strike. Membership doubled, and the local union treasury had a balance of $146,000. The Homestead union grew belligerent, and relationships between workers and managers grew tense.

The Homestead strike was organized and purposeful, a harbinger of the type of strike which would mark the modern age of labor relations in the United States. The AA strike at the Homestead steel mill in 1892 was different from previous large-scale strikes in American history such as the Great railroad strike of 1877 or the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886. Earlier strikes had been largely leaderless and disorganized mass uprisings of workers.

Andrew Carnegie placed industrialist Henry Clay Frick in charge of his company's operations in 1881. Frick resolved to break the union at Homestead. "The mills have never been able to turn out the product they should, owing to being held back by the Amalgamated men," he complained in a letter to Carnegie.

Carnegie was publicly in favor of labor unions. He condemned the use of strikebreakers and told associates that no steel mill was worth a single drop of blood. But Carnegie agreed with Frick's desire to break the union and "reorganize the whole affair, and . . . exact good reasons for employing every man. Far too many men required by Amalgamated rules." Carnegie ordered the Homestead plant to manufacture large amounts of inventory so the plant could weather a strike. He also drafted a notice (which Frick never released) withdrawing recognition of the union.

With the collective bargaining agreement due to expire on June 30, 1892, Frick and the leaders of the local AA union entered into negotiations in February. With the steel industry doing well and prices higher, the AA asked for a wage increase; the AA represented about 800 of the 3,800 workers at the plant. Frick immediately countered with a 22% wage decrease that would affect nearly half the union's membership and remove a number of positions from the bargaining unit. Carnegie encouraged Frick to use the negotiations to break the union: "...the Firm has decided that the minority must give way to the majority. These works, therefore, will be necessarily non-union after the expiration of the present agreement." Carnegie believed that the Amalgamated was a hindrance to efficiency; furthermore it was not representative of the workers. It admitted only a small group of skilled workers. It was in its own way an elitist, discriminatory organization that was not worthy of the Republic, Carnegie felt.

Frick announced on April 30, 1892 that he would bargain for 29 more days. If no contract was reached, Carnegie Steel would cease to recognize the union. Carnegie formally approved Frick's tactics on May 4. Then Frick offered a slightly better wage scale and advised the Superintendent to tell the workers, "We do not care whether a man belongs to a union or not, nor do we wish to interfere. He may belong to as many unions or organizations as he chooses, but we think our employees at Homestead Steel Works would fare much better working under the system in vogue at Edgar Thomson and Duquesne."

Frick locked workers out of the plate mill and one of the open hearth furnaces on the evening of June 28. When no collective bargaining agreement was reached on June 29, Frick locked the union out of the rest of the plant. A high fence topped with barbed wire, begun in January, was completed and the plant sealed to the workers. Sniper towers with searchlights were constructed near each mill building, and high-pressure water cannons (some capable of spraying boiling-hot liquid) were placed at each entrance. Various aspects of the plant were protected, reinforced or shielded.

At a mass meeting on June 30, local AA leaders reviewed the final negotiating sessions and announced that the company had broken the contract by locking out workers a day before the contract expired. The Knights of Labor, which had organized the mechanics and transportation workers at Homestead, agreed to walk out alongside the skilled workers of the AA. Workers at Carnegie plants in Pittsburgh, Duquesne, Union Mills and Beaver Falls struck in sympathy the same day.

 

The Declaration of the Strike Committee, dated July 20, 1892 reads in part,

'The employees in the mill of Messrs. Carnegie, Phipps & Co., at Homestead, Pa., have built there a town with its homes, its schools and its churches; have for many years been faithful co-workers with the company in the business of the mill; have invested thousands of dollars of their savings in said mill in the expectation of spending their lives in Homestead and of working in the mill during the period of their efficiency. . . . “Therefore, the committee desires to express to the public as its firm belief that both the public and the employees aforesaid have equitable rights and interests in the said mill which cannot be modified or diverted without due process of law; that the employees have the right to continuous employment in the said mill during efficiency and good behavior without regard to religious, political or economic opinions or associations; that it is against public policy and subversive of the fundamental principles of American liberty that a whole community of workers should be denied employment or suffer any other social detriment on account of membership in a church, a political party or a trade union; that it is our duty as American citizens to resist by every legal and ordinary means the unconstitutional, anarchic and revolutionary policy of the Carnegie Company, which seems to evince a contempt [for] public and private interests and a disdain [for] the public conscience. . . .

The striking workers were determined to keep the plant closed. They secured a steam-powered river launch and several rowboats to patrol the Monongahela River, which ran alongside the plant. Men also divided themselves into units along military lines. Picket lines were thrown up around the plant and the town, and 24-hour shifts established. Ferries and trains were watched. Strangers were challenged to give explanations for their presence in town; if one was not forthcoming, they were escorted outside the city limits. Telegraph communications with AA locals in other cities were established to keep tabs on the company's attempts to hire replacement workers. Reporters were issued special badges which gave them safe passage through the town, but the badges were withdrawn if it was felt misleading or false information made it into the news. Tavern owners were even asked to prevent excessive drinking.

Frick was also busy. The company placed ads for replacement workers in newspapers as far away as Boston, St. Louis and even Europe.

But unprotected strikebreakers would be driven off. On July 4, Frick formally requested that Sheriff William H. McCleary intervene to allow supervisors access to the plant. Carnegie corporation attorney Philander Knox gave the go-ahead to the sheriff on July 5, and McCleary dispatched 11 deputies to the town to post handbills ordering the strikers to stop interfering with the plant's operation. The strikers tore down the handbills and told the deputies that they would not turn over the plant to nonunion workers. Then they herded the deputies onto a boat and sent them downriver to Pittsburgh.

Frick had ordered the construction of a solid board fence topped with barbed wire around mill property. The workers dubbed the newly fortified mill "Fort Frick." With the mill ringed by striking workers, agents from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which Frick had contracted to provide security at the plant in April 1892, planned to access the plant grounds from the river. Three hundred Pinkerton detectives assembled on the Davis Island Dam on the Ohio River about five miles (8 km) below Pittsburgh at 10:30 p.m. on the night of July 5, 1892. They were given Winchester rifles, placed on two specially-equipped barges and towed upriver with the object of removing the workers by force. Upon their landing, a large mêlée between workers and Pinkerton detectives ensued. Several men were killed, nine workers among them, and the riot was ultimately quelled only by the intervention of 8,000 armed state militia. Among working-class Americans, Frick's actions against the strikers were condemned as excessive, and he soon became a target of even more union organizers.

 

Battle on July 6

 

Frick's intent was to open the works with nonunion men on July 6. Knox devised a plan to get the Pinkertons onto the mill property. With the mill ringed by striking workers, the agents would access the plant grounds from the river. Three hundred Pinkerton agents assembled on the Davis Island Dam on the Ohio River about five miles below Pittsburgh at 10:30 p.m. on the night of July 5, 1892. They were given Winchester rifles, placed on two specially-equipped barges and towed upriver.

The strikers were prepared for them; the AA had learned of the Pinkertons as soon as they had left Boston for the embarkation point. The small flotilla of union boats went downriver to meet the barges. Strikers on the steam launch fired a few random shots at the barges, then withdrew—blowing the launch whistle to alert the plant. The strikers blew the plant whistle at 2:30 a.m., drawing thousands of men, women and children to the plant.

The Pinkertons attempted to land under cover of darkness about 4 a.m. A large crowd of families had kept pace with the boats as they were towed by a tug into the town. A few shots were fired at the tug and barges, but no one was injured. The crowd tore down the barbed-wire fence and strikers and their families surged onto the Homestead plant grounds. Some in the crowd threw stones at the barges, but strike leaders shouted for restraint.

The Pinkerton agents attempted to disembark, and shots were fired. Conflicting testimony exists as to which side fired the first shot. John T. McCurry, a boatman on the steamboat Little Bill (which had been hired by the Pinkerton Detective Agency to ferry its agents to the steel mill) and one of the men wounded by the strikers, said: "The armed Pinkerton men commenced to climb up the banks. Then the workmen opened fire on the detectives. The men shot first, and not until three of the Pinkerton men had fallen did they respond to the fire. I am willing to take an oath that the workmen fired first, and that the Pinkerton men did not shoot until some of their number had been wounded." But according to The New York Times, the Pinkertons shot first. The newspaper reported that the Pinkertons opened fire and wounded William Foy, a worker. Regardless of which side opened fire first, the first two individuals wounded were Frederick Heinde, captain of the Pinkertons, and Foy. The Pinkerton agents aboard the barges then fired into the crowd, killing two and wounding 11. The crowd responded in kind, killing two and wounding 12. The firefight continued for about 10 minutes.

The strikers then huddled behind the pig and scrap iron in the mill yard, while the Pinkertons cut holes in the side of the barges so they could fire on any who approached. The Pinkerton tug departed with the wounded agents, leaving the barges stranded. The strikers soon set to work building a rampart of steel beams further up the riverbank from which they could fire down on the barges. Hundreds of women continued to crowd on the riverbank between the strikers and the agents, calling on the strikers to 'kill the Pinkertons'.

