title: Theocracy

text: Although North Korea is a socialist republic in nature, the government's official state ideology is Juche which centers around the Kim family. According to Ashley J. Tellis and Michael Wills, this amendment to the preamble was an indication of the unique North Korean characteristic of being a theocratic state based on the personality cult surrounding Kim Il-sung. Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994, remains North Korea's "Eternal President" and the country adopted a Juche calendar dating from 1912, the year of Kim's birth.


title: Theocracy

text: Sumerian cities during the Uruk period were probably theocratic and were most likely headed by a priest-king ("ensi"), assisted by a council of elders, including both men and women.


title: Theocracy

text: Ancient Egyptian pharaohs were seen as divine and associated with Horus, and after death, Osiris. While not considered equal to other members of the Egyptian pantheon, the pharaoh was seen as having the responsibility of mediating between the gods and the people.


title: Theocracy

text: The emperor was historically venerated as the descendant of the Shinto sun goddess Amaterasu. Through this line of descent, the emperor was seen as a living god who was the supreme leader of the Japanese people. This status only changed with the Occupation of Japan following the end of the Second World War when Emperor Hirohito was forced to declare that he was not a living god in order for Japan to reorganize into a democratic nation.


title: Theocracy

text: In biblical times, Early Israel was a Kritarchy, ruled by Judges before instituting a monarchy. The Judges were believed to be representatives of YHWH (Yahweh).


title: Theocracy

text: The Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified Roman emperors and some members of their families with the divinely sanctioned authority ("auctoritas") of the Roman State. The official offer of "cultus" to a living emperor acknowledged his office and rule as divinely approved and constitutional: his Principate should therefore demonstrate pious respect for traditional Republican deities and mores.


title: Theocracy

text: Unified religious rule in Buddhist Tibet began in 1642, when the Fifth Dalai Lama allied with the military power of the Mongol Gushri Khan to consolidate the political power and center control around his office as head of the Gelug school. This form of government is known as the dual system of government. Prior to 1642, particular monasteries and monks had held considerable power throughout Tibet, but had not achieved anything approaching complete control, though power continued to be held in a diffuse, feudal system after the ascension of the Fifth Dalai Lama. Power in Tibet was held by a number of traditional elites, including members of the nobility, the heads of the major Buddhist sects (including their various tulkus), and various large and influential monastic communities.


title: Theocracy

text: Similar to the Roman Emperor, the Chinese sovereign was historically held to be the Son of Heaven. However, from the first historical Emperor on, this was largely ceremonial and tradition quickly established it as a posthumous dignity, like the Roman institution. The situation before Qin Shi Huang Di is less clear.


title: Theocracy

text: The Shang dynasty essentially functioned as a theocracy, declaring the ruling family the sons of heaven and calling the chief sky god Shangdi after a word for their deceased ancestors. After their overthrow by the Zhou, the royal clan of Shang were not eliminated but instead moved to a ceremonial capital where they were charged to continue the performance of their rituals.


title: Theocracy

text: The titles combined by Shi Huangdi to form his new title of emperor were originally applied to god-like beings who ordered the heavens and earth and to culture heroes credited with the invention of agriculture, clothing, music, astrology, etc. Even after the fall of Qin, an emperor's words were considered sacred edicts () and his written proclamations "directives from above" ().


title: Theocracy

text: As a result, some Sinologists translate the title "huangdi" (usually rendered "emperor") as thearch. The term properly refers to the head of a thearchy (a kingdom of gods), but the more accurate "theocrat" carries associations of a strong priesthood that would be generally inaccurate in describing imperial China. Others reserve the use of "thearch" to describe the legendary figures of Chinese prehistory while continuing to use "emperor" to describe historical rulers.


title: Theocracy

text: The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace in 1860s Qing China was a heterodox Christian theocracy led by a person who said that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, Hong Xiuquan. This theocratic state fought one of the most destructive wars in history, the Taiping Rebellion, against the Qing dynasty for fifteen years before being crushed following the fall of the rebel capital Nanjing.


title: Theocracy

text: The Sunni branch of Islam stipulates that, as a head of state, a Caliph should be selected or elected by Muslims or their representatives. Followers of Shia Islam, however, believe a Caliph should be an Imam chosen by God from the Ahl al-Bayt (the "Family of the House", Muhammad's direct descendants).


title: Theocracy

text: The Byzantine Empire ( 324–1453) operated under Symphonia, meaning that the emperor was both the head of civil society and the ultimate authority over the ecclesiastical authorities, the patriarchates. The emperor was considered to be God's omnipotent representative on earth and he ruled as an absolute autocrat.


title: Theocracy

text: Jennifer Fretland VanVoorst argues, "the Byzantine Empire became a theocracy in the sense that Christian values and ideals were the foundation of the empire's political ideals and heavily entwined with its political goals". Steven Runciman says in his book on "The Byzantine Theocracy" (2004):


title: Theocracy

text: Between 1533 and 1535 the Protestant leaders Jan Mattys and John of Leiden erected a short-living theocratic kingdom in the city of Münster. They created an Anabaptist regime with chiliastic and millenarian expectations. Money was abolished and any violations of the Ten Commandments were punished by death. Despite the pietistic ideology, polygamy was allowed and von Leiden had 17 wives. In 1535, Münster was recaptured by Franz von Waldeck, ending the existence of the kingdom.


title: Theocracy

text: Historians debate the extent to which Geneva, Switzerland, in the days of John Calvin (1509–64) was a theocracy. On the one hand, Calvin's theology clearly called for separation between church and state. Other historians have stressed the enormous political power wielded on a daily basis by the clerics.


title: Theocracy

text: In nearby Zurich, Switzerland, Protestant reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) built a political system that many scholars have called a theocracy, while others have denied it.


title: Theocracy

text: The question of theocracy has been debated extensively by historians regarding the Latter-Day Saint communities in Illinois, and especially in Utah.


title: Theocracy

text: Joseph Smith, mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois and founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, ran as an independent for president in 1844. He proposed the redemption of slaves by selling public lands; reducing the size and salary of Congress; the closure of prisons; the annexation of Texas, Oregon, and parts of Canada; the securing of international rights on high seas; free trade; and the re-establishment of a national bank. His top aide Brigham Young campaigned for Smith saying, "He it is that God of Heaven designs to save this nation from destruction and preserve the Constitution." The campaign ended when Smith was killed by a mob while in the Carthage, Illinois, jail on June 27, 1844.


title: Theocracy

text: After severe persecution, the Mormons left the United States and resettled in a remote part of Utah, which was then part of Mexico. However the United States took control in 1848 and would not accept polygamy. The Mormon State of Deseret was short-lived. Its original borders stretched from western Colorado to the southern California coast. When the Mormons arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake in 1847, the Great Basin was still a part of Mexico and had no secular government. As a result, Brigham Young administered the region both spiritually and temporally through the highly organized and centralized Melchizedek Priesthood. This original organization was based upon a concept called theodemocracy, a governmental system combining Biblical theocracy with mid-19th-century American political ideals.


title: Theocracy

text: In 1849, the Saints organized a secular government in Utah, although many ecclesiastical leaders maintained their positions of secular power. The Mormons also petitioned Congress to have Deseret admitted into the Union as a state. However, under the Compromise of 1850, Utah Territory was created and Brigham Young was appointed governor. In this situation, Young still stood as head of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) as well as of Utah's secular government.


title: Theocracy

text: After the abortive Utah War of 1857–1858, the replacement of Young by an outside Federal Territorial Governor, intense federal prosecution of LDS Church leaders, the eventual resolution of controversies regarding plural marriage, and accession by Utah to statehood, the apparent temporal aspects of LDS theodemocracy receded markedly.


title: Theocracy

text: During the Achaemenid Empire, Zoroastrianism was the state religion and included formalized worship. The Persian kings were known to be pious Zoroastrians and they ruled with a Zoroastrian form of law called "asha". However, Cyrus the Great, who founded the empire, avoided imposing the Zoroastrian faith on the inhabitants of conquered territory. Cyrus's kindness towards Jews has been cited as sparking Zoroastrian influence on Judaism.


title: Theocracy

text: Under the Seleucids, Zoroastrianism became autonomous. During the Sassanid period, the Zoroastrian calendar was reformed, image-use in worship was banned, Fire Temples were increasingly built, and intolerance towards other faiths prevailed.


title: Theocracy

text: The short reign (1494–1498) of Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican priest, over the city of Florence had features of a theocracy. During his rule, "unchristian" books, statues, poetry, and other items were burned (in the Bonfire of the Vanities), sodomy was made a capital offense, and other Christian practices became law.


title: Theocracy

text: The Prince-Bishopric of Montenegro was an ecclesiastical principality that existed from 1516 until 1852. The principality was located around modern-day Montenegro. It emerged from the Eparchy of Cetinje, later known as the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral, whose bishops defied the Ottoman Empire overlordship and transformed the parish of Cetinje into a de facto theocracy, ruling it as Metropolitans ("Vladike", also known as "prince-bishops"). The first prince-bishop was Vavila. The system was transformed into a hereditary one by Danilo Šćepčević, a bishop of Cetinje who united the several tribes of Montenegro into fighting the Ottoman Empire that had occupied all of Montenegro (as the Sanjak of Montenegro and Montenegro Vilayet) and most of southeastern Europe at the time.


