Atmosphere of The Derby Epsom Downs
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The inflorescence of Romanesco broccoli or Romanesque cauliflower. Each bud is composed of a series of smaller buds, each arranged in a logarithmic spiral. Mathematicians use the term fractal to describe a curve or geometrical figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. In Romanesco broccoli, the pattern is only an approximate fractal since the pattern eventually terminates when the feature is sufficiently small. For more information see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanesco_broccoli
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I am very grateful for the very kind comments and faves. Thanks for visiting.
There is a colour photo (shallower dof) in the first comment.
f/32 1.6sec ISO 800 Pentax 100mm Pentax K-1
"Ooops ... I need to review the logarithms"
For Flickr group "Happy Caturday!", topics: "Our cats by numbers"
Taken on the dark and rainy Nottingham Light Night 2021.
More information about the mill and the mathematician can be found here:
The Mathematician
The Father of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
The Logician
The Cryptanalyst
The Philosopher
The Genius
The Saver of Lives
One of the Greatest Persons of the 20th Century
One of the Greatest Ever Britons
.... and the victim of a cruel society.
Alan Turing
Read: 10 Facts About Enigma Codebreaker Alan Turing
Read: Alan Turing
Artwork ©jackiecrossley
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Galileo Galilei was an important Italian scientist, physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher. His scientific contribution started a new era in the history of astronomy, he was the first astronomer to access new knowledge using the telescope. He defended the concept that the Earth was not the center of the universe.
Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy, on February 15, 1564, son of Vincenzo Galilei and Julia Ammannati. His parents noticed Galilei's great intelligence and special aptitudes from an early age. The boy showed an interest in the arts and performed excellent paintings, demonstrating manual skill and creativity to manufacture toys and contraptions. He played the organ and zither with aplomb. Thus, Galilei excelled in studies at the Sunday school in Vallombrosa and planned to enter the monastery, but his father did not agree with the idea and enrolled him to study medicine at the University of Pisa. Two years after joining, he dropped out of the course and went to dedicate himself to the study of mathematics. The move did not please his father, and Galilei ended up dropping out of the University in 1585. He did not complete any degrees, but in the same year he went to Florence and began giving private lessons to support himself. He stood out for his research in geometry and continued with his mathematical studies.
It was at this time that he invented the hydrostatic balance, a mechanism that would be published in a detailed treatise in the year 1644. In 1589, in recognition of his scientific contributions and brilliant reasoning, he was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa. He was not welcomed by teachers, as he was only 25 years old, had incomplete academic training and publicly discredited Aristotle's established theories. In 1590 Galilei published a treatise on the motion of bodies. In 1591 he was removed from the professorship, after succumbing to intrigues and disputes with Aristotle's supporters. In 1592 he was appointed by the Senate of Venice to teach mathematics at the University of Padua, a position he would hold for 18 years. In 1609 he built a telescope based on the one previously invented by Hans Lippershey in Holland. Galilei made meticulous observations of the sky and incredible discoveries: he located the four largest moons of Jupiter and the mountains and craters on the Moon's surface. And when he detected spots present on the Sun's surface, the discovery helped to prove his theory that the star rotated on an axis. He investigated Saturn and observed what appeared to be two fixed moons, which were the edges of Saturn's ring system, but Galilei's telescope was not accurate enough to determine exactly what those points were.
His findings were collected and published in March 1610 in the book “The Messenger of the Stars”. The work was acclaimed and also generated much controversy, as Galilei publicly defended Nicolaus Copernicus' theory that the Sun was the center of our Solar System, not the Earth. At that time, the Catholic Church fully controlled science and held the opposite view, that the center was the Earth.
In 1616 Galilei was cornered by the authorities of the Inquisition and threatened with the death penalty if he did not publicly deny the scientific truths he had proved. He was expressly prohibited from teaching and propagating ideas that were contrary to the position of the Church. Even so, in 1632 he published the "Dialogue Concerning the Two Greatest Systems of the Universe", causing the Church's total rejection and intolerance. Prevented from continuing with his research and theories, the scientist retired to his castle located in Arcetri, a village near Florence, where he dedicated himself to pursuing his experiments alone.
Galileo Galilei died on January 8, 1642 in Arcetri, Italy. He was almost blinded by the observation of sunspots done without adequate protection for decades. Three hundred and fifty years later, through Pope John Paul II, on October 31, 1992, the Catholic Church formally recognized the legitimacy of Galilei's theories.
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He is reburied here:
A re-working in black and white of an image from 2014
Nik Silver Efex Pro 2. Anstruther lighthouse on the west pier of Anstruther Harbour, also known as Chalmers lighthouse after Dr Thomas Chalmers, a mathematician who studied at St Andrew’s University.
long stories shortened... (discarded and abandoned and intertwined short stories) well..actually they are chunks and fragmets and notes of stories that never made it
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a young PhD math candidate writing his dissertation on an obscure arab mathematician from the middle ages who specialized in cycles and periods in infinite series and develops a process to determine prime number density in a large number space. (which is all and good) except this makes it an excellent tool to decrypting military grade encryption, which is based on the computational difficulty of factoring large numbers into their prime components
the arab mathematician was ultimately censured by the religious mullahs for developing tools to rationalize the infinite, which is of course the nature of Allah and for man to attempt to place Allah into a human scale is blasphemy
so the arab mathematician disappears and the young phd candidate finds that his dissertation has been suspended pending review but cant get any information on who is reviewing it
finally another young mathematician approaches him and starts a long discussion on math and the nature of numbers and the mathematicians love of the underlying structure of reality that math represents. the phd candidate is leary of this mathematician cause he wont answer what he does or where he went to school or how he knows so many cutting edge fields in math
eventually, the young mathematician offers the phd candidate a position with the NSA, National Security Agency, (where all the big crypto and high math goes on) but explains that if he accepts that he will essentially disappear from his current world. his work will be classified, he will not be able to publish in academic journals or speak in public, or talk about his work to his friends on the outside, but the compensation is that he
would be able to work unfettered with the greatest math minds in the country, totally funded, free to explore any field or fancy he thought. after a few moments of thought, the phd accepts.
then the story will go back to the arab mathematician who is also approached my a young beared mullah, who offers him a position within his group of thinkers who do ponder and explore the nature of nature reality and Allah through mathematics, but that by joining them he would need to disappear from the world, after a few minutes of thought, he too accepts...
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Daniel sipped his 6th coffee (colloidal suspension for caffeine transport) while his batch jobs on ramanet, the Indian supergrid, finished their checksum verification. His chin, a bit stubbly, itched. His eyes, a bit red, were sore. The goa trance shoutcast feed had mushed into a fast cadence drone. The flat screen monitor warped and bulged with the oscillating fan blowing on Daniel's face
'O' glamorous larval life of a PhD student...' he jotted and doodle-circled on his notepad.
Daniel cracked his neck and jutted his jaw, stretching out the accumulation of kinks, as RamaNet finished the final integrity check on his dataset. this two hour round of processing on the Indian supergrid would cost about $130 out of his precious grant fund, but you couldnt beat the bargain. 120 minutes times 150,000 PCs in the RamaNet processing collective = 1,080,000,000 seconds or 18,000,000 minutes or 300,000 hours or 12500 days or 34.25 years of processing time for the price of a video game. Calculation was commoditized now. You uploaded your pre-fromatted dataset to RamaNet. the data was packeted and sent to out to 150,000 Indians who lent a few percents of never-to-be missed CPU cycles off their systems for background processing. when their alotted package was completed it was sent back to RamaNet for re-assembly into something coherent for the buyer. in return the Indians got a rebate on their net access charges or access to premier bollywood galleries or credit towards their own processing charges. a good deal all the way around. Daniel's dataset, an anthology of complex proofs from a long-dead arab mathematician, was queued with amateur weather forecast modeling, home-brewed digital CGI for indie movies, chaos theory-based currency trading algorithms, etc. the really high end, confidential jobs, like protein folding analysis or big pharm drug trials were more likely handled by the huge western collectives of several million collaborative systems, usually high-performance machines in dedicated corporate server farms. the cost there was out of Daniel's range, but you got a faster return and better promises of encryption for your buck.
Daniel scratched his scalp and flexed his fingers. 'two months from today i will be a doctor of mathematics...and no job. damnit. i need to find something fast.' Daniel calculated in his mind how quickly the student loans repayments would kick in and completely wipe him out. RamaNet would have done it in nanoseconds, ha! he laughed to himself. Daniel had avoided the rounds of job interviews and recommendations that passed his way. he was too absorbed in his research to look ahead, and perhaps a bit intimidated by the idea of the job hunt flea market. flexing his CV, getting a monkey suit, trying to explain his research to recruiters, who were often the same finger-counting business majors in college that made his skin crawl. Daniel always felt a bit embarrassed when he announced he was math PhD candidate. folks would immediately glaze over,
tsk tsk out a 'that's interesting', and swiftly change the subject. something will come up, he mantra'd to himself over and over, something will come up. stick with ali, there is something real in there, just a bit deeper. the real problem was his thesis advisor. dr. fuentes was not returning his calls, his secretary was not taking appointments from Daniel. he had submitted his finished draft of his thesis two weeks ago, but hadnt heard back since, except for a cryptic email saying that the review committee was having some issues with his paper and that Daniel would be hearing from him shortly. Daniel was rerunning his calculations on RamaNet to assuage the gnawing doubt that he completely botched some component of his argument and that the review committee was debating some manner of telling him to redo the entire effort. no PhD and no job. that would ice the cake. Daniel started calculating his body mass and general aerodynamic resistance relative to the height of the school cathedral to figure out if he had time to reach a terminal velocity before impact...only a failed math PhD would attempt to determine at what speed his body would smack concrete, he morbidly thought to himself.
ali ja'far muhammed ibn abdullah al-farisi slipped meditatively on his cup of water, thinking about his proof. he dipped a finger in the cup and held up a droplet of water under his fingertip, watching the sunlight prisimatically splay out on the mouth of the cup. 'praise be Allah and his wonderous bounty' he mumured to himself.
the elders had been in conference all day over his proof. though the heavy doors to their chamber were closed, he would occasionally hear muffled but distinctly angry shouts. ali sat on a divan in the anteroom, served numerous cups of tea by an obviously nervous secretary. ali knew there was deep resistance to his research, but for the life of him he couldnt figure out why. he was a simple mathematician. he came up with some unique observations. he wanted to share them with his peers...