The strikers continued to sporadically fire on the barges. Union members took potshots at the ships from their rowboats and the steam-powered launch. The burgess of Homestead, John McLuckie, issued a proclamation at 6:00 a.m. asking for townspeople to help defend the peace; more than 5,000 people congregated on the hills overlooking the steelworks. A 20-pounder brass cannon was set up on the shore opposite the steel mill, and an attempt was made to sink the barges. Six miles away in Pittsburgh, thousands of steelworkers gathered in the streets, listening to accounts of the attacks at Homestead; hundreds, many of them armed, began to move toward the town to assist the strikers.

The Pinkertons attempted to disembark again at 8:00 a.m. A striker high up the riverbank fired a shot. The Pinkertons returned fire, and four more strikers were killed (one by shrapnel sent flying when cannon fire hit one of the barges). Many of the Pinkerton agents refused to participate in the firefight any longer; the agents crowded onto the barge farthest from the shore. More experienced agents were barely able to stop the new recruits from abandoning the ships and swimming away. Intermittent gunfire from both sides continued throughout the morning. When the tug attempted to retrieve the barges at 10:50 a.m., gunfire drove it off. More than 300 riflemen positioned themselves on the high ground and kept a steady stream of fire on the barges. Just before noon, a sniper shot and killed another Pinkerton agent.

After a few more hours, the strikers attempted to burn the barges. They seized a raft, loaded it with oil-soaked timber and floated it toward the barges. The Pinkertons nearly panicked, and a Pinkerton captain had to threaten to shoot anyone who fled. But the fire burned itself out before it reached the barges. The strikers then loaded a railroad flatcar with drums of oil and set it afire. The flatcar hurtled down the rails toward the mill's wharf where the barges were docked. But the car stopped at the water's edge and burned itself out. Dynamite was thrown at the barges, but it only hit the mark once (causing a little damage to one barge). At 2:00 p.m., the workers poured oil onto the river, hoping the oil slick would burn the barges; attempts to light the slick failed.

The AA worked behind the scenes to avoid further bloodshed and defuse the tense situation. At 9:00 a.m., outgoing AA international president William Weihe rushed to the sheriff's office and asked McCleary to convey a request to Frick to meet. McCleary did so, but Frick refused. He knew that the more chaotic the situation became, the more likely it was that Governor Robert E. Pattison would call out the state militia.

Sheriff McCleary resisted attempts to call for state intervention until 10 a.m. on July 7. In a telegram to Gov. Pattison, he described how his deputies and the Carnegie men had been driven off, and noted that the workers and their supporters actively resisting the landing numbered nearly 5,000. Pattison responded by requiring McCleary to exhaust every effort to restore the peace. McCleary asked again for help at noon, and Pattison responded by asking how many deputies the sheriff had. A third telegram, sent at 3:00 p.m., again elicited a response from the governor exhorting McCleary to raise his own troops.

At 4:00 p.m., events at the mill quickly began to wind down. More than 5,000 men—most of them armed mill hands from the nearby South Side, Braddock and Duquesne works—arrived at the Homestead plant. Weihe wanted to prevent further trouble at Homestead, so he pleaded with Frick to confer with representatives of the Amalgamated to return to Homestead and stop the riot. Weihe urged the strikers to let the Pinkertons surrender, but he was shouted down. Weihe tried to speak again, but this time his pleas were drowned out as the strikers bombarded the barges with fireworks left over from the recent Independence Day celebration. Hugh O'Donnell, a heater in the plant and head of the union's strike committee, then spoke to the crowd. He demanded that each Pinkerton be charged with murder, forced to turn over his arms and then be removed from the town. The crowd shouted their approval.

The Pinkertons, too, wished to surrender. At 5:00 p.m., they raised a white flag and two agents asked to speak with the strikers. O'Donnell guaranteed them safe passage out of town. Upon arrival, their arms were stripped from them. With heads uncovered, to distinguish them from the mill hands, they passed along between two rows of guards armed with Winchesters. As the Pinkertons crossed the grounds of the mill, the crowd formed a gauntlet through which the agents passed. Men and women threw sand and stones at the Pinkerton agents, spat on them and beat them. Several Pinkertons were clubbed into unconsciousness. Members of the crowd ransacked the barges, then burned them to the waterline.

As the Pinkertons were marched through town to the Opera House (which served as a temporary jail), the townspeople continued to assault the agents. Two agents were beaten as horrified town officials looked on. The press expressed shock at the treatment of the Pinkerton agents, and the torrent of abuse helped turn media sympathies away from the strikers.

The strike committee met with the town council to discuss the handover of the agents to McCleary. But the real talks were taking place between McCleary and Weihe in McCleary's office. At 10:15 p.m., the two sides agreed to a transfer process. A special train arrived at 12:30 a.m. on July 7. McCleary, the international AA's lawyer and several town officials accompanied the Pinkerton agents to Pittsburgh.

But when the Pinkerton agents arrived at their final destination in Pittsburgh, state officials declared that they would not be charged with murder (per the agreement with the strikers) but rather simply released. The announcement was made with the full concurrence of the AA attorney. A special train whisked the Pinkerton agents out of the city at 10:00 a.m. on July 7.

On July 7, the strike committee sent a telegram to Gov. Pattison to attempt to persuade him that law and order had been restored in the town. Pattison replied that he had heard differently. Union officials traveled to Harrisburg and met with Pattison on July 9. Their discussions revolved not around law and order, but the safety of the Carnegie plant.

Pattison, however, remained unconvinced by the strikers' arguments. Although Pattison had ordered the Pennsylvania militia to muster on July 6, he had not formally charged it with doing anything. Pattison's refusal to act rested largely on his concern that the union controlled the entire city of Homestead and commanded the allegiance of its citizens. Pattison refused to order the town taken by force, for fear a massacre would occur. But once emotions had died down, Pattison felt the need to act. He had been elected with the backing of a Carnegie-supported political machine, and he could no longer refuse to protect Carnegie interests.

The steelworkers resolved to meet the militia with open arms, hoping to establish good relations with the troops. But the militia managed to keep its arrival in the town a secret almost to the last moment. At 9:00 a.m. on July 12, the Pennsylvania state militia arrived at the small Munhall train station near the Homestead mill (rather than the downtown train station as expected). Their commander, Major General George R. Snowden, made to clear to local officials that he sided with the owners. When Hugh O'Donnell, the head of the union's strike committee attempted to welcome Snowden and pledge the cooperation of the strikers, Snowden told him that the strikers had not been law abiding, and that "I want you to distinctly understand that I am the master of this situation." More than 4,000 soldiers surrounded the plant. Within 20 minutes they had displaced the picketers; by 10:00 a.m., company officials were back in their offices. Another 2,000 troops camped on the high ground overlooking the city.

The company quickly brought in strikebreakers and restarted production under the protection of the militia. Despite the presence of AFL pickets in front of several recruitment offices across the nation, Frick easily found employees to work the mill. The company quickly built bunk houses, dining halls and kitchens on the mill grounds to accommodate the strikebreakers. New employees, many of them black, arrived on July 13, and the mill furnaces relit on July 15. When a few workers attempted to storm into the plant to stop the relighting of the furnaces, militiamen fought them off and wounded six with bayonets. But all was not well inside the plant. A race war between nonunion black and white workers in the Homestead plant broke out on July 22, 1892.

Desperate to find a way to continue the strike, the AA appealed to Whitelaw Reid, the Republican candidate for vice president, on July 16. The AA offered to make no demands or set any preconditions; the union merely asked that Carnegie Steel reopen the negotiations. Reid wrote to Frick, warning him that the strike was hurting the Republican ticket and pleading with him to reopen talks. Frick refused.

Frick, too, needed a way out of the strike. The company could not operate for long with strikebreakers living on the mill grounds, and permanent replacements had to be found. On July 18, the town was placed under martial law, further disheartening many of the strikers.

National attention became riveted on Homestead when, on July 23, Alexander Berkman, a New York anarchist with no connection to steel or to organized labor, plotted with his lover Emma Goldman to assassinate Frick. He came in from New York, gained entrance to Frick's office, then shot and stabbed the executive. Frick survived and continued his role; Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

The Berkman assassination attempt undermined public support for the union and prompted the final collapse of the strike. Hugh O'Donnell was removed as chair of the strike committee when he proposed to return to work at the lower wage scale if the unionists could get their jobs back. On August 12, the company announced that 1,700 men were working at the mill and production had resumed at full capacity. The national AFL refused to intervene, the East European workers ignored the union and it had no strategy left. The union voted to go back to work on Carnegie's terms; the strike had failed and the union had collapsed.

The company had waged a second front in state court, and was winning. On July 18, 16 of the strike leaders were charged with conspiracy, riot and murder. Each man was jailed for one night and forced to post a $10,000 bond.