title: The Little Rascals (film)

text: The Little Rascals is a 1994 American family comedy film produced by Amblin Entertainment, and released by Universal Pictures on August 5, 1994. The film is an adaptation of Hal Roach's "Our Gang", a series of short films of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s (many of which were broadcast on television as "The Little Rascals") which centered on the adventures of a group of neighborhood children. Directed by Penelope Spheeris, who co-wrote the screenplay with Paul Guay and Stephen Mazur, the film presents several of the "Our Gang" characters in an updated setting, featuring re-interpretations of several of the original shorts. It is the first collaboration by Guay and Mazur, whose subsequent comedies were "Liar Liar" and "Heartbreakers".


title: The Little Rascals (film)

text: Another film based on "Our Gang", "The Little Rascals Save the Day", was released as a direct-to-video feature in 2014.


title: The Little Rascals (film)

text: Spanky is the president of the "He-Man Woman ('woman' is misspelled as 'womun') Haters Club" with many school-aged boys from around the neighborhood as members. His best friend, Alfalfa, has been chosen as the driver for the club's prize-winning undefeated go-kart, "The Blur", in the annual Soap Box Derby style race. However, when the announcement is made, Alfalfa is nowhere to be found.


title: The Little Rascals (film)

text: The boys catch Alfalfa in the company of Darla. The club's members try their hardest to break the two apart, eventually causing their beloved clubhouse to burn down. Darla is mistakenly led to believe Alfalfa feels ashamed of her, so she turns her attentions to Waldo, the new rich kid whose father is an oil tycoon. Spanky, Stymie and friends judge Alfalfa's punishment to be left guarding the go-kart day and night until the day of the race. Until that day comes, Alfalfa makes many attempts to woo back Darla including a visit to her ballet rehearsal, an undelivered love letter, and through serenade, all of which fail.


title: The Little Rascals (film)

text: In order to rebuild their clubhouse, the boys try to fund-raise the cost of lumber, $450. But the youngest ones, Porky and Buckwheat, have unknowingly come up with $500. Their school teacher finds out about the scheme, but Spanky convinces her to use the funds as prize money for the go-kart derby.


title: The Little Rascals (film)

text: "The Blur" is stolen by local bullies Butch and Woim. In addition to having to rebuild the clubhouse, the boys now need a new set of wheels. They band together to build "The Blur 2: The Sequel." Prior to race day, Spanky and Alfalfa reconcile and decide to ride in the two-seat go-kart together. They hope to win the prize money and the trophy, to be presented to the victors by the greatest racer of all, "A.J. Ferguson."


title: The Little Rascals (film)

text: Butch and Woim make several sneaky attempts to stop Alfalfa and Spanky from winning the race. Waldo, who (seemingly) kicks out Darla from his race car, pulls a few tricks of his own. It's a wild race to the finish, but "The Blur 2" crosses the finish line ahead of the pack (and resulting in a photo-finish between "The Blur" and "The Blur 2" literally "by a hair" due to Alfalfa's pointy hairstyle), despite the many scrapes and crashes throughout the derby. When Butch and Woim try to beat up Alfalfa, he knocks Butch into pig slop and Woim throws himself in.


title: The Little Rascals (film)

text: Along with first prize, Alfalfa also wins back Darla's heart after it turns out that Darla kicked Waldo out of the car, not the other way around. Spanky, meanwhile, is shocked at the trophy presentation when he finally meets his favorite driver, A.J. Ferguson -- "a girl!" As soon as the club house is rebuilt, the boys collectively have a change of heart toward membership and welcome Darla and friends to their club, with "Women Welcome" added to the sign.


title: The Little Rascals (film)

text: At the end of the movie, it is revealed that Uh-Huh can say more than simply “Uh-Huh.” The movie closes with bloopers from the kids while filming.


title: The Little Rascals (film)

text: Bill Thomas Jr., son of the late Bill Thomas, who played the original Buckwheat, contacted the studio and was invited down to visit the set, but got the impression that the filmmakers did not want him or any of the surviving original cast members involved in any production capacity. The surviving cast members saw this as especially hurtful, in light of the fact that director Penelope Spheeris had previously made a point of including Buddy Ebsen, from the original "Beverly Hillbillies", in her 1993 feature film adaptation of that series. Eugene Jackson, who played the original Pineapple from the silent "Our Gang" comedies, tried unsuccessfully to contact the studio to be a part of production, stated, "It's real cold. They have no respect for the old-timers. At least they could have recognized some of the living legends surviving from the first films." Filming took place from January 11, 1994 to April 6, 1994.


title: The Little Rascals (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 21% based on reviews from 14 critics as of December 2022. On Metacritic it has a score of 45 out of 100 based on reviews from 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A−" on scale of A to F.


title: The Little Rascals (film)

text: Brian Lowry of "Variety magazine" wrote: "Those who grew up watching "The Little Rascals" may well be intrigued by the idea of introducing their kids to this full-color, bigscreen version. Still, the challenge of stretching those mildly diverting shorts to feature length remains formidable, and one has to wonder whether an audience exists beyond nostalgic parents and their young children."


title: The Little Rascals (film)

text: "The Little Rascals" earned $10 million at the North American box office during its opening weekend. The film grossed a worldwide total of $67,308,282.


title: The Little Rascals (film)

text: Many of the gags and subplots in the film were borrowed from the original "Our Gang/Little Rascals" shorts. These include:


title: The Little Rascals (film)

text: "The Little Rascals" was released on VHS and DVD in 1995 and 2004 respectively. It made its Blu-Ray debut in 2014.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: The Cabinet of the United Kingdom is the senior decision-making body of His Majesty's Government. A committee of the Privy Council, it is chaired by the prime minister and its members include secretaries of state and other senior ministers.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: The Ministerial Code says that the business of the Cabinet (and cabinet committees) is mainly questions of major issues of policy, questions of critical importance to the public and questions on which there is an unresolved argument between departments.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: Until at least the 16th century, individual officers of state had separate property, powers and responsibilities granted with their separate offices by royal command, and the Crown and the Privy Council constituted the only co-ordinating authorities. In England, phrases such as "cabinet counsel", meaning advice given in private, in a cabinet in the sense of a small room, to the monarch, occur from the late 16th century, and, given the non-standardised spelling of the day, it is often hard to distinguish whether "council" or "counsel" is meant. The "OED" credits Francis Bacon in his "Essays" (1605) with the first use of "Cabinet council", where it is described as a foreign habit, of which he disapproves: "For which inconveniences, the doctrine of Italy, and practice of France, in some kings' times, hath introduced cabinet counsels; a remedy worse than the disease". Charles I began a formal "Cabinet Council" from his accession in 1625, as his Privy Council, or "private council", and the first recorded use of "cabinet" by itself for such a body comes from 1644, and is again hostile and associates the term with dubious foreign practices.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: There were ministries in England led by the chief minister, which was a personage leading the English government for the monarch. Despite primary accountability to the monarch, these ministries, having a group of ministers running the country, served as a predecessor of the modern perspective of cabinet. After the ministry of Lord Stanhope and Lord Sunderland collapsed, Sir Robert Walpole rose to power as First Lord of the Treasury. Since the reign of King George I the Cabinet has been the principal executive group of British government. Both he and George II made use of the system, as both were not native English speakers, unfamiliar with British politics, and thus relied heavily on selected groups of advisers. The term "minister" came into being since the royal officers "ministered" to the sovereign. The name and institution have been adopted by most English-speaking countries, and the Council of Ministers or similar bodies of other countries are often informally referred to as cabinets.The modern Cabinet system was set up by Prime Minister David Lloyd George during his premiership, 1916–1922, with a Cabinet Office and Secretariat, committee structures, unpublished minutes, and a clearer relationship with departmental Cabinet ministers. The formal procedures, practice and proceedings of the Cabinet remain largely unpublished.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: This development grew out of the exigencies of the First World War, where faster and better co-ordinated decisions across Government were seen as a crucial part of the war effort. Decisions on mass conscription, co-ordination worldwide with other governments across international theatres, and armament production tied into a general war strategy that could be developed and overseen from an inner "War Cabinet". The country went through successive crises after the war: the 1926 United Kingdom general strike; the Great Depression of 1929–32; the rise of Bolshevism after 1917 and Fascism after 1922; the Spanish Civil War 1936 onwards; the invasion of Abyssinia 1936; the League of Nations Crisis which followed; and the re-armament and resurgence of Germany from 1933, leading into another World War. All these demanded a highly organised and centralised Government centred on the Cabinet.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: The total number of Cabinet ministers who are entitled to a salary is capped at 21, plus the lord chancellor, who is paid separately. Some ministers may be designated as also attending Cabinet, like the attorney general, as "...it has been considered more appropriate, in recent times at any rate, that the independence and detachment of his office should not be blurred by his inclusion in a political body – that is to say the Cabinet – which may have to make policy decisions upon the basis of the legal advice the law officers have given."