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Overview: biotech researcher discovers a new life-extension technology and is murdered. He is cryogenically frozen for 150 years. When he is
revived he must stop a dark corporate conspiracy – and find his murderer.
Summer 2015 - Hot genius free-lance biotech researcher unravels the key component of a radical life-extension gene therapy that will ensure 300 years of robust life to its recipients. The researcher is murdered shortly after he hides the critical component. His distraught friend has him cryogenically frozen. 150 years later, the researcher is revived by the same major bio-med corporation for which he had originally been working.
Quickly he realizes that their motives are less than altruistic: his modification of the gene therapy is needed to resolve an unforeseen debilitation now creeping up in the recipients of the life-extension process. The recipients, now nearing 125 years off added life, are decompensating into psychotics. The researcher at first tries to remember and reconstruct what he did with the hidden critical component, but stops in disgust when he learns that in the past 150 years the life-extension therapy has been reserved solely for the ultra-affluent and has created an extreme and cruel global gerontocratic elite. He voices his disgust to his corporate minders, who cease being beneficent and show their true colors as trying to gain control of this critical technology in order to control the elites.
In the process of dealing with the corporation, he learns about his murder and begins investigating.As he comes closer to the identity of his murderer, he uncovers a wider conspiracy and is the target of more murder attempts.
He was killed by a friend in 2015. The friend was the CEO of a small bio-gen firm that the researcher was doing the LET work for. The CEO, a biz-head with a genetics academic background, took the researcher’s work and exploited it as his own, in the process growing his small firm into a bio-med powerhouse and him into one of the world’s wealthiest individuals.
The CEO also was the first recipient of the LET and is now 190 years old, but doesn’t look a day over 45. Smart, urbane, ruthless, the CEO used his wealth and position to start the cabal of Ultras. It is a faction of the top 50 smartest and wealthiest people in the world who have ‘ascended from the world’ (faked their demise) and control the global economy with their vast coordinated wealth. Perhaps they will call themselves ‘The Ascended’. We need to decide how the cabal lives. Are they sequestered on a luxurious island compound, or do they live in the open, surgically re-sculpted after each faked death, or do they live in the open.
Also we need to figure out what the world will look and feel like in 150 years.
As the ultras decompensate into psychosis, the CEO orders the researcher to be revived in order to find a cure. The CEO had the researcher’s lab notes decrypted and figured that the he was close if not successful in finding the missing component to stabilize the LET.
Tiberius Syndrome: the decline into cruel psychosis experienced by the ultras, named after the roman emperor Tiberius’ degenerate behavior after he sequestered himself on Capri.
The ironic twist might be that there is no cure, no stabilization. The psychosis is not the result of the LET alone, but also due in part to the unfettered ego/wills of the ultras. Absolute power corrupts…
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a brazilian hacking syndicate was subcontracted by a st petersberg crew to run interference on a hit on SWIFT, the global currency clearinghouse notification network. The UniFavela clan was going to run a multi-flank raid. They specialized in fast propagating virii and had created a custom mail-in virus that exploited a few microsoft vulnerabilities that they had discovered and kept mum. Their target was a Latin American PR spokesman listed on the corporate web site for press queries. The PR flak would be just the sleepy guard on the wall for their virus to slip past. 30 minutes after opening an inocuous spoofed email from a French e-trade publication requesting clarification on the SWIFT-Indentrus partnership. the virus would port scan and map its entire site LAN, salmoning its way up the router paths till it found the deep waters of the main corporate campus network in Brussels. Shortly, the internal LAN at Brussels would be suffering switch and router buffer overflows and traffic would gasp, ack, and sputter. UniFavela would then towel whip out a vanilla DDOS on the main company web site, any INTERNIC-registered addresses, and any other system in the IP block reserved for SWIFT that had previously port scanned as interesting, or ,even, as nothing. Mongols charging the village gates and tossing flaming torches on thatched roofs. IT Operations would be running to and fro, trying to figure out the internal bandwidth crunch and if there was a bleedout causing the external net problems.
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The Post-Human Story of Minos:
the CEO of a powerful commercial combine is bore an illegitimate son by his indiscreet wife in retaliation for his own dalliances. the son has a hideous deformity but is fantastically brilliant - brilliant enough for the father overcome his own repulsion of the child - as a bastard and a freak. the father sequesters the child in an elaborate virtual domain. the child, a hacker savant, is used to breach competitor nets. but as his power in the digital realm expands, the child transforms into the tyrant-monster. using the nets, he lashes out at people who have caused him pain, then evolves into enjoying the taste of terror and fear. He becomes the Minotaur.
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'there was a mad scramble amongst all the big spook governments, dark side corporations, and the privacy maccabees once it was determined that quantum computation had left the tidal pool of academia, grown legs and air-breathing lungs, and was headed for the nat sec intel highlands. all previous encryption models were rendered obsolete, and worse, exposed. QC became an undefiable xray spotlight, laying bare any encrypted secret with a ease of opening a mathematical candy wrapper. And for a while it swung the advantage back to the state in the digital Boer War against the freecon partisans.'
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The Oort, to the Intras, looked as one people. Extra-stellar hillbillies, ekeing out a subsistance existence on extracted organics from the frozen crud comets and other planetesimals of the Oort Cloud that slung around the solar system in a 1K AU circuit. To the Oort there was no Oort. Each station, each kampong was distinct and seperate. Seperate dialects, traditions, norms, goals. Some were scientific collectives, some were tired mining operations, some were intense sectarian cults - they shared little between themselves beyond necessary trade links for scarce commodities.
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A young prince is disgraced in an internal court scandal and sent into a quasi-exile on a worthless mission. On his travels he builds the wisdom and learns the skills necessary to be a just and effective leader.
His exile was a gambit by his patriarch to remove Genji from the arena of pointless court intrigues and develop him as a real leader. The patriarch dispatched a team of loyal praetorians to discreetly follow and protect Genji on his odyssey.
Genji was sent as an emissary to the Oort system. He must pass through the Martian-Saturnine corridor, populated with industrial trading guilds and their private militias.
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Genealogy becomes paramount in a closed culture; hierarchy by heredity. Reference the roman patrician class’ death-grip obsession with lineage, or the medieval Japanese imperial court’s strict intra-elite caste system.
But in an era of extreme genetic engineering, how can bloodlines retain their importance? Perhaps this is the wrong question. Perhaps in an era of extreme genetic engineering, authentic bloodlines can only retain their importance. The longevity of an unchanged gene line demonstrates success in evolutionary competition. Over time however, the fitness of a rigidly enforced and ‘sequestered’ gene line will degrade. Consider the hemophilia of the European royal strata.
I would not want the imperial court of the inner system to be pure blue bloods, eschewing genetic manipulation. Rather I would have them take the opposite tack – and embrace genetic engineering in the pursuit of perfecting particular socially valued or distinctive attributes; a roman nose, elongated refined fingers, even the possession of certain ‘noble’ afflictions (for ex., the aforementioned hemophilia as a sign of noble lineage).
The elites should pursue genealogy with the same passion and gusto as horse breeders; studs and mares and percentages of bloodlines, enforced and suppressed gene expressions, surrogates, and gene modes des saisons.
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a bum finds a the wallet and keys of a man who jumped from a bridge
he goes to his townhouse to find something to eat or steal
is impressed and overwhelmed with the man's townhouse
showers, eats, gets cleaned up, finds some clothes
is ready to leave when he helps a woman wrestling with groceries at her door
she thanks him, but looks stunned.
‘are you the man in #560? umm..i have lived here for 3 years and have never actually seen you. you seem to leave so early in the morning and get
home so late and keep to yourself.’
they spend 30 minutes talking, having a generally warm friendly encounter.
‘well, I am so glad to have finally met you. Hope to see you soon.’ As she closes her door, the bum turns to leave but pauses and thinks for a moment, then goes back into the man's townhouse
he pours through the man's papers and keepsakes and learns that the man has no family that he speaks with, no friends, lives off a well-endowed trust fund
and
the bum moves in and takes over the mans identity
he brings warmth and sincerity to the man's identity
what makes a hermit tick? what lengths do they go to to remove themselves from society? does it become a game to avoid contact, trying to become a shadow, a phantom? does society dissolve away as a mental force in their thoughts, atrophy away or does it become an amputated impression?
what divsion line stands between a hermit and convict in solitary? the hermit, by and large, chooses their isolation, the convict has it enforced upon them. at what point does the human need for society or socialization collapse? is there anything left that we can inspect and evaluate? a hermit, however, is able to maintain walls against the Great Other, which would imply that they are seeking refuge from the world. a schizo or an autistic will be physically surrounded by others but unable or incapable of making contact.
when does the will to contact die? what is left over? do humans require contact to retain our humanity? can you love and sacrifice in a vacuum?
what defines humanity? oooh, a big question...