The union retaliated by charging company executives with murder as well. The company men, too, had to post a $10,000 bond, but they were not forced to spend any time in jail. One judge issued treason charges against the Advisory Committee on August 30 for making itself the law. Most of the men could not raise the bail bond, and went to jail or into hiding. A compromise was reached whereby both sides dropped their charges.

Support for the strikers evaporated. The AFL refused to call for a boycott of Carnegie products in September 1892. Wholesale crossing of the picket line occurred, first among Eastern European immigrants and then among all workers. The strike had collapsed so much that the state militia pulled out on October 13, ending the 95-day occupation. The AA was nearly bankrupted by the job action. Weekly Union relief for a member averaged $6.25 but totalled a staggering $10,000 per week when including 1,600 strikers. With only 192 out of more than 3,800 strikers in attendance, the Homestead chapter of the AA voted, 101 to 91, to return to work on November 20, 1892.

In the end, only four workers were ever tried on the actual charges filed on July 18. Three AA members were found innocent of all charges. Hugh Dempsey, the leader of the local Knights of Labor District Assembly, was found guilty of conspiring to poison nonunion workers at the plant—despite the state's star witness recanting his testimony on the stand. Dempsey served a seven-year prison term. In February 1893, Knox and the union agreed to drop the charges filed against one another, and no further prosecutions emerged from the events at Homestead.

The striking AA affiliate in Beaver Falls gave in the same day as the Homestead lodge. The AA affiliate at Union Mills held out until August 14, 1893. But by then the union had only 53 members. The union had been broken; the company had been operating the plant at full capacity for almost a year, since September 1892.

The Homestead strike broke the AA as a force in the American labor movement. Many employers refused to sign contracts with their AA unions while the strike lasted. A deepening in 1889 of the Long Depression led most steel companies to seek wage decreases similar to those imposed at Homestead.

An organizing drive at the Homestead plant in 1896 was crushed by Frick. In May 1899, 300 Homestead workers actually formed an AA lodge, but Frick ordered the Homestead works shut down and the unionization effort collapsed. Carnegie Steel remained nonunion for the next 40 years.

De-unionization efforts throughout the Midwest began against the AA in 1897 when Jones and Laughlin Steel refused to sign a contract. By 1900, not a single steel plant in Pennsylvania remained union. The AA presence in Ohio and Illinois continued for a few more years, but the union continued to collapse. Many lodges disbanded, their members disillusioned. Others were easily broken in short battles. Carnegie Steel's Mingo Junction, Ohio plant was the last major unionized steel mill in the country. But it, too, successfully withdrew recognition without a fight in 1903.

AA membership sagged to 10,000 in 1894 from its high of over 24,000 in 1891. A year later, it was down to 8,000. A 1901 strike against Carnegie's successor company, U.S. Steel collapsed. By 1909, membership in the AA had sunk to 6,300. A nationwide steel strike of 1919 also was unsuccessful.

The AA maintained a rump membership in the steel industry until its takeover by the Steel Workers Organizing Committee in 1936. The two organizations officially disbanded and formed the United Steelworkers May 22, 1942.

A railroad bridge over the Monongahela near the site of the battle is named Pinkerton's Landing Bridge in honor of the dead.

The pumphouse where the gunfight occurred remains as a museum and meeting hall. There are several historical markers as well as a metal commemorative sign with the US Steel logo that reads "In Honor Of The Workers." (Wikipedia)

 

Curtiss-Wright O-52 "Owl" production in Buffalo, Kenmore Avenue Plant, winter 1941

 

What a labor-intensive process! On aircraft assembly lines, the "workbench" production method was used, whereby larger or more complex parts were made and fitted by hand, using teams of highly-skilled workers.

 

This illustrates well the problems that Henry Ford and other automakers encountered when they tried to apply automotive assembly line practices to the production of World War II aircraft. Aircraft were much more complicated than cars, and many problems arose when automakers tried to mass-produce aircraft using existing automotive production methods and tooling. In addition, the car industry was inherently less-flexible, and was unable to incorporate the frequent design changes that typified military aircraft.

 

Photographer: Dmitri Kessel, Life Magazine

 

© Time Inc. For personal non-commercial use only. Photos can be found online at: images.google.com or at www.life.com. (Search using both "Curtiss" and "Buffalo" keywords at both sites.)

 

Notes: I have attempted to correct any irregularities in the originally posted photos. You may notice the occasional 'Life' logo is shown backwards or upside-down. This is intentional. Many of the originally posted photos were backwards or otherwise mis-oriented. In addition, captions were often inaccurate, so these were corrected where possible—and I've liberally added my own comments. Hope you enjoy!

June 8, 2015 - LUXOR, Egypt. Egypt Emergency Labor Intensive project aims at creating short term employment opportunities for unemployed unskilled and semi skilled workers and provide access to basic infrastructure services. These construction workers are building stronger river banks along the Nile river to protect it from erosion. Photo © Dominic Chavez/World Bank

 

Photo ID: Egypt_Luxor_Final_Edit_0006

  

Roadtrip Doel and Antwerp, Belgium

  

Antwerp

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

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For other uses, see Antwerp (disambiguation).

  

Antwerp

Antwerpen

 

Municipality of Belgium

Antwerp.jpg

 

Flag of Antwerp

Flag Coat of arms of Antwerp

Coat of arms

   

Antwerp is located in Belgium

 

Antwerp

 

Antwerp

 

Location in Belgium

  

Map of Antwerp[show]

  

AntwerpenLocatie.png

 

Coordinates: 51°13′N 04°24′ECoordinates: 51°13′N 04°24′E

 

Country

Belgium

 

Community

Flemish Community

 

Region

Flemish Region

 

Province

Antwerp

 

Arrondissement

Antwerp

 

Government

  

• Mayor (list)

Bart De Wever (N-VA)

 

• Governing party/ies

1. N-VA

2. CD&V

3. Open Vld

 

Area

  

• Total

204.51 km2 (78.96 sq mi)

 

Population (1 January 2013)[1]

  

• Total

502,604

 

• Density

2,500/km2 (6,400/sq mi)

 

Postal codes

2000–2660

 

Area codes

03

 

Website

www.antwerpen.be

     

The Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal (Cathedral of our Lady) and the Scheldt river.

    

Grote Markt

Antwerp (Listeni/ˈæntwɜrp/, Dutch: Antwerpen [ˈɑn̪t̪.β̞ɛr.pə(n̪)] ( listen), French: Anvers [ɑ̃ˈvɛʁ(s)], Spanish: Amberes) is a city and municipality in Belgium and the capital of the Antwerp province of Belgium. With a population of 510,610,[2] it is the second most populous city in Belgium, after the capital Brussels, and its metropolitan area, with over 1,190,769 inhabitants, is also the second metropolitan area in Belgium.[3] Antwerp is located on the river Scheldt, which is linked to the North Sea by the Westerschelde estuary. The Port of Antwerp is one of the biggest ports in the world, ranking third in Europe and within the top 20 globally.

 

Antwerp has long been an important city in the Low Countries, both economically and culturally, especially before the Spanish Fury (1576) in the period of the Dutch Revolt. The inhabitants of Antwerp are locally nicknamed Sinjoren, after the Spanish honorific señor or French seigneur, "lord". It refers to the leading Spanish noblemen who ruled the city during the 17th century.[4]

  

History[edit]

 

See also: Timeline of Antwerp

 

Origin of the name[edit]

 

According to folklore, notably celebrated by a statue in front of the town hall, the city got its name from a legend involving a mythical giant called Antigoon who lived near the Scheldt river. He exacted a toll from those crossing the river, and for those who refused, he severed one of their hands and threw it into the river. Eventually, the giant was slain by a young hero named Brabo, who cut off the giant's own hand and flung it into the river. Hence the name Antwerpen, from Dutch hand werpen, akin to Old English hand and wearpan (to throw), which has evolved to today's warp.[5]

 

However, John Lothrop Motley argues that Antwerp's name derives from an 't werf (on the wharf).[6] Aan 't werp (at the warp) is also possible. This "warp" (thrown ground) is a man-made hill, just high enough to remain dry at high tide, whereupon a farm would be built. Another word for werp is pol (hence polders).

 

The prevalent theory is that the name originated in the Gallo-Roman period and comes from the Latin antverpia. Antverpia would come from Ante (before) Verpia (deposition, sedimentation), indicating land that forms by deposition in the inside curve of a river (which is in fact the same origin as Germanic waerpen). Note that the river Scheldt, before a transition period between 600 to 750, followed a different track. This must have coincided roughly with the current ringway south of the city, situating the city within a former curve of the river.[7]

 

Pre-1500[edit]

 

Historical Antwerp had its origins in a Gallo-Roman vicus civilization. Excavations carried out in the oldest section near the Scheldt, 1952–1961 (ref. Princeton), produced pottery shards and fragments of glass from mid-2nd century to the end of the 3rd century.