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: The Cabinet is a committee of the Privy Council (though this interpretation has been challenged) and, as such, all Cabinet ministers must be privy counsellors.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: Members of the Cabinet are by convention chosen from members of the two houses of Parliament, as the Peel convention dictates that ministers may only be recruited from the House of Commons or the House of Lords, although this convention has been broken in the past for short periods. Patrick Gordon Walker is perhaps the most notable exception: he was appointed to the Cabinet despite losing his seat in the 1964 election, and resigned from Cabinet after running and losing in a by-election in January 1965. Sometimes, when a minister from neither House is appointed, they have been granted a customary peerage. The Cabinet is now made up almost entirely of members of the House of Commons.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: Civil servants from the Cabinet Secretariat and special advisors (on the approval of the prime minister) can also attend Cabinet meetings, but neither take part in discussions.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: It has been suggested that the modern Cabinet is too large, including by former Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill and scholars Robert Hazell and Rodney Brazier. Robert Hazell has suggested merging the offices of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales into one Secretary of State for the Union, in a department into which Rodney Brazier has suggested adding a minister of state for England with responsibility for English local government.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: Most cabinet meetings take place in the Cabinet Room of 10 Downing Street; however, they have been known to take place in other places.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: Despite the custom of meeting on a Thursday, after the appointment of Gordon Brown, the meeting day was switched to Tuesday. However, when David Cameron became prime minister, he held his cabinet meetings on Thursdays again. Upon Theresa May's tenure, she switched the cabinet meetings back to Tuesday.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: The length of meetings varies according to the style of the prime minister and political conditions, but modern meetings can be as short as 30 minutes. Ministers are bound by the constitutional convention of collective ministerial responsibility.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: Cabinet ministers, like all ministers, are appointed and may be dismissed by the monarch without notice or reason, on the advice of the prime minister. The allocation and transfer of responsibilities between ministers and departments is also generally at the prime minister's discretion. The Cabinet has always been led by the prime minister, whose originally unpaid office as such was traditionally described as merely "primus inter pares" (first among equals), but today the prime minister is the preeminent head of government, with the effective power to appoint and dismiss Cabinet ministers and to control the Cabinet's agenda. The extent to which the Government is collegial varies with political conditions and individual personalities.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: The Cabinet is the ultimate decision-making body of the executive within the Westminster system of government in traditional constitutional theory. This interpretation was originally put across in the work of 19th century constitutionalists such as Walter Bagehot, who described the Cabinet as the "efficient secret" of the British political system in his book "The English Constitution". The political and decision-making authority of the cabinet has been gradually reduced over the last several decades, with some claiming its role has been usurped by a "prime ministerial" government. In the modern political era, the prime minister releases information concerning the ministerial ranking in the form of a list detailing the seniority of all Cabinet ministers.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: The centralisation of the Cabinet in the early 20th century enhanced the power of the prime minister, who moved from being the "primus inter pares" of the Asquith Cabinets of 1906 onwards, to the dominating figures of David Lloyd George, Stanley Baldwin and Winston Churchill.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: The Institute for Government claims that the reduced number of full Cabinet meetings signifies "that the role of Cabinet as a formal decision-making body has been in decline since the war." This view has been contradicted by Vernon Bogdanor, a British constitutional expert, who claims that "the Cabinet has, in fact, been strengthened by the decline in full meetings, as it allows more matters to be transferred to cabinet committees. Thus, business is done more efficiently."


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: Most prime ministers have had a so-called "kitchen cabinet" consisting of their own trusted advisers who may be Cabinet members but are often non-cabinet trusted personal advisers on their own staff. In recent governments, generally from Margaret Thatcher, and especially in that of Tony Blair, it has been reported that many or even all major decisions have been made before cabinet meetings. This suggestion has been made by former ministers including Clare Short and Chris Smith, in the media, and was made clear in the Butler Review, where Blair's style of "sofa government" was censured.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: The combined effect of the prime minister's ability to control Cabinet by circumventing effective discussion in Cabinet and the executive's ability to dominate parliamentary proceedings places the British prime minister in a position of great power, that has been likened to an elective dictatorship (a phrase coined by Quinton Hogg, Lord Hailsham in 1976). The relative inability of Parliament to hold the Government of the day to account is often cited by the UK media as a justification for the vigour with which they question and challenge the Government.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: The classic view of Cabinet Government was laid out by Walter Bagehot in "The English Constitution" (1867) in which he described the prime minister as the "primus‐inter‐pares" ("first among equals"). The view was questioned by Richard Crossman in "The Myths of Cabinet Government" (1972) and by Tony Benn. They were both members of the Labour governments of the 1960s and thought that the position of the prime minister had acquired more power so that prime ministerial government was a more apt description. Crossman stated that the increase in the power of the prime minister resulted from power of centralised political parties, the development of a unified civil service, and the growth of the prime minister's private office and Cabinet secretariat.


title: Cabinet of the United Kingdom

text: Graham Allen (a government whip during Tony Blair's first government) makes the case in "The Last Prime Minister: Being Honest About the UK Presidency" (2003) that the office of prime minister has presidential powers, as did Michael Foley in "The British Presidency" (2000). However the power that a prime minister has over his or her cabinet colleagues is directly proportional to the amount of support that they have with their political parties and this is often related to whether the party considers them to be an electoral asset or liability. Also when a party is divided into factions a prime minister may be forced to include other powerful party members in the Cabinet for party political cohesion. The prime minister's personal power is also curtailed if their party is in a power-sharing arrangement, or a formal coalition with another party (as happened in the coalition government of 2010 to 2015).


title: Taxi Driver (South Korean TV series)

text: Taxi Driver () is a South Korean television series starring Lee Je-hoon, Esom and Kim Eui-sung. Based on the webtoon "The Deluxe Taxi" ("Red Cage") by Carlos and Lee Jae-jin, it premiered on SBS TV on April 9, 2021, and aired every Friday and Saturday at 22:00 KST until May 29.


title: Taxi Driver (South Korean TV series)

text: The series is inspired by actual real life heinous crimes committed in Korea. The series received praise from viewers for its performances and storylines. The finale achieved the fourth highest rating of any Friday-Saturday drama in SBS history.


title: Taxi Driver (South Korean TV series)

text: Kim Do-gi (Lee Je-hoon) is a Korea Military Academy graduate whose mother was murdered when he was young. Since he could not take revenge on the man who murdered his mother, he now works as a taxi driver for a company which offers a "revenge-call" service to its clients who have been wronged and helps them take revenge.


title: Taxi Driver (South Korean TV series)

text: On December 4, 2019, it was reported that SBS was considering adapting the webtoon "The Deluxe Taxi" by Carlos and Lee Jae-jin into a television series. Korean streaming platform Wavve was also invested in the series, has also reported that it has previously invested in several other series such as Zombie Detective (2020), (2021), Alice (2020).


title: Taxi Driver (South Korean TV series)

text: On November 20, 2020, Lee Je-hoon, Esom, Kim Eui-sung and Lee Na-eun were confirmed to star in the series. On March 8, 2021, Lee Na-eun officially left the cast following bullying accusations made against her. Two days later, it was announced that Pyo Ye-jin would replace Lee Na-eun.


title: Taxi Driver (South Korean TV series)

text: As of March 8, 2021, about 60% of filming was complete, though scenes featuring Lee Na-eun were scheduled to be re-shot following her removal from the cast.


title: Taxi Driver (South Korean TV series)

text: On July 6, 2021, SBS announced the production of second season. On March 8, 2022, it was reported that Esom will be withdrawing from Season 2 due to scheduling inconsistencies.


title: Taxi Driver (South Korean TV series)

text: On June 8, 2022, it was confirmed that Lee Je-hoon and Pyo Ye-jin will reprise their respective roles in Season 2, and a script reading will take place on the June 12, 2022. Season 2 is expected to air in 2023. A day later, Kim Eui-sung, Jang Hyuk-jin and Bae Yoo-ram also confirmed to reprise their roles.


title: Taxi Driver (South Korean TV series)

text: On July 15, 2022, it was confirmed by SBS that some of the staff had tested positive for COVID-19, causing filming in Vietnam to temporarily halt.


title: Gheorghe Mureșan

text: Gheorghe Dumitru Mureșan (; born 14 February 1971), also known as "Ghiță" (), is a Romanian former professional basketball player. At , he is tied with Manute Bol for the tallest player ever to have played in the NBA.


title: Gheorghe Mureșan

text: Mureșan was born in Tritenii de Jos, Cluj County, Romania. Although his parents were of normal height, he grew to his remarkable height due to a pituitary gland disorder called acromegaly.


title: Gheorghe Mureșan

text: Mureșan played professionally in the French league with Pau-Orthez during the 1992–93 season and was an instant hit with fans, also managing to win the French League Cup.