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genetic engineering will continue to deconstruct the human species
there will be catastrophic disasters: gene sequence specific viruses engineered to attack 'types' of people. Der Genkampf
petroleum will be replaced- hydrogen-powered locomotion and green power (in the wealthy states). the poor states will continue to be held hostage to oil politics
(cultures and civilizations do not move forward uneringly. they spasticly jerk forward and fro, in clumps andgrains, never ever as a lemming death drive.)
developed economies will be netized. a new state structure will be needed to manage and dsitribute resources. the corporate structure, the commercial backbone of the capitalist democracy, will replace the republic. it is flexible to markets and political forces, insistent on accountability, it provides a sufficient compromise between individual representation and republican government. they will begin their political evolution as projects in community development. assurances of an educated workforce by charter education. assurances of uninterrupted utilities by running their own power/water etc. net-based marketplaces create corporate agoras. employees are in fact de facto citizens of the corporation. citizenship, or regular employment, will be a reward for merit, stock shares will count towards suffrage.
great corporate collectives will arise. housing, education, security...all the needs of the middle class will be absorbed in the corporate state. the tradtional state will cede roles and responsibilities to the corporate state as their resources dwindle. a few isolated violent reactions (military or legal)by the republics against the corporate states, but they will fail over time. against, or more so, in conjunction with the homogenized corporatsists wil be the diasporae, non-corporates will glom to other modes of networked alignment, ethnic allegiance will become stronger over time - as the chinese, indian, and jewish disporaestrengthen as a formula for a successful competition against/with the corporates.
the american state, succored by its overwhelming techo-military supremancy, loses its mission, its vision - substitutes will to dominate for will to excel - and falls into the deep narcotic, insulated slumber of the unassailable. GE, nano, and the banknote net weaken the mythic cohesion of the american spirit. we are no longer united by common experience (mass-mediated or otherwise) the promise of science to make us stronger, smarter, near immortal is held like a manifest destiny or a divine IOU for services rendered to humanity.
Hannah Fry ~ Waterstones ~ St James's Church ~ Piccadilly ~ London ~ England ~ Thursday March 28th 2019.
www.flickriver.com/photos/kevenlaw/popular-interesting/ Click here to see My most interesting images
Purchase some of my images here ~ www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/24360 ~ Should you so desire...go on, make me rich..lol...Oh...and if you see any of the images in my stream that you would like and are not there, then let me know and I'll add them to the site for you..:))
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Have a Fabulous Friday Y'all..:)
In 1961, mathematician Edward Lorenz from the Institute of Technology in Boston was running simulations on a computer about the evolution of the climate of a certain region and discovered that small perturbations in the initial conditions of the system generated significant divergences over time. It was nothing more and nothing less than the birth of the famous phrase "A butterfly's flap of wings could cause a hurricane" and, with it, the beginnings of Chaos Theory. Over the years, mathematicians such as Mitchell Feigenbaum, David Ruelle, Floris Takens, and even Benoit Mandelbrot (father of fractal geometry) were working on the theory.
Towards the end of the 1980s, G. J. Sussman, J. Wisdom, and J. Laskar used powerful computers to perform a numerical simulation of the behavior of the outer and inner planets and discovered that, after a significant number of years, their orbits exhibited chaotic behavior. In particular, the orbital motion of the Earth and with it the Moon, was unstable after ten million years.
For now, regardless of changes, scientific advances, our finitude and contingency, and the fragile flutter of a butterfly, the planets and their moons remain there, within reach of our telescopes, beyond chaos and order in the bowels of disorder.
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From left to right: Ganymede, Europa, Jupiter and Io.
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Maksutov Cassegrain Telescope "Explore Scientific" 127, f/15.
Player One Ceres-C Camera.
Jupiter captured with Barlow Celestron X-Cell LX, 2x.
Moons captured without barlow for the final composition.
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December 24, 2023, 00:35 UT. Rural area, Concordia, Entre Ríos, Argentina.
If you are not a mathematician, you are unlikely to know of a gentleman named August Ferdinand Möbius, who was a professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at the University of Leipzig. Despite being outlandishly talented, the good professor didn’t exactly blaze through academic ranks because he was unable to attract paying students to take his class and would advertise his lectures as ‘free’ to get adequate enrollment. However, the absentminded professor considered mathematics to be poetic, and ended up defining and lending his name to one of the most enigmatic two-dimensional structures: the Möbius band (or, Möbius strip).
Yes, all of us have seen a Möbius band: the recycling sign on plastic or the infinity sign are great examples of Möbius band. To make a Möbius strip of your own, find yourself a rectangular strip of paper and glue both ends of the strip together after half-twisting the paper (by 180 degrees). Many things are extremely remarkable about this structure. Most uniquely, this two-dimensional structure has one surface. Don’t believe? Find yourself a ink pen and mark your initials anywhere on the surface. Now, with your finger tip, travel away from your initials along the central line of the strip surface. Keep going without lifting your finger from the paper. When you will have traveled the whole strip twice, you will find your fingers back on your initials –– convinced, that’s only one surface?
This 'one surface' property leads to another unintuitive – almost tantalizing – nature of this unique structure where the laterally inverted (mirror image) form of any physical point exists on the same surface! In a regular piece of paper, your initials and its mirror image (bleed-through the paper) would be on two different surfaces; To travel between them, you will have to switch surfaces. But in your personal paper Möbius strip, it is now possible to start from your initials, and without altering surfaces, reach their bleed-through mirror image, which is apparently on the other side of the surface from your initials! Also, one could keep walking on the only surface of the strip forever without ever needing to turn around – if you didn’t already, now you know why the infinity sign looks as it does!
Finally, the most unintuitive signature of Mobius structures is that they are unorientable. What’s that, right? Points on orientable things, like a ball or a bat, can be ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ or ‘upward’ and ‘downward’. No matter how you rotate the ball, an ‘outward’ point will always remain outward. But on a Möbius band, a point can slide from an ‘outward’ to an ‘inward’ orientation by rotating the strip. Simply put, the Möbius band has no ‘sidedness’. Here, every point and its mirror-image have collapsed on the same surface. It is as if, all dichotomies have disappeared and dimensions have warped-up somewhere!
Do Möbius bands exist in nature? Yes, they do. Despite the illusory visual of being so, the famous namesake arch in Alabama hills, CA is geometrically not a Möbius band. But, non-fictitious Möbius bands exist in nature elsewhere. Crystals of certain chemical compounds (e.g., niobium and selenium, NbSe3) display Möbius structures. In quantum physics, waveforms for fermions (not bosons) curiously reminds one of the Möbius pattern. Now, imagine how nice would it be if we had Möbius roller coasters or freeways in our perceivable world? We could then hop on them to simultaneously be ourselves and our mirror image – our alter ago – thereby drawing a closure to all our dichotomies. Wouldn’t it be nice if that happened?
Let me close with a crazy thought. What if, Möbius bands come into existence somewhere in those ten dimensions (M-theory) around us somewhen during magical times of the day, but due to limitations of our perceptual faculties, we are unable to acknowledge their presence?
Secret #26: Having a degree in maths does not mean I can count! Seriously, I can prove theorems like "i to the power of i is a great number of real distinct numbers"... but I suck at splitting the restaurant bill.
Melba Roy Mouton (1929-1990) was a mathematician and computer programmer in NASA’s Trajectory and Geodynamics Division, acting as the Assistant Chief of Research Programs. Mouton worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, coding computer programs to calculate the trajectories and locations of various aircraft. She also led the group of "human computers," who tracked the Echo satellites. Roy and her team's computations helped produce the orbital element timetables by which millions could view the satellite from Earth as it passed overhead.
Image Credit: NASA
#nasa #NASAmarshall #history #blackhistorymonth #BHM
Rachel Riley ~ Trolled ~ Kingspace ~ Kings Cross ~ London ~ England ~ Sunday September 15th 2019.
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Purchase some of my images here ~ www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/24360 ~ Should you so desire...go on, make me rich..lol...Oh...and if you see any of the images in my stream that you would like and are not there, then let me know and I'll add them to the site for you..:))
You can also buy my WWT card here (The Otter image) or in the shop at the Wetland Centre in Barnes ~ London ~ www.wwt.org.uk/shop/shop/wwt-greeting-cards/european-otte...
Well, I had the absolute awesome pleasure of seeing & meeting the always gorgeous Mathematician & TV Presenter Rachel Riley at the @kingsplacelondon in #london for a live #podcast of #trolled Both, she, Tracy Ann Oberman & Nick Cohen were as awesome as you'd expect on the difficult subject of "On line" abuse!!! 😊
Have a great Monday Y'all..:)
This Group become a mathematicians today at a University of Szeged . Found them drinking vodka ,beer and other good stuff at side of the fountain ! two of them had math hat !