 

In the 4th century, Antwerp was first named, having been settled by the Germanic Franks.[8] The name was reputed to have been derived from "anda" (at) and "werpum" (wharf).[6]

 

The Merovingian Antwerp, now fortified, was evangelized by Saint Amand in the 7th century. At the end of the 10th century, the Scheldt became the boundary of the Holy Roman Empire. Antwerp became a margraviate, a border province facing the County of Flanders.

 

In the 11th century Godfrey of Bouillon was for some years known as the marquis of Antwerp. In the 12th century, Norbert of Xanten established a community of his Premonstratensian canons at St. Michael's Abbey at Caloes. Antwerp was also the headquarters of Edward III during his early negotiations with Jacob van Artevelde, and his son Lionel, the Duke of Clarence, was born there in 1338.

 

16th century[edit]

 

After the silting up of the Zwin and the consequent decline of Bruges, the city of Antwerp, then part of the Duchy of Brabant, gained in importance. At the end of the 15th century the foreign trading houses were transferred from Bruges to Antwerp, and the building assigned to the English nation is specifically mentioned in 1510. Antwerp became the sugar capital of Europe, importing product from Portuguese and Spanish plantations. The city attracted Italian and German sugar refiners by 1550, and shipped their refined product to Germany, especially Cologne.[9] Moneylenders and financiers did a large business loaning money to the English government in the 1544–1574 period. London bankers were too small to operate on that scale, and Antwerp had a highly efficient bourse that itself attracted rich bankers from around Europe. After the 1570s the city's banking business declined; England ended its borrowing in Antwerp in 1574.[10]

 

Fernand Braudel states that Antwerp became "the centre of the entire international economy, something Bruges had never been even at its height."[11] Antwerp was the richest city in Europe at this time.[12] Antwerp's golden age is tightly linked to the "Age of Exploration". Over the first half of the 16th century Antwerp grew to become the second-largest European city north of the Alps by 1560s with some 200,000 people.[13][14] Many foreign merchants were resident in the city. Francesco Guicciardini, the Venetian envoy, stated that hundreds of ships would pass in a day, and 2,000 carts entered the city each week. Portuguese ships laden with pepper and cinnamon would unload their cargo. According to Luc-Normand Tellier "It is estimated that the port of Antwerp was earning the Spanish crown seven times more revenues than the Americas."[15]

 

Without a long-distance merchant fleet, and governed by an oligarchy of banker-aristocrats forbidden to engage in trade, the economy of Antwerp was foreigner-controlled, which made the city very cosmopolitan, with merchants and traders from Venice, Ragusa, Spain and Portugal. Antwerp had a policy of toleration, which attracted a large orthodox Jewish community. Antwerp was not a "free" city though, since it had been reabsorbed into the Duchy of Brabant in 1406 and was controlled from Brussels.

 

Antwerp experienced three booms during its golden age: The first based on the pepper market, a second launched by American silver coming from Seville (ending with the bankruptcy of Spain in 1557), and a third boom, after the stabilising Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, in 1559, based on the textiles industry. At the beginning of the 16th century Antwerp accounted for 40% of world trade.[15] The boom-and-bust cycles and inflationary cost-of-living squeezed less-skilled workers. In the century after 1541, however, the city's economy and population declined dramatically, while rival Amsterdam experienced massive growth.

 

The religious revolution of the Reformation erupted in violent riots in August 1566, as in other parts of the Low Countries. The regent Margaret, Duchess of Parma, was swept aside when Philip II sent the Duke of Alba at the head of an army the following summer. When the Eighty Years' War broke out in 1568, commercial trading between Antwerp and the Spanish port of Bilbao collapsed and became impossible. On 4 November 1576, Spanish soldiers plundered the city during the so-called Spanish Fury; 7,000 citizens were massacred, 800 houses were burnt down, and over 2 million sterling of damage was done.

 

Subsequently,the city joined the Union of Utrecht in 1579 and became the capital of the Dutch revolt. In 1585, Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza, captured it after a long siege and as part of the terms of surrender its Protestant citizens were given two years to settle their affairs before quitting the city.[16] Most went to the United Provinces in the north, starting the Dutch Golden Age. Antwerp's banking was controlled for a generation by Genoa, and Amsterdam became the new trading centre.

 

17th–19th centuries[edit]

     

Map of Antwerp (1624)

    

Antwerp and the river Scheldt, photochrom ca. 1890–1900

The recognition of the independence of the United Provinces by the Treaty of Münster in 1648 stipulated that the Scheldt should be closed to navigation, which destroyed Antwerp's trading activities. This impediment remained in force until 1863, although the provisions were relaxed during French rule from 1795 to 1814, and also during the time Belgium formed part of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands (1815 to 1830). Antwerp had reached the lowest point of its fortunes in 1800, and its population had sunk under 40,000, when Napoleon, realizing its strategic importance, assigned two million[clarification needed] to enlarge the harbour by constructing two docks and a mole and deepening the Scheldt to allow for larger ships to approach Antwerp.[12] Napoleon hoped that by making Antwerp's harbour the finest in Europe he would be able to counter London's harbour and stint British growth, but he was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo before he could see the plan through.[17]

     

Antwerp, Belgium, from the left bank of the Scheldt (ca. 1890-1900)

In 1830, the city was captured by the Belgian insurgents, but the citadel continued to be held by a Dutch garrison under General David Hendrik Chassé. For a time Chassé subjected the town to periodic bombardment which inflicted much damage, and at the end of 1832 the citadel itself was besieged by a French army. During this attack the town was further damaged. In December 1832, after a gallant defence, Chassé made an honourable surrender.

 

Later that century, a ring of fortresses was constructed some 10 km (6 mi) from the city centre, as Antwerp was considered vital for the survival of the young Belgian state. And in the last decade Antwerp presented itself to the world via a World's Fair attended by 3 million.[18]

 

20th century[edit]

 

Antwerp was the first city to host the World Gymnastics Championships, in 1903. During World War I, the city became the fallback point of the Belgian Army after the defeat at Liège. The Siege of Antwerp lasted for 11 days, but the city was taken after heavy fighting by the German Army, and the Belgians were forced to retreat westwards. Antwerp remained under German occupation until the Armistice.

 

Antwerp hosted the 1920 Summer Olympics. During World War II, the city was an important strategic target because of its port. It was occupied by Germany in May 1940 and liberated by the British 11th Armoured Division on 4 September 1944. After this, the Germans attempted to destroy the Port of Antwerp, which was used by the Allies to bring new material ashore. Thousands of Rheinbote, V-1 and V-2 missiles battered the city. The city was hit by more V-2s than all other targets during the entire war combined, but the attack did not succeed in destroying the port since many of the missiles fell upon other parts of the city. As a result, the city itself was severely damaged and rebuilt after the war in a modern style. After the war, Antwerp, which had already had a sizeable Jewish population before the war, once again became a major European centre of Haredi (and particularly Hasidic) Orthodox Judaism.

 

Ryckewaert argued for the importance of the Ten-Year Plan for the port of Antwerp (1956–1965). It expanded and modernized the port's infrastructure over a 10-year period, with national funding, intended to build a set of canal docks. The broader importance was to facilitate the growth of the north-eastern Antwerp metropolitan region, which attracted new industry. Extending the linear layout along the Scheldt River, planners designed further urbanization along the same linear city model. Satellite communities would be connected to the main strip. Ryckewaert, argues that in contrast to the more confused Europoort plan for the port of Rotterdam, the Antwerp approach succeeded because of flexible and strategic implementation of the project as a co-production between various authorities and private parties.[19]

 

Starting in the 1990s, Antwerp rebranded itself as a world-class fashion centre. Emphasizing the avant-garde, it tried to compete with London, Milan, New York and Paris. It emerged from organized tourism and mega-cultural events.[20]

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antwerp

The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer, pronounced [bɛʁˈliːnɐ ˈmaʊ̯ɐ] (About this sound listen)) was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), starting on 13 August 1961, the Wall cut off (by land) West Berlin from virtually all of surrounding East Germany and East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989. Its demolition officially began on 13 June 1990 and finished in 1992. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany.

 

GDR authorities officially referred to the Berlin Wall as the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall). The West Berlin city government sometimes referred to it as the "Wall of Shame", a term coined by mayor Willy Brandt in reference to the Wall's restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer Inner German border (IGB), which demarcated the border between East and West Germany, it came to symbolize physically the "Iron Curtain" that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.

 

Before the Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and defected from the GDR, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin; from there they could then travel to West Germany and to other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989 the Wall prevented almost all such emigrations During this period over 100,000 people attempted to escape and over 5,000 people succeeded in escaping over the Wall, with an estimated death toll ranging from 136 to more than 200 in and around Berlin.

 

In 1989 a series of revolutions in nearby Eastern Bloc countries - Poland and Hungary in particular - caused a chain reaction in East Germany that ultimately resulted in the demise of the Wall. After several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced on 9 November 1989 that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the Wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, euphoric people and souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the Wall; the governments later used industrial equipment to remove most of what was left. The "fall of the Berlin Wall" paved the way for German reunification, which formally took place on 3 October 1990.