title: Gheorghe Mureșan

text: Mureșan was selected by the NBA's Washington Bullets in the 1993 NBA draft. He played in the NBA from 1993 to 2000 showing signs of a promising career that was derailed by injuries. His best season came in the 1995–1996 campaign, when he averaged 14.5 points per game.


title: Gheorghe Mureșan

text: Mureșan was named the NBA's Most Improved Player for the 1995–96 season after averaging 14.5 points, 9.6 rebounds, 2.26 blocks per game while making a league-leading 58.4 percent of his field goals. He led in field goal percentage again the following season, with a 60.4% average. Overall, he holds career averages of 9.8 points, 6.4 rebounds, 0.5 assists, 1.48 blocks per game and a .573 field goal percentage.


title: Gheorghe Mureșan

text: After ending his NBA career, Mureșan had another stint at Pau-Orthez where he won the French league before returning to the United States with his family. He normally wore number 77, in reference to his height.


title: Gheorghe Mureșan

text: On 11 March 2007, Mureșan played a game for the Maryland Nighthawks as part of the tallest lineup in the history of basketball. This was the only basketball game Mureșan played where he was not the tallest person on the court, as Sun Mingming is .


title: Gheorghe Mureșan

text: In 2004, Mureşan founded the Giant Basketball Academy (GBA), a program dedicated to teaching the proper fundamentals of basketball to boys and girls of all ages. The Academy is located in Ashburn, Virginia.


title: Gheorghe Mureșan

text: Mureşan is also part of the Washington Wizards marketing and public relations team, serving as an "ambassador" for the team.


title: Gheorghe Mureșan

text: Outside basketball, Mureșan has dabbled in acting, playing the title character in 1998 feature film "My Giant" starring comedian Billy Crystal. He appeared as a ventriloquist in the music video for Eminem's breakthrough single "My Name Is." He has appeared in commercials for Snickers candy bars, and sports television network ESPN. Most recently, Mureșan co-authored two young adult fitness and health books: "The Boy's Fitness Guide" and "The Girl's Fitness Guide".


title: Gheorghe Mureșan

text: In 2013, Mureșan participated in the first annual 3v3 UMTTR (You Matter) Basketball Tournament to increase awareness, prevention and research of teen suicide, the leading cause of death among adults and children between the ages of 15 and 24.


title: Gheorghe Mureșan

text: Mureșan and his wife Liliana and sons George and Victor have resided in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, but they relocated to the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Since the 2016–2017 season,


title: Gheorghe Mureșan

text: his oldest son, George, has played for the Georgetown University Hoyas as a walk-on forward. His younger son Victor joined the Hoyas as a walk-on in the 2020–2021 season. Victor is 6'10" and 190lbs and has not played in the 2021–22 season.


title: History of Google

text: Google was officially launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to market Google Search, which has become the most used web-based search engine. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, students at Stanford University in California, developed a search algorithm at first known as "BackRub" in 1996, with the help of Scott Hassan and Alan Steremberg. The search engine soon proved successful and the expanding company moved several times, finally settling at Mountain View in 2003. This marked a phase of rapid growth, with the company making its initial public offering in 2004 and quickly becoming one of the world's largest media companies. The company launched Google News in 2002, Gmail in 2004, Google Maps in 2005, Google Chrome in 2008, and the social network known as Google+ in 2011 (which was shut down in April 2019), in addition to many other products. In 2015, Google became the main subsidiary of the holding company Alphabet Inc.


title: History of Google

text: Google has engaged in partnerships with NASA, AOL, Sun Microsystems, News Corporation, Sky UK, and others. The company set up a charitable offshoot, Google.org, in 2005.


title: History of Google

text: The name Google is a misspelling of Googol, the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, which was picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide large quantities of information.


title: History of Google

text: Google has its origins in "BackRub", a research project that was begun in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California. The project initially involved an unofficial "third founder", Scott Hassan, the lead programmer who wrote much of the code for the original Google Search engine, but he left before Google was officially founded as a company; Hassan went on to pursue a career in robotics and founded the company Willow Garage in 2006.


title: History of Google

text: In the search of a dissertation theme, Page had been considering among other things exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web, understanding its link structure as a huge graph. His supervisor, Terry Winograd, encouraged him to pick this idea (which Page later recalled as "the best advice I ever got") and Page focused on the problem of finding out which web pages link to a given page, based on the consideration that the number and nature of such backlinks was valuable information about that page (with the role of citations in academic publishing in mind). Page told his ideas to Hassan, who began writing the code to implement Page's ideas.


title: History of Google

text: The research project was nicknamed "BackRub", and it was soon joined by Brin, who was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. The two had first met in the summer of 1995, when Page was part of a group of potential new students that Brin had volunteered to give a tour around the campus and nearby San Francisco. Both Brin and Page were working on the Stanford Digital Library Project (SDLP). The SDLP's goal was "to develop the enabling technologies for a single, integrated and universal digital library" and it was funded through the National Science Foundation, among other federal agencies. Brin and Page were also part of a computer science research team at Stanford University that received funding from Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS), a program managed for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) by large intelligence and military contractors.


title: History of Google

text: Page's web crawler began exploring the web in March 1996, with Page's own Stanford home page serving as the only starting point. To convert the backlink data that is gathered for a given web page into a measure of importance, Brin and Page developed the PageRank algorithm. While analyzing BackRub's output which, for a given URL, consisted of a list of backlinks ranked by importance, the pair realized that a search engine based on PageRank would produce better results than existing techniques (existing search engines at the time essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page).


title: History of Google

text: Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant Web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies and laid the foundation for their search engine. The first version of Google was released in August 1996 on the Stanford website. It used nearly half of Stanford's entire network bandwidth.


title: History of Google

text: Scott Hassan and Alan Steremberg were cited by Page and Brin as being critical to the development of Google. Rajeev Motwani and Terry Winograd later co-authored with Page and Brin the first paper about the project, describing PageRank and the initial prototype of the Google search engine, published in 1998. Héctor García-Molina and Jeff Ullman were also cited as contributors to the project.


title: History of Google

text: PageRank was influenced by a similar page-ranking and site-scoring algorithm earlier used for RankDex, developed by Robin Li in 1996. Larry Page's patent for PageRank filed in 1998 includes a citation to Li's earlier patent. Li later went on to create the Chinese search engine Baidu in 2000.


title: History of Google

text: Originally the search engine used Stanford's website with the domains "google.stanford.edu" and "z.stanford.edu". The domain "google.com" was registered on September 15, 1997. They formally incorporated their company, "Google", on September 4, 1998 in their friend Susan Wojcicki's garage in Menlo Park, California. Wojcicki eventually became an executive at Google and is now the CEO at YouTube.


title: History of Google

text: Both Brin and Page had been against using advertising pop-ups in a search engine, or an "advertising funded search engines" model, and they wrote a research paper in 1998 on the topic while still students. They changed their minds early on and allowed simple text ads.


title: History of Google

text: By the end of 1998, Google had an index of about 60 million pages. The home page was still marked "BETA", but an article in Salon.com already argued that Google's search results were better than those of competitors like Hotbot or Excite.com, and praised it for being more technologically innovative than the overloaded portal sites (like Yahoo!, Excite.com, Lycos, Netscape's Netcenter, AOL.com, Go.com and MSN.com) which at that time, during the growing dot-com bubble, were seen as "the future of the Web", especially by stock market investors.


title: History of Google

text: Early in 1999, Brin and Page decided they wanted to sell Google to Excite. They went to Excite CEO George Bell and offered to sell it to him for $1 million. He rejected the offer. Vinod Khosla, one of Excite's venture capitalists, talked the duo down to $750,000, but Bell still rejected it.


title: History of Google

text: In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups. After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company leased a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway from Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 2003. The company has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since become known as the Googleplex (a play on the word googolplex, a number that is equal to 1 followed by a googol of zeros). In 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for US$319 million.


title: History of Google

text: The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design. In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords. The ads were text-based to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed. Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bid and click-throughs, with bidding starting at $.05 per click. This model of selling keyword advertising was first pioneered by Goto.com, an Idealab spin-off created by Bill Gross. When the company changed names to Overture Services, it sued Google over alleged infringements of the company's pay-per-click and bidding patents. Overture Services would later be bought by Yahoo! and renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing. The case was then settled out of court; Google agreed to issue shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license. While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.


title: History of Google

text: Google's declared code of conduct is "Don't be evil", a phrase which they went so far as to include in their prospectus (aka "S-1") for their 2004 IPO, noting that "We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served—as shareholders and in all other ways—by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains."


title: History of Google

text: In February 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs, owner of the Blogger website. The acquisition secured the company's competitive ability to use information gleaned from blog postings to improve the speed and relevance of articles contained in a companion product to the search engine Google News.


title: History of Google

text: In February 2004, Yahoo! dropped its partnership with Google, providing an independent search engine of its own. This cost Google some market share, yet Yahoo!'s move highlighted Google's own distinctiveness. The verb "to google" has entered a number of languages (first as a slang verb and now as a standard word), meaning "to perform a web search" (a possible indication of "Google" becoming a genericized trademark).