Rachel Riley ~ Trolled ~ Kingspace ~ Kings Cross ~ London ~ England ~ Sunday September 15th 2019.
www.flickriver.com/photos/kevenlaw/popular-interesting/ Click here to see My most interesting images
Purchase some of my images here ~ www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/24360 ~ Should you so desire...go on, make me rich..lol...Oh...and if you see any of the images in my stream that you would like and are not there, then let me know and I'll add them to the site for you..:))
You can also buy my WWT card here (The Otter image) or in the shop at the Wetland Centre in Barnes ~ London ~ www.wwt.org.uk/shop/shop/wwt-greeting-cards/european-otte...
Well, I had the absolute awesome pleasure of seeing & meeting the always gorgeous Mathematician & TV Presenter Rachel Riley at the @kingsplacelondon in #london for a live #podcast of #trolled Both, she, Tracy Ann Oberman & Nick Cohen were as awesome as you'd expect on the difficult subject of "On line" abuse!!! 😊
Have a great Hump Day Wednesday Y'all..:)
Bernkastel-Kues, Germany.
The first settlements date back to the time of the Linear Pottery culture, some 5000 years ago. The present town developed in the Middles Ages. Bernkastel was granted town status by King Rudolph of Habsburg in 1291. Bernkastel literally means "bear castle".
In 1905, Bernkastel, on the right bank, was merged with the village of Kues, on the left bank. They were joined by the villages of Andel and Wehlen in 1970.
Kues was the birthplace of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa ("Nikolaus von Kues" in German, 1401-1464), a philosopher, jurist, mathematician, and astronomer, who is regarded as one of the greatest geniuses and polymaths of the 15th century.
For video, please visit youtu.be/fOJxngF7z2k
Hagia Sophia is a former Orthodox patriarchal basilica, later a mosque, and now a museum in Istanbul, Turkey.
From the date of its dedication in 360 until 1453, it served as the cathedral of Constantinople. The building was a mosque from 29 May 1453 until 1931, when it was secularized. It was opened as a museum on 1 February 1935.
Famous in particular for its massive dome, it is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and is said to have "changed the history of architecture." It was the largest cathedral in the world for nearly a thousand years, until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520. The current building was originally constructed as a church between 532 and 537 on the orders of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian and was the third Church of the Holy Wisdom to occupy the site, the previous two having both been destroyed by rioters. It was designed by the Greek scientists Isidore of Miletus, a physicist, and Anthemius of Tralles, a mathematician.
In 1453, Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks under Sultan Mehmed II, who subsequently ordered the building converted into a mosque. The bells, altar, iconostasis, and sacrificial vessels were removed and many of the mosaics were plastered over. Islamic features — such as the mihrab, minbar, and four minarets — were added while in the possession of the Ottomans. It remained a mosque until 1931 when it was closed to the public for four years. It was re-opened in 1935 as a museum by the Republic of Turkey.
Source: Wikipedia
Otton Nikodym and Stefan Banach who were sitting here in Cracow in October 1916 and met another famous mathematicial - prof. Hugo Steinhaus;
commemorative monument - the author Stefan Dousa; financed by the Astor company; October 2016; Poland
Syracuse is a historic city in Sicily, the capital of the province of Syracuse. The city is notable for its rich Greek history, culture, amphitheatres, architecture, and as the birthplace of the preeminent mathematician and engineer Archimedes. This 2,700-year-old city played a key role in ancient times, when it was one of the major powers of the Mediterranean world. Syracuse is located in the southeast corner of the island of Sicily, right by the Gulf of Syracuse next to the Ionian Sea.
The city was founded by Ancient Greek Corinthians and Teneans and became a very powerful city-state. Syracuse was allied with Sparta and Corinth and exerted influence over the entirety of Magna Graecia, of which it was the most important city. Described by Cicero as "the greatest Greek city and the most beautiful of them all", it equaled Athens in size during the fifth century BC. It later became part of the Roman Republic and Byzantine Empire. After this Palermo overtook it in importance, as the capital of the Kingdom of Sicily. Eventually the kingdom would be united with the Kingdom of Naples to form the Two Sicilies until the Italian unification of 1860.
In the modern day, the city is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site along with the Necropolis of Pantalica. In the central area, the city itself has a population of around 125,000 people. The inhabitants are known as Siracusans. Syracuse is mentioned in the Bible in the Acts of the Apostles book at 28:12 as Paul stayed there.
Srinivasa Ramanujan FRS was an Indian mathematician who l had almost no formal training in pure mathematics. He made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems then considered unsolvable. Ramanujan initially developed his own mathematical research in isolation. Seeking mathematicians who could better understand his work, in 1913 he began a postal partnership with the English mathematician G. H. Hardy at the University of Cambridge, England. Recognizing Ramanujan's work as extraordinary, Hardy arranged for him to travel to Cambridge. In his notes, Ramanujan had produced groundbreaking new theorems, including some that Hardy said had "defeated him and his colleagues completely", in addition to rediscovering recently proven but highly advanced results.
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I'm stampolina and I love to take photos of stamps. Thanks for visiting this pages on flickr.
I'm neither a typical collector of stamps, nor a stamp dealer. I'm only a stamp photograph. I'm fascinated of the fine close-up structures which are hidden in this small stamp-pictures. Please don't ask of the worth of these stamps - the most ones have a worth of a few cents or still less.
By the way, I wanna say thank you to all flickr users who have sent me stamps! Great! Thank you! Someone sent me 3 or 5 stamps, another one sent me more than 20 stamps in a letter. It's everytime a great surprise for me and I'm everytime happy to get letters with stamps inside from you!
thx, stampolina
For the case you wanna send also stamps - it is possible. (...I'm pretty sure you'll see these stamps on this photostream on flickr :) thx!
stampolina68
Mühlenweg 3/2
3244 Ruprechtshofen
Austria - Europe
* * * * * * * * *
great stamp Helvetia 40c Celestial globe, Himmelsglobus, Globus coelestis (by Jost Bürgi, 1552-1632, swiss mathematician, watchmaker and astronomer; Globe céleste, Звёздный глобус, 天球仪)
Christiaan Huygens was a prominent Dutch mathematician, astronomer, physicist and horologist. His work included early telescopic studies elucidating the nature of the rings of Saturn and the discovery of its moon Titan, the invention of the pendulum clock and other investigations in timekeeping, and studies of both optics and the centrifugal force.
Huygens achieved note for his argument that light consists of waves, now known as the Huygens–Fresnel principle, which two centuries later became instrumental in the understanding of wave-particle duality. He generally receives credit for his discovery of the centrifugal force, the laws for collision of bodies, for his role in the development of modern calculus and his original observations on sound perception (see repetition pitch). Huygens is seen as the first theoretical physicist as he was the first to use formulae in physics.
Source: wikipedia
Albrecht Dürer (Nuremberg, 21 May 1471 - Nuremberg, 6 April 1528) - Bildnis einer Frau Fürleger mit geflochtenem Haar (1497) - Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
La giovane donna non sposata guarda direttamente lo spettatore ostentando estrema sicurezza; se per noi oggi questo non è per niente insolito, all'epoca era scandaloso, si potrebbe persino parlare di una svolta spudorata. Indossa un vestito elaborato, la scollatura è enfatizzata, i capelli sono artisticamente raccolti. Invece dello sfondo semplice, si può vedere un interno, sul lato sinistro una finestra offre la vista di un ampio paesaggio. Nella sua mano tiene delle piante dal forte carattere simbolico erotico: erba stella e agrimonia.
The young unmarried woman looks directly at the viewer, displaying extreme security; if for us today this is not at all unusual, at the time it was scandalous, we could even speak of a shameless turning point. Wear an elaborate dress, the neckline is emphasized, the hair is artistically gathered. Instead of the plain background, an interior can be seen, on the left side a window offers a view of a large landscape. In his hand he holds plants with a strong erotic symbolic character: star grass and agrimony.
Egnazio Danti (Perugia 1536 - Alatri 1586)
Mathematician, astronomer, Dominican friar and even cosmographer.
In 1567 or so, Cosimo I de Medici, Duke of Tuscany summoned him in his court to develop and share the mathematical and astronomical studies in the territory of his competence.
He became soon a Grand Ducal cosmographer working hard on the maps that are still decorating the Hall of Charts in Palazzo Vecchio.
During his permanence in Florence Danti lived at the convent of Santa Maria Novella assembling the armillary sphere, the gnomon and the gnomonic holes on the façade.
The armillary sphere, installed it on the building in 1574, is on the left side of the front of the church and was used to determine the time of the vernal or Spring equinox by the shadow of the sun on its equatorial ring.
It was with this instrument that Fra' Egnazio Danti established that the calendar was 10 days late. He presented his plan to the pope who approved it. Thus was born the Gregorian calendar which is also ours, jumping from 4 to 14 October
Mathematician, navigator, and first mate of the Henri, Myles Bowditch is signing up for Eslandola and the East Trade Wind Company! For gold and country! - and the ETWC.
My sig-fig for Brethren of the Brick Seas. Check it out here!
Jack Hale. Plenary talk on the International Conference on Dynamical Systems And Applications in Atlanta (GE), 2007.
Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Legend.
The Postcard
A carte postale bearing no publisher's name that was posted in St.-Denis, Paris on Tuesday the 4th. November 1913 to:
Monsieur et Madame Brette,
1, Rue Gérot,
Auxerre (Yonne).
The brief message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Bonne santé.
Bonjour à tous,
R. P."
The Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower.
