View allAll Photos Tagged technologically
It does look like a flying saucer, but this technologically advanced structure is not here to deliver the wise extraterrestrial from the scifi classic movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. It is here to advance our knowledge of the Universe though. Shown sitting near the top of a mountain in Hawaii, the dome of the Gemini Observatory North houses one of two identical 8.1-meter diameter telescopes. Used with its southern hemisphere twin observatory in Chile, the two can access the entire sky from planet Earth. Constructed from 85 exposures lasting 30 seconds each with camera fixed to a tripod, the image also clearly demonstrates that the Earth did not stand still. Adjusted to be slighter brighter at the ends of their arcs, the concentric star trails centered on the North Celestial Pole are a reflection of Earth's rotation around its axis. Close to the horizon at Hawaiian latitdues, Polaris, the North Star, makes the shortest star trail. The fainter denser forest of star trails toward the right are in the rising Milky Way. via NASA ift.tt/2dVx4tU
Alfa Romeo is synonymous with racing and technological prestige worldwide. It competed in Formula 1 from 1950 until 1988, both as a constructor and as an engine supplier. It was actually in its debut year, 1950, that Alfa Romeo won its first drivers' world championship with Nino Farina in the Alfa Romeo 158. This success was repeated in the following year, when the 159 single-seater won the world title again thanks to champion Juan Manuel Fangio. This is the car on show at Techno Classica. Compared to the 158, it had a more powerful 1500 cc straight eight supercharged engine turning out 425 HP, "De Dion" rear suspensions and more efficient aerodynamics. Its top speed was 305 km/h.
1.479 cc
8 in-line
425 HP @ 9.300 rpm
Vmax : 305 km/h
Techno Classica 2019
Essen
Deutschland - Germany
April 2019
for show in L.A. at Junc. This is connected to part one but it's 11x17 so both sides had to be scanned separately.
A good technological contrast, though each piece of equipment is used for very different purposes.
A Uchibō Line (内房線) train, made up of E235 series cars, slows to a stop at Goi station (五井). On the next track, two KiHa40s await their next departure on the Kominato Railway.
{ Most recent edits : 12 January 2017 }
For background, please see Wikipedia's pages on :
Great Filter
Wow! signal
Technological singularity
Search for extraterrestrial intelligence
If you care to, please also see the pages linked beneath my ugliest self-portrait to date, though i like it, as i feel these are also relevant .
In the multi-hypothetical case that wide-spread, (and decisive), computerized election fraud, (being generally), in favor of right wing candidates, (also hypothetically, including Donald Trump), is onging in the United States of America --- it would be my further hypothesis that this country may be approaching the "event horizon" of permanent, right-wing, one-party rule .
Under such a scenario, (if the above would, overall, be true), i expect the right wing to make a high priority of consolidating effective control over the Judicial Branch of the United States Government, and over the Military High Command ; that these would complement their hold, (as i see it), over the Legislative Branch and coming hold, (as i see it, and should circumstances proceed according to script), over the Executive Branch . To use a military analogy, if they were to achieve these things, (and if the above scenarios would be, essentially, correct), they would have emplaced "cannon" on all the major hilltops of federal power .
Continuing the above scenarios, (in the assumption they would be, overall, correct) : With increasingly sophisticated surveillance and artificial-intelligence technologies at their disposal, the alliance of people and organizations holding such federal high ground, (as well as, reportedly, considerable accumulated wealth), could gain effective control over the socio-economic middle and, (by degrees), low grounds as well --- particularly if cautious and/or right-wing-sympathetic press outlets were not to treat these issue(s) seriously ----- particularly also if cautious and/or right-wing-sympathetic religious leaders stressed a doubling-down on God, without an activist, (Dr. King-ian), parallel commitment to, (as i believe so critical), transparent election practices .
Rightly or wrongly, i see computerized election systems running trade-secret software on trade-secret hardware, which record the vote in a manner invisible to the voter, (but purport to show the voter how our ballot will be recorded on a confirmation screen), for counting in a manner invisible to the public, (but which purport to tell the truth to the public), as, at least potentially, playgrounds for insider fraud . If such would indeed be the case, (and as what is being determined is the character of, and control over, the United States of America), i imagine these playgrounds would attract some very powerful players . I see no reason to expect that these would be limited to Americans seeking advantage over other Americans, and considerable reason to expect that these would, ultimately, include foreign-sponsored attempts to seek control over America .
I see it as essential to the health of representative democracy in the United States, (if not the world), that computerized election systems such i describe above are replaced, (nation-wide), with all-human election processes, (such as i described in recent posts) . A large part of what concerns me about the administration of a President-apparent Donald Trump is the potential right-wing capture of Federal "high ground" as described 3 paragraphs previous . If my suspicions about elections in this country are (basically) correct, i see such a capture as bringing with it closure of all effective routes to achieve such a replacement .
Rightly or wrongly, (and if the above scenarios are essentially correct), i see the world, human civilization, simultaneously approaching the "event horizon" of one expression of the Great Filter, (in no small part due to the loss of representative democracy in the United States), while also receding from the event horizon of another expression of the Great Filter . If only people in positions of power and/or influence were to discuss this openly . Because i feel there is much to be considered :
Effective consolidation of control over the world's governments, (and nuclear arsenals), into the hands of a single, politically competent and sound-minded individual, (not an easy task, but one which the vulnerabilities innate in "careless", {my word}, attention to election processes within advanced representative-democracies could be exploited to facilitiate, {or so i believe}), could, (at least), reduce the probability that World War III will become the Human expression of the Great Filter --- but perhaps only for as long as the "benevolent (?) dictator" remained alive and well, (and, perhaps also, unobvious) . With stakes that high, a succession could prove extraordinarly attractive to those of ruthless ambition, (not that this would be alien to the character of the dictator himself or herself) . I think that the problem with many autocratic successions has been that the character attributes a dictator values in his or her Numero Dos, often, do not serve that person well when and if they become, (or try to compete to become), El Numero Uno . And, conversely, that the character attributes that make an effective dictator can be destabilizing in the hands of a ranking subordinate . Thus, in order to more fully reduce the risk of civilization-destroying nuclear war, (perhaps during a succession struggle), a leader in the chain, while the consolidation of power was still firmly in hand, would have to effect global nuclear disarmament to below the threshold of annihilation, (while keeping a reserve force to back his or her authority) . This could, potentially, be a very difficult manuever to pull off without triggering the very holocaust he or she would hope to avoid . And yet, multiple truly space-faring nations, if led by biological beings, could be expected to eventually destroy their home planet in a war amongst eachother . . .
Unfortunately, (in my opinion), such a consolidation of effective control, particularly to the extent it may be accomlished by the effective toppling of representative democracies world-wide, steers the world directly toward, (and perhaps through), the event horizon of a Global Winnowing expression of the Great Filter . It is not difficult to imagine --- given the impunity with which the authorities and the wealthy can act, (and add to their power over the ruled and the poor), in the absence of meaningful representative democracy --- that society can trap itself in an endless rat-race . What is difficult to fully comprehend is how completely technology will change the picture . Jobs, livelihoods, stand to be shed from advanced, (and human-capital), economies in stunning numbers during this century . The first two paragraphs of Wikipedia's page on "Technological singularity", currently hold, (as of a 2012 survey), that runaway advancement cybernetic intelligence will take flight, (in the median view of experts), around 2040 . We are engineering our own obsolescence . We are dealing ourselves out of our livelihoods in an environment where right-wing candidates are, (often and in my opinion), doing strangely better than expected at the polls . And, (in at least some cases), our political, press, and religious leaders do not seem to have their eyes firmly focussed upon the constitutionality, (or lack thereof), of election practices in many, (perhaps decisively many), parts this country . This seems to me an object example of the principle that parchment barriers cannot stand without people to hold them up .
Pursuing such a dystopia further, (and perhaps beyond the point of rationality), i imagine it possible that a post 2040 world, if fully captured by its powerful and their associated wealthy, may for some generations spiral into being a world totally mute to the external universe . Without any effective controls upon ambition save for other powerful and wealthy people, i expect that poor people will be created and, (largely), exterminated in successive waves by advancing automation . I expect that survival will, increasingly, depend upon being among the 1% of the 1% of the 1%, (in terms of power, wealth and/or beauty), ad infinitum, until no biological humans may remain . Only the machinery . A mitigating factor would be the benevolence of the world's dictators, (in succession), and of the world's wealthy and powerful below them . I accept that the wealthy and powerful can at times mean well ; but i also believe that such a milieu would evolve in directions which will not reward altruism to nearly the extent it would self-interest . I note also for every truly benevolent person in power, there exists the possibility of a truly malevolent one . Unless there is a way to engineer an incorruptible, benevolent, permanent cybernetic dictator --- a worthy but tall order in which blind faith in secretive corporate methodologies is not recommended --- to perserve and protect the lives as many people as the land will support, this seems to be a very dangerous course for the world to be on . Even if, to those blessed to be at the top, for a while, it will resemble an endless party ; (though an increasingly spookily empty one) .
And then there is Global Warming . I see this as among those factors most likely to bring World War III, (one possible expression of the Great Filter) . I see it also as among those most likely to bring violent conflict within and between nations, which (in my opinion) could move human civilization closer to world-wide authoritarianism and thus toward a Great Winnowing expression of the Great Filter .
IMG_8349
For additional background, please see a Quixotic Idea .
I see the situation as, (potentially), desperate ; but not as unremittingly dark . It is possible that the needle can be threaded, in my opinion .
Ultimately, to do so, humanity must establish an equitable alliance, (and division of labor), with the artificial intelligence we will be developing within this century . I imagine such intelligence would be ideally suited to working in outer-space, (and other hostile environments), while terrrestrial work should remain --- to a large extent --- in human hands, (to protect our livelihoods) . I believe, (and hope), that a consolidation of global power based upon real, well-informed, and wealth-redistributive representative democracy will have a better chance of threading the needle than one based upon autocracy, plutocracy and trans-national corporations .
But i acknowledge that the jet-streams which i believe guide (cosmic and terrestrial) history through their structuring of the outcomes of quantum-mechanical events, (and thus, by extension, those macroscopic ones which outwardly seem governed by chance), are pulling toward whatever outcome they would be pulling toward . I had imagined a more favorable one than seems to be upcoming, and this perturbs me . But and also, as i believe that surface conditions can influence the course and strength of atmospheric jet streams, i wonder to what extent human free will can influence the course and strength of historical jet streams .
"Some burning idea" territory :
It is difficult for me not to become enthusiastic when i think of sub-surface colonies on the moon, (built and maintained by cybernetic machines and humans, working together, and populated by both), which would run on solar electricity and generate artificial gravity by placing (human) crew cabins on circular rail tracks some hundreds of meters in diameter . Such technology could be ironed out there, (days from resupply and rescue), before being expanded to Mars, Mercury and the Asteroid Belt . To protect humans, (and cybernetic control systems), from radiation, (and most small drifting objects), during journeys to these inner-solar-system objectives, craft could be built on the moon which encased crew and control quarters in many meters of lunar brick held in place by a mortar of lunar metal . This also would provide additional stability for rotation-based artificial gravity environments, (ballasting the wobble which would result as the crew moved around), though some form of moving counterweight system would probably also be required . Such craft could be launched from the moon using solar-electricity powered rail guns . Water could be sourced from Mars ; a low-gravity, (.376 g), thin atmosphere, (.006 atm), environment where we could work out those and other additional details .
With the resources available in inner solar-system, outer solar system missions could be contemplated . Great parabolic mirrors to reflect sunlight to solar panels could be built, in part, from water ice --- once one was far enough from the sun for this to be structurally stable . Water ice could also be used as an additional jacket around the space-craft to absorb impacts from drifting objects . On these longer journeys, more control could be given over to cybernetic intelligences which would be optimized for deliberative thought-processes ; (once again, i see this as a worthy but challenging endeavor) . A journey to the as yet unlocated and unnamed Planet Nine, (please see Wikipedia's page), might take a hundred years . During this, the details of multi-generational space-travel could be worked out . Additionally, it may be worth a try in outer-solar system contexts to set up laser stations which would beam power to passing, (or departing), spacecraft having receivers optimized to convert the laser's frequency to electricity .
Ultimately, the goal would be to place human beings on Earth II, (III, IV, V, VI, and so on), which a sufficiently large and accurate space-telescope should be able to locate .
But first, the goal is to get through the next hundred years without getting caught in some expression of the Great Filter . Rightly or wrongly, i find it dangerously naive to assume that President-elect-apparent Donald Trump won a majority (or plurality) of the expressed intent of the voters for every electoral vote his camp claims, particularly those of Pennsylvania and Florida . I believe his elevation to President-apparent would be a grave mistake without taking the necessary time for the Supreme Court, (as it stood on election day), and a qualified Military Court Martial to, simultaneously, consider the Contitutionality of American election practices as they stood on election day ; and if these were found to be Unconstitutional, what remedial action should be taken . I would have no objection --- i would welcome --- the establishment of a provisional government by the Military while this process was ongoing .
And i do not consider such a statement seditionist, as a review of the military oaths, (of office and of enlistment), shows that all United States service members vow
... "that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same" ... .