 

BACKGROUND

POST-WAR GERMANY

After the end of World War II in Europe, what remained of pre-war Germany west of the Oder-Neisse line was divided into four occupation zones (as per the Potsdam Agreement), each one controlled by one of the four occupying Allied powers: the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union. The capital of Berlin, as the seat of the Allied Control Council, was similarly subdivided into four sectors despite the city's location, which was fully within the Soviet zone.

 

Within two years, political divisions increased between the Soviets and the other occupying powers. These included the Soviets' refusal to agree to reconstruction plans making post-war Germany self-sufficient and to a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods and infrastructure already removed by the Soviets. France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Benelux countries later met to combine the non-Soviet zones of the country into one zone for reconstruction and to approve the extension of the Marshall Plan.

 

EASTERN BLOC AND THE BERLIN AIRLIFT

Following World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin headed a group of nations on his Western border, the Eastern Bloc, that then included Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which he wished to maintain alongside a weakened Soviet-controlled Germany. As early as 1945, Stalin revealed to German communist leaders that he expected to slowly undermine the British position within the British occupation zone, that the United States would withdraw within a year or two, and that nothing would then stand in the way of a united communist Germany within the bloc.

 

The major task of the ruling communist party in the Soviet zone was to channel Soviet orders down to both the administrative apparatus and the other bloc parties, which in turn would be presented as internal measures. Property and industry was nationalized in the East German zone. If statements or decisions deviated from the described line, reprimands and (for persons outside public attention) punishment would ensue, such as imprisonment, torture and even death.

 

Indoctrination of Marxism-Leninism became a compulsory part of school curricula, sending professors and students fleeing to the West. The East Germans created an elaborate political police apparatus that kept the population under close surveillance, including Soviet SMERSH secret police.

 

In 1948, following disagreements regarding reconstruction and a new German currency, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade, preventing food, materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin. The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several other countries began a massive "airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other supplies. The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against the Western policy change. Communists attempted to disrupt the elections of 1948, preceding large losses therein, while 300,000 Berliners demonstrated for the international airlift to continue. In May 1949, Stalin lifted the blockade, permitting the resumption of Western shipments to Berlin.

 

The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was declared on 7 October 1949. By a secret treaty, the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs accorded the East German state administrative authority, but not autonomy. The Soviets permeated East German administrative, military and secret police structures and had full control.

 

East Germany differed from West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany), which developed into a Western capitalist country with a social market economy ("Soziale Marktwirtschaft" in German) and a democratic parliamentary government. Continual economic growth starting in the 1950s fuelled a 20-year "economic miracle" ("Wirtschaftswunder"). As West Germany's economy grew, and its standard of living steadily improved, many East Germans wanted to move to West Germany.

 

EMIGRATION WESTWARD IN THE EARLY 1950s

After the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, the majority of those living in the newly acquired areas of the Eastern Bloc aspired to independence and wanted the Soviets to leave. Taking advantage of the zonal border between occupied zones in Germany, the number of GDR citizens moving to West Germany totaled 187,000 in 1950; 165,000 in 1951; 182,000 in 1952; and 331,000 in 1953. One reason for the sharp 1953 increase was fear of potential further Sovietization, given the increasingly paranoid actions of Joseph Stalin in late 1952 and early 1953. 226,000 had fled in just the first six months of 1953.

 

ERECTION OF THE INNER GERMAN BORDER

By the early 1950s, the Soviet approach to controlling national movement, restricting emigration, was emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc, including East Germany. The restrictions presented a quandary for some Eastern Bloc states, which had been more economically advanced and open than the Soviet Union, such that crossing borders seemed more natural - especially where no prior border existed between East and West Germany.

 

Up until 1952, the demarcation lines between East Germany and the western occupied zones could be easily crossed in most places. On 1 April 1952, East German leaders met the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in Moscow; during the discussions Stalin's foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov proposed that the East Germans should "introduce a system of passes for visits of West Berlin residents to the territory of East Berlin [so as to stop] free movement of Western agents" in the GDR. Stalin agreed, calling the situation "intolerable". He advised the East Germans to build up their border defenses, telling them that "The demarcation line between East and West Germany should be considered a border - and not just any border, but a dangerous one ... The Germans will guard the line of defence with their lives."

 

Consequently, the inner German border between the two German states was closed, and a barbed-wire fence erected. The border between the Western and Eastern sectors of Berlin, however, remained open, although traffic between the Soviet and the Western sectors was somewhat restricted. This resulted in Berlin becoming a magnet for East Germans desperate to escape life in the GDR, and also a flashpoint for tension between the United States and the Soviet Union.

 

In 1955, the Soviets gave East Germany authority over civilian movement in Berlin, passing control to a regime not recognized in the West. Initially, East Germany granted "visits" to allow its residents access to West Germany. However, following the defection of large numbers of East Germans under this regime, the new East German state legally restricted virtually all travel to the West in 1956. Soviet East German ambassador Mikhail Pervukhin observed that "the presence in Berlin of an open and essentially uncontrolled border between the socialist and capitalist worlds unwittingly prompts the population to make a comparison between both parts of the city, which unfortunately does not always turn out in favour of Democratic [East] Berlin."

 

BERLIN EMIGRATION LOOPHOLE

With the closing of the inner German border officially in 1952, the border in Berlin remained considerably more accessible because it was administered by all four occupying powers. Accordingly, Berlin became the main route by which East Germans left for the West. On 11 December 1957, East Germany introduced a new passport law that reduced the overall number of refugees leaving Eastern Germany.

 

It had the unintended result of drastically increasing the percentage of those leaving through West Berlin from 60% to well over 90% by the end of 1958. Those caught trying to leave East Berlin were subjected to heavy penalties, but with no physical barrier and subway train access still available to West Berlin, such measures were ineffective. The Berlin sector border was essentially a "loophole" through which Eastern Bloc citizens could still escape. The 3.5 million East Germans who had left by 1961 totalled approximately 20% of the entire East German population.

 

An important reason that crossing the inner German border was not stopped earlier was that doing so would cut off much of the railway traffic in East Germany. Construction of a new railway bypassing West Berlin, the Berlin outer ring, commenced in 1951. Following the completion of the railway in 1961, closing the border became a more practical proposition. (See History of rail transport in Germany.)

 

BRAIN DRAIN

The emigrants tended to be young and well-educated, leading to the "brain drain" feared by officials in East Germany.[28] Yuri Andropov, then the CPSU Director on Relations with Communist and Workers' Parties of Socialist Countries, wrote an urgent letter on 28 August 1958, to the Central Committee about the significant 50% increase in the number of East German intelligentsia among the refugees. Andropov reported that, while the East German leadership stated that they were leaving for economic reasons, testimony from refugees indicated that the reasons were more political than material. He stated "the flight of the intelligentsia has reached a particularly critical phase."

 

An East German SED propaganda booklet published in 1955 dramatically described the serious nature of 'flight from the republic':

 

Both from the moral standpoint as well as in terms of the interests of the whole German nation, leaving the GDR is an act of political and moral backwardness and depravity.

 

Those who let themselves be recruited objectively serve West German Reaction and militarism, whether they know it or not. Is it not despicable when for the sake of a few alluring job offers or other false promises about a "guaranteed future" one leaves a country in which the seed for a new and more beautiful life is sprouting, and is already showing the first fruits, for the place that favours a new war and destruction?

 

Is it not an act of political depravity when citizens, whether young people, workers, or members of the intelligentsia, leave and betray what our people have created through common labour in our republic to offer themselves to the American or British secret services or work for the West German factory owners, Junkers, or militarists? Does not leaving the land of progress for the morass of an historically outdated social order demonstrate political backwardness and blindness? ...

 

Workers throughout Germany will demand punishment for those who today leave the German Democratic Republic, the strong bastion of the fight for peace, to serve the deadly enemy of the German people, the imperialists and militarists.

 

By 1960, the combination of World War II and the massive emigration westward left East Germany with only 61% of its population of working age, compared to 70.5% before the war. The loss was disproportionately heavy among professionals: engineers, technicians, physicians, teachers, lawyers and skilled workers. The direct cost of manpower losses to East Germany (and corresponding gain to the West) has been estimated at $7 billion to $9 billion, with East German party leader Walter Ulbricht later claiming that West Germany owed him $17 billion in compensation, including reparations as well as manpower losses. In addition, the drain of East Germany's young population potentially cost it over 22.5 billion marks in lost educational investment. The brain drain of professionals had become so damaging to the political credibility and economic viability of East Germany that the re-securing of the German communist frontier was imperative.

 

The exodus of emigrants from East Germany presented two minor potential benefits: an easy opportunity to smuggle East German secret agents to West Germany, and a reduction in the number of citizens hostile to the communist regime. Neither of these advantages, however, proved particularly useful.