Locally nicknamed "La Dame de Fer" ("Iron Lady"), it was constructed from 1887 to 1889 as the entrance to the 1889 World's Fair.
The tower was initially criticised by some of France's leading artists and intellectuals for its design, but it has become a global cultural icon of France, and one of the most recognisable structures in the world. The Eiffel Tower is the most-visited paid monument in the world; 6.91 million people ascended it in 2015.
The tower is 324 metres tall, about the same height as an 81-storey building, and the tallest structure in Paris. Its base is square, measuring 125 metres on each side.
During its construction, the Eiffel Tower surpassed the Washington Monument to become the tallest man-made structure in the world, a title it held for 41 years until the Chrysler Building in New York City was finished in 1930. It was the first structure in the world to surpass both the 200 meter and 300 meter mark in height.
Due to the addition of a broadcasting aerial at the top of the tower in 1957, it is now taller than the Chrysler Building by 5.2 metres. Excluding transmitters, the Eiffel Tower is the second tallest free-standing structure in France after the Millau Viaduct.
The tower has three levels for visitors, with restaurants on the first and second levels. The top level's upper platform is 276 m above the ground – the highest observation deck accessible to the public in the European Union. The climb from ground level to the first level is over 300 steps, as is the climb from the first level to the second. Although there is a staircase to the top level, it is usually accessible only by lift.
Origin of The Eiffel Tower
The design of the Eiffel Tower is attributed to Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier, two senior engineers working for the Compagnie des Établissements Eiffel. It was envisioned after discussion about a suitable centrepiece for the proposed 1889 Exposition Universelle, a world's fair to celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution.
Eiffel openly acknowledged that inspiration for a tower came from the Latting Observatory built in New York City in 1853.
In May 1884, working at home, Koechlin made a sketch of their idea, described by him as:
"A great pylon, consisting of four lattice girders
standing apart at the base and coming together
at the top, joined together by metal trusses at
regular intervals".
Eiffel initially showed little enthusiasm, but he did approve further study, and the two engineers then asked Stephen Sauvestre, the head of company's architectural department, to contribute to the design. Sauvestre added decorative arches to the base of the tower, a glass pavilion to the first level, and other embellishments.
The new version gained Eiffel's support: he bought the rights to the patent on the design which Koechlin, Nougier, and Sauvestre had taken out, and the design was exhibited at the Exhibition of Decorative Arts in the autumn of 1884 under the company name.
On the 30th. March 1885, Eiffel presented his plans to the Société des Ingénieurs Civils; after discussing the technical problems and emphasising the practical uses of the tower, he finished his talk by saying:
"The tower would symbolise not only the art
of the modern engineer, but also the century
of Industry and Science in which we are living,
and for which the way was prepared by the great
scientific movement of the eighteenth century
and by the Revolution of 1789, to which this
monument will be built as an expression of
France's gratitude".
Little progress was made until 1886, when Jules Grévy was re-elected as president of France and Édouard Lockroy was appointed as minister for trade. A budget for the exposition was passed and, on the 1st. May, Lockroy announced an alteration to the terms of the open competition being held for a centrepiece to the exposition.
This effectively made the selection of Eiffel's design a foregone conclusion, as entries had to include a study for a 300 m four-sided metal tower on the Champ de Mars. On the 12th. May, a commission was set up to examine Eiffel's scheme and its rivals, which, a month later, decided that all the proposals except Eiffel's were either impractical or lacking in details.
After some debate about the exact location of the tower, a contract was signed on the 8th. January 1887. This was signed by Eiffel acting in his own capacity rather than as the representative of his company. He was granted 1.5 million francs toward the construction costs: less than a quarter of the estimated 6.5 million francs.
Eiffel was to receive all income from the commercial exploitation of the tower during the exhibition and for the following 20 years. He later established a separate company to manage the tower, putting up half the necessary capital himself.
Artists' Criticism of The Tower Before it Was Built
The proposed tower drew criticism from those who did not believe it was feasible, and those who objected on artistic grounds. Prior to the Eiffel Tower's construction, no structure had ever been constructed to a height of 300 m, or even 200 m for the matter, and many people believed it was impossible.
These objections were an expression of a long-standing debate in France about the relationship between architecture and engineering. It came to a head as work began at the Champ de Mars: a "Committee of Three Hundred" (one member for each metre of the tower's height) was formed, led by the prominent architect Charles Garnier.
The committee included some of the most important figures of the arts, such as William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Gounod and Jules Massenet. A petition called "Artists against the Eiffel Tower" was sent to the Minister of Works and Commissioner for the Exposition, Adolphe Alphand, and it was published by Le Temps on the 14th. February 1887:
"We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and
passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched
beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with
all our indignation in the name of slighted French
taste, against the erection of this useless and
monstrous Eiffel Tower.
To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment
a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a
gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric
bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre,
the Dome of Les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of
our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly
dream.
And for twenty years we shall see stretching like a blot
of ink the hateful shadow of the hateful column of
bolted sheet metal".
Gustave Eiffel responded to these criticisms by comparing his tower to the Egyptian pyramids:
"My tower will be the tallest edifice ever erected
by man. Will it not also be grandiose in its way?
And why would something admirable in Egypt
become hideous and ridiculous in Paris?"
These criticisms were also dealt with by Édouard Lockroy in a letter of support written to Alphand, sardonically saying:
"Judging by the stately swell of the rhythms, the beauty
of the metaphors, the elegance of its delicate and precise style, one can tell this protest is the result of collaboration
of the most famous writers and poets of our time".
He went on to say that anyway, the protest was irrelevant since the project had been decided upon months before, and construction on the tower was already under way.
Indeed, Garnier was a member of the Tower Commission that had examined the various proposals, and had raised no objection. Eiffel was similarly unworried, pointing out to a journalist that it was premature to judge the effect of the tower solely on the basis of the drawings, that the Champ de Mars was distant enough from the monuments mentioned in the protest for there to be little risk of the tower overwhelming them, and putting the aesthetic argument for the tower:
"Do not the laws of natural forces always
conform to the secret laws of harmony?"
Some of the protesters changed their minds when the tower was built; others remained unconvinced. Guy de Maupassant supposedly ate lunch in the tower's restaurant every day because it was the one place in Paris where the tower was not visible.
By 1918, it had become a symbol of Paris and of France after Guillaume Apollinaire wrote a nationalist poem in the shape of the tower (a calligram) to express his feelings about the war against Germany. Today, it is widely considered to be a remarkable piece of structural art, and is often featured in films and literature.
Construction of The Eiffel Tower
Work on the foundations started on the 28th. January 1887. Those for the east and south legs were straightforward, with each leg resting on four 2 m concrete slabs, one for each of the principal girders of each leg.
The west and north legs, being closer to the river Seine, were more complicated: each slab needed two piles installed by using compressed-air caissons 15 m long and 6 m in diameter driven to a depth of 22 m. These were designed to support the concrete slabs, which were 6 m thick. Each of these slabs supported a block of limestone with an inclined top to bear a supporting shoe for the ironwork.
Each shoe was anchored to the stonework by a pair of bolts 10 cm in diameter and 7.5 m long. The foundations were completed on the 30th. June, and the erection of the ironwork began.
The visible work on-site was complemented by the enormous amount of exacting preparatory work that took place behind the scenes: the drawing office produced 1,700 general drawings and 3,629 detailed drawings of the different parts needed.
The task of drawing the components was complicated by the complex angles involved in the design and the degree of precision required: the position of rivet holes was specified to within 1 mm and angles worked out to one second of arc.
The finished components, some already joined together into sub-assemblies, arrived on horse-drawn carts from a factory in the nearby Parisian suburb of Levallois-Perret. They were first bolted together, with the bolts being replaced with rivets as construction progressed. No drilling or shaping was done on site: if any part did not fit, it was sent back to the factory for alteration. In all, 18,038 pieces were joined together using 2.5 million rivets.
At first, the legs were constructed as cantilevers, but about halfway to the first level construction was paused to create a substantial timber scaffold. This renewed concerns about the structural integrity of the tower, and sensational headlines such as "Eiffel Suicide!" and "Gustave Eiffel Has Gone Mad: He Has Been Confined in an Asylum" appeared in the tabloid press.
At this stage, a small "creeper" crane designed to move up the tower was installed in each leg. They made use of the guides for the lifts which were to be fitted in the four legs. The critical stage of joining the legs at the first level was completed by the end of March 1888.
Although the metalwork had been prepared with the utmost attention to detail, provision had been made to carry out small adjustments to precisely align the legs; hydraulic jacks were fitted to the shoes at the base of each leg, capable of exerting a force of 800 tonnes.
Although construction involved 300 on-site employees, due to Eiffel's safety precautions and the use of movable gangways, guardrails and screens, only one person died.
The Eiffel Tower Lifts
Equipping the tower with adequate and safe passenger lifts was a major concern of the government commission overseeing the Exposition. Although some visitors could be expected to climb to the first level, or even the second, lifts clearly had to be the main means of ascent.
Constructing lifts to reach the first level was relatively straightforward: the legs were wide enough at the bottom and so nearly straight that they could contain a straight track, and a contract was given to the French company Roux, Combaluzier & Lepape for two lifts to be fitted in the east and west legs.