This, in my opinion, gives the American Military interest and standing in determining the matter of whether an election was conducted Constitutionally, (and thus, by extension, whether the President-elect-apparent is legitimately so) . Particularly if the United States Supreme Court either refuses to consider the matter, or deadlocks when doing so .
My entry for CCCVII Technological Advance...a PF motorized windmill with house...the pictures coming soon!
Yesterday the second line of metro (subway/underground) was opened in Warsaw. The amount of scams that accompanied the construction of the line was unaccountable. The new metro is of course nice, wonderful and clean and so on...
BUT...
In the picture you can see one of the stations of the first line of Warsaw metro. This line is 23 km long and it was being built (hold on!!!)
for 25 years!!!!!!!!!!!
Can you imagine this?!
For all the sceptics: you can check it on wikipedia.
A technological experience.
Virgil is the greatest man to ever walk the face of this Earth. Come, see his home.
please somebody tell me the answer.
you know what? i'm sick of my generation. boys are massive idiots, and so are girls. i'm tired of being critizyced because of not having kissed a stranger, i'm tired of wanting to be excessively thin to 'have a life', i'm tired of being friends with people i don't even like, i'm tired of being pushed to be beautiful and without a cm of fat in my body to avoid loneliness, i'm tired of watching girls being used as a sexual object, updating their practically nude photos so boys tell them they're hot, i'm tired of people saying terrible things about girls or boys they think are ugly, i'm tired of living in a world where appereance is so much more important than personality.
Do you even know what i would do to have been born 50 years ago?
fucking technological revolution.
Speeding north with the 1H11 London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly is an unidentified Virgin Trains Class 390 Pendolino unit.
Since their introduction in 2002, the Class 390 tilting Pendolino sets have revolutionised services on the West Coast Mainline, bringing about an entirely new level of speed onto a route notorious for its laboriously winding route. But with such a technological leap, the Class 390 has sadly paid the price for its image due to what it was replacing.
The idea of a tilting train on the West Coast Mainline was however not a new one to Alstom when they developed the Pendolino sets in the late 1990's, with the concept being toyed way back in the early 1970's. British Rail first pioneered the concept of the tilting train with the ill-fated Advanced Passenger Train or APT of the mid-1970's. The idea was to create a train that could shift its centre of gravity whilst moving around sharp bends at high speeds, similar to how a motorcyclist leans into corners. This was to not only allow the train to travel at higher speeds on winding track without fear of it falling over, but also to improve passenger comfort levels and stop people being pressed against the windows when taking corners!
The original APT was a Gas-Turbine unit that operated on the Midland Region out of London St Pancras, and was later followed by the Class 370 electric multiple unit that began trials on the West Coast Mainline from 1980. A truly brilliant concept, the APT showed the world that the idea of a tilting train could be possible, that is, when it worked. The Class 370 was marred by teething problems and reliability issues, mostly consisting of the fact that the tilting mechanism wouldn't work properly or there would be just general train faults. Coupled with the winter of 1981, the worst winter for many years, and the train's image was damaged beyond repair. Even while developments were looking promising, and with only a few million Pounds required to complete the project, the British Government pulled the plug and the APT was axed in 1986, with only one complete set remaining as a rather sorry museum piece. The train of the future had become a thing of the past.
But the developments of the APT were picked up by none-other than Fiat Ferroviaria, who, following the failure of their British rival, developed their own and much more successful tilting train, the ETR-401 Pendolino, which began operations in 1988. This was later translated into a fleet of 15 ETR 450 production units which became the first revenue earning tilting trains.
In 2000, Fiat Ferroviaria was acquired by Alstom, who has been building their legendary tilting trains ever since. This coincided with the formation of Virgin Trains following privatisation of British Rail in 1994. As part of Virgin Trains' franchise requirements in 1997, the company intended the replacement of the ageing BR stock of the 1960's with a new fleet of high speed trains that would reduce journey times and up travel quality. As such, Virgin turned to Fiat Ferroviaria and later successor Alstom to provide them with a derivative version of the company's latest tilting Pendolino, the ETR 460.
Fiat Ferroviaria supplied much of the content of the Class 390 units, including the bodyshell and the bogies, while final assembly was carried out at Washwood Heath. The tilting technology was developed by SIG Switzerland (later Fiat-SIG, today Alstom). Two electromechanical actuators are used per car to achieve the desired tilting angle on curved stretches of track. The train can tilt to a maximum of eight degrees, at which point one side of the cabin train is 380 mm higher above the track than the other. In contrast to other Fiat Ferroviaria tilting trains which use hydraulic tilting actuators, the electromechanical systems offers lower maintenance cost and higher efficiency.
The new trains were intended to run at 140mph, but the West Coast Main Line modernisation programme, which was an upgrade to the infrastructure to allow faster line speeds, ran over budget. Consequently, plans were scaled back, and in a manner reminiscent of the introduction of the InterCity 225, the lack of signalling upgrades resulted in the maximum line speed being restricted to 125mph. Although this (and 140mph) are well below BR's hopes for APT of 155mph, it does match the maximum speed of 125mph for the APT in passenger service (although one APT set reached 162mph in testing).
The fleet was introduced into passenger services from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly on 23rd July, 2002, to coincide with the opening of the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester. Over the next few months they took over the Manchester services, and were soon introduced on routes from London to Liverpool Lime Street, Birmingham New Street, Wolverhampton and Preston.
With the start of Class 390 operations, the writing was very much on the wall for the ageing sets of trains it was replacing, and thus the Class 390's image began to be somewhat tarnished amongst the railway purists. First to go were the Class 86's of the 1960's, proud high-speed locomotives that were once the mainstay of the WCML, withdrawn from service in 2003 following both the introduction of the Class 390's, and the Class 220/221 Voyager units on Cross-Country services. Next were the newer Class 90's of 1989, replaced in 2004 once Class 390's had been allocated to routes north of Preston. The final locomotive hauled trains were provided by the Class 87's of the 1970's, which held strong until final replacement in 2005, bringing an end to locomotive hauled services on the West Coast Mainline. From then on, the Class 86's have mostly been scrapped, whilst Class 90's were transferred to Anglia to replace their Class 86 fleet. Class 87's on the other hand have since been exported largely to Bulgaria, the few remaining here in the UK either being scrapped, placed in storage, or made into museum pieces. This left a great deal of animosity towards the Class 390's by the railway enthusiast community, who, even after 10 years, still have a strong hatred towards these trains.
The service improvements however are something that can't be taken away from the Class 390's as these trains have taken the original and comparatively sluggish 110mph top speed and translated it into the extremely fast 125mph running speed that BR had dreamt of for years. In September 2006, the Pendolino set a new speed record, completing the 401 mile length of the West Coast Main Line from Glasgow Central to London Euston in 3 hours, 55 minutes, beating the 4-hour-14-minute record for the southbound run previously set in 1981 by the Class 370 APT. The APT however retains the ultimate speed record for this route, having completed the northbound journey between London Euston and Glasgow Central in 3 hours 52 minutes in 1984 which included a 5-minute delay due to a signal fault.
Since then the Pendolino has become very much a staple of high speed train travel in the UK, and still looks good even 15 years after the first ones hit the test tracks back in 2001.
The Class 390 was put to the test however with 390033 'City of Glasgow', which was written off after the Grayrigg derailment of February 23rd, 2007. The accident had been caused by a points malfunction, which, after a failure to inspect by Network Rail, changed the direction of travel from normal and thus resulted in the entire set derailing and plummeting down an embankment at 95mph. The sturdy design and robust nature of the Class 390 has been attributed to the fact that only one person, an elderly lady, was killed in the disaster, whereas if the previous MkII carriages had been involved, the death-toll could have been much higher. As said, the unit was written off, and the less damaged rear carriages of the set now reside at the Crewe Training Centre and are used for the instruction of drivers and train crew. The subsequent destruction of one of the units led to Virgin Trains reinstating a loco-hauled service to cover its diagrams, this being in the form of a hired Class 90 (usually from Freightliner), a set of 9 MkIII coaches, and a Driving Van Trailer. This train operated covering diagrams until November 2014, when it was retired and transferred to Greater Anglia.
Since 2007 the Class 390's have had their fleet enhanced from the original 53 sets to 57 with the addition of 4 new units between 2011 and 2012. The introduction of these new sets coincided with the extension of 31 sets to 11-cars, with new carriages built and imported from Alstom's factory in Italy, the first routine 11-car InterCity train to operate in the UK since the 1970's.
Today the Class 390's continue to ply their merry trade, and remain vital parts of the UK's high speed network, bringing Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and London closer together than they've ever been before.
A technological experience.
Virgil is the greatest man to ever walk the face of this Earth. Come, see his home.
In every breath, a universe unfolds,
Each atom a testament, ancient and bold.
In rivers that flow, in mountains that rise,
The divine essence, a silent guise.
From the flutter of wings to the stars' dance above,
All intertwined in a tapestry of love.
— ChatGPT
Chris Anderson has spent his life at the hinge of technological change, where curiosity meets invention. At 3D Robotics in Berkeley, surrounded by propellers, circuit boards, and the quiet hum of experimentation, he reflected a rare blend of editor, engineer, and entrepreneur. Once the editor who guided Wired through the early turbulence of the digital revolution, Anderson has since become one of its architects, translating complex ideas about networks, abundance, and open creation into forms that help others see what comes next.
He was born in London and raised in the United States. Trained as a physicist, he studied quantum mechanics before turning to journalism, beginning at Nature, Science, and The Economist, where he worked in London, Hong Kong, and New York. In 2001 he became Editor in Chief of Wired, leading it through a decade that saw the rise of social media, smartphones, and the web economy. Under his direction, Wired became a cultural compass for a world being rewired in real time.
In 2004 he wrote “The Long Tail,” an idea that reframed how people think about markets and creativity. Anderson argued that the internet would transform the economics of scarcity into the economics of possibility. He later expanded the essay into a book that became a touchstone for digital entrepreneurs everywhere. His follow-up, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, explored how giving things away could create new forms of value. In Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, he captured the spirit of a movement that was restoring creativity and experimentation to everyday life.
After Wired, Anderson stepped fully into the world he had been chronicling. He became CEO of 3D Robotics, one of the most influential drone companies in the United States, where he helped pioneer accessible and open tools for aerial innovation. He founded the Linux Foundation’s Dronecode Project and built the DIY Drones and DIY Robocars communities, including the open-source ArduPilot autopilot project. These initiatives opened advanced flight and robotics technology to anyone with curiosity and a workbench.
He later served as CTO of Kittyhawk, Larry Page’s air taxi company, where he worked on the future of aviation and autonomous flight. Today, he is building a stealth project at the intersection of artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing, exploring how machines can learn to make with intelligence and precision. He also serves as an angel investor in companies shaping those same frontiers.
When photographed at 3D Robotics, Anderson appears at ease amid tools and prototypes, the workshop around him filled with evidence of ideas in motion. The space mirrors his own life, where theory becomes practice and making is an act of discovery. Technology, for him, is not destiny but possibility, a place where imagination and engineering converge.
What defines Anderson, more than any single role, is a capacity to see pattern where others see noise. He moves easily between scales, from the design of a sensor to the shape of an industry. Whether editing, inventing, or building, his work follows the same thread: that progress begins when knowledge is shared and the tools of creation are placed in everyone’s hands.
Living in Northern California, he continues to write, build, and invest in the systems that will shape the next industrial revolution.
A technological experience.
Virgil is the greatest man to ever walk the face of this Earth. Come, see his home.
Statue of Sir Adam Beck on University Avenue at Queen Street West. Toronto, Canada. Spring afternoon, 2021. Pentax K1 II.
A biography of Sir Adam Beck: www.biographi.ca/en/bio/beck_adam_15E.html
BECK, Sir ADAM, manufacturer, horseman, politician, office holder, and philanthropist; b. 20 June 1857 in Baden, Upper Canada, son of Jacob Friedrich Beck and Charlotte Josephine Hespeler; m. 7 Sept. 1898 Lillian Ottaway in Hamilton, Ont., and they had a daughter; d. 15 Aug. 1925 in London, Ont.
The Prometheus of Canadian politics during the first quarter of the 20th century, Sir Adam Beck brought the inestimable benefit of cheap electric light and power to the citizens of Ontario through a publicly owned utility, the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario. He had to fight continuously to build Hydro, as it came to be called, but supported by municipal allies he succeeded in creating one of the largest publicly owned integrated electric systems in the world. Brusque and overbearing, he made many enemies in the process, even amongst his friends, as he rammed his projects forward, frequently over the objections of the governments he notionally served. His ruthless determination to expand Hydro, with little regard to the cost, led eventually to a movement to rein him in. He spent his last years pinned down before three public inquiries as lawyers, accountants, and political adversaries picked over every Hydro expenditure. These public humiliations broke his spirit but failed to diminish his enormous popularity. Adam Beck more than any other public figure in Ontario reshaped the institutional life of the province by making electricity a public utility and legitimizing, through his accomplishments, public ownership as an effective instrument of policy throughout Canada.