title: History of Google

text: After the IPO, Google's stock market capitalization rose greatly and the stock price more than quadrupled. On August 19, 2004, the number of shares outstanding was 172.85 million while the "free float" was 19.60 million (which makes 89% held by insiders). Google has a dual-class stock structure in which each Class B share gets ten votes compared to each Class A share getting one. Page said in the prospectus that Google has "a dual-class structure that is biased toward stability and independence and that requires investors to bet on the team, especially Sergey and me."


title: History of Google

text: In June 2005, Google was valued at nearly $52 billion, making it one of the world's biggest media companies by stock market value.


title: History of Google

text: On August 18, 2005 (one year after the initial IPO), Google announced that it would sell 14,159,265 (another mathematical reference as π ≈ 3.14159265) more shares of its stock to raise money. The move would double Google's cash stockpile to $7 billion. Google said it would use the money for "acquisitions of complementary businesses, technologies or other assets".


title: History of Google

text: With Google's increased size came more competition from large mainstream technology companies. One such example is the rivalry between Microsoft and Google. Microsoft had been touting its Bing search engine to counter Google's competitive position. Furthermore, the two companies are increasingly offering overlapping services, such as webmail (Gmail vs. Hotmail), search (both online and local desktop searching), and other applications (for example, Microsoft's Windows Live Local competes with Google Earth). In addition to an Internet Explorer replacement, Google designed its own Linux-based operating system called ChromeOS to directly compete with Microsoft Windows. There were also rumors of a Google web browser, fueled much by the fact that Google was the owner of the domain name "gbrowser.com". These were later proven when Google released Google Chrome. This corporate feud boiled over into the courts when Kai-Fu Lee, a former vice-president of Microsoft, quit Microsoft to work for Google. Microsoft sued to stop his move by citing Lee's non-compete contract (he had access to much sensitive information regarding Microsoft's plans in China). Google and Microsoft reached a settlement out of court on December 22, 2005, the terms of which are confidential.


title: History of Google

text: Click fraud also became a growing problem for Google's business strategy. Google's CFO George Reyes said in a December 2004 investor conference that "something has to be done about this really, really quickly, because I think, potentially, it threatens our business model."


title: History of Google

text: While the company's primary market is in the web content arena, Google has experimented with other markets, such as radio and print publications. On January 17, 2006, Google announced that it had purchased the radio advertising company dMarc, which provides an automated system that allows companies to advertise on the radio. Google also began an experiment in selling advertisements from its advertisers in offline newspapers and magazines, with select advertisements in the "Chicago Sun-Times".


title: History of Google

text: During the third quarter of 2005 Google Conference Call, Eric Schmidt said, "We don't do the same thing as everyone else does. And so if you try to predict our product strategy by simply saying well so and so has this and Google will do the same thing, it's almost always the wrong answer. We look at markets as they exist and we assume they are pretty well served by their existing players. We try to see new problems and new markets using the technology that others use and we build."


title: History of Google

text: After months of speculation, Google was added to the Standard & Poor's 500 index (S&P 500) on March 31, 2006. Google replaced Burlington Resources, a major oil producer based in Houston that had been acquired by ConocoPhillips. The day after the announcement Google's share price rose by 7%.


title: History of Google

text: Although Google was already deriving the vast majority of its income from advertising at the time of its 2004 IPO, it did not use any HTTP cookie-based web tracking until during the 2007-2008 financial crisis on Google. By 2006, Google's Ad revenue was already facing signs of decline, as "a growing number of advertisers were refusing to buy display ads from Google." The financial crisis pushed Google into a hiring freeze, and potentially to the edge of bankruptcy if ad revenue would keep declining. With a market cap of more than $100 billion, if Google was to go bankrupt, it would have serious implications on a stock market that was already seriously hit by the crisis (see United States bear market of 2007–2009).


title: History of Google

text: In 2007, Google agreed to buy DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, marking the start of its use of cookie-based tracking. Even with the purchase, Google only ended up with a 3% revenue in the second quarter of 2009, in the depth of the recession.


title: History of Google

text: Google initially separated the browsing habits collected from AD tracking from data collected by its other services by default. Google removed this last layer of protection in 2016, making its tracking personally-identifiable.


title: History of Google

text: In 2011, the company launched Google+, its fourth foray into social networking, following Google Buzz (launched 2010, retired in 2011), Google Friend Connect (launched 2008, retired by March 1, 2012), and Orkut (launched in 2004, retired in September 2014)


title: History of Google

text: In 2015, Google reorganized its interests as a holding company, Alphabet Inc., with Google as its leading subsidiary. Google continued to serve as the umbrella for Alphabet's Internet interests. On September 1, 2017, Google Inc. announced its plans of restructuring as a limited liability company, Google LLC, as a wholly owned subsidiary of XXVI Holdings, Inc., which is formed as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. to hold the equity of its other subsidiaries, including Google LLC and other bets.


title: History of Google

text: Between 2018 and 2019, tensions between the company's leadership and its workers escalated as staff protested company decisions on internal sexual harassment, Dragonfly, a censored Chinese search engine, and Project Maven, a military drone artificial intelligence, which had been seen as areas of revenue growth for the company. On 25 October 2018, "The New York Times" published an exposé, "How Google Protected Andy Rubin, the 'Father of Android'". The company subsequently announced that "48 employees have been fired over the last two years" for sexual misconduct. On 1 November 2018, Google employees staged a global walk-out to protest the company's handling of sexual harassment complaints, including the golden parachute exit of former executive Andy Rubin; more than 20,000 employees and contractors participated. CEO Sundar Pichai was reported to be in support of the protests.


title: History of Google

text: On March 19, 2019, Google announced that it would enter the video game market, launching a cloud gaming platform called Google Stadia.


title: History of Google

text: On June 3, 2019, the United States Department of Justice reported that it would investigate Google for antitrust violations. This led to the filing of an antitrust lawsuit in October 2020, on the grounds the company had abused a monopoly position in the search and search advertising markets.


title: History of Google

text: In December 2019, former PayPal chief operating officer Bill Ready became Google's new commerce chief. Ready's role will not be directly involved with Google Pay.


title: History of Google

text: In April 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Google announced several cost-cutting measures. Such measures included slowing down hiring for the remainder of 2020, except for a small number of strategic areas, recalibrating the focus and pace of investments in areas like data centers and machines, and non-business essential marketing and travel.


title: History of Google

text: The 2020 Google services outages disrupted Google services: one in August that affected Google Drive among others, another in November affecting YouTube, and a third in December affecting the entire suite of Google applications. All three outages were resolved within hours.


title: History of Google

text: In January 2021, the Australian Government proposed legislation that would require Google and Facebook to pay media companies for the right to use their content. In response, Google threatened to close off access to its search engine in Australia.


title: History of Google

text: In March 2021, Google reportedly paid $20 million for Ubisoft ports on Google Stadia. Google spent "tens of millions of dollars" on getting major publishers such as Ubisoft and Take-Two to bring some of their biggest games to Stadia.


title: History of Google

text: In April 2021, "The Wall Street Journal" reported that Google ran a years-long program called 'Project Bernanke' that used data from past advertising bids to gain an advantage over competing ad services. This was revealed in documents concerning the antitrust lawsuit filed by ten US states against Google in December.


title: History of Google

text: The first funding for Google as a company was secured in August 1998 in the form of a US$100,000 contribution from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given to a corporation which did not yet exist.


title: History of Google

text: On June 7, 1999, a round of equity funding totalling $25 million was announced, the major investors being rival venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital. While Google still needed more funding for their further expansion, Brin and Page were hesitant to take the company public, despite their financial issues. They were not ready to give up control over Google.


title: History of Google

text: Following the closing of the $25 million financing round, Sequoia encouraged Brin and Page to hire a CEO. Brin and Page ultimately acquiesced and hired Eric Schmidt as Google's first CEO in March 2001.


title: History of Google

text: In October 2003, while discussing a possible initial public offering of shares (IPO), Microsoft approached the company about a possible partnership or merger. The deal never materialized. In January 2004, Google announced the hiring of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group to arrange an IPO. The IPO was projected to raise as much as $4 billion.


title: History of Google

text: Google's initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004. A total of 19,605,052 shares were offered at a price of $85 per share. Of that, 14,142,135 (another mathematical reference as ≈ 1.4142135) were floated by Google and 5,462,917 by selling stockholders. The sale raised US$1.67 billion, and gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. Many of Google's employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited from the IPO because it owned 2.7 million shares of Google.


title: History of Google

text: Following the company's IPO in 2004, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt requested that their base salary be cut to $1. Subsequent offers by the company to increase their salaries were turned down, primarily because their main compensation continues to come from owning stock in Google. Before 2004, Schmidt made $250,000 per year, and Page and Brin each received an annual salary of $150,000.


title: History of Google

text: There were concerns that Google's IPO would lead to changes in company culture. Reasons ranged from shareholder pressure for employee benefit reductions to the fact that many company executives would become instant paper millionaires. As a reply to this concern, co-founders Brin and Page promised in a report to potential investors that the IPO would not change the company's culture.