Roux, Combaluzier & Lepape used a pair of endless chains with rigid, articulated links to which the car was attached. Lead weights on some links of the upper or return sections of the chains counterbalanced most of the car's weight. The car was pushed up from below, not pulled up from above. To prevent the chain buckling, it was enclosed in a conduit. At the bottom of the run, the chains passed around 3.9 m diameter sprockets.
Installing lifts to the second level was more of a challenge because a straight track was impossible. No French company wanted to undertake the work. The European branch of Otis Brothers & Company submitted a proposal, but this was rejected: the fair's charter ruled out the use of any foreign material in the construction of the tower.
The deadline for bids was extended, but still no French companies put themselves forward, and eventually the contract was given to Otis in July 1887. Otis were confident they would eventually be given the contract, and had already started creating designs.
The car was divided into two superimposed compartments, each holding 25 passengers, with the lift operator occupying an exterior platform on the first level. Motive power was provided by an inclined hydraulic ram 12.67 m long and 96.5 cm in diameter in the tower leg with a stroke of 10.83 m.
The original lifts for the journey between the second and third levels were supplied by Léon Edoux. A pair of 81 m hydraulic rams were mounted on the second level, reaching nearly halfway up to the third level. One lift car was mounted on top of these rams: cables ran from the top of this car up to sheaves on the third level and back down to a second car. Each car only travelled half the distance between the second and third levels and passengers were required to change lifts halfway by means of a short gangway. The 10-ton cars each held 65 passengers.
Inauguration and the 1889 exposition
The main structural work was completed at the end of March 1889 and, on the 31st. March, Eiffel celebrated by leading a group of government officials, accompanied by representatives of the press, to the top of the tower.
Because the lifts were not yet in operation, the ascent was made by foot, and took over an hour, with Eiffel stopping frequently to explain various features. Most of the party chose to stop at the lower levels, but a few, including the structural engineer, Émile Nouguier, the head of construction, Jean Compagnon, the President of the City Council, and reporters from Le Figaro and Le Monde Illustré, completed the ascent. At 2:35 pm, Eiffel hoisted a large Tricolour to the accompaniment of a 25-gun salute fired at the first level.
There was still work to be done, particularly on the lifts and facilities, and the tower was not opened to the public until nine days after the opening of the exposition on the 6th. May; even then, the lifts had not been completed.
The tower was an instant success with the public, and nearly 30,000 visitors made the 1,710-step climb to the top before the lifts entered service on 26 May. Tickets cost 2 francs for the first level, 3 for the second, and 5 for the top, with half-price admission on Sundays. By the end of the exhibition there had been 1,896,987 visitors.
After dark, the tower was lit by hundreds of gas lamps, and a beacon sent out three beams of red, white and blue light. Two searchlights mounted on a circular rail were used to illuminate various buildings of the exposition. The daily opening and closing of the exposition were announced by a cannon at the top.
On the second level, the French newspaper Le Figaro had an office and a printing press, where a special souvenir edition, Le Figaro de la Tour, was made. There was also a pâtisserie.
At the top of the tower there was a post office where visitors could send letters and postcards as a memento of their visit. Graffitists were also catered for: sheets of paper were mounted on the walls each day for visitors to record their impressions of the tower. Gustave Eiffel described some of the responses as vraiment curieuse ("truly curious").
Famous visitors to the tower included the Prince of Wales, Sarah Bernhardt, "Buffalo Bill" Cody (his Wild West show was an attraction at the exposition) and Thomas Edison. Eiffel invited Edison to his private apartment at the top of the tower, where Edison presented him with one of his phonographs, a new invention and one of the many highlights of the exposition. Edison signed the guestbook with this message:
"To M Eiffel the Engineer, the brave builder
of so gigantic and original specimen of
modern Engineering from one who has the
greatest respect and admiration for all
Engineers including the Great Engineer the
Bon Dieu.
Thomas Edison".
Eiffel had a permit for the tower to stand for 20 years. It was to be dismantled in 1909, when its ownership would revert to the City of Paris. The City had planned to tear it down (part of the original contest rules for designing a tower was that it should be easy to dismantle) but as the tower proved to be valuable for radio telegraphy, it was allowed to remain after the expiry of the permit, and from 1910 it also became part of the International Time Service.
Eiffel made use of his apartment at the top of the tower to carry out meteorological observations, and also used the tower to perform experiments on the action of air resistance on falling bodies.
Subsequent Events Associated With The Tower
On the 19th. October 1901, Alberto Santos-Dumont, flying his No.6 airship, won a 100,000-franc prize offered by Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe for the first person to make a flight from St. Cloud to the Eiffel Tower and back in less than half an hour.
Many innovations took place at the Eiffel Tower in the early 20th century. In 1910, Theodor Wulf measured radiant energy at the top and bottom of the tower. He found more at the top than expected, incidentally discovering what are known today as cosmic rays.
On the 4th. February 1912, Austrian tailor Franz Reichelt died after jumping from the first level of the tower (a height of 57 m) to demonstrate his parachute design.
In 1914, at the outbreak of the Great War, a radio transmitter located in the tower jammed German radio communications, seriously hindering their advance on Paris and contributing to the Allied victory at the First Battle of the Marne.
From 1925 to 1934, illuminated signs for Citroën adorned three of the tower's sides, making it the tallest advertising space in the world at the time. In April 1935, the tower was used to make experimental low-resolution television transmissions. On the 17th. November, an improved 180-line transmitter was installed.
On two separate occasions in 1925, the con artist Victor Lustig "sold" the tower for scrap metal.
In February 1926, pilot Leon Collet was killed trying to fly under the tower. His aircraft became entangled in an aerial belonging to a wireless station.
A bust of Gustave Eiffel by Antoine Bourdelle was unveiled at the base of the north leg on the 2nd. May 1929.
In 1930, the tower lost the title of the world's tallest structure when the Chrysler Building in New York City was completed.
In 1938, the decorative arcade around the first level was removed.
Upon the German occupation of Paris in 1940, the lift cables were cut by the French. In 1940, German soldiers had to climb the tower to hoist a swastika flag, but the flag was so large it blew away just a few hours later, and was replaced by a smaller one.
When visiting Paris, Hitler chose to stay on the ground. When the Allies were nearing Paris in August 1944, Hitler ordered General Dietrich von Choltitz, the military governor of Paris, to demolish the tower along with the rest of the city. Von Choltitz disobeyed the order.
On the 25th. June, before the Germans had been driven out of Paris, the German flag was replaced with a Tricolour by two men from the French Naval Museum, who narrowly beat three men led by Lucien Sarniguet, who had lowered the Tricolour on the 13th. June 1940 when Paris fell to the Germans.
The tower was closed to the public during the occupation, and the lifts were not repaired until 1946.
A fire started in the television transmitter on the 3rd. January 1956, damaging the top of the tower. Repairs took a year, and in 1957, the present radio aerial was added to the top. In 1964, the Eiffel Tower was officially declared to be a historical monument by the Minister of Cultural Affairs, André Malraux.
According to interviews, in 1967, Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau negotiated a secret agreement with Charles de Gaulle for the tower to be dismantled and temporarily relocated to Montreal to serve as a landmark and tourist attraction during Expo 67.
The plan was allegedly vetoed by the company operating the tower out of fear that the French government could refuse permission for the tower to be restored in its original location.
In 1982, the original lifts between the second and third levels were replaced after 97 years in service. These had been closed to the public between November and March because the water in the hydraulic drive tended to freeze. The new cars operate in pairs, with one counterbalancing the other, and perform the journey in one stage, reducing the journey time from eight minutes to less than two minutes.
At the same time, two new emergency staircases were installed, replacing the original spiral staircases. In 1983, the south pillar was fitted with an electrically driven Otis lift to serve the Jules Verne restaurant.
The Fives-Lille lifts in the east and west legs, fitted in 1899, were extensively refurbished in 1986. The cars were replaced, and a computer system was installed to completely automate the lifts. The motive power was moved from the water hydraulic system to a new electrically driven oil-filled hydraulic system.
Robert Moriarty flew a Beechcraft Bonanza under the tower on the 31st. March 1984.
In 1987, A. J. Hackett made one of his first bungee jumps from the top of the Eiffel Tower, using a special cord he had helped develop. Hackett was arrested by the police.
On the 27th. October 1991, Thierry Devaux, along with mountain guide Hervé Calvayrac, performed a series of acrobatic figures while bungee jumping from the second floor of the tower. Facing the Champ de Mars, Devaux used an electric winch to go back up to the second floor. When firemen arrived, he stopped after the sixth jump.
The tower is the focal point for New Year's Eve and Bastille Day celebrations in Paris.
For its "Countdown to the Year 2000" celebration on the 31st. December 1999, flashing lights and high-powered searchlights were installed on the tower. During the last three minutes of the year, the lights were turned on starting from the base of the tower and continuing to the top to welcome 2000 with a huge fireworks show. The searchlights on top of the tower made it a beacon in Paris's night sky, and 20,000 flashing bulbs gave the tower a sparkly appearance for five minutes every hour on the hour.
The tower received its 200,000,000th guest on the 28th. November 2002. The tower has operated at its maximum capacity of about 7 million visitors per year since 2003.
In 2004, the Eiffel Tower began hosting a seasonal ice rink on the first level.
A glass floor was installed on the first level during the 2014 refurbishment.