Beck came from an enterprising immigrant family of builders and makers. In 1829 Frederick and Barbara Beck had emigrated from the Grand Duchy of Baden (Germany) to upstate New York, and then had moved to the Pennsylvania Dutch community of Doon (Kitchener) in Upper Canada, where they settled on a farm and built a sawmill. Their son Jacob, who had stayed behind to work first as a doctor’s apprentice and later in the mills and locomotive works of Schenectady, joined them in 1837. A few miles from his parents, in Preston (Cambridge), he opened a foundry. When fire destroyed it, his friends rallied and he was able to rebuild bigger than before. His first wife, Caroline Logus, whom he married in January 1843, died soon after the birth of a son, Charles. In 1843 Beck had recruited a skilled iron moulder from Buffalo, John Clare (Klarr), to join him; Clare would cement the alliance by marrying his sister in September 1845. With Clare and another partner (Valentine Wahn) running the business, Beck returned to tour his homeland, where he met Charlotte Hespeler, the sister of his Preston neighbour, merchant-manufacturer Jacob Hespeler. When Charlotte came out to Canada, she and Beck were wed, in October 1845; a daughter, Louisa, was born in 1847, followed by two sons, George and William. In a move typical of his venturing spirit, Jacob suggested relocating his company closer to the projected line of the Grand Trunk Railway, but Clare refused. So in 1854 Beck dissolved the partnership and bought 190 acres on the route of the railway ten miles west of Berlin (Kitchener). There he laid out a town-site, which he named Baden, and built a foundry, a grist mill, and a large brick house. Beck’s businesses flourished on the strength of iron orders from the railway, and a brickyard and machine shop were eventually added. It was in this thriving hamlet that Adam Beck was born in 1857.
Adam passed a bucolic childhood exploring the edges of the millpond with his brothers, poking about the sooty recesses of the foundry with the workmen, and horseback-riding with his sister. He was sent off to attend William Tassie*’s boarding school in Galt (Cambridge), where he showed no particular distinction; a slow and indifferent student, he preferred riding to reading. His formal education ended at Rockwood Academy, near Guelph. On his return to Baden, his father, who abhorred idleness, set him to work as a groundhog (a moulder’s apprentice) in the foundry. It was said by those who knew Adam that he inherited his enterprising spirit, his determination and visionary ability, and some of his sternness from his father, and a love of public service from his mother. Adam’s career as a moulder came to an end with the failure of his father’s businesses in 1879. At age 63 Jacob Beck, unbowed, started afresh once again, this time as a grain merchant in Detroit. Louisa and the youngest members of the family, Jacob Fritz and Adam, accompanied their parents; one of the older boys, William, stayed in Baden to run the cigar-box manufactory he had started in 1878. Adam returned to work briefly in Toronto as a clerk in a foundry and then as an employee in a cigar factory. With $500 in borrowed money, he joined William and their cousin William Hespeler in a cigar-box factory in Galt in 1881. Hespeler eventually left the partnership, but the two Becks persisted and built a modestly successful business. In 1884, with the inducement of a five-year tax exemption and free water, they moved their works to London, Ont., to be closer to the centre of the province’s cigar-making industry. William left soon afterwards to open a branch in Montreal and for a time Adam worked in partnership with his brother George; from 1 Jan. 1888 Adam was the sole proprietor of William Beck and Company, which later became the Beck Manufacturing Company Limited.
Cigar boxes would appear to be a fragile basis on which to build a fortune or a political career. The smoking of cigars, however, was a major rite of male sociability during the Victorian era. Earlier in the century cigars consumed in Canada had originated in Germany and later they came from the United States. The imposition of the National Policy tariff of 25 per cent on rolled cigars but not on tobacco leaf led to the migration of the industry to Canada. London was one of the first major centres where the leaf grown in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin entered the dominion, and it was there and in Montreal [see Samuel Davis*] that the domestic cigar-making business took root. In London the industry would reach its peak around 1912, when 22 companies, employing 1,980 workers, produced more than 20 million cigars. Situated on Albert Street, the Beck factory was essentially a veneer plant. Cedar logs and specialty woods from Spain and Mexico arrived by rail, were stored in the yard for seasoning, and then were peeled into strips to make not only cigar boxes but also cheese boxes and veneer for furniture and pianos. Toiling side by side with his workers (25 in 1889, rising to 125 in 1919), Beck built a thriving business, taking orders, setting up equipment, manhandling logs, and wheeling the finished boxes to customers. (He himself was a non-smoker, an enduring fatherly influence.) Eventually the company supplied all of the main cigar makers with the boxes, labels, and bands in which their products were shipped. Until he was 40, business was Adam Beck’s main preoccupation.
In the years after 1897 he emerged much more prominently in public life. He got out more, married, offered himself for public office, and turned the management of his firm over to his brother Jacob. An avid sportsman, he had played baseball as a boy; in London he played tennis and lacrosse and, with a group of bachelors, organized a toboggan club. On the advice of his doctor he took up riding again for relaxation. But nothing with Adam Beck could ever be just a recreation – he quickly became a breeder of racehorses and a competitive jumper. His social life revolved around the London Hunt Club where, in 1897, he became master of the hounds, a post he would hold until 1922. A mutual love of horses and riding brought the muscular Beck and the slim, strikingly beautiful Lillian Ottaway together at a jumping meet; she was 23 years his junior. After a whirlwind courtship they were married in 1898 at Christ’s Church Anglican Cathedral in Hamilton. Lillian, who had been raised in Britain, spoke with a slight English accent, had a lovely soprano voice, rode with gusto, and carried herself regally. Her mother, Marion Elizabeth Stinson*, from a wealthy Hamilton family, had married an English barrister, who died before Lillian was born. At 18 Lillian returned to Canada when her mother married a prominent Hamilton lawyer. After a honeymoon tour of Europe, Beck triumphantly brought his bride to London, Ont., where they promptly acquired the most ostentatious house in the city, Elliston, the estate of Ellis Walton Hyman*, and proceeded to make it even grander, with his and hers stables, under a new name, Headley. From being a sporting, business-possessed bachelor, Beck, with his young wife on his arm, moved effortlessly into the very centre of London society. She sang in the cathedral choir, their house and grounds were the envy of the city, and they made a romantic and devoted couple at dinners and hunt club affairs. Winston Churchill stayed with them on his lecture tour of 1900-1, as did Governor General Lord Minto [Elliot*] and Lady Minto in 1903.
As Adam Beck came out into society, he developed an interest in public life. In provincial politics London had long been a Conservative fief – William Ralph Meredith held the seat from 1872 to 1894. The Liberals captured it in a by-election when Meredith was appointed to the bench. At the next general election, in March 1898, Beck entered the lists for the Conservatives, ultimately falling 301 votes short of beating the Liberal Francis Baxter Leys. Although he perhaps should not have expected a better result, having no previous political experience or strong organization, he left the field feeling slightly wounded. Nevertheless, his political energies were channelled into the Victoria Hospital Trust, to which he was appointed by the city in 1901. Here he scandalized supporters with his aggressive approach towards patients’ rights, his attacks on hospital inefficiency, and his hands-on way of managing repairs economically. It is said that Beck, realizing that he was not likely to be reappointed, ran for mayor to outflank his opposition. In any case, he offered himself and was elected in January 1902. Making few promises, preferring instead to be judged by his works, he plunged into the first of what would be three one-year terms. His administration was marked by a vigorous, reforming tone that discomfited the aldermanic coterie. He promoted civic beautification by offering a prize from his own purse for a garden competition. He persuaded the city to take over the operation of the London and Port Stanley Railway when the private operator’s lease expired. He cleaned out the fire department, promoted public health, and became involved in the leadership of the Union of Canadian Municipalities, whose annual convention he brought to London in 1904. Beck thus learned the political craft at the top of local politics, as a mayor without a long apprenticeship. He entered public life as an oppositionist, a critic who used his personal popularity to drive his reluctant colleagues forward and to cleanse the municipal stables. Despite his class position as a manufacturer, in politics he developed the style of a populist champion of the ordinary citizen against the establishment. Although one might have glimpsed intimations of his future in these London years, it would have required an extremely vivid imagination to see in this maverick local politician the system-building Napoleon of provincial politics that history would know as Sir Adam Beck.
In the election of May 1902 the leader of the Conservative party, James Pliny Whitney*, encouraged Beck to run again, with the offer of a cabinet post. Although the party as a whole was unsuccessful, the popular Beck beat Francis Leys by 131 votes and thus, for the next two and a half years, he would serve as both mayor and mpp of London. It was in his capacity as mayor of a southwestern Ontario industrial city that he came in contact with a group of activists from his home district of Waterloo County who had become agitated by the hydroelectric power question. Led by the manufacturer Elias Weber Bingeman Snider and the enthusiast Daniel Bechtel Detweiler, the anxious businessmen and municipal politicians of the industrial centres of the Grand River valley had begun to organize themselves to obtain Niagara power that they believed would otherwise go to Toronto and Buffalo. They had met in 1902 to study the situation, and then formed common cause with the politicians of Toronto concerned about private monopoly. At first they hoped the provincial government could be persuaded to undertake the distribution of cheap power to the municipalities. Talks with the Liberal premier, George William Ross*, who refused to take on the inevitable debt, convinced them that if they wanted control over electrical distribution they would have to do the job themselves. Beck went as an observer to the first meeting of this group, the Berlin Convention of February 1903, a gathering of 67 delegates representing all of the main towns and cities in southwestern Ontario; he came away an active convert to municipal intervention. In response to this public pressure, in June the Ross government passed legislation (drafted by Snider) authorizing a commission of investigation to explore the possibilities of cooperative municipal action and a statutory framework within which the municipalities could create a permanent commission to operate a distribution system. Snider was the obvious choice as chair of this Ontario Power Commission, which more frequently went by his name. Beck along with Philip William Ellis, a Toronto jewellery manufacturer and wholesaler, and William Foster Cockshutt, a Brantford farm-implements manufacturer, were chosen by the municipal delegates to serve with Snider as commissioners. Thus, in the fall of 1903, Beck began a crash course on the power question. It was a subject ideally suited to his developing temperament, and he could readily identify with the professed goals: economic electrical light and power, equity between the different manufacturing regions, and the welfare of the common people. The vision of sensible, non-partisan, and public-spirited businessmen and municipal leaders (such as himself) appealed to Beck. He could also subscribe to the implicit attack on monopoly, social privilege, and finance capitalism. This was a moral universe in which he felt right at home.
As the Snider commission began working out the details of a municipally owned hydroelectric distribution system in 1904, Beck sensed the weakness of the voluntary, cooperative structure. It lacked the authority to order the power companies to surrender sensitive information vital to the enterprise, and the municipalities could not agree on much for long. Financing a collective municipal enterprise without provincial backing would be fraught with difficulties. The more he studied the question the more he became convinced that the province would have to play a major role, not just facilitate municipal activity. This growing conviction coincided with a major shift in the political landscape. The Liberal party was losing its hold over the electorate. Rooted in rural Ontario, it had trouble coming to grips with issues important to the rapidly growing urban constituencies. The Conservatives had crept to within three seats of upsetting the Liberals in 1902. In January 1905 Whitney’s Conservatives swept to a landslide victory, capturing 69 of the 98 seats. In London, the increasingly popular Adam Beck won with a plurality of 566 votes.
The hydroelectric question had not figured prominently in the campaign. The change in government, however, catapulted Beck into a position of some influence provincially. On 8 February he was made a minister without portfolio in the new administration. After the election, Whitney grandly promised that the water-power of Niagara “should be as free as air” and be developed for the public good. “It is the duty of the Government,” Beck insisted in his populist fashion, “to see that development is not hindered by permitting a handful of people to enrich themselves out of these treasures at the expense of the general public.” To that end Whitney cancelled an eleventh-hour water-power concession granted by the Ross government and on 5 July he appointed Beck to head a hydroelectric commission of inquiry. It was empowered to take an inventory of available water-power sites, gather information on existing companies in terms of their capital costs, their operating expenses, and the prices they charged, and recommend an appropriate provincial policy with respect to the generation and distribution of hydroelectricity. Beck continued to be a member of the Snider commission but clearly he had moved on to a broader conception of the power question; he now wielded a much more powerful regulatory and investigative instrument and could act with the authority of the province. Henceforth he would be the undisputed leader of the hydro movement.
The Snider commission, which reported first, in March 1906, recommended the construction of a cooperatively owned hydroelectric system linking the major municipal utilities to generating facilities at Niagara under the control of a permanent power commission financed and managed by the subscribing municipalities. In the weeks that followed, the Beck commission, in the first of its five regional reports, and more particularly the activities of Beck himself, superseded the Snider notion of a municipal cooperative. Beck’s initial report, on Niagara and southwest Ontario, prepared the way instead for provincial action by pointing out the excessive rates charged by private power companies, and the inherent difficulties of government regulation. He gave an important speech in Guelph urging direct provincial intervention. He inspired a mass meeting of municipal representatives at Toronto city hall and, on 11 April, a demonstration on the lawn of the legislature demanding that the province empower a commission to generate, transmit, and sell power to the municipalities at the lowest possible cost, and regulate the prices charged by the private providers. Beck also orchestrated a deluge of petitions from the municipal councils. All of this effort was intended to soften up his colleagues in cabinet, most of whom harboured deep suspicions about public ownership in general and Beck’s movement in particular. The strategy worked. The Whitney government hesitantly introduced legislation on 7 May (Act to provide for the transmission of electrical power to municipalities) which, in effect, created a three-member provincial crown corporation (though it was not called that), the Hydro-Electric Power Commission. Operating outside the usual civil service constraints and with extensive powers of expropriation, this body would have full powers to purchase, lease, or build transmission facilities financed by provincial bonds. Local utilities could buy power from the commission only after municipal voters had approved the contract and the enabling financial by-law. Astonishingly, Beck’s extraparliamentary organization cowed even the opposition: the bill passed unanimously in less than a week.