title: History of Google

text: The company was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol GOOG. When Alphabet was created as Google's parent company, it retained Google's stock price history and ticker symbol.


title: History of Google

text: The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol", which refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros. Page and Brin write in their first paper on PageRank: "We chose our systems name, Google, because it is a common spelling of googol, or 10 and fits well with our goal of building very large-scale search engines."


title: History of Google

text: There are uses of the name going back at least as far as the creation of the comic strip character Barney Google in 1919. British children's author Enid Blyton used the phrase "Google Bun" in "The Magic Faraway Tree" (published 1941) and "The Folk of the Faraway Tree" (published 1946), and called a clown character "Google" in "Circus Days Again" (published 1942). There is also the Googleplex Star Thinker from Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". In March 1996, a business called Groove Track Productions applied for a United States trademark for "Google" for various products including several categories of clothing, stuffed toys, board games, and candy. The firm abandoned its application in July 1997.


title: History of Google

text: Having found its way increasingly into everyday language, the verb "google" was added to the "Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary" and the "Oxford English Dictionary" in 2006, meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet." The use of the term itself reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web. The first use of "Google" as a verb in pop culture happened on the TV series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", in 2002. In November 2009, the Global Language Monitor named "Google" No. 7 on its Top Words of the Decade list. In December 2009 the BBC highlighted Google in their "Portrait of the Decade (Words)" series. In May 2012, David Elliott filed a complaint against Google, Inc. claiming that Google's once distinctive mark GOOGLE® has become generic and lacks trademark significance due to its common use as a transitive verb. After losing to Google in UDRP proceedings involving many "Google-related" domain name registrations that he owns, Elliott later sought a declaratory judgment that his domain names are rightfully his, that they do not infringe any trademark rights Google may own, and that all Google's registered GOOGLE® marks should be cancelled since "Google" is now a common generic word worldwide that means "to search the Internet."


title: History of Google

text: On September 28, 2005, Google announced a long-term research partnership with NASA which would involve Google building a R&D center at NASA's Ames Research Center. NASA and Google are planning to work together on a variety of areas, including large-scale data management, massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. The new building would also include labs, offices, and housing for Google engineers. In October 2006, Google formed a partnership with Sun Microsystems to help share and distribute each other's technologies. As part of the partnership Google will hire employees to help the open source office program OpenOffice.org.


title: History of Google

text: Time Warner's AOL unit and Google unveiled an expanded partnership on December 21, 2005, including an enhanced global advertising partnership and a US$1 billion investment by Google for a 5% stake in AOL. As part of the collaboration, Google plans to work with AOL on video search and offer AOL's premium video service within Google Video. This did not allow users of Google Video to search for AOL's premium-video services. Display advertising throughout the Google network will also increase.


title: History of Google

text: In August 2006, Google signed a $900 million offer with News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media unit to provide search and advertising on MySpace and other News Corp. websites including IGN, AmericanIdol.com, Fox.com, and Rotten Tomatoes, although Fox Sports is not included as a deal already exists between News Corp. and MSN.


title: History of Google

text: On December 6, 2006, British Sky Broadcasting released details of a Sky and Google alliance. This includes a feature where Gmail will link with Sky and host a mail service for Sky, incorporating the email domain "@sky.com".


title: History of Google

text: In 2007, Google displaced America Online as a key partner and sponsor of the NORAD Tracks Santa program. Google Earth was used for the first time to give visitors to the website the impression that they were following Santa Claus' progress in 3-D. The program also made its presence known on YouTube in 2007 as part of its partnership with Google.


title: History of Google

text: In 2008, Google developed a partnership with GeoEye to launch a satellite providing Google with high-resolution (0.41 m monochrome, 1.65 m color) imagery for Google Earth. The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on September 6, 2008. Google also announced in 2008 that it was hosting an archive of "Life Magazine"s photographs.


title: History of Google

text: In January 2009, Google announced a partnership with the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, allowing the Pope to have his own channel on YouTube.


title: History of Google

text: In January 2013, Google announced a partnership with Kia Motors and Hyundai. The partnership integrates Google Maps and Place into new car models to be released later in 2013.


title: History of Google

text: The Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) was launched in October 2013; Google is part of the coalition of public and private organizations that also includes Facebook, Intel, and Microsoft. Led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the A4AI seeks to make Internet access more affordable so that access is broadened in the developing world, where only 31% of people are online. Google will help to decrease Internet access prices so they fall below the UN Broadband Commission's worldwide target of 5% of monthly income.


title: History of Google

text: On September 21, 2017, HTC announced a "cooperation agreement" in which it would sell non-exclusive rights to certain intellectual property, as well as smartphone talent, to Google for $1.1 billion.


title: Musical instrument

text: A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who plays a musical instrument is known as an instrumentalist. The history of musical instruments dates to the beginnings of human culture. Early musical instruments may have been used for rituals, such as a horn to signal success on the hunt, or a drum in a religious ceremony. Cultures eventually developed composition and performance of melodies for entertainment. Musical instruments evolved in step with changing applications and technologies.


title: Musical instrument

text: The date and origin of the first device considered a musical instrument is disputed. The oldest object that some scholars refer to as a musical instrument, a simple flute, dates back as far as 50,000 - 60,000 years. Some consensus dates early flutes to about 40,000 years ago. However, most historians believe that determining a specific time of musical instrument invention is impossible, as many early musical instruments were made from animal skins, bone, wood, and other non-durable materials.


title: Musical instrument

text: Musical instruments developed independently in many populated regions of the world. However, contact among civilizations caused rapid spread and adaptation of most instruments in places far from their origin. By the post-classical era, instruments from Mesopotamia were in maritime Southeast Asia, and Europeans played instruments originating from North Africa. Development in the Americas occurred at a slower pace, but cultures of North, Central, and South America shared musical instruments.


title: Musical instrument

text: By 1400, musical instrument development slowed in many areas and was dominated by the Occident. During the Classical and Romantic periods of music, lasting from roughly 1750 to 1900, many new musical instruments were developed. While the evolution of traditional musical instruments slowed beginning in the 20th century, the proliferation of electricity led to the invention of new electric instruments, such as electric guitars, synthesizers and the theremin.


title: Musical instrument

text: Musical instrument classification is a discipline in its own right, and many systems of classification have been used over the years. Instruments can be classified by their effective range, material composition, size, role, etc. However, the most common academic method, Hornbostel–Sachs, uses the means by which they produce sound. The academic study of musical instruments is called organology.


title: Musical instrument

text: A musical instrument is used to make musical sounds. Once humans moved from making sounds with their bodies — for example, by clapping—to using objects to create music from sounds, musical instruments were born. Primitive instruments were probably designed to emulate natural sounds, and their purpose was ritual rather than entertainment. The concept of melody and the artistic pursuit of musical composition were probably unknown to early players of musical instruments. A person sounding a bone flute to signal the start of a hunt does so without thought of the modern notion of "making music".


title: Musical instrument

text: Musical instruments are constructed in a broad array of styles and shapes, using many different materials. Early musical instruments were made from "found objects" such as shells and plant parts. As instruments evolved, so did the selection and quality of materials. Virtually every material in nature has been used by at least one culture to make musical instruments. One plays a musical instrument by interacting with it in some way — for example, by plucking the strings on a string instrument, striking the surface of a drum, or blowing into an animal horn.


title: Musical instrument

text: Researchers have discovered archaeological evidence of musical instruments in many parts of the world. Some artifacts have been dated to 67,000 years old, while critics often dispute the findings. Consensus solidifying about artifacts dated back to around 37,000 years old and later. Artifacts made from durable materials, or constructed using durable methods, have been found to survive. As such, the specimens found cannot be irrefutably placed as the earliest musical instruments.


title: Musical instrument

text: In July 1995, Slovenian archaeologist Ivan Turk discovered a bone carving in the northwest region of Slovenia. The carving, named the Divje Babe Flute, features four holes that Canadian musicologist Bob Fink determined could have been used to play four notes of a diatonic scale. Researchers estimate the flute's age at between 43,400 and 67,000 years old, making it the oldest known musical instrument and the only musical instrument associated with Neanderthal culture. However, some archaeologists and ethnomusicologists dispute the flute's status as a musical instrument. German archaeologists have found mammoth bone and swan bone flutes dating back to 30,000 to 37,000 years old in the Swabian Alps. The flutes were made in the Upper Paleolithic age, and are more commonly accepted as being the oldest known musical instruments.


title: Musical instrument

text: Archaeological evidence of musical instruments was discovered in excavations at the Royal Cemetery in the Sumerian city of Ur. These instruments, one of the first ensembles of instruments yet discovered, include nine lyres ( the Lyres of Ur), two harps, a silver double flute, a sistrum and cymbals. A set of reed-sounded silver pipes discovered in Ur was the likely predecessor of modern bagpipes. The cylindrical pipes feature three side-holes that allowed players to produce a whole-tone scale. These excavations, carried out by Leonard Woolley in the 1920s, uncovered non-degradable fragments of instruments and the voids left by the degraded segments that, together, have been used to reconstruct them. The graves these instruments were buried in have been carbon dated to between 2600 and 2500 BC, providing evidence that these instruments were used in Sumeria by this time.