 

HOW KHRUSHEV-KENNEDY RELATIONS AFFECTED THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE WALL

In April 1961 , Khrushchev gained an impression that Kennedy is not very smart when he saw Washington supporting the failed invasion of Cuba by anti-communist exiles which were than left to their fate. Khrushchev decided to alarm rather than appease the president. He soon revealed his intention of signing the separate peace treaty with East Germany that would abolish allied rights in West Berlin. One of his intentions was therefore to get whole of the Berlin. However, this action had risks behind it. The risks that we are taking is justified. If we look at it in the terms of a percentage, there is more than a 95% chance that there will be no war. It meant that 5% was an actual chance of having a war. Khrushchev's assumptions about Kennedy were false. He made clear that the chance of having a war was bigger that 5%. He showed the unpredictability of US's policy. All though Soviet forces were not on high alert, the plans were nonetheless changed to deal with the consequences of the Kennedy's actions. It was then decided to block the access of the West Berlin from the East. That is when the construction of the wall started.

 

1961 - CONSTRUCTION BEGINS

On 15 June 1961, First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party and GDR State Council chairman Walter Ulbricht stated in an international press conference, "Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten!" (No one has the intention of erecting a wall!). It was the first time the colloquial term Mauer (wall) had been used in this context.

 

The transcript of a telephone call between Nikita Khrushchev and Ulbricht on 1 August in the same year, suggests that the initiative for the construction of the Wall came from Khrushchev. However, other sources suggest that Khrushchev had initially been wary about building a wall, fearing negative Western reaction. What is beyond dispute, though, is that Ulbricht had pushed for a border closure for quite some time, arguing that East Germany's very existence was at stake.

 

Khrushchev had become emboldened upon seeing US President John F. Kennedy's youth and inexperience show as weakness against Khrushchev's brutal, undiplomatic aggression. This feeling of miscalculation and failure is admitted by Kennedy in the U.S. ambassador's residence with New York Times columnist James "Scotty" Reston. Kennedy made the regrettable error of admitting that the US would not actively oppose this action in the Soviet sector of Berlin. On Saturday, 12 August 1961, the leaders of the GDR attended a garden party at a government guesthouse in Döllnsee, in a wooded area to the north of East Berlin. There Ulbricht signed the order to close the border and erect a wall.

 

At midnight, the police and units of the East German army began to close the border and, by Sunday morning, 13 August, the border with West Berlin was closed. East German troops and workers had begun to tear up streets running alongside the border to make them impassable to most vehicles and to install barbed wire entanglements and fences along the 156 kilometres around the three western sectors, and the 43 kilometres that divided West and East Berlin. The date of 13 August became commonly referred to as Barbed Wire Sunday in Germany.

 

The barrier was built inside East Berlin or East German territory to ensure that it did not encroach on West Berlin at any point. Generally, the Wall was only slightly inside East Berlin, but in a few places it was some distance from the legal border, most notably at Potsdamer Bahnhof and the Lenné Triangle that is now much of the Potsdamer Platz development.

 

Later, the initial barrier was built up into the Wall proper, the first concrete elements and large blocks being put in place on 17 August. During the construction of the Wall, National People's Army (NVA) and Combat Groups of the Working Class (KdA) soldiers stood in front of it with orders to shoot anyone who attempted to defect. Additionally, chain fences, walls, minefields and other obstacles were installed along the length of East Germany's western border with West Germany proper. A huge no man's land was cleared to provide a clear line of fire at fleeing refugees.

 

IMMEDIATE EFFECTS

With the closing of the East-West sector boundary in Berlin, the vast majority of East Germans could no longer travel or emigrate to West Germany. Berlin soon went from being the easiest place to make an unauthorized crossing between East and West Germany to being the most difficult Many families were split, while East Berliners employed in the West were cut off from their jobs. West Berlin became an isolated exclave in a hostile land. West Berliners demonstrated against the Wall, led by their Mayor (Oberbürgermeister) Willy Brandt, who strongly criticized the United States for failing to respond. Allied intelligence agencies had hypothesized about a wall to stop the flood of refugees, but the main candidate for its location was around the perimeter of the city. In 1961, Secretary of State Dean Rusk proclaimed, "The Wall certainly ought not to be a permanent feature of the European landscape. I see no reason why the Soviet Union should think it is - it is to their advantage in any way to leave there that monument to communist failure."

 

United States and UK sources had expected the Soviet sector to be sealed off from West Berlin, but were surprised by how long the East Germans took for such a move. They considered the Wall as an end to concerns about a GDR/Soviet retaking or capture of the whole of Berlin; the Wall would presumably have been an unnecessary project if such plans were afloat. Thus they concluded that the possibility of a Soviet military conflict over Berlin had decreased.

 

The East German government claimed that the Wall was an "anti-fascist protective rampart" (German: "antifaschistischer Schutzwall") intended to dissuade aggression from the West. Another official justification was the activities of Western agents in Eastern Europe. The Eastern German government also claimed that West Berliners were buying out state-subsidized goods in East Berlin. East Germans and others greeted such statements with skepticism, as most of the time, the border was only closed for citizens of East Germany traveling to the West, but not for residents of West Berlin travelling to the East. The construction of the Wall had caused considerable hardship to families divided by it. Most people believed that the Wall was mainly a means of preventing the citizens of East Germany from entering or fleeing to West Berlin.

 

SECONDARY RESPONSE

The National Security Agency was the only American intelligence agency that was aware that East Germany was to take action to deal with the brain drain problem. On 9 August 1961, the NSA intercepted an advance warning information of the Socialist Unity Party's plan to close the intra-Berlin border between East and West Berlin completely for foot traffic. The interagency intelligence Berlin Watch Committee assessed that this intercept "might be the first step in a plan to close the border." This warning did not reach U.S. President John F. Kennedy until noon on 13 August 1961, while he was vacationing in his yacht off the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. While Kennedy was angry that he had no advance warning, he was relieved that the East Germans and the Soviets had only divided Berlin without taking any action against West Berlin's access to the West. However, he denounced the Berlin Wall, whose erection worsened the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

 

In response to the erection of the Berlin Wall, a retired general, Lucius D. Clay, was appointed by Kennedy as his special advisor and sent to Berlin with ambassadorial rank. Clay had been the Military Governor of the US Zone of Occupation in Germany during the period of the Berlin Blockade and had ordered the first measures in what became the Berlin Airlift. He was immensely popular with the residents of West Berlin, and his appointment was an unambiguous sign that Kennedy would not compromise on the status of West Berlin. Clay and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson arrived at Tempelhof Airport on the afternoon of Saturday, 19 August 1961.

 

They arrived in a city defended by three Allied brigades—one each from the UK, the US, and France (the Forces Françaises à Berlin). On 16 August, Kennedy had given the order for them to be reinforced. Early on 19 August, the 1st Battle Group, 18th Infantry (commanded by Colonel Glover S. Johns Jr.) was alerted.

 

On Sunday morning, U.S. troops marched from West Germany through East Germany, bound for West Berlin. Lead elements - arranged in a column of 491 vehicles and trailers carrying 1,500 men, divided into five march units - left the Helmstedt-Marienborn checkpoint at 06:34. At Marienborn, the Soviet checkpoint next to Helmstedt on the West German-East German border, US personnel were counted by guards. The column was 160 kilometres long, and covered 177 kilometres from Marienborn to Berlin in full battle gear. East German police watched from beside trees next to the autobahn all the way along.

 

The front of the convoy arrived at the outskirts of Berlin just before noon, to be met by Clay and Johnson, before parading through the streets of Berlin in front of a large crowd. At 04:00 on 21 August, Lyndon Johnson left West Berlin in the hands of General Frederick O. Hartel and his brigade of 4,224 officers and men. "For the next three and a half years, American battalions would rotate into West Berlin, by autobahn, at three month intervals to demonstrate Allied rights to the city".

 

The creation of the Wall had important implications for both German states. By stemming the exodus of people from East Germany, the East German government was able to reassert its control over the country: in spite of discontent with the Wall, economic problems caused by dual currency and the black market were largely eliminated. The economy in the GDR began to grow. But, the Wall proved a public relations disaster for the communist bloc as a whole. Western powers portrayed it as a symbol of communist tyranny, particularly after East German border guards shot and killed would-be defectors. Such fatalities were later treated as acts of murder by the reunified Germany.

 

WIKIPEDIA

___________

. . . space here is limited - so for further reading go to Wikipedia

 

The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer, pronounced [bɛʁˈliːnɐ ˈmaʊ̯ɐ] (About this sound listen)) was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), starting on 13 August 1961, the Wall cut off (by land) West Berlin from virtually all of surrounding East Germany and East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989. Its demolition officially began on 13 June 1990 and finished in 1992. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany.

 

GDR authorities officially referred to the Berlin Wall as the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall). The West Berlin city government sometimes referred to it as the "Wall of Shame", a term coined by mayor Willy Brandt in reference to the Wall's restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer Inner German border (IGB), which demarcated the border between East and West Germany, it came to symbolize physically the "Iron Curtain" that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.

 

Before the Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and defected from the GDR, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin; from there they could then travel to West Germany and to other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989 the Wall prevented almost all such emigrations During this period over 100,000 people attempted to escape and over 5,000 people succeeded in escaping over the Wall, with an estimated death toll ranging from 136 to more than 200 in and around Berlin.