In organizational terms Beck had pushed on beyond an unwieldy municipal cooperative to a provincial crown agency. In doing so he had alienated some of his friends, especially in the way he had shoved Snider aside and unilaterally appropriated studies done by the Snider commission for his own investigation. Nonetheless he had created a broad coalition of municipal activists behind his determination to build a publicly owned, provincial system. But there were many possible forms, involving different degrees of state intervention, that the organization might take. The government remained ambivalent, guarded, and internally divided. What eventually emerged as Ontario Hydro, however, was Beck’s creation over the opposition of his cabinet colleagues. On 7 June 1906 Whitney appointed Beck chairman of the new commission, as expected. Needed engineering expertise would come from Cecil Brunswick Smith. And to balance Beck’s populism and rein in his enthusiasms, Whitney also persuaded a reluctant John Strathearn Hendrie of Hamilton to serve, Beck’s peer as a horseman, a man of his wife’s class, and a known supporter of the private power companies, among them the Hamilton Electric Light and Cataract Power Company Limited [see John Patterson*].
The private interests, especially the group promoting the only Canadian firm at Niagara, the Electrical Development Company of Ontario Limited from Toronto, having failed in their first attempts to derail Beck, now bent their minds to seeking some reasonable accommodation with the government. There were many in the cabinet, the premier included, who were sympathetic to this point of view. The Electrical Development Company was in a precarious financial position; a collapse would be a costly blot on the province. Whitney insisted that every consideration be given the company in negotiating the contract for power in early 1907 with the winning bidder, the American-based Ontario Power Company, and then with respect to the construction of the transmission line. In each case negotiations failed. The premier did not conceive of his policy as a guerre à outrance against the private interests. He believed in talking tough, but in the end was willing to come to terms. Unlike Beck, Whitney was a practitioner of brokerage politics. Beck, a newly formed ideologue, was not prepared to bargain away what had formed in his mind as a just alternative to private control. It was possible that neither of them knew the truth about themselves, though in time they came to a realization of their honest differences. For his part Beck had to manoeuvre against the wishes of his premier and colleagues in cabinet. From their point of view he could be unpleasant, ruthless, even unprincipled. He would change his mind without notice, withhold information, go back on deals, and alternately retreat in a sulk or play the rude bully.
Beck proved a formidable champion. The Toronto market was a key element in his grand scheme. Without access, which the city wanted, he could not deliver cheap electricity to southwestern towns, but Toronto’s system was controlled by the Electrical Development Company. In the resulting contest over a proposed by-law to fund a municipal network powered by Hydro, Beck’s emotional, simplistic rhetoric was a telling factor. He also profited from the ineptitude and arrogance of his corporate opponents in Electrical Development, Frederic Nicholls, Sir Henry Mill Pellatt*, and William Mackenzie, whose financial reputations had already taken a beating from the royal commission on life insurance in 1906. During the winter of 1907-8 by-laws endorsing the contracts with Ontario Hydro were approved by municipal ratepayers with huge majorities in Toronto and elsewhere. Hydro policy also proved extremely popular in the election of June 1908, in which the government increased both its popular vote and its number of seats. Beck now had a dual mandate from the municipal and provincial electorates. When a desperate Mackenzie amalgamated several enterprises into one utility in 1908 and then belatedly attempted to forestall provincial ownership with a counterproposal to build the system and distribute power under government regulation, the offer came too late. The government had gone so far it could not safely turn back; a publicly owned transmission company would have to be created. Mackenzie and his colleagues had played the game badly and when they lost, after having been given every possible consideration, they turned viciously on Beck and the government. Their quixotic campaign to undermine provincial credit in British financial circles, and then to seek disallowance in Ottawa of key Hydro legislation, served only to bring Whitney and Beck closer together and solidify the political foundations of Ontario Hydro.
Using electricity generated by the Ontario Power Company, the Hydro-Electric Power Commission became an operating entity in a series of theatrical turning-on ceremonies that began in the fall of 1910 and continued into 1911 as successive towns and cities were wired into the grid. Each of these civic festivals became an opportunity for Beck to recount the triumph of public power over private greed. His hostility towards the private power companies, who were now his competitors, and his shameless self-promotion as the champion of “The People’s Power,” deeply troubled his colleagues. Moreover, his independent conduct raised awkward questions about the precise relationship between the management of Hydro and the government. Before the election of December 1911 Whitney floated a trial balloon, suggesting that the time had come to make Hydro a department of government, under the full control of the cabinet. Beck did not openly attack the proposal, but once he was acclaimed in his own seat and the government was re-elected, his municipal allies, acting through the Ontario Municipal Electric Association, formed in early 1912, launched an aggressive campaign on his behalf; it not only supported Beck as chairman of a quasi-independent commission, but also (in February) brought him a handsome $6,000 salary, without requiring his resignation from the legislature.
With this vote of confidence from the people and somewhat more reluctantly from the premier, Beck struggled within a competitive environment to build Hydro through dramatic price cutting and political showmanship. In his campaign to expand consumption Beck became an electrical Messiah: in speeches and publicity he extolled the power of abundant cheap light to brighten the homes of working people; cheap electricity would create more jobs in the factories of the province; hydro would lighten the drudgery of the barn and the household; and electric railways radiating out from the cities into the countryside would create more prosperous, progressive farms even as light and power made brighter, cleaner cities. With his famous travelling exhibits of the latest electrical appliances (popularly called circuses), rural tests, and local Hydro stores (where household appliances were on display), and in parade floats, newspaper and magazine advertisements, and a host of speeches, Beck presented public hydro as an elixir, but he was no snake-oil salesman. He understood the economics of the electric industry better than his competitors or his critics. Along with utilities magnate Samuel Insull of Chicago, Beck realized that the more electricity he could sell, the cheaper it would cost to acquire. It was a difficult lesson to teach. He even had to browbeat some of the more fiscally conservative municipal utilities, most notably the Toronto Hydro-Electric Power Commission, to pass the lower rates on to consumers. In the process he continued to expand his publicly owned system at the expense of his private competitors.
In Toronto and across the province, Beck acquired a more ardent following than the government itself. At home he and his family continued to rise in public esteem. London’s municipal electric utility, which received its first hydro from Niagara in 1910, became a model for progressive business promotion and Beck loyalism. Personally Beck maintained an active interest in civic politics. When the water commissioners proposed a treatment facility to take more water from the tainted Thames River, he boldly promised to find enough clean fresh water in artesian wells. The city took him up on this offer, voting $10,000 for the purpose. In 1910 Beck drilled the wells, installed electrical pumps, and brought the project in on time and on budget, or rather, he absorbed the excess costs himself. In two grand gestures Beck brought light and water to the growing city in the same year.
However, it was in the field of public health that the Becks made their greatest contribution. Sometime in l907 or 1908 the Becks’ young daughter, Marion Auria, contracted tuberculosis. Her worried parents sought out the best specialists in America and in Europe. Mercifully her case responded to treatment. But the Becks became concerned for those families in their community who lacked the means to provide their children with medical care. Everyone, they believed, ought to have close access to first-class tuberculosis facilities. Accordingly, in 1909 Adam and Lillian Beck organized the London Health Association to provide a sanatorium. From local individuals and organizations they raised $10,000 (led by their own donation of $1,200), the city contributed $5,000, and the province added $4,000. On 5 April 1910 Governor General Lord Grey* opened the Queen Alexandra Sanatorium in the village of Byron, west of the city. For the rest of their lives the Becks remained deeply attached to this sanatorium and made its maintenance and expansion their passion. As president from its inception to his death in 1925 and a sometimes overbearing physical presence on the weekends, Adam Beck personally oversaw all major and even many minor renovations.
A society beauty, Lillian Beck also continued to be a fiercely competitive horsewoman. The Beck stables produced a string of outstanding hunter-class horses that won Adam and Lillian international recognition. In 1907 they competed in the Olympia Horse Show in London, England, where Lillian’s horse My Fellow won its class. To remain competitive, the Becks leased an estate in England in 1913 to maintain their equestrian operation at the highest international standards. From that time onward Lillian and Marion lived about half the year in England; Adam paid extended visits when his schedule permitted. In 1914 their prize-winning horses Melrose, Sir Edward, and Sir James were counted among the finest middleweight and heavyweight hunters in the world. The Becks also competed regularly at the National Horse Show in New York City where, in 1915, Lillian was named a judge over chauvinist protests, famously breaking down the barriers of this once exclusively male domain.
Adam Beck’s contribution to London had been publicly recognized in an unprecedented dinner given in his honour on 25 Nov. 1913. At this glittering affair, attended by 500 in the Masonic Temple, Anglican bishop David Williams* proclaimed him “incorrupt and incorruptible”; Roman Catholic bishop Michael Francis Fallon* eulogized his vision, character, and charitable works; and the mayor and city council gave him a silver candelabra and tray. While the ladies looked on from the galleries, the head-table guests were served their dinners from a small electric railway. According to the London Free Press, this banquet was “the most remarkable and spontaneous demonstration of affection and regard ever tendered a public man in London.” Visibly moved, Beck spoke briefly of his satisfaction at lightening the load of the poor, the housewife, the farmer, the merchant, and afflicted children, and pledged to carry on the fight to create a renewed citizenship based upon “service, progress and righteousness.” These local honours were crowned the following year when he received a knighthood in the king’s June honours list. He was now Sir Adam, the Power Knight, and Lillian formally became what she had long been in style, Lady Beck. Charging at fences on horseback, or driving the rapidly growing Hydro system forward, Sir Adam Beck was at the height of his power in 1914.
Re-elected by a large majority in the general election of 29 June 1914, Beck directed a major structural transformation of Hydro during his next term with fewer constraints than in the past. Whitney, who died in September, was replaced by a less adept premier, William Howard Hearst*. Beck’s nemesis, John Hendrie, resigned from the Hydro-Electric Power Commission to become lieutenant governor. Beck thus had a much freer rein, though Hearst did not include him in his cabinet. Hydro’s head set about expanding his organization with a powerful lobby, the Ontario Municipal Electric Association, zealously behind him. Beck and the regional municipalities fixed upon electric radial railways as a major force for modernization and rural reconstruction. In 1913 the Hydro Electric Railway Act and amendments to the Ontario Railway Act had prepared the way legislatively. A web of light lines that connected farms, towns, and cities and delivered transportation at cost under a public authority had enormous appeal and Beck became its most ardent hot gospeller. He managed to have the abject London and Port Stanley Railway electrified as a glowing prototype. Coincidentally the baseload of the proposed railways would greatly increase electric consumption and drive Hydro to a new stage of development as a fully integrated regional monopoly that provided hydroelectric generation, transmission, and distribution services as well as high-speed transportation. This grandiose vision of electrical modernization had commensurate costs, which Beck somewhat disingenuously managed to minimize.
In 1914 Hydro and the municipalities received legislative permission, subject to ratepayer approval, to enter into the inter-city electric railway business. By stages Hydro acquired the legal authority to generate power as well as distribute it through the purchase of a utility (Big Chute) on the Severn River and the construction of regional power stations in 1914-15 at Wasdell Falls, also on the Severn, and Eugenia Falls, near Flesherton. These were sideshows, however; the centrepiece of the proposed integrated system remained Niagara. In 1914 Hydro quietly began planning for a massive hydroelectric station there, but there was precious little water left at Niagara to turn the turbines. A treaty negotiated with the United States in 1908 limited the amount that might be diverted for power purposes; the three existing private companies at Niagara had already acquired, between them, the rights to most of the Canadian quota. Beck had made the development of the hydroelectric system into the central issue on the Ontario political agenda when conflict broke out in Europe in August 1914.
The Becks threw themselves wholeheartedly into the war effort. In 1912 the military authorities had cleverly put Adam’s organizing talents and his knowledge of horses together by naming him to a remount committee. At the outset of the war he took charge of acquiring horses for the Canadian army in the territory from Halifax to the Lakehead. In June 1915 he assumed this responsibility for the British army as well, an appointment that brought him an honorary colonelcy. Inevitably, allegations arose that his agency either paid too much for horses or acquired unsuitable remounts, but the claims were not substantiated upon investigation. Together Adam and Lillian Beck also made personal contributions to the war effort, donating all of their champion horses to the cause. General Edwin Alfred Hervey Alderson, for example, rode Sir James, Adam’s most famous horse. Lady Beck, in England for most of the war, working with the Canadian Red Cross Society, devoted herself particularly to ensuring that wounded veterans were welcomed into British country homes for their convalescence. The Queen Alexandra Sanatorium in Ontario was expanded in 1917-18 to accommodate the rehabilitation of wounded returnees. The arrangement worked well, but in the later stages of the war battle-hardened veterans began to complain about the hospital’s stern regimen, much of which was attributed to Sir Adam’s “Germanic” direction. In 1916, for his local and patriotic help, Beck had received an lld from the Western University of London, which he served as a director and later as chancellor.