title: Musical instrument

text: Archaeologists in the Jiahu site of central Henan province of China have found flutes made of bones that date back 7,000 to 9,000 years, representing some of the "earliest complete, playable, tightly-dated, multinote musical instruments" ever found.


title: Musical instrument

text: Scholars agree that there are no completely reliable methods of determining the exact chronology of musical instruments across cultures. Comparing and organizing instruments based on their complexity is misleading, since advancements in musical instruments have sometimes reduced complexity. For example, construction of early slit drums involved felling and hollowing out large trees; later slit drums were made by opening bamboo stalks, a much simpler task.


title: Musical instrument

text: German musicologist Curt Sachs, one of the most prominent musicologists and musical ethnologists in modern times, argues that it is misleading to arrange the development of musical instruments by workmanship, since cultures advance at different rates and have access to different raw materials. For example, contemporary anthropologists comparing musical instruments from two cultures that existed at the same time but differed in organization, culture, and handicraft cannot determine which instruments are more "primitive". Ordering instruments by geography is also not reliable, as it cannot always be determined when and how cultures contacted one another and shared knowledge. Sachs proposed that a geographical chronology until approximately 1400 is preferable, however, due to its limited subjectivity. Beyond 1400, one can follow the overall development of musical instruments over time.


title: Musical instrument

text: The science of marking the order of musical instrument development relies on archaeological artifacts, artistic depictions, and literary references. Since data in one research path can be inconclusive, all three paths provide a better historical picture.


title: Musical instrument

text: Until the 19th century AD, European-written music histories began with mythological accounts mingled with scripture of how musical instruments were invented. Such accounts included Jubal, descendant of Cain and "father of all such as handle the harp and the organ" (Genesis 4:21) Pan, inventor of the pan pipes, and Mercury, who is said to have made a dried tortoise shell into the first lyre. Modern histories have replaced such mythology with anthropological speculation, occasionally informed by archeological evidence. Scholars agree that there was no definitive "invention" of the musical instrument since the term "musical instrument" is subjective and hard to define.


title: Musical instrument

text: Among the first devices external to the human body that are considered instruments are rattles, stampers, and various drums. These instruments evolved due to the human motor impulse to add sound to emotional movements such as dancing. Eventually, some cultures assigned ritual functions to their musical instruments, using them for hunting and various ceremonies. Those cultures developed more complex percussion instruments and other instruments such as ribbon reeds, flutes, and trumpets. Some of these labels carry far different connotations from those used in modern day; early flutes and trumpets are so-labeled for their basic operation and function rather than resemblance to modern instruments. Among early cultures for whom drums developed ritual, even sacred importance are the Chukchi people of the Russian Far East, the indigenous people of Melanesia, and many cultures of Africa. In fact, drums were pervasive throughout every African culture. One East African tribe, the Wahinda, believed it was so holy that seeing a drum would be fatal to any person other than the sultan.


title: Musical instrument

text: Humans eventually developed the concept of using musical instruments to produce melody, which was previously common only in singing. Similar to the process of reduplication in language, instrument players first developed repetition and then arrangement. An early form of melody was produced by pounding two stamping tubes of slightly different sizes—one tube would produce a "clear" sound and the other would answer with a "darker" sound. Such instrument pairs also included bullroarers, slit drums, shell trumpets, and skin drums. Cultures who used these instrument pairs associated them with gender; the "father" was the bigger or more energetic instrument, while the "mother" was the smaller or duller instrument. Musical instruments existed in this form for thousands of years before patterns of three or more tones would evolve in the form of the earliest xylophone. Xylophones originated in the mainland and archipelago of Southeast Asia, eventually spreading to Africa, the Americas, and Europe. Along with xylophones, which ranged from simple sets of three "leg bars" to carefully tuned sets of parallel bars, various cultures developed instruments such as the ground harp, ground zither, musical bow, and jaw harp. Recent research into usage wear and acoustics of stone artefacts has revealed a possible new class of prehistoric musical instrument, known as lithophones.


title: Musical instrument

text: Images of musical instruments begin to appear in Mesopotamian artifacts in 2800 BC or earlier. Beginning around 2000 BC, Sumerian and Babylonian cultures began delineating two distinct classes of musical instruments due to division of labor and the evolving class system. Popular instruments, simple and playable by anyone, evolved differently from professional instruments whose development focused on effectiveness and skill. Despite this development, very few musical instruments have been recovered in Mesopotamia. Scholars must rely on artifacts and cuneiform texts written in Sumerian or Akkadian to reconstruct the early history of musical instruments in Mesopotamia. Even the process of assigning names to these instruments is challenging since there is no clear distinction among various instruments and the words used to describe them.


title: Musical instrument

text: Although Sumerian and Babylonian artists mainly depicted ceremonial instruments, historians have distinguished six idiophones used in early Mesopotamia: concussion clubs, clappers, sistra, bells, cymbals, and rattles. Sistra are depicted prominently in a great relief of Amenhotep III, and are of particular interest because similar designs have been found in far-reaching places such as Tbilisi, Georgia and among the Native American Yaqui tribe. The people of Mesopotamia preferred stringed instruments, as evidenced by their proliferation in Mesopotamian figurines, plaques, and seals. Innumerable varieties of harps are depicted, as well as lyres and lutes, the forerunner of modern stringed instruments such as the violin.


title: Musical instrument

text: Musical instruments used by the Egyptian culture before 2700 BC bore striking similarity to those of Mesopotamia, leading historians to conclude that the civilizations must have been in contact with one another. Sachs notes that Egypt did not possess any instruments that the Sumerian culture did not also possess. However, by 2700 BC the cultural contacts seem to have dissipated; the lyre, a prominent ceremonial instrument in Sumer, did not appear in Egypt for another 800 years. Clappers and concussion sticks appear on Egyptian vases as early as 3000 BC. The civilization also made use of sistra, vertical flutes, double clarinets, arched and angular harps, and various drums.


title: Musical instrument

text: Little history is available in the period between 2700 BC and 1500 BC, as Egypt (and indeed, Babylon) entered a long violent period of war and destruction. This period saw the Kassites destroy the Babylonian empire in Mesopotamia and the Hyksos destroy the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. When the Pharaohs of Egypt conquered Southwest Asia in around 1500 BC, the cultural ties to Mesopotamia were renewed and Egypt's musical instruments also reflected heavy influence from Asiatic cultures. Under their new cultural influences, the people of the New Kingdom began using oboes, trumpets, lyres, lutes, castanets, and cymbals.


title: Musical instrument

text: Unlike Mesopotamia and Egypt, professional musicians did not exist in Israel between 2000 and 1000 BC. While the history of musical instruments in Mesopotamia and Egypt relies on artistic representations, the culture in Israel produced few such representations. Scholars must therefore rely on information gleaned from the Bible and the Talmud. The Hebrew texts mention two prominent instruments associated with Jubal: the "ugab" (pipes) and "kinnor" (lyre). Other instruments of the period included the "tof" (frame drum), "pa'amon" (small bells or jingles), shofar, and the trumpet-like "hasosra".


title: Musical instrument

text: The introduction of a monarchy in Israel during the 11th century BC produced the first professional musicians and with them a drastic increase in the number and variety of musical instruments. However, identifying and classifying the instruments remains a challenge due to the lack of artistic interpretations. For example, stringed instruments of uncertain design called nevals and asors existed, but neither archaeology nor etymology can clearly define them. In her book "A Survey of Musical Instruments", American musicologist Sibyl Marcuse proposes that the nevel must be similar to vertical harp due to its relation to "nabla", the Phoenician term for "harp".


title: Musical instrument

text: In Greece, Rome, and Etruria, the use and development of musical instruments stood in stark contrast to those cultures' achievements in architecture and sculpture. The instruments of the time were simple and virtually all of them were imported from other cultures. Lyres were the principal instrument, as musicians used them to honor the gods. Greeks played a variety of wind instruments they classified as "aulos" (reeds) or "syrinx" (flutes); Greek writing from that time reflects a serious study of reed production and playing technique. Romans played reed instruments named "tibia", featuring side-holes that could be opened or closed, allowing for greater flexibility in playing modes. Other instruments in common use in the region included vertical harps derived from those of the Orient, lutes of Egyptian design, various pipes and organs, and clappers, which were played primarily by women.


title: Musical instrument

text: Evidence of musical instruments in use by early civilizations of India is almost completely lacking, making it impossible to reliably attribute instruments to the Munda and Dravidian language-speaking cultures that first settled the area. Rather, the history of musical instruments in the area begins with the Indus Valley civilization that emerged around 3000 BC. Various rattles and whistles found among excavated artifacts are the only physical evidence of musical instruments. A clay statuette indicates the use of drums, and examination of the Indus script has also revealed representations of vertical arched harps identical in design to those depicted in Sumerian artifacts. This discovery is among many indications that the Indus Valley and Sumerian cultures maintained cultural contact. Subsequent developments in musical instruments in India occurred with the Rigveda, or hymns. These songs used various drums, shell trumpets, harps, and flutes. Other prominent instruments in use during the early centuries AD were the snake charmer's double clarinet, bagpipes, barrel drums, cross flutes, and short lutes. In all, India had no unique musical instruments until the post-classical era.