In 2016, during Valentine's Day, the performance Un Battement by French artist Milène Guermont unfolds among the Eiffel Tower, the Montparnasse Tower and the contemporary artwork Phares installed on the Place de la Concorde. This interactive pyramid-shaped sculpture allows the public to transmit the beating of their hearts thanks to a cardiac sensor. The Eiffel Tower and the Montparnasse Tower also light up to the rhythm of Phares. This is the first time that the Eiffel Tower has interacted with a work of art.
The Metal of The Eiffel Tower
The wrought iron of the Eiffel Tower weighs 7,300 tons, and the addition of lifts, shops and antennae have brought the total weight to approximately 10,100 tons.
As a demonstration of the economy of design, if the 7,300 tons of metal in the structure were melted down, it would fill the square base, 125 metres (410 ft) on each side, to a depth of only 6.25 cm. A box surrounding the tower (324 m x 125 m x 125 m) would contain 6,200 tons of air, weighing almost as much as the iron itself.
Depending on the ambient temperature, the top of the tower may shift away from the sun by up to 18 cm (7 in) due to thermal expansion of the metal on the side facing the sun.
Wind Considerations
When it was built, many were shocked by the tower's daring form. Eiffel was accused of trying to create something artistic with no regard to the principles of engineering. However, Eiffel and his team – experienced bridge builders – understood the importance of wind forces, and knew that if they were going to build the tallest structure in the world, they had to be sure it could withstand them. In an interview with the newspaper Le Temps published on the 14th. February 1887, Eiffel said:
"Is it not true that the very conditions which give
strength also conform to the hidden rules of
harmony?
Now to what phenomenon did I have to give
primary concern in designing the Tower? It was
wind resistance.
Well then! I hold that the curvature of the monument's
four outer edges, which is as mathematical calculation
dictated it should be, will give a great impression of
strength and beauty, for it will reveal to the eyes of the
observer the boldness of the design as a whole".
Eiffel used graphical methods to determine the strength of the tower, and empirical evidence to account for the effects of wind, rather than a mathematical formula. All parts of the tower were over-designed to ensure maximum resistance to wind forces. The top half was even assumed to have no gaps in the latticework.
In the years since it was completed, engineers have put forward various mathematical hypotheses in an attempt to explain the success of the design. The most recent, devised in 2004 after letters sent by Eiffel to the French Society of Civil Engineers in 1885 were translated into English, is described as a non-linear integral equation based on counteracting the wind pressure on any point of the tower with the tension between the construction elements at that point.
The Eiffel Tower sways by up to 9 cm in the wind.
Facilities Within The Eiffel Tower
When originally built, the first level contained three restaurants – one French, one Russian and one Flemish — and an "Anglo-American Bar".
After the exposition closed, the Flemish restaurant was converted to a 250-seat theatre. A promenade 2.6-metres wide ran around the outside of the first level.
At the top, there were laboratories for various experiments, and a small apartment reserved for Gustave Eiffel to entertain guests, which is now open to the public, complete with period decorations and lifelike mannequins of Eiffel and some of his notable guests.
In May 2016, an apartment was created on the first level to accommodate four competition winners during the UEFA Euro 2016 football tournament in Paris in June. The apartment has a kitchen, two bedrooms, a lounge, and views of Paris landmarks including the Seine, the Sacre Coeur, and the Arc de Triomphe.
Engraved Names on The Tower
Gustave Eiffel engraved on the tower the names of 72 French scientists, engineers and mathematicians in recognition of their contributions to the building of the tower. Eiffel chose this "invocation of science" because of his concern over the artists' protest. At the beginning of the 20th. century, the engravings were painted over, but they were restored in 1986–87.
Aesthetics of The Tower
The tower is painted in three shades: lighter at the top, getting progressively darker towards the bottom to complement the Parisian sky. It was originally reddish brown; this changed in 1968 to a bronze colour known as "Eiffel Tower Brown".
The only non-structural elements are the four decorative grill-work arches, added in Sauvestre's sketches, which served to make the tower look more substantial and to make a more impressive entrance to the exposition.
A movie cliché is that the view from a Parisian window always includes the tower. In reality, since zoning restrictions limit the height of most buildings in Paris to seven storeys, only a small number of tall buildings have a clear view of the tower.
Maintenance of The Tower
Maintenance of the tower includes applying 60 tons of paint every seven years to prevent it from rusting. The tower has been completely repainted at least 19 times since it was built. Lead paint was still being used as recently as 2001 when the practice was stopped out of concern for the environment.
Popularity of The Tower
More than 250 million people have visited the tower since it was completed in 1889. The tower is the most-visited paid monument in the world. An average of 25,000 people ascend the tower every day which can result in long queues.
Restaurants in The Tower
The tower has two restaurants: Le 58 Tour Eiffel on the first level, and Le Jules Verne, a gourmet restaurant with its own lift on the second level. Additionally, there is a champagne bar at the top of the Eiffel Tower.
From 1937 until 1981, there was a restaurant near the top of the tower. It was removed due to structural considerations; engineers had determined it was too heavy, and was causing the tower to sag. This restaurant was sold to an American restaurateur and transported to New Orleans. It was rebuilt on the edge of New Orleans' Garden District as a restaurant and later an event hall.
Replicas of The Eiffel Tower
As one of the most iconic landmarks in the world, the Eiffel Tower has been the inspiration for the creation of many replicas and similar towers.
An early example is Blackpool Tower in England. The mayor of Blackpool, Sir John Bickerstaffe, was so impressed on seeing the Eiffel Tower at the 1889 exposition that he commissioned a similar tower to be built in his town. It opened in 1894, and is 158.1 m tall. Tokyo Tower in Japan, built as a communications tower in 1958, was also inspired by the Eiffel Tower.
There are various scale models of the tower in the United States, including a half-scale version at the Paris Las Vegas, Nevada. There is also a copy in Paris, Texas built in 1993, and two 1:3 scale models at Kings Island, located in Mason, Ohio, and Kings Dominion, Virginia, amusement parks opened in 1972 and 1975 respectively.
There is a 1:3 scale model in China, and one in Durango, Mexico that was donated by the local French community. There are also several across Europe.
In 2011, the TV show Pricing the Priceless on the National Geographic Channel speculated that a full-size replica of the tower would cost approximately US$480 million to build. This would be more than ten times the cost of the original.
Communications
The tower has been used for making radio transmissions since the beginning of the 20th. century. Until the 1950's, sets of aerial wires ran from the cupola to anchors on the Avenue de Suffren and Champ de Mars. These were connected to longwave transmitters in small bunkers.
In 1909, a permanent underground radio centre was built near the south pillar, which still exists today.
On the 20th. November 1913, the Paris Observatory, using the Eiffel Tower as an aerial, exchanged wireless signals with the United States Naval Observatory, which used an aerial in Arlington, Virginia. The object of the transmissions was to measure the difference in longitude between Paris and Washington, D.C. Today, radio and digital television signals are transmitted from the Eiffel Tower.
A television antenna was first installed on the tower in 1957, increasing its height by 18.7 m. Work carried out in 2000 added a further 5.3 m, giving the current height of 324 m.
Legal Issues Associated With The Tower
The tower and its image have been in the public domain since 1993, 70 years after Eiffel's death.
In June 1990 a French court ruled that a special lighting display on the tower in 1989 to mark the tower's 100th. anniversary was an "original visual creation" protected by copyright. The Société d'Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel (SETE) now considers any illumination of the tower to be a separate work of art that falls under copyright. As a result, the SNTE alleges that it is illegal to publish contemporary photographs of the lit tower at night without permission in France and some other countries for commercial use. For this reason, it is rare to find images or videos of the lit tower at night on stock image sites, and media outlets rarely broadcast images or videos of it.
The imposition of copyright has been controversial. The Director of Documentation for what was then called the Société Nouvelle d'Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel (SNTE), Stéphane Dieu, commented in 2005:
"It is really just a way to manage commercial
use of the image, so that it isn't used in ways
of which we don't approve".
SNTE made over €1 million from copyright fees in 2002.
The copyright claim itself has never been tested in courts to date, and there has never been an attempt to track down millions of netizens who have posted and shared their images of the illuminated tower on the Internet worldwide. However, the potential for litigation exists for the commercial use of such images, for example in a magazine, on a film poster, or on product packaging.
French law allows pictures incorporating a copyrighted work as long as their presence is incidental or accessory to the subject being represented. Therefore, SETE may be unable to claim copyright on photographs of Paris which happen to include the lit tower.
An Earthquake in Chile
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 4th. November 1913, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 killed 150 people in the Apurimac Region of Chile.
A Train Crash in France
Also on that day, at least 39 people were killed near Melun when the Marseille-Lyon-Paris express train collided with a local train.
Gig Young
The 4th. November 1913 also marked the birth in St. Cloud, Minnesota of Byron Barr. He adopted the stage name Gig Young.
Gig was an American film actor, and recipient of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Gig died in 1978.
Paul Irniger
The Swiss serial killer, Paul Irniger, was also born on that day, in Izerbash, Canton of Schwyz. He was executed by guillotine in 1939.
Paul Irniger was the last person to be sentenced to death and executed in Switzerland after a criminal trial in the canton of Zug. He is also the last person sentenced to death in several cantons, before a new Penal Code, without capital punishment for civilian crimes, was adopted in 1942.
Irniger's mother had several criminal records for fraud and other offenses. After the early death of his father, the six-year-old grew up in the Walterswil children's home. As a teenager, he tried several times, unsuccessfully, to enter a monastery.