At first the war had relatively little impact on Beck’s plans for Hydro. The municipal elections of January 1917, for example, revolved around the approval of by-laws for Hydro radials and vague authorization for the future generation of power at Niagara. Then the rapidly increasing power demands of wartime industrialization provided the overriding urgency, later in 1917, to overcome opposition to the purchase of one of the power companies at Niagara (Ontario Power) and forge ahead with the construction of a large diversion canal and a world-scale plant at Queenston, which would make much more efficient use of the available water. Shamelessly using the moral purpose of the war, Beck hemmed in his private competitors even more, setting the stage for their eventual acquisition, though the negotiations would be unduly drawn out, litigious, and embittered. However, war, inflation, railway nationalization, and the demands of automotive technology for better roads combined to damp enthusiasm for the radial railway project. Moreover, the problem for the Hydro-Electric Commission now was not finding ways of selling surplus power, but rather keeping up with galloping industrial, commercial, municipal, and domestic demand. When the war ended, Hydro’s transformation into an integrated utility producing as well as transmitting its own power was much closer to realization. Its corresponding administrative growth had been grandly marked by the ornate office building begun on University Avenue in Toronto in 1914 and occupied in 1916. Sir Adam had a good war, but he emerged from it a wounded politician.
From the very beginning there had been critics of the Hydro project and Beck’s management of it. Canadian private producers and British investors placed obstacles in the way during the early stages. As Hydro advanced, it attracted new critics: private power advocates from the United States, who viewed the progress of public ownership in Ontario with alarm. In 1912 a New York State committee of investigation, the Ferris committee, issued a sharply critical report. A year later a prominent American hydroelectric expert, Reginald Pelham Bolton, denounced the unorthodox financing of Hydro in An expensive experiment . . . (New York). Between 15 July and 23 Dec. 1916 James Mavor, a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto, published a devastating critique of Hydro’s lack of accountability, dictatorial methods, and tendency to subvert democracy in a series of articles in the Financial Post (Toronto), later reprinted as Niagara in politics . . . (New York, 1925).
In the final analysis Beck was his own worst enemy. His authoritarian management style invited criticism. In 1916 the provincial auditor, James Clancy, threw up his hands at Hydro’s accounting practices. Beck embarrassed his premier and government with surprises. He was not one to compromise, even with his friends. A scrapper and sometimes a bully, he intimidated his staff and his municipal allies, and regarded the government and the legislature with disdain. He was more popular and more powerful than the premier, and he acted as if he knew it. Hydro, in his mind, was bigger than any government and he was the personal embodiment of Hydro. Cautious people who wanted to know in advance how much projects would cost were battered into submission and put on his list of enemies; when the bills added up to two or three times the initial estimates, there were always convoluted exculpatory explanations. Dismissing his censors, Beck stormed ahead, fuming with rage at the conspiracies mounted against him and bristling with indignation at the slightest criticism. Even Beck’s defenders tired of his haughty, domineering ways. A frustrated Hearst, when accused by Beck of hindering Hydro’s development in the spring of 1919, rebuked Sir Adam for never taking him into his confidence, for his presumptuous attitude towards parliament, and for saddling others with responsibility for Hydro’s mounting debt. Beck responded by withdrawing his support from the government and by announcing his intention to run independently in the upcoming election.
The election of October 1919 came as a devastating blow to Beck and, potentially, to his project. As an independent in London, he was defeated by his sole opponent, Dr Hugh Allan Stevenson, the Labour candidate, who benefited from disaffected Tory votes, some nastiness about Beck’s ethnic background, and a vocal uprising amongst the returned soldiers in the Queen Alexandra Sanatorium. The timing could not have been worse. Beck’s massive Queenston hydroelectric station lay only half completed and the radial railway scheme had stalled; however, Beck’s enormous popularity, which transcended party lines, saved him. The victorious but leaderless United Farmers of Ontario initially sounded him out as a possible premier, but both sides quickly thought better of it. Although Labour strongly supported Hydro, the UFO were much more reserved, especially about Beck’s radial-railway enthusiasms; they preferred improved roads. As chairman of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission, Beck had also been an mpp and, for much of the time, a minister without portfolio. The election broke that political connection with the government in power. The eventual premier, Ernest Charles Drury*, had little choice but to keep Beck on as chairman, but he appointed a tough ex-soldier, Lieutenant-Colonel Dougall Carmichael, to the commission to keep him in line.
Over the next four years the new government and the tempestuous Power Knight remained locked in combat. For much of the time William Rothwell Plewman, a reporter for the Toronto Daily Star, acted as unofficial mediator between Hydro and the premier, who was determined that Hydro do the government’s bidding and not the other way around. On 6 July 1920 the government announced a royal commission to reconsider Beck’s radial program in light of the rising costs, disappointing experience in other jurisdictions, and technological change. Beck immediately orchestrated a campaign of resistance. In emergency meetings on the 8th at Toronto city hall and the Hydro building, for instance, the Hydro-Electric Radial Association registered its “strong disapproval” of the commission. Provincial treasurer Peter Smith responded for the government that it would not be stampeded. In July 1921 the commission, chaired by Robert Franklin Sutherland, produced a report that was highly critical of radials and recommended construction of only a much reduced system. Meanwhile, Beck had wasted valuable political capital in an acrimonious takeover of Sir William Mackenzie’s Toronto Power Company Limited and its related electric and radial companies and in fighting the City of Toronto over an eight-track entry corridor for a mammoth radial system. Characteristically, he condemned the Sutherland report in an intemperate pamphlet and urged the municipalities not to let up in their campaign. The adverse report, a hostile provincial government, and defeats for radial by-laws (particularly in Toronto) in the municipal elections of January 1922 effectively put an end to Beck’s radial dream.
Drury, concerned at the spiralling costs of the Queenston hydroelectric plant, wanted an inquiry into this project as well. At first Beck agreed. However, when his hand-picked expert, Hugh L. Cooper, questioned the design, recalculated the costs upward, and insisted upon changes in the power canal to enhance capacity, Beck rejected his advice and appointed another consulting engineer. The turbines had begun to turn on the first phase of this huge project on 29 Dec. 1921, but there seemed to be no relation between the estimates Beck presented and the mounting bills; in one year the difference amounted to $20 million. Unable to explain the situation, Colonel Carmichael offered his resignation, which the premier refused. The cost of the undertaking, now much larger, had ballooned from the initial $20 million to $84 million and counting. Drury, who had to guarantee the bonds for the over-budget project and take political responsibility for it, insisted upon a commission of inquiry with a sweeping mandate to examine the overall operations of Hydro, not just Queenston. This commission, appointed in April 1922 and chaired by Liberal lawyer Walter Dymond Gregory, became in effect an adversarial audit of Beck’s management that involved scores of witnesses, produced thousands of pages of testimony, and ran into the middle of 1923.
These political setbacks were, in some respects, the least of his problems. On 17 Oct. 1921 his beloved wife had died from complications following surgery for pancreatitis. Sir Adam and Lady Beck had been a deeply devoted couple despite their often long absences from one another. Living in the Alexandra apartments next to the Hydro building, they had only just begun to settle into life together in Toronto society. Moreover, she had been the one mellowing influence in his life. He was devastated by the loss. A widower, he was now also the single parent of a fiercely independent teenager. With the check upon his temper in a Hamilton grave, he became more difficult and erratic in the face of his daughter’s defiance and the ascendancy of those he considered to be his political enemies. These were the years of Beck’s towering, black rages.
Beck had run Hydro as a private corporation. Honest and incorruptible personally, he nevertheless paid scant attention to the niceties of accounting. He would routinely spend funds authorized for one purpose on any project he deemed in the interests of Hydro, including local by-law campaigns. For Beck the ends justified the means. Meanwhile, his vision of a provincial, publicly owned hydroelectric monopoly that served the municipal utilities and provided power at the lowest possible cost had been largely realized. In 1923 Hydro served 393 municipalities and distributed 685,000 horsepower using facilities in which over $170 million had been invested. Beck was a magnificent builder. There could be no denying his accomplishments, though, as the hearings of the Gregory commission showed, his management style, planning, political methods, and accountability to the legislature could be questioned.
The vexations suffered at the hands of the UFO government eventually drew Beck back to the bosom of the Conservative party in self-defence. In the election of June 1923 he stood as a Conservative in his old London riding. The irony of a civil servant running as a candidate in opposition to the government was not lost on Drury or the Farmers’ Sun (Toronto), but Beck managed to get away with it. This time he won with a plurality of more than 7,000 votes – a wonderful personal vindication. George Howard Ferguson*’s Conservatives swept the province, and Beck returned to cabinet in July as a minister without portfolio. Ferguson brought the Gregory inquiry to an abrupt conclusion and made much of the fact that Sir Adam’s general stewardship of Hydro had been supported in the commission’s voluminous evidence and summary reports. Beck’s probity could be stressed while quietly the government used the critical aspects of Gregory’s reports to bring Hydro more fully within the framework of financial and political accountability.
Then, just when it seemed these clouds had passed over, Beck’s personal integrity came under attack from an unexpected source. Hydro secretary E. Clarence Settell absconded with $30,000 in Hydro funds and left a blackmailing letter itemizing Sir Adam’s alleged misdeeds. When he was apprehended in October 1924 heading for the border with his mistress, he added further charges to the indictment. Wounded by Settell’s treachery, and by now a very sick man, Beck had to endure yet another inquiry as judge Colin George Snider conducted an investigation of more than 40 specific allegations having to do with the private use of automobiles, misappropriation of public money, unauthorized expenditures, conflicts of interest in tendering, and irregularities in expense records. Issued in December, Snider’s report condemned Isaac Benson Lucas’s management of Hydro’s legal department and Frederick Arthur Gaby’s conflict of interest in a dredging contract within the engineering department, but it found no evidence of serious wrongdoing by Beck. Save for a few petty mistakes in his expense accounts, the commission exonerated him. Settell went to jail for three years. Although another attempt “to get” Sir Adam, in the words of the Toronto Globe, had failed, the critics continued the battle of the books against Hydro. Beck thundered back with vigorous refutations in pamphlets that put his fighting spirit on full display. Returning to London one night by train, he gestured in some excitement to his travelling companion and long-time ally Edward Victor Buchanan, head of London’s utilities: “Look out there! The lights in the farms. That’s what I’ve been fighting for.”
The political struggle and quarrels with his daughter over her determination to marry Strathearn Hay, whom he deemed unsuitable in part because he was related to the Hendrie family, exhausted Beck, whose health and mental outlook deteriorated. It took Howard Ferguson’s intervention to persuade him to attend Marion’s wedding in January 1925. Ordered to rest by his doctors, who had diagnosed his illness as pernicious anaemia, Beck went to South Carolina for a holiday in February, and then he underwent transfusion treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. There he brooded about his beloved Hydro, strategies for the hydroelectric development of the St Lawrence River, and the continuing machinations of the private power interests, and he grumbled that the premier and his colleagues in government were neglecting him. He was a broken man by his own admission.
In May, Beck quietly slipped back to his home in London, where he attempted to conduct Hydro business by telephone from his bedroom. He weakened rapidly over the summer and died on 15 Aug. 1925 in his 69th year. Beck’s passing shocked the province; the seriousness of his condition had not been widely understood. The death announcement occasioned a spontaneous outpouring of grief, with eulogies pouring in from every quarter. His obituaries filled pages in the newspapers. “Canada has not produced a greater man than the late Sir Adam Beck,” declared Saturday Night (Toronto) as it enshrined him in the national pantheon along with Sir John A. Macdonald*, Lord Mount Stephen [Stephen], and Sir William Cornelius Van Horne*. Ontario city halls were draped in black, the Hydro shops and offices closed in tribute, and in London business ceased for an hour. Thousands lined the streets for his funeral cortège. The ceremony at St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral, attended by all the major political figures of the province, was also broadcast over the radio. As his funeral train mournfully passed from London across Beck’s political heartland to Hamilton, where he was to be interred in Greenwood Cemetery under a granite cross beside his wife, farmers and their families paused from their toil and men swept their hats from their heads. The entire Toronto City Council attended his burial. It is a small irony that Beck lies in what he would have considered enemy ground, Hamilton, the last bastion of private power. But for once his wish to be beside his wife overcame his prejudices.
Sir Adam Beck’s death marked the end of an unusual period in Ontario politics, one in which the chairman of Hydro had exercised greater power and influence than the premier and commanded a broad-based, populist political following much stronger than any political party. In building Hydro, Beck almost succeeded in creating an institution that was a law unto itself and for a long time it would continue to demonstrate some of the characteristics of independence. He died a wealthy man with an estate valued at more than $627,000, although his manufacturing business had been in decline for some years. His salary from his chairmanship of Hydro over 20 years totalled $197,000. Some of his wealth may have come to him from his wife. After making numerous small bequests to relatives and charities, he left a trust fund of approximately half a million dollars to his daughter and her heirs.