 

In 1989 a series of revolutions in nearby Eastern Bloc countries - Poland and Hungary in particular - caused a chain reaction in East Germany that ultimately resulted in the demise of the Wall. After several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced on 9 November 1989 that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the Wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, euphoric people and souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the Wall; the governments later used industrial equipment to remove most of what was left. The "fall of the Berlin Wall" paved the way for German reunification, which formally took place on 3 October 1990.

 

BACKGROUND

POST-WAR GERMANY

After the end of World War II in Europe, what remained of pre-war Germany west of the Oder-Neisse line was divided into four occupation zones (as per the Potsdam Agreement), each one controlled by one of the four occupying Allied powers: the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union. The capital of Berlin, as the seat of the Allied Control Council, was similarly subdivided into four sectors despite the city's location, which was fully within the Soviet zone.

 

Within two years, political divisions increased between the Soviets and the other occupying powers. These included the Soviets' refusal to agree to reconstruction plans making post-war Germany self-sufficient and to a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods and infrastructure already removed by the Soviets. France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Benelux countries later met to combine the non-Soviet zones of the country into one zone for reconstruction and to approve the extension of the Marshall Plan.

 

EASTERN BLOC AND THE BERLIN AIRLIFT

Following World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin headed a group of nations on his Western border, the Eastern Bloc, that then included Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which he wished to maintain alongside a weakened Soviet-controlled Germany. As early as 1945, Stalin revealed to German communist leaders that he expected to slowly undermine the British position within the British occupation zone, that the United States would withdraw within a year or two, and that nothing would then stand in the way of a united communist Germany within the bloc.

 

The major task of the ruling communist party in the Soviet zone was to channel Soviet orders down to both the administrative apparatus and the other bloc parties, which in turn would be presented as internal measures. Property and industry was nationalized in the East German zone. If statements or decisions deviated from the described line, reprimands and (for persons outside public attention) punishment would ensue, such as imprisonment, torture and even death.

 

Indoctrination of Marxism-Leninism became a compulsory part of school curricula, sending professors and students fleeing to the West. The East Germans created an elaborate political police apparatus that kept the population under close surveillance, including Soviet SMERSH secret police.

 

In 1948, following disagreements regarding reconstruction and a new German currency, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade, preventing food, materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin. The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several other countries began a massive "airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other supplies. The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against the Western policy change. Communists attempted to disrupt the elections of 1948, preceding large losses therein, while 300,000 Berliners demonstrated for the international airlift to continue. In May 1949, Stalin lifted the blockade, permitting the resumption of Western shipments to Berlin.

 

The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was declared on 7 October 1949. By a secret treaty, the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs accorded the East German state administrative authority, but not autonomy. The Soviets permeated East German administrative, military and secret police structures and had full control.

 

East Germany differed from West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany), which developed into a Western capitalist country with a social market economy ("Soziale Marktwirtschaft" in German) and a democratic parliamentary government. Continual economic growth starting in the 1950s fuelled a 20-year "economic miracle" ("Wirtschaftswunder"). As West Germany's economy grew, and its standard of living steadily improved, many East Germans wanted to move to West Germany.

 

EMIGRATION WESTWARD IN THE EARLY 1950s

After the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, the majority of those living in the newly acquired areas of the Eastern Bloc aspired to independence and wanted the Soviets to leave. Taking advantage of the zonal border between occupied zones in Germany, the number of GDR citizens moving to West Germany totaled 187,000 in 1950; 165,000 in 1951; 182,000 in 1952; and 331,000 in 1953. One reason for the sharp 1953 increase was fear of potential further Sovietization, given the increasingly paranoid actions of Joseph Stalin in late 1952 and early 1953. 226,000 had fled in just the first six months of 1953.

 

ERECTION OF THE INNER GERMAN BORDER

By the early 1950s, the Soviet approach to controlling national movement, restricting emigration, was emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc, including East Germany. The restrictions presented a quandary for some Eastern Bloc states, which had been more economically advanced and open than the Soviet Union, such that crossing borders seemed more natural - especially where no prior border existed between East and West Germany.

 

Up until 1952, the demarcation lines between East Germany and the western occupied zones could be easily crossed in most places. On 1 April 1952, East German leaders met the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in Moscow; during the discussions Stalin's foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov proposed that the East Germans should "introduce a system of passes for visits of West Berlin residents to the territory of East Berlin [so as to stop] free movement of Western agents" in the GDR. Stalin agreed, calling the situation "intolerable". He advised the East Germans to build up their border defenses, telling them that "The demarcation line between East and West Germany should be considered a border - and not just any border, but a dangerous one ... The Germans will guard the line of defence with their lives."

 

Consequently, the inner German border between the two German states was closed, and a barbed-wire fence erected. The border between the Western and Eastern sectors of Berlin, however, remained open, although traffic between the Soviet and the Western sectors was somewhat restricted. This resulted in Berlin becoming a magnet for East Germans desperate to escape life in the GDR, and also a flashpoint for tension between the United States and the Soviet Union.

 

In 1955, the Soviets gave East Germany authority over civilian movement in Berlin, passing control to a regime not recognized in the West. Initially, East Germany granted "visits" to allow its residents access to West Germany. However, following the defection of large numbers of East Germans under this regime, the new East German state legally restricted virtually all travel to the West in 1956. Soviet East German ambassador Mikhail Pervukhin observed that "the presence in Berlin of an open and essentially uncontrolled border between the socialist and capitalist worlds unwittingly prompts the population to make a comparison between both parts of the city, which unfortunately does not always turn out in favour of Democratic [East] Berlin."

 

BERLIN EMIGRATION LOOPHOLE

With the closing of the inner German border officially in 1952, the border in Berlin remained considerably more accessible because it was administered by all four occupying powers. Accordingly, Berlin became the main route by which East Germans left for the West. On 11 December 1957, East Germany introduced a new passport law that reduced the overall number of refugees leaving Eastern Germany.

 

It had the unintended result of drastically increasing the percentage of those leaving through West Berlin from 60% to well over 90% by the end of 1958. Those caught trying to leave East Berlin were subjected to heavy penalties, but with no physical barrier and subway train access still available to West Berlin, such measures were ineffective. The Berlin sector border was essentially a "loophole" through which Eastern Bloc citizens could still escape. The 3.5 million East Germans who had left by 1961 totalled approximately 20% of the entire East German population.

 

An important reason that crossing the inner German border was not stopped earlier was that doing so would cut off much of the railway traffic in East Germany. Construction of a new railway bypassing West Berlin, the Berlin outer ring, commenced in 1951. Following the completion of the railway in 1961, closing the border became a more practical proposition. (See History of rail transport in Germany.)

 

BRAIN DRAIN

The emigrants tended to be young and well-educated, leading to the "brain drain" feared by officials in East Germany.[28] Yuri Andropov, then the CPSU Director on Relations with Communist and Workers' Parties of Socialist Countries, wrote an urgent letter on 28 August 1958, to the Central Committee about the significant 50% increase in the number of East German intelligentsia among the refugees. Andropov reported that, while the East German leadership stated that they were leaving for economic reasons, testimony from refugees indicated that the reasons were more political than material. He stated "the flight of the intelligentsia has reached a particularly critical phase."

 

An East German SED propaganda booklet published in 1955 dramatically described the serious nature of 'flight from the republic':

 

Both from the moral standpoint as well as in terms of the interests of the whole German nation, leaving the GDR is an act of political and moral backwardness and depravity.

 

Those who let themselves be recruited objectively serve West German Reaction and militarism, whether they know it or not. Is it not despicable when for the sake of a few alluring job offers or other false promises about a "guaranteed future" one leaves a country in which the seed for a new and more beautiful life is sprouting, and is already showing the first fruits, for the place that favours a new war and destruction?

 

Is it not an act of political depravity when citizens, whether young people, workers, or members of the intelligentsia, leave and betray what our people have created through common labour in our republic to offer themselves to the American or British secret services or work for the West German factory owners, Junkers, or militarists? Does not leaving the land of progress for the morass of an historically outdated social order demonstrate political backwardness and blindness? ...

 

Workers throughout Germany will demand punishment for those who today leave the German Democratic Republic, the strong bastion of the fight for peace, to serve the deadly enemy of the German people, the imperialists and militarists.

 

By 1960, the combination of World War II and the massive emigration westward left East Germany with only 61% of its population of working age, compared to 70.5% before the war. The loss was disproportionately heavy among professionals: engineers, technicians, physicians, teachers, lawyers and skilled workers. The direct cost of manpower losses to East Germany (and corresponding gain to the West) has been estimated at $7 billion to $9 billion, with East German party leader Walter Ulbricht later claiming that West Germany owed him $17 billion in compensation, including reparations as well as manpower losses. In addition, the drain of East Germany's young population potentially cost it over 22.5 billion marks in lost educational investment. The brain drain of professionals had become so damaging to the political credibility and economic viability of East Germany that the re-securing of the German communist frontier was imperative.