After working as an unskilled worker in Baden, he began an apprenticeship as a technical draftsman, which he broke off after a few months. He went to Interlaken, where he found a job in the Hotel Beau-Rivage, but started a small fire there.
Subsequently, he was admitted to the forced education institution in Aarburg, where he learned to be a carpenter. After his release, he graduated from the recruit school in Lucerne.
On the 5th. December 1933, Irniger took the train to Zug and from there took a taxi in the direction of Baar. He shot the taxi driver near Baar and fled with 60 francs. Shortly afterwards, he was arrested for fraud and sent to the Sedel prison in Lucerne.
Irniger managed to escape; he went to Einsiedeln, where he disguised himself as a Trappist priest and read masses and heard confessions in various churches.
After the imposture was discovered, Irniger was imprisoned for a few months, but he still had not been connected to the murder near Baar.
After his release from prison, Irniger went to Ticino, where he met a woman and tried his hand at selling vacuum cleaners. He also committed various break-ins.
On the 9th. August 1937, he was arrested in Rapperswil and taken to the police station. There, he shot a police officer and fled towards Lake Zürich, with various people chasing him. On the run, Irniger also shot one of his pursuers, but was then caught by the angry population.
Irniger was brought to St. Gallen, where, in addition to the two homicides committed in Rapperswil, he also confessed to the murder in Baar. He was brought to justice and sentenced to death for the murders in Rapperswil in April 1938, but pardoned by the Grand Council of the Canton of St. Gallen to life imprisonment.
Since criminal law in Switzerland was a matter for the cantons before 1942, Irniger could only be convicted in St. Gallen for the crimes committed in that canton. In the trial for the murder in Baar, Irniger was also sentenced to death in the canton of Zug.
He withdrew his appeal to the higher court itself and waived a petition for clemency, so that the judgment in the first instance became final. Irniger was then executed on the 25th. August 1939 in the prison in Zug using the guillotine borrowed from Lucerne.
The canton of Zug received letters of application from 186 individuals who volunteered to be the executioner. The psychiatrist Boris Pritzker conducted extensive interviews with 115 of them.
The anonymous executioner selected from these volunteers, known as Arthur X., later fell ill with paranoid schizophrenia and died in 1960 in the Burghölzli psychiatric clinic.
Pritzker's conversations with the executioner candidates were first published in 1993. On the basis of the letters of application and Pritzker's interviews, the play "The Last Executioner" was performed in Zug in 1998.
Strobist: AB800 with HOBD-W, 15 degree grid, overhead, 45 degrees. AB1600 with 60X39 softbox overhead right, AB800 with Softlighter II camera left. Triggered by Cybersync.
Name: Egeskov Castle (Egeskov Slot in Danish).
Location: Funen, Denmark.
Map: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Locatio...
Built: in 1405.
Current building: built in 1554.
Visitors: 200 000 visitors/year.
Famous for: The castle is Europe's best preserved Renaissance water castle.
History, architecture, castle contents, gardens and lands
Egeskov's history dates to the early 15th century. The castle structure was erected by Frands Brockenhuus in 1554. Due to the troubles caused by the civil war known as the Count's Feud, general civil unrest, and a civil war introducing the Protestant Reformation, most Danish noblemen built their homes as fortifications. The castle is constructed on oaken piles and located in a small lake with a maximum depth of 5 metres (16 ft). Originally, the only access was by means of a drawbridge. According to legend, it took an entire forest of oak trees to build the foundation, hence the name Egeskov (oak forest).
The castle consists of two long buildings connected by a thick double wall, allowing defenders to abandon one house and continue fighting from the other. The double wall is over one meter (3 ft) thick and contains secret staircases and a well. Defenders were able to attack an enemy's flanks from the two round corner towers. Other medieval defences include artillery ports, scalding holes and arrow slits. The bricks composing the castle are of an oversized medieval type sometimes called "monks bricks". The conical towers are constructed in a series of separate panels.
The architecture includes depressed and round-arched windows, round-arched blank arcading within the gables, and a double string course between the high cellar and the ground floor. The structure contains some of the early indoor plumbing design first used in Europe with vertical shafts for waste. The thick double wall also contains a water well which is accessed from the servants kitchen in the east house. Several of the large rooms have massive parallel exposed beams with some end carving.
Contents of the castle include a massive iron chest from at least as early as the 16th century, which derived from Hvedholm Castle, a property earlier owned by the Egeskov estate about ten kilometers (six miles) to the west. Numerous oil paintings are found within the castle including a large painting in the great hall on the first floor of Niels Juel, who defeated the Swedish force in the Battle of Koge Bay in the year 1677.
Other buildings belonging to Egeskov include Ladegarden, a thatched half-timbered building which is now part of the museum. Other buildings are used by the museum and for farming. Surrounding the castle is an old park, covering 20 hectares (49 acres) of land.
The park is divided into a number of gardens. The renaissance garden features fountains, a gravel path and topiary figures. The fuchsia garden, one of the largest in Europe, contains 104 different species. Other gardens near the castle include an English garden, a water garden, an herb garden, a vegetable garden, and a peasant's garden.
The gardens also feature four hedge mazes. The oldest is a beech maze several hundreds of years old. The newest maze is the world's largest bamboo maze. It features a Chinese tower in the centre, and a bridge from the tower provides the exit from the maze. The parks feature a three-meter-tall sundial designed by Danish poet and mathematician, Piet Hein.
The estate includes an additional eight square kilometres; 2.5 square kilometres (0.97 sq mi) is forest, with the rest being farmland. The estate has belonged to the Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille family since 1784. In 1986, a full-sized replica of the castle was built in Hokkaidō, Japan, to hold an aquarium. This was constructed with the permission of the Egeskov's owners at the time, Count Claus and Countess Louisa Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille.
Most of the castle is open to the public, except for the areas used by current owners Count Michael and Countess Caroline Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille.
Owners:
1405 AD - Lydike Skinkel and Jorgen Skinkel
1470 - Johan Skinkel
1516 - Otto Skinkel and Poul Skinkel
1518-1533 - Laurids Skinkel
1533-1536 - Hilleborg Pedersdatter Bille and her daughters Anne, Hilleborg and Rigborg
1536-1545 - Anne, Hilleborg and Rigborg
1545-1569 - Frands Brockenhuus
1569-1604 - Laurids Brockenhuus
1604-1615 - Laurids Brockenhuus's heirs
1615-1615 - Hans Pogwish
1616-1630 - Jakob Ulfeldt
1630-1640 - Ebbe Jakobsen Ulfeldt, Corfitz Ulfeldt and Laurids Ulfeldt
1640-1648 - Laurids Ulfeldt
1648-1656 - Oluf Parsberg
1656-1666 - Otto Krag
1666-1688 - Anne Rosenkrantz
1688-1713 - Niels Krag the Elder
1713-1722 - The widow of Niels Krag
1722-1740 - Niels Krag the Younger
1740-1784 - Sofie Juel
1784-1789 - Henrik Bille-Brahe
1789-1810 - Caroline Agnese Raben, married Bille-Brahe
1810-1857 - Preben Bille-Brahe
1857-1871 - Frederik Siegfried Bille-Brahe
1871-1882 - Frantz Preben Bille-Brahe
1882-1912 - Count Julius Ludvig Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille
1912-1919 - Baroness Camille Jessy Bille-Brahe, married Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille
1919-1946 - Count Preben Frederik Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille
1946-1985 - Count Preben Julius Gregers Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille and Nonni Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille
1985-1994 - Count Claus Christian Preben Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille and Louisa Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille
1994-today - Count Michael Preben Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille and Caroline Soeborg Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille
.
Ahlefeldt (noble family)
Ahlefeldt is a Danish and German family of high nobility. The earliest known ancestor is one Benedict Ahlefeldt, (d c 1340), whose son and grandsons served Valdemar IV, King of Denmark in 1340-1375, and received significant pawn fiefs and properties in Denmark.
In Slesvig the family inherited estates Sogard, Nor, Konigsforde-Lindau, Sakstorp and Gelting. In Holstein, Bossee, Lehmkulen, Wittmold, Deutsch-Nienhof, Emkendorf, Kl. Nordsee, Haseldorf and Fresenburg. High royal councillor Burchard Ahlefeldt of Eskilsmark received in 1672 letters patent as Danish count.
His kinsman Frederik Ahlefeldt (d. 1686), was erected in 1665 to Heiliger Romischer Reichsgraf, ie German count in immediate vassalage to the emperor. He further received in the same year as his kinsman, in 1672 the Danish title of count. One of his grandsons, count Christian Ahlefeldt inherited the county of Laurvig in Norway. In 1785 he received the royal licence to himself and his descendants to bear the name Ahlefeldt-Laurvig.
Bille (noble family)
Bille is a Danish noble family, part of the ancient Danish nobility from Scania in southern Sweden.
Its members have played a prominent role in Danish politics and society since the mid 13th century. The family includes the comital branches Bille-Brahe and Bille-Brahe-Selby.
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Sources:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egeskov_Castle
da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egeskov_Slot
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahlefeldt_(noble_family)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bille_(noble_family)
The owner of the image above is Malene Thyssen. Links:
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Malene
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Egeskov_Slot_spejling_Edit_2.jpg
The image above is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license. Link: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en
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"The Mathematician" (detail) by Andrey Zakirzyanov
colored pencil on paper
57x 76 cm
1990
My animations & videoart here - www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F07F0FC9A199F76B