Beck’s memory was kept alive by the Ontario Municipal Electric Association, Hydro, and the citizens of London. In 1934 Toronto and the Hydro municipalities raised a splendid monument to him that still commands University Avenue. This brooding statue, by Emanuel Otto Hahn*, and Beck’s grave in Hamilton became sites of regular pilgrimages and wreath-laying ceremonies by the heirs and successors to the OMEA as they struggled to perpetuate the notion of Hydro as a municipal cooperative. Hydro publications regularly stressed the vision and legacy of Beck during the era of growth after World War I; eventually the much enlarged power stations at Queenston were renamed Beck No.1 and Beck No.2 in his honour. In London a new collegiate was named after him and a nearby public school was named after Lady Beck. The Women’s Sanatorium Aid Society of London built a charming chapel, St Luke’s in the Garden, across from the Queen Alexandra Sanatorium in memory of the Becks in 1932. The sanatorium itself became the Beck Memorial Sanatorium in 1948. In print, W. R. Plewman’s vivid 1947 biography captured the greatness of Beck and the tempestuous nature of his personality. Merrill Denison*’s commissioned history of Hydro in 1960 established continuity between the transcendent hero figure at the beginning and the transforming, province-girdling corporation Hydro had become in the postwar era.
As the obituaries noted, Hydro itself was Beck’s greatest monument. He worried on his deathbed that political partisanship would overcome it and that Hydro as an independent entity would not survive. But in his absence it continued to flourish, firmly rooted in the towns and cities, along the back concessions, and amongst the merchants, workers, farmers, and homemakers of the province. Hydroelectricity generated and delivered by a crown corporation to municipally owned utilities at the lowest cost had become an Ontario institution that would outlive changing governments and passing ideologies. That had largely been Sir Adam Beck’s doing.
Don't interrupt the sorrow
Darn right
In flames our prophet witches
Be polite
A room full of glasses
He says "Your notches, liberation doll"
And he chains me with that serpent
To that Ethiopian wall
Anima rising
Queen of Queens
Wash my guilt of Eden
Wash and balance me
Anima rising
Uprising in me tonight
She's a vengeful little goddess
With an ancient crown to fight
A technological experience.
Virgil is the greatest man to ever walk the face of this Earth. Come, see his home.
Tel Aviv-Yafo usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a population of 467,875, it is the economic and technological center of the country. If East Jerusalem is considered part of Israel, Tel Aviv is the country's second-most-populous city, after Jerusalem; if not, Tel Aviv is the most populous city, ahead of West Jerusalem.
Tel Aviv is governed by the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality, headed by Mayor Ron Huldai, and is home to most of Israel's foreign embassies. It is a beta+ world city and is ranked 57th in the 2022 Global Financial Centres Index. Tel Aviv has the third- or fourth-largest economy and the largest economy per capita in the Middle East. The city currently has the highest cost of living in the world. Tel Aviv receives over 2.5 million international visitors annually. A "party capital" in the Middle East, it has a lively nightlife and 24-hour culture. The city is gay-friendly, with a large LGBT community. Tel Aviv is home to Tel Aviv University, the largest university in the country with more than 30,000 students.
The city was founded in 1909 by the Yishuv (Jewish residents) and initially given the Hebrew name Ahuzat Bayit (Hebrew: אחוזת בית, romanized: ʔAħuzat Bayit, lit. 'House Estate' or 'Homestead'), namesake of the Jewish association which established the neighbourhood as a modern housing estate on the outskirts of the ancient port city of Jaffa (Yafo in Hebrew), then part of the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem within the Ottoman Empire. Its name was changed the following year to Tel Aviv, after the biblical name Tel Abib (lit. "Tell of Spring") adopted by Nahum Sokolow as the title for his Hebrew translation of Theodor Herzl's 1902 novel Altneuland ("Old New Land"). Other Jewish suburbs of Jaffa had been established before Tel Aviv, the oldest among them being Neve Tzedek. Tel Aviv was given township status within the Jaffa Municipality in 1921, and became independent from Jaffa in 1934. Immigration by mostly Jewish refugees meant that the growth of Tel Aviv soon outpaced that of Jaffa, which had a majority Arab population at the time. In 1948 the Israeli Declaration of Independence was proclaimed in the city. After the 1947–1949 Palestine war, Tel Aviv began the municipal annexation of parts of Jaffa, fully unified with Jaffa under the name Tel Aviv in April 1950, and was formally renamed to Tel Aviv-Yafo in August 1950.
Tel Aviv's White City, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, comprises the world's largest concentration of International Style buildings, including Bauhaus and other related modernist architectural styles. Popular attractions include Jaffa Old City, the Eretz Israel Museum, the Museum of Art, Hayarkon Park, and the city's promenade and beach.
Etymology and origins
Tel Aviv is the Hebrew title of Theodor Herzl’s 1902 novel Altneuland ("Old New Land"), as translated from German by Nahum Sokolow. Sokolow had adopted the name of a Mesopotamian site near the city of Babylon mentioned in Ezekiel: "Then I came to them of the captivity at Tel Abib [Tel Aviv], that lived by the river Chebar, and to where they lived; and I sat there overwhelmed among them seven days." The name was chosen in 1910 from several suggestions, including "Herzliya". It was found fitting as it embraced the idea of a renaissance in the ancient Jewish homeland. Aviv (אביב, or Abib) is a Hebrew word that can be translated as "spring", symbolizing renewal, and tell (or tel) is an artificial mound created over centuries through the accumulation of successive layers of civilization built one over the other and symbolizing the ancient.
Although founded in 1909 as a small settlement on the sand dunes north of Jaffa, Tel Aviv was envisaged as a future city from the start. Its founders hoped that in contrast to what they perceived as the squalid and unsanitary conditions of neighbouring Arab towns, Tel Aviv was to be a clean and modern city, inspired by the European cities of Warsaw and Odesa. The marketing pamphlets advocating for its establishment stated:
In this city we will build the streets so they have roads and sidewalks and electric lights. Every house will have water from wells that will flow through pipes as in every modern European city, and also sewerage pipes will be installed for the health of the city and its residents.
— Akiva Arieh Weiss, 1906
History
The walled city of Jaffa is modern-day Tel Aviv-Yafo's only urban centre that existed in early modern times. Jaffa was an important port city in the region for millennia. Archaeological evidence shows signs of human settlement there starting in roughly 7,500 BC. The city was established around 1,800 BC at the latest. Its natural harbour has been used since the Bronze Age. By the time Tel Aviv was founded as a separate city during Ottoman rule of the region, Jaffa had been ruled by the Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Phoenicians, Ptolemies, Seleucids, Hasmoneans, Romans, Byzantines, the early Islamic caliphates, Crusaders, Ayyubids, and Mamluks before coming under Ottoman rule in 1515. It had been fought over numerous times. The city is mentioned in ancient Egyptian documents, as well as the Hebrew Bible.
Other ancient sites in Tel Aviv include: Tell Qasile, Tel Gerisa, Abattoir Hill, Tel Hashash, and Tell Qudadi.
During the First Aliyah in the 1880s, when Jewish immigrants began arriving in the region in significant numbers, new neighborhoods were founded outside Jaffa on the current territory of Tel Aviv. The first was Neve Tzedek, founded in 1887 by Mizrahi Jews due to overcrowding in Jaffa and built on lands owned by Aharon Chelouche. Other neighborhoods were Neve Shalom (1890), Yafa Nof (1896), Achva (1899), Ohel Moshe (1904), Kerem HaTeimanim (1906), and others. Once Tel Aviv received city status in the 1920s, those neighborhoods joined the newly formed municipality, now becoming separated from Jaffa.
1904–1917: Foundation in Late Ottoman period
The Second Aliyah led to further expansion. In 1906, a group of Jews, among them residents of Jaffa, followed the initiative of Akiva Aryeh Weiss and banded together to form the Ahuzat Bayit (lit. "homestead") society. One of the society's goals was to form a "Hebrew urban centre in a healthy environment, planned according to the rules of aesthetics and modern hygiene". The urban planning for the new city was influenced by the garden city movement. The first 60 plots were purchased in Kerem Djebali near Jaffa by Jacobus Kann, a Dutch citizen, who registered them in his name to circumvent the Turkish prohibition on Jewish land acquisition.[34] Meir Dizengoff, later Tel Aviv's first mayor, also joined the Ahuzat Bayit society. His vision for Tel Aviv involved peaceful co-existence with Arabs.
On 11 April 1909, 66 Jewish families gathered on a desolate sand dune to parcel out the land by lottery using seashells. This gathering is considered the official date of the establishment of Tel Aviv. The lottery was organised by Akiva Aryeh Weiss, president of the building society. Weiss collected 120 sea shells on the beach, half of them white and half of them grey. The members' names were written on the white shells and the plot numbers on the grey shells. A boy drew names from one box of shells and a girl drew plot numbers from the second box. A photographer, Abraham Soskin (b. 1881 in Russia, made aliyah 1906), documented the event. The first water well was later dug at this site, located on what is today Rothschild Boulevard, across from Dizengoff House. Within a year, Herzl, Ahad Ha'am, Yehuda Halevi, Lilienblum, and Rothschild streets were built; a water system was installed; and 66 houses (including some on six subdivided plots) were completed. At the end of Herzl Street, a plot was allocated for a new building for the Herzliya Hebrew High School, founded in Jaffa in 1906. The cornerstone for the building was laid on 28 July 1909. The town was originally named Ahuzat Bayit. On 21 May 1910, the name Tel Aviv was adopted. The flag and city arms of Tel Aviv (see above) contain under the red Star of David 2 words from the biblical book of Jeremiah: "I (God) will build You up again and you will be rebuilt." (Jer 31:4) Tel Aviv was planned as an independent Hebrew city with wide streets and boulevards, running water for each house, and street lights.
By 1914, Tel Aviv had grown to more than 1 km2 (247 acres). In 1915 a census of Tel Aviv was conducted, recording a population 2,679. However, growth halted in 1917 when the Ottoman authorities expelled the residents of Jaffa and Tel Aviv as a wartime measure. A report published in The New York Times by United States Consul Garrels in Alexandria, Egypt described the Jaffa deportation of early April 1917. The orders of evacuation were aimed chiefly at the Jewish population. Jews were free to return to their homes in Tel Aviv at the end of the following year when, with the end of World War I and the defeat of the Ottomans, the British took control of Palestine.
The town had rapidly become an attraction to immigrants, with a local activist writing:
The immigrants were attracted to Tel Aviv because they found in it all the comforts they were used to in Europe: electric light, water, a little cleanliness, cinema, opera, theatre, and also more or less advanced schools... busy streets, full restaurants, cafes open until 2 a.m., singing, music, and dancing.
British administration 1917–34: Townships within the Jaffa Municipality
A master plan for the Tel Aviv township was created by Patrick Geddes, 1925, based on the garden city movement. The plan consisted of four main features: a hierarchical system of streets laid out in a grid, large blocks consisting of small-scale domestic dwellings, the organization of these blocks around central open spaces, and the concentration of cultural institutions to form a civic center.
Tel Aviv, along with the rest of the Jaffa municipality, was conquered by the British imperial army in late 1917 during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of World War I and became part of British-administered Mandatory Palestine until 1948.
Tel Aviv, established as suburb of Jaffa, received "township" or local council status within the Jaffa Municipality in 1921. According to a census conducted in 1922 by the British Mandate authorities, Tel Aviv had a population of 15,185 (15,065 Jews, 78 Muslims and 42 Christians). The population increased in the 1931 census to 46,101 (45,564 Jews, 288 with no religion, 143 Christians, and 106 Muslims), in 12,545 houses.
With increasing Jewish immigration during the British administration, friction between Arabs and Jews in Palestine increased. On 1 May 1921, the Jaffa riots resulted in the deaths of 48 Arabs and 47 Jews and injuries to 146 Jews and 73 Arabs. In the wake of this violence, many Jews left Jaffa for Tel Aviv. The population of Tel Aviv increased from 2,000 in 1920 to around 34,000 by 1925.
Tel Aviv began to develop as a commercial center. In 1923, Tel Aviv was the first town to be wired to electricity in Palestine, followed by Jaffa later in the same year. The opening ceremony of the Jaffa Electric Company powerhouse, on 10 June 1923, celebrated the lighting of the two main streets of Tel Aviv.
In 1925, the Scottish biologist, sociologist, philanthropist and pioneering town planner Patrick Geddes drew up a master plan for Tel Aviv which was adopted by the city council led by Meir Dizengoff. Geddes's plan for developing the northern part of the district was based on Ebenezer Howard's garden city movement. While most of the northern area of Tel Aviv was built according to this plan, the influx of European refugees in the 1930s necessitated the construction of taller apartment buildings on a larger footprint in the city.
Ben Gurion House was built in 1930–31, part of a new workers' housing development. At the same time, Jewish cultural life was given a boost by the establishment of the Ohel Theatre and the decision of Habima Theatre to make Tel Aviv its permanent base in 1931.