 

The exodus of emigrants from East Germany presented two minor potential benefits: an easy opportunity to smuggle East German secret agents to West Germany, and a reduction in the number of citizens hostile to the communist regime. Neither of these advantages, however, proved particularly useful.

 

HOW KHRUSHEV-KENNEDY RELATIONS AFFECTED THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE WALL

In April 1961 , Khrushchev gained an impression that Kennedy is not very smart when he saw Washington supporting the failed invasion of Cuba by anti-communist exiles which were than left to their fate. Khrushchev decided to alarm rather than appease the president. He soon revealed his intention of signing the separate peace treaty with East Germany that would abolish allied rights in West Berlin. One of his intentions was therefore to get whole of the Berlin. However, this action had risks behind it. The risks that we are taking is justified. If we look at it in the terms of a percentage, there is more than a 95% chance that there will be no war. It meant that 5% was an actual chance of having a war. Khrushchev's assumptions about Kennedy were false. He made clear that the chance of having a war was bigger that 5%. He showed the unpredictability of US's policy. All though Soviet forces were not on high alert, the plans were nonetheless changed to deal with the consequences of the Kennedy's actions. It was then decided to block the access of the West Berlin from the East. That is when the construction of the wall started.

 

1961 - CONSTRUCTION BEGINS

On 15 June 1961, First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party and GDR State Council chairman Walter Ulbricht stated in an international press conference, "Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten!" (No one has the intention of erecting a wall!). It was the first time the colloquial term Mauer (wall) had been used in this context.

 

The transcript of a telephone call between Nikita Khrushchev and Ulbricht on 1 August in the same year, suggests that the initiative for the construction of the Wall came from Khrushchev. However, other sources suggest that Khrushchev had initially been wary about building a wall, fearing negative Western reaction. What is beyond dispute, though, is that Ulbricht had pushed for a border closure for quite some time, arguing that East Germany's very existence was at stake.

 

Khrushchev had become emboldened upon seeing US President John F. Kennedy's youth and inexperience show as weakness against Khrushchev's brutal, undiplomatic aggression. This feeling of miscalculation and failure is admitted by Kennedy in the U.S. ambassador's residence with New York Times columnist James "Scotty" Reston. Kennedy made the regrettable error of admitting that the US would not actively oppose this action in the Soviet sector of Berlin. On Saturday, 12 August 1961, the leaders of the GDR attended a garden party at a government guesthouse in Döllnsee, in a wooded area to the north of East Berlin. There Ulbricht signed the order to close the border and erect a wall.

 

At midnight, the police and units of the East German army began to close the border and, by Sunday morning, 13 August, the border with West Berlin was closed. East German troops and workers had begun to tear up streets running alongside the border to make them impassable to most vehicles and to install barbed wire entanglements and fences along the 156 kilometres around the three western sectors, and the 43 kilometres that divided West and East Berlin. The date of 13 August became commonly referred to as Barbed Wire Sunday in Germany.

 

The barrier was built inside East Berlin or East German territory to ensure that it did not encroach on West Berlin at any point. Generally, the Wall was only slightly inside East Berlin, but in a few places it was some distance from the legal border, most notably at Potsdamer Bahnhof and the Lenné Triangle that is now much of the Potsdamer Platz development.

 

Later, the initial barrier was built up into the Wall proper, the first concrete elements and large blocks being put in place on 17 August. During the construction of the Wall, National People's Army (NVA) and Combat Groups of the Working Class (KdA) soldiers stood in front of it with orders to shoot anyone who attempted to defect. Additionally, chain fences, walls, minefields and other obstacles were installed along the length of East Germany's western border with West Germany proper. A huge no man's land was cleared to provide a clear line of fire at fleeing refugees.

 

IMMEDIATE EFFECTS

With the closing of the East-West sector boundary in Berlin, the vast majority of East Germans could no longer travel or emigrate to West Germany. Berlin soon went from being the easiest place to make an unauthorized crossing between East and West Germany to being the most difficult Many families were split, while East Berliners employed in the West were cut off from their jobs. West Berlin became an isolated exclave in a hostile land. West Berliners demonstrated against the Wall, led by their Mayor (Oberbürgermeister) Willy Brandt, who strongly criticized the United States for failing to respond. Allied intelligence agencies had hypothesized about a wall to stop the flood of refugees, but the main candidate for its location was around the perimeter of the city. In 1961, Secretary of State Dean Rusk proclaimed, "The Wall certainly ought not to be a permanent feature of the European landscape. I see no reason why the Soviet Union should think it is - it is to their advantage in any way to leave there that monument to communist failure."

 

United States and UK sources had expected the Soviet sector to be sealed off from West Berlin, but were surprised by how long the East Germans took for such a move. They considered the Wall as an end to concerns about a GDR/Soviet retaking or capture of the whole of Berlin; the Wall would presumably have been an unnecessary project if such plans were afloat. Thus they concluded that the possibility of a Soviet military conflict over Berlin had decreased.

 

The East German government claimed that the Wall was an "anti-fascist protective rampart" (German: "antifaschistischer Schutzwall") intended to dissuade aggression from the West. Another official justification was the activities of Western agents in Eastern Europe. The Eastern German government also claimed that West Berliners were buying out state-subsidized goods in East Berlin. East Germans and others greeted such statements with skepticism, as most of the time, the border was only closed for citizens of East Germany traveling to the West, but not for residents of West Berlin travelling to the East. The construction of the Wall had caused considerable hardship to families divided by it. Most people believed that the Wall was mainly a means of preventing the citizens of East Germany from entering or fleeing to West Berlin.

 

SECONDARY RESPONSE

The National Security Agency was the only American intelligence agency that was aware that East Germany was to take action to deal with the brain drain problem. On 9 August 1961, the NSA intercepted an advance warning information of the Socialist Unity Party's plan to close the intra-Berlin border between East and West Berlin completely for foot traffic. The interagency intelligence Berlin Watch Committee assessed that this intercept "might be the first step in a plan to close the border." This warning did not reach U.S. President John F. Kennedy until noon on 13 August 1961, while he was vacationing in his yacht off the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. While Kennedy was angry that he had no advance warning, he was relieved that the East Germans and the Soviets had only divided Berlin without taking any action against West Berlin's access to the West. However, he denounced the Berlin Wall, whose erection worsened the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

 

In response to the erection of the Berlin Wall, a retired general, Lucius D. Clay, was appointed by Kennedy as his special advisor and sent to Berlin with ambassadorial rank. Clay had been the Military Governor of the US Zone of Occupation in Germany during the period of the Berlin Blockade and had ordered the first measures in what became the Berlin Airlift. He was immensely popular with the residents of West Berlin, and his appointment was an unambiguous sign that Kennedy would not compromise on the status of West Berlin. Clay and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson arrived at Tempelhof Airport on the afternoon of Saturday, 19 August 1961.

 

They arrived in a city defended by three Allied brigades—one each from the UK, the US, and France (the Forces Françaises à Berlin). On 16 August, Kennedy had given the order for them to be reinforced. Early on 19 August, the 1st Battle Group, 18th Infantry (commanded by Colonel Glover S. Johns Jr.) was alerted.

 

On Sunday morning, U.S. troops marched from West Germany through East Germany, bound for West Berlin. Lead elements - arranged in a column of 491 vehicles and trailers carrying 1,500 men, divided into five march units - left the Helmstedt-Marienborn checkpoint at 06:34. At Marienborn, the Soviet checkpoint next to Helmstedt on the West German-East German border, US personnel were counted by guards. The column was 160 kilometres long, and covered 177 kilometres from Marienborn to Berlin in full battle gear. East German police watched from beside trees next to the autobahn all the way along.

 

The front of the convoy arrived at the outskirts of Berlin just before noon, to be met by Clay and Johnson, before parading through the streets of Berlin in front of a large crowd. At 04:00 on 21 August, Lyndon Johnson left West Berlin in the hands of General Frederick O. Hartel and his brigade of 4,224 officers and men. "For the next three and a half years, American battalions would rotate into West Berlin, by autobahn, at three month intervals to demonstrate Allied rights to the city".

 

The creation of the Wall had important implications for both German states. By stemming the exodus of people from East Germany, the East German government was able to reassert its control over the country: in spite of discontent with the Wall, economic problems caused by dual currency and the black market were largely eliminated. The economy in the GDR began to grow. But, the Wall proved a public relations disaster for the communist bloc as a whole. Western powers portrayed it as a symbol of communist tyranny, particularly after East German border guards shot and killed would-be defectors. Such fatalities were later treated as acts of murder by the reunified Germany.

 

WIKIPEDIA

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Series: CRYSTAL CRAFTING #3

 

Crystals Master casting the crystal block into a metal mold cooling system..

 

Location: House of Waterford Crystal - Parnell Street - Waterford - County Waterford - Munster - Ireland - IE - Europe - EU

 

Photographer: Mark

 

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