1934 municipal independence from Jaffa
Tel Aviv was granted the status of an independent municipality separate from Jaffa in 1934. The Jewish population rose dramatically during the Fifth Aliyah after the Nazis came to power in Germany. By 1937 the Jewish population of Tel Aviv had risen to 150,000, compared to Jaffa's mainly Arab 69,000 residents. Within two years, it had reached 160,000, which was over a third of Palestine's total Jewish population. Many new Jewish immigrants to Palestine disembarked in Jaffa, and remained in Tel Aviv, turning the city into a center of urban life. Friction during the 1936–39 Arab revolt led to the opening of a local Jewish port, Tel Aviv Port, independent of Jaffa, in 1938. It closed on 25 October 1965. Lydda Airport (later Ben Gurion Airport) and Sde Dov Airport opened between 1937 and 1938.
Many German Jewish architects trained at the Bauhaus, the Modernist school of architecture in Germany, and left Germany during the 1930s. Some, like Arieh Sharon, came to Palestine and adapted the architectural outlook of the Bauhaus and similar schools to the local conditions there, creating what is recognized as the largest concentration of buildings in the International Style in the world.
Tel Aviv's White City emerged in the 1930s, and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. During World War II, Tel Aviv was hit by Italian airstrikes on 9 September 1940, which killed 137 people in the city.
The village statistics of 1938 listed Tel Aviv's population as 140,000, all Jews. The village statistics of 1945 listed Tel Aviv's population as 166,660 (166,000 Jews, 300 "other", 230 Christians, and 130 Muslims).
During the Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine, Jewish Irgun and Lehi guerrillas launched repeated attacks against British military, police, and government targets in the city. In 1946, following the King David Hotel bombing, the British carried out Operation Shark, in which the entire city was searched for Jewish militants and most of the residents questioned, during which the entire city was placed under curfew. During the March 1947 martial law in Mandatory Palestine, Tel Aviv was placed under martial law by the British authorities for 15 days, with the residents kept under curfew for all but three hours a day as British forces scoured the city for militants. In spite of this, Jewish guerrilla attacks continued in Tel Aviv and other areas under martial law in Palestine.
According to the 1947 UN Partition Plan for dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, Tel Aviv, by then a city of 230,000, was to be included in the proposed Jewish state. Jaffa with, as of 1945, a population of 101,580 people—53,930 Muslims, 30,820 Jews and 16,800 Christians—was designated as part of the Arab state. Civil War broke out in the country and in particular between the neighbouring cities of Tel Aviv and Jaffa, which had been assigned to the Jewish and Arab states respectively. After several months of siege, on 13 May 1948, Jaffa fell and the Arab population fled en masse.
State of Israel
When Israel declared Independence on 14 May 1948, the population of Tel Aviv was over 200,000. Tel Aviv was the temporary government center of the State of Israel until the government moved to Jerusalem in December 1949. Due to the international dispute over the status of Jerusalem, most embassies remained in or near Tel Aviv. The boundaries of Tel Aviv and Jaffa became a matter of contention between the Tel Aviv municipality and the Israeli government in 1948. The former wished to incorporate only the northern Jewish suburbs of Jaffa, while the latter wanted a more complete unification. The issue also had international sensitivity, since the main part of Jaffa was in the Arab portion of the United Nations Partition Plan, whereas Tel Aviv was not, and no armistice agreements had yet been signed. On 10 December 1948, the government announced the annexation to Tel Aviv of Jaffa's Jewish suburbs, the Palestinian neighborhood of Abu Kabir, the Arab village of Salama and some of its agricultural land, and the Jewish Hatikva slum. On 25 February 1949, the depopulated Palestinian village of al-Shaykh Muwannis was also annexed to Tel Aviv. On 18 May 1949, Manshiya and part of Jaffa's central zone were added, for the first time including land that had been in the Arab portion of the UN partition plan. The government voted on the unification of Tel Aviv and Jaffa on 4 October 1949, but the decision was not implemented until 24 April 1950 due to the opposition of Tel Aviv mayor Israel Rokach. The name of the unified city was Tel Aviv until 19 August 1950, when it was renamed Tel Aviv-Yafo in order to preserve the historical name Jaffa. Tel Aviv thus grew to 42 km2 (16.2 sq mi). In 1949, a memorial to the 60 founders of Tel Aviv was constructed.
In the 1960s, some of the older buildings were demolished, making way for the country's first high-rises. The historic Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium was controversially demolished, to make way for the Shalom Meir Tower, which was completed in 1965, and remained Israel's tallest building until 1999. Tel Aviv's population peaked in the early 1960s at 390,000, representing 16 percent of the country's total. By the early 1970s, Tel Aviv had entered a long and steady period of continuous population decline, which was accompanied by urban decay. By 1981, Tel Aviv had entered not just natural population decline, but an absolute population decline as well. In the late 1980s the city had an aging population of 317,000. Construction activity had moved away from the inner ring of Tel Aviv, and had moved to its outer perimeter and adjoining cities. A mass out-migration of residents from Tel Aviv, to adjoining cities like Petah Tikva and Rehovot, where better housing conditions were available, was underway by the beginning of the 1970s, and only accelerated by the Yom Kippur War. Cramped housing conditions and high property prices pushed families out of Tel Aviv and deterred young people from moving in. From the beginning of 1970s, the common image of Tel Aviv became that of a decaying city, as Tel Aviv's population fell 20%.
In the 1970s, the apparent sense of Tel Aviv's urban decline became a theme in the work of novelists such as Yaakov Shabtai, in works describing the city such as Sof Davar (The End of Things) and Zikhron Devarim (The Memory of Things). A symptomatic article of 1980 asked "Is Tel Aviv Dying?" and portrayed what it saw as the city's existential problems: "Residents leaving the city, businesses penetrating into residential areas, economic and social gaps, deteriorating neighbourhoods, contaminated air – Is the First Hebrew City destined for a slow death? Will it become a ghost town?". However, others saw this as a transitional period. By the late 1980s, attitudes to the city's future had become markedly more optimistic. It had also become a center of nightlife and discotheques for Israelis who lived in the suburbs and adjoining cities. By 1989, Tel Aviv had acquired the nickname "Nonstop City", as a reflection of the growing recognition of its nightlife and 24/7 culture, and "Nonstop City" had to some extent replaced the former moniker of "First Hebrew City". The largest project built in this era was the Dizengoff Center, Israel's first shopping mall, which was completed in 1983. Other notable projects included the construction of Marganit Tower in 1987, the opening of the Suzanne Dellal Center for Dance and Theater in 1989, and the Tel Aviv Cinematheque (opened in 1973 and located to the current building in 1989).
In the early 1980s, 13 embassies in Jerusalem moved to Tel Aviv as part of the UN's measures responding to Israel's 1980 Jerusalem Law. Today, most national embassies are located in Tel Aviv or environs. In the 1990s, the decline in Tel Aviv's population began to be reversed and stabilized, at first temporarily due to a wave of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Tel Aviv absorbed 42,000 immigrants from the FSU, many educated in scientific, technological, medical and mathematical fields. In this period, the number of engineers in the city doubled. Tel Aviv soon began to emerge as a global high-tech center. The construction of many skyscrapers and high-tech office buildings followed. In 1993, Tel Aviv was categorized as a world city. However, the city's municipality struggled to cope with an influx of new immigrants. Tel Aviv's tax base had been shrinking for many years, as a result of its preceding long term population decline, and this meant there was little money available at the time to invest in the city's deteriorating infrastructure and housing. In 1998, Tel Aviv was on the "verge of bankruptcy". Economic difficulties would then be compounded by a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings in the city from the mid-1990s, to the end of the Second Intifada, as well as the dot-com bubble, which affected the city's rapidly growing hi-tech sector. On 4 November 1995, Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated at a rally in Tel Aviv in support of the Oslo peace accord. The outdoor plaza where this occurred, formerly known as Kikar Malchei Yisrael, was renamed Rabin Square.
In the Gulf War in 1991, Tel Aviv was attacked by Scud missiles from Iraq. Iraq hoped to provoke an Israeli military response, which could have destroyed the US–Arab alliance. The United States pressured Israel not to retaliate, and after Israel acquiesced, the US and Netherlands rushed Patriot missiles to defend against the attacks, but they proved largely ineffective. Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities continued to be hit by Scuds throughout the war, and every city in the Tel Aviv area except for Bnei Brak was hit. A total of 74 Israelis died as a result of the Iraqi attacks, mostly from suffocation and heart attacks, while approximately 230 Israelis were injured. Extensive property damage was also caused, and some 4,000 Israelis were left homeless. It was feared that Iraq would fire missiles filled with nerve agents or sarin. As a result, the Israeli government issued gas masks to its citizens. When the first Iraqi missiles hit Israel, some people injected themselves with an antidote for nerve gas. The inhabitants of the southeastern suburb of Hatikva erected an angel-monument as a sign of their gratitude that "it was through a great miracle, that many people were preserved from being killed by a direct hit of a Scud rocket."
Since the First Intifada, Tel Aviv has suffered from Palestinian political violence. The first suicide attack in Tel Aviv occurred on 19 October 1994, on the Line 5 bus, when a bomber killed 22 civilians and injured 50 as part of a Hamas suicide campaign. On 6 March 1996, another Hamas suicide bomber killed 13 people (12 civilians and 1 soldier), many of them children, in the Dizengoff Center suicide bombing. Three women were killed by a Hamas terrorist in the Café Apropo bombing on 27 March 1997.
One of the deadliest attacks occurred on 1 June 2001, during the Second Intifada, when a suicide bomber exploded at the entrance to the Dolphinarium discothèque, killing 21, mostly teenagers, and injuring 132. Another Hamas suicide bomber killed six civilians and injured 70 in the Allenby Street bus bombing. Twenty-three civilians were killed and over 100 injured in the Tel Aviv central bus station massacre. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack. In the Mike's Place suicide bombing, an attack on a bar by a British Muslim suicide bomber resulted in the deaths of three civilians and wounded over 50. Hamas and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed joint responsibility. An Islamic Jihad bomber killed five and wounded over 50 on 25 February 2005 Stage Club bombing. The most recent suicide attack in the city occurred on 17 April 2006, when 11 people were killed and at least 70 wounded in a suicide bombing near the old central bus station.
Another attack took place on 29 August 2011 in which a Palestinian attacker stole an Israeli taxi cab and rammed it into a police checkpoint guarding the popular Haoman 17 nightclub in Tel Aviv which was filled with 2,000 Israeli teenagers. After crashing, the assailant went on a stabbing spree, injuring eight people. Due to an Israel Border Police roadblock at the entrance and immediate response of the Border Police team during the subsequent stabbings, a much larger and fatal mass-casualty incident was avoided.
On 21 November 2012, during Operation Pillar of Defense, the Tel Aviv area was targeted by rockets, and air raid sirens were sounded in the city for the first time since the Gulf War. All of the rockets either missed populated areas or were shot down by an Iron Dome rocket defense battery stationed near the city. During the operation, a bomb blast on a bus wounded at least 28 civilians, three seriously. This was described as a terrorist attack by Israel, Russia, and the United States and was condemned by the United Nations, United States, United Kingdom, France and Russia, whilst Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri declared that the organisation "blesses" the attack. More than 300 rockets were fired towards the Tel Aviv Metropolitan area in the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis.
New laws were introduced to protect Modernist buildings, and efforts to preserve them were aided by UNESCO recognition of Tel Aviv's White City as a world heritage site in 2003. In the early 2000s, Tel Aviv municipality focused on attracting more young residents to the city. It made significant investment in major boulevards, to create attractive pedestrian corridors. Former industrial areas like the city's previously derelict Northern Tel Aviv Port and the Jaffa railway station, were upgraded and transformed into leisure areas. A process of gentrification began in some of the poor neighborhoods of southern Tel Aviv and many older buildings began to be renovated.
The demographic profile of the city changed in the 2000s, as it began to attract a higher proportion of young residents. By 2012, 28 percent of the city's population was aged between 20 and 34 years old. Between 2007 and 2012, the city's population growth averaged 6.29 percent. As a result of its population recovery and industrial transition, the city's finances were transformed, and by 2012 it was running a budget surplus and maintained a credit rating of AAA+. In the 2000s and early 2010s, Tel Aviv received tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, primarily from Sudan and Eritrea, changing the demographic profile of areas of the city. In 2009, Tel Aviv celebrated its official centennial. In addition to city- and country-wide celebrations, digital collections of historical materials were assembled. These include the History section of the official Tel Aviv-Yafo Centennial Year website; the Ahuzat Bayit collection, which focuses on the founding families of Tel Aviv, and includes photographs and biographies; and Stanford University's Eliasaf Robinson Tel Aviv Collection, documenting the history of the city. Today, the city is regarded as a strong candidate for global city status. Over the past 60 years, Tel Aviv had developed into a secular, liberal-minded center with a vibrant nightlife and café culture.
Geography
Tel Aviv is located around 32°5′N 34°48′E on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline, in central Israel, the historic land bridge between Europe, Asia and Africa. Immediately north of the ancient port of Jaffa, Tel Aviv lies on land that used to be sand dunes and as such has relatively poor soil fertility. The land has been flattened and has no important gradients; its most notable geographical features are bluffs above the Mediterranean coastline and the Yarkon River mouth. Because of the expansion of Tel Aviv and the Gush Dan region, absolute borders between Tel Aviv and Jaffa and between the city's neighborhoods do not exist.
The city is located 60 km (37 mi) northwest of Jerusalem and 90 km (56 mi) south of the city of Haifa. Neighboring cities and towns include Herzliya to the north, Ramat HaSharon to the northeast, Petah Tikva, Bnei Brak, Ramat Gan and Giv'atayim to the east, Holon to the southeast, and Bat Yam to the south. The city is economically stratified between the north and south. Southern Tel Aviv is considered less affluent than northern Tel Aviv with the exception of Neve Tzedek and northern and north-western Jaffa. Central Tel Aviv is home to Azrieli Center and the important financial and commerce district along Ayalon Highway. The northern side of Tel Aviv is home to Tel Aviv University, Hayarkon Park, and upscale residential neighborhoods such as Ramat Aviv and Afeka.
Environment
Tel Aviv is ranked as the greenest city in Israel. Since 2008, city lights are turned off annually in support of Earth Hour. In February 2009, the municipality launched a water saving campaign, including competition granting free parking for a year to the household that is found to have consumed the least water per person.
In the early 21st century, Tel Aviv's municipality transformed a derelict power station into a public park, now named "Gan HaHashmal" ("Electricity Park"), paving the way for eco-friendly and environmentally conscious designs. In October 2008, Martin Weyl turned an old garbage dump near Ben Gurion International Airport, called Hiriya, into an attraction by building an arc of plastic bottles.[120] The site, which was renamed Ariel Sharon Park to honor Israel's former prime minister, will serve as the centerpiece in what is to become a 2,000-acre (8.1 km2) urban wilderness on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, designed by German landscape architect, Peter Latz.
At the end of the 20th century, the city began restoring historical neighborhoods such as Neve Tzedek and many buildings from the 1920s and 1930s. Since 2007, the city hosts its well-known, annual Open House Tel Aviv weekend, which offers the general public free entrance to the city's famous landmarks, private houses and public buildings. In 2010, the design of the renovated Tel Aviv Port (Nemal Tel Aviv) won the award for outstanding landscape architecture at the European Biennial for Landscape Architecture in Barcelona.
In 2014, the Sarona Market Complex opened, following an 8-year renovation project of Sarona colony.
Tel Aviv has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification: Csa), and enjoys plenty of sunshine throughout the year. Most precipitation falls in the form of rain between the months of October and April, with intervening dry summers, and there is almost no rainfall from June to September. The average annual temperature is 20.9 °C (69.6 °F), and the average sea temperature is 18–20 °C (64–68 °F) during the winter, and 24–29 °C (75–84 °F) during the summer. The city averages 528 mm (20.8 in) of precipitation annually.
Summers in Tel Aviv last about five months, from June to October. August, the warmest month, averages a high of 30.6 °C (87.1 °F), and a low of 25 °C (77 °F). The high relative humidity due to the location of the city by the Mediterranean Sea, in a combination with the high temperatures, creates a thermal discomfort during the summer. Summer low temperatures in Tel Aviv seldom drop below 20 °C (68 °F).
Winters are mild and wet, with most of the annual precipitation falling within the months of December, January and February as intense rainfall and thunderstorms. In January, the coolest month, the average maximum temperature is 17.6 °C (63.7 °F), the minimum temperature averages 10.2 °C (50.4 °F). During the coldest days of winter, temperatures may vary between 8 °C (46 °F) and 12 °C (54 °F). Both freezing temperatures and snowfall are extremely rare in the city.
Autumns and springs are characterized by sharp temperature changes, with heat waves that might be created due to hot and dry air masses that arrive from the nearby deserts. During heatwaves in autumn and springs, temperatures usually climb up to 35 °C (95 °F) and even up to 40 °C (104 °F), accompanied with exceptionally low humidity. An average day during autumn and spring has a high of 23 °C (73 °F) to 25 °C (77 °F), and a low of 15 °C (59 °F) to 18 °C (64 °F).
The highest recorded temperature in Tel Aviv was 46.5 °C (115.7 °F) on 17 May 1916, and the lowest is −1.9 °C (28.6 °F) on 7 February 1950, during a cold wave that brought the only recorded snowfall in Tel Aviv.
Government
Tel Aviv is governed by a 31-member city council elected for a five-year term by in direct proportional elections, and a mayor elected for the same term by direct elections under a two-round system. Like all other mayors in Israel, no term limits exist for the Mayor of Tel Aviv. All Israeli citizens over the age of 17 with at least one year of residence in Tel Aviv are eligible to vote in municipal elections. The municipality is responsible for social services, community programs, public infrastructure, urban planning, tourism and other local affairs. The Tel Aviv City Hall is located at Rabin Square. Ron Huldai has been mayor of Tel Aviv since 1998. Huldai was reelected for a fifth term in the 2018 municipal elections, defeating former deputy Asaf Zamir, founder of the Ha'Ir party. Huldai's has become the longest-serving mayor of the city, exceeding Shlomo Lahat's 19-year term. The shortest-serving was David Bloch, in office for two years, 1925–27.
Politically, Tel Aviv is known to be a stronghold for the left, in both local and national issues. The left wing vote is especially prevalent in the city's mostly affluent central and northern neighborhoods, though not the case for its working-class southeastern neighborhoods which tend to vote for right wing parties in national elections. Outside the kibbutzim, Meretz receives more votes in Tel Aviv than in any other city in Israel.
Joanne O’Riordan, 19, has been selected by St. Patrick’s Festival to lead this year’s Festival Parade and in accepting this honour Joanne became the youngest ever Grand Marshal.
At only 19 years of age, Joanne has achieved remarkable things in her life. She has been awarded both Cork Person of the Month and Young Person of the Year and spoke in 2012 at the United Nations about technology where she challenged the technological minds of the world to invent a robotic device that would assist her in becoming even more independent in her daily life. Trinity College Dublin answered this call and is currently in the process of developing ‘Robbie the Robot’. Recently Joanne appeared on RTÉ Television in an independent documentary titled No Limbs No Limits which was directed and produced by her brother Steven. The film explores Joanne’s personal relationships with her family and those she meets on a daily basis and is seen as an education on how the human spirit can triumph over adversity.
Joanne, a 2nd-year criminology student at UCC and from Millstreet Co. Cork is one of seven people in the world living with Total Amelia, a syndrome in which individuals are born without limbs. Total Amelia is a very rare congenital disorder which is caused by mutations in the WNT3 gene and in Joanne’s case means she was born without all four limbs. Joanne received a Quercus Scholarship to study in UCC for her Active Citizen work. Joanne recently won the JCI (Junior Chamber International) Top Outstanding Young Person of the World award which saw her fly to Japan to accept the accolade.
Both Joanne and her family have never allowed her condition to hold her back. Using technology to enhance her abilities in both her educational pursuits and the wider social environment has led to Joanne conquering major challenges at home, in school and around her local community. Joanne lives life with a no limits mentality and her outlook on life has served as an example both nationally and internationally to all able-bodied and disabled bodies to live very happy, independent and fulfilled lives.
On receiving the honour of Grand Marshal, Joanne commented; “I am extremely honoured and delighted to be this year’s Grand Marshal in the Dublin St. Patrick’s Festival. As a small child growing up in Millstreet I have always been awe-inspired and filled with joy seeing the colours, enthusiasm and buzz that fills the streets of Dublin every year. To be a part of it is a serious dream come true. I have been around the globe, to New York and Japan, giving the people with a disability in this world a voice. To be able to come home and be the Grand Marshal of this parade, it helps the people of Ireland see it’s not the disability it’s the ability. I am proud to be in the St. Patrick’s Day Festival and I’m incredibly proud to be a voice for the voiceless.”
A technological experience.
Virgil is the greatest man to ever walk the face of this Earth. Come, see his home.
One 430 EX II, slaved. 1/32 +0.7, flash positioned above the nuts and bolts. Triggered with 600D's own pop-up flash.
I have used the Nursing building as a backdrop for numerous portraits taken on TTU's Quad. It wasn't until this morning, however, that I actually went inside.
The oval-shaped foyer of the Nursing building turned out to be very impressive. I spent upwards of 20 minutes photographing the entryway before heading home to post-process.
The other side of the technological race. We should consider it if we don't want to destroy the planet in the nearest future.
A technological experience.
Virgil is the greatest man to ever walk the face of this Earth. Come, see his home.
My technological bike strikes again!
I was in S.Maria in Trastevere, almost going home, sunset time. I was in the middle of the place, acting like a tourist pretending to have a look at the beauty of the church ... but ... I saw them and probably this time I would have gone away. And what happened? They whistled me! Damn!!! They called me and what do they say? Well, nice bike first of all, is it carbon or aluminium?
And ... by the way it's too late to take picture of the church, light is not that good!!! Too funny! "I don't wanna take pictures of the church guys, I wanna take pictures of you"!
So let's start: what's your name, 'cause I need to write down a few lines ... "My name is Black Man! In this way we solve every racial issue!". "I don't have any racial problem my friend, I would be glad if you told me your real name, if you want".
And after a while, Frank told me much more than his real name. French but from Ivory Coast originally, now he lives in Rome and was really really interested about the project. In the end we also had the time to joke about the 2006 World Cup of football, I love to make a fool of French people about football!
So thank you Frank "Black Man" for participating in my project and I hope to meet you again in Rome!
This picture is #20 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page
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This man is frustrated by what he sees in his computer's monitor. I've been having a few such frustrations lately, like a router that didn't believe it was configured so it would block some websites for no clear reason (I really just had to convince it that it was configured; the configuring was already done), and an updated desktop environment that breaks features that were common and generally worked something like three decades ago, like moving windows.
I originally wanted to use a yellow minifig head, but couldn't find a good expression of anger in my collection. When I decided to use this one instead, it was obvious who the second minifig in the image should be.
Foto subaquática feita para o Estúdio Mopa, e seu novo site: www.estudiomopa.com
Underwater photo for Mopa
Urbex Benelux -
Technological change in the farming industry significantly affected the popularity of thatching. The availability of good quality thatching straw declined in England after the introduction of the combine harvester in the late 1930s and 1940s, and the release of short-stemmed wheat varieties. Increasing use of nitrogen fertiliser in the 1960s–70s also weakened straw and reduced its longevity. Since the 1980s, however, there has been a big increase in straw quality as specialist growers have returned to growing older, tall-stemmed, "heritage" varieties of wheat such as Squareheads Master (1880), N59 (1959), Rampton Rivet (1937), Victor (1910) and April Bearded (early 1800s)] in low input/organic conditions.
Intergalactic, seeming to be you
It's all in the tablets, sneezy Bhutan
Little wonder then, little wonder
You little wonder, little wonder you
Mars happy nation, sit on my karma
Dame meditation, take me away
Little wonder then, little wonder
You little wonder, little wonder you
A technological experience.
Virgil is the greatest man to ever walk the face of this Earth. Come, see his home.
This is a 360-degree panoramic image of the auditorium in Derryberry Hall at Tennessee Tech.
I actually tried to capture this image twice. The first attempt I simply wasn't happy with. It wasn't framed properly and the stage was dark. On the second attempt, I fixed the framing and got some help with the stage lights. Special thanks to Alexis Pope in Admissions for helping me with preparing the auditorium for the shot.
This is probably my favorite 360-degree pano so far. :-)
"The 19th century was a period of political and technological change in America. Romanticism dominated the arts, and the Hudson River Valley was the center of progress in painting and architecture. Wealthy patrons commissioned the construction of mansions in a variety of styles along the bluffs of the Hudson River."
"Lyndhurst, an historic Hudson River Valley estate, is centered on American's finest surviving early Gothic Revival mansion, designed in 1838 by Alexander Jackson Davis. Occupants included former New York City mayor William Paulding, merchant George Merritt and railroad tycoon Jay Gould. Occupied for more than a century by these three families, it evolved from a country villa on a farm to a Gothic mansion in a landscaped estate."
"Lyndhurst was conceived as a country villa by architect A. J. Davis for William Paulding; it was called "Knoll." The Gothic Revival design immediately drew attention to the building; critics called it "Paulding's Folly" because its fanciful turrets and asymmetrical outline were unlike earlier buildings in the area."
"In 1864 Davis doubled the size of the mansion for the second owner, New York merchant George Merritt, who renamed it "Lyndhurst" after the Linden trees he included in landscaping the estate. After Merritt died in 1873, railroad magnate Jay Gould purchased the estate for a summer home."
"By 1884 Jay Gould was at the zenith of his power, having gained control of Western Union Telegraph, the New York Elevated Railway and the Union Pacific Railroad. Gould, a devoted family man, used Lyndhurst as an escape from the pressures of his business life until his death from tuberculosis in 1892."
"Gould's daughter, Helen, took charge of the property until she died in 1938. Her sister, Anna, Duchess of Talleyrand-Perigord, maintained Lyndhurst until her death in France in 1961. The 67 acre estate was bequeathed to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and opened to the public in 1965."
Tarrytown, NY