title: Musical instrument

text: Musical instruments such as zithers appeared in Chinese writings around 12th century BC and earlier. Early Chinese philosophers such as Confucius (551–479 BC), Mencius (372–289 BC), and Laozi shaped the development of musical instruments in China, adopting an attitude toward music similar to that of the Greeks. The Chinese believed that music was an essential part of character and community, and developed a unique system of classifying their musical instruments according to their material makeup.


title: Musical instrument

text: Idiophones were extremely important in Chinese music, hence the majority of early instruments were idiophones. Poetry of the Shang dynasty mentions bells, chimes, drums, and globular flutes carved from bone, the latter of which has been excavated and preserved by archaeologists. The Zhou dynasty saw percussion instruments such as clappers, troughs, wooden fish, and "yǔ" (wooden tiger). Wind instruments such as flute, pan-pipes, pitch-pipes, and mouth organs also appeared in this time period. The "xiao" (an end-blown flute) and various other instruments that spread through many cultures, came into use in China during and after the Han dynasty.


title: Musical instrument

text: Although civilizations in Central America attained a relatively high level of sophistication by the eleventh century AD, they lagged behind other civilizations in the development of musical instruments. For example, they had no stringed instruments; all of their instruments were idiophones, drums, and wind instruments such as flutes and trumpets. Of these, only the flute was capable of producing a melody. In contrast, pre-Columbian South American civilizations in areas such as modern-day Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile were less advanced culturally but more advanced musically. South American cultures of the time used pan-pipes as well as varieties of flutes, idiophones, drums, and shell or wood trumpets.


title: Musical instrument

text: An instrument that can be attested to the Iron Age Celts is the carnyx which is dated to ~300 BC, the elongated trumpet-like instrument which had the end of the bell crafted from bronze into the shape of a screaming animal head which was held high above their heads, when blown into, the carnyx would emit a deep, harsh sound, the head also had a tongue which clicked when vibrated, the intention of the instrument was to use it on the battleground to intimidate their opponents.


title: Musical instrument

text: During the period of time loosely referred to as the post-classical era and Europe in particular as the Middle Ages, China developed a tradition of integrating musical influence from other regions. The first record of this type of influence is in 384 AD, when China established an orchestra in its imperial court after a conquest in Turkestan. Influences from Middle East, Persia, India, Mongolia, and other countries followed. In fact, Chinese tradition attributes many musical instruments from this period to those regions and countries. Cymbals gained popularity, along with more advanced trumpets, clarinets, pianos, oboes, flutes, drums, and lutes. Some of the first bowed zithers appeared in China in the 9th or 10th century, influenced by Mongolian culture.


title: Musical instrument

text: India experienced similar development to China in the post-classical era; however, stringed instruments developed differently as they accommodated different styles of music. While stringed instruments of China were designed to produce precise tones capable of matching the tones of chimes, stringed instruments of India were considerably more flexible. This flexibility suited the slides and tremolos of Hindu music. Rhythm was of paramount importance in Indian music of the time, as evidenced by the frequent depiction of drums in reliefs dating to the post-classical era. The emphasis on rhythm is an aspect native to Indian music. Historians divide the development of musical instruments in medieval India between pre-Islamic and Islamic periods due to the different influence each period provided.


title: Musical instrument

text: In pre-Islamic times, idiophones such as handbells, cymbals, and peculiar instruments resembling gongs came into wide use in Hindu music. The gong-like instrument was a bronze disk that was struck with a hammer instead of a mallet. Tubular drums, stick zithers (veena), short fiddles, double and triple flutes, coiled trumpets, and curved India horns emerged in this time period. Islamic influences brought new types of drum, perfectly circular or octagonal as opposed to the irregular pre-Islamic drums. Persian influence brought oboes and sitars, although Persian sitars had three strings and Indian version had from four to seven. The Islamic culture also introduced double-clarinet instruments as the Alboka (from Arab, al-buq or "horn") nowadays only alive in Basque Country. It must be played using the technique of the circular breathing.


title: Musical instrument

text: Southeast Asian musical innovations include those during a period of Indian influence that ended around 920 AD. Balinese and Javanese music made use of xylophones and metallophones, bronze versions of the former. The most prominent and important musical instrument of Southeast Asia was the gong. While the gong likely originated in the geographical area between Tibet and Burma, it was part of every category of human activity in maritime Southeast Asia including Java.


title: Musical instrument

text: The areas of Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula experiences rapid growth and sharing of musical instruments once they were united by Islamic culture in the seventh century. Frame drums and cylindrical drums of various depths were immensely important in all genres of music. Conical oboes were involved in the music that accompanied wedding and circumcision ceremonies. Persian miniatures provide information on the development of kettle drums in Mesopotamia that spread as far as Java. Various lutes, zithers, dulcimers, and harps spread as far as Madagascar to the south and modern-day Sulawesi to the east.


title: Musical instrument

text: Despite the influences of Greece and Rome, most musical instruments in Europe during the Middles Ages came from Asia. The lyre is the only musical instrument that may have been invented in Europe until this period. Stringed instruments were prominent in Middle Age Europe. The central and northern regions used mainly lutes, stringed instruments with necks, while the southern region used lyres, which featured a two-armed body and a crossbar. Various harps served Central and Northern Europe as far north as Ireland, where the harp eventually became a national symbol. Lyres propagated through the same areas, as far east as Estonia.


title: Musical instrument

text: European music between 800 and 1100 became more sophisticated, more frequently requiring instruments capable of polyphony. The 9th-century Persian geographer Ibn Khordadbeh mentioned in his lexicographical discussion of music instruments that, in the Byzantine Empire, typical instruments included the "urghun" (organ), "shilyani" (probably a type of harp or lyre), "salandj" (probably a bagpipe) and the lyra. The Byzantine lyra, a bowed string instrument, is an ancestor of most European bowed instruments, including the violin.


title: Musical instrument

text: The monochord served as a precise measure of the notes of a musical scale, allowing more accurate musical arrangements. Mechanical hurdy-gurdies allowed single musicians to play more complicated arrangements than a fiddle would; both were prominent folk instruments in the Middle Ages. Southern Europeans played short and long lutes whose pegs extended to the sides, unlike the rear-facing pegs of Central and Northern European instruments. Idiophones such as bells and clappers served various practical purposes, such as warning of the approach of a leper.


title: Musical instrument

text: The ninth century revealed the first bagpipes, which spread throughout Europe and had many uses from folk instruments to military instruments. The construction of pneumatic organs evolved in Europe starting in fifth-century Spain, spreading to England in about 700. The resulting instruments varied in size and use from portable organs worn around the neck to large pipe organs. Literary accounts of organs being played in English Benedictine abbeys toward the end of the tenth century are the first references to organs being connected to churches. Reed players of the Middle Ages were limited to oboes; no evidence of clarinets exists during this period.


title: Musical instrument

text: Musical instrument development was dominated by the Occident from 1400 on, indeed, the most profound changes occurred during the Renaissance period. Instruments took on other purposes than accompanying singing or dance, and performers used them as solo instruments. Keyboards and lutes developed as polyphonic instruments, and composers arranged increasingly complex pieces using more advanced tablature. Composers also began designing pieces of music for specific instruments. In the latter half of the sixteenth century, orchestration came into common practice as a method of writing music for a variety of instruments. Composers now specified orchestration where individual performers once applied their own discretion. The polyphonic style dominated popular music, and the instrument makers responded accordingly.


title: Musical instrument

text: Beginning in about 1400, the rate of development of musical instruments increased in earnest as compositions demanded more dynamic sounds. People also began writing books about creating, playing, and cataloging musical instruments; the first such book was Sebastian Virdung's 1511 treatise "Musica getuscht und ausgezogen" ('Music Germanized and Abstracted'). Virdung's work is noted as being particularly thorough for including descriptions of "irregular" instruments such as hunters' horns and cow bells, though Virdung is critical of the same. Other books followed, including Arnolt Schlick's "Spiegel der Orgelmacher und Organisten" ('Mirror of Organ Makers and Organ Players') the following year, a treatise on organ building and organ playing. Of the instructional books and references published in the Renaissance era, one is noted for its detailed description and depiction of all wind and stringed instruments, including their relative sizes. This book, the "Syntagma musicum" by Michael Praetorius, is now considered an authoritative reference of sixteenth-century musical instruments.


title: Musical instrument

text: In the sixteenth century, musical instrument builders gave most instruments – such as the violin – the "classical shapes" they retain today. An emphasis on aesthetic beauty also developed; listeners were as pleased with the physical appearance of an instrument as they were with its sound. Therefore, builders paid special attention to materials and workmanship, and instruments became collectibles in homes and museums. It was during this period that makers began constructing instruments of the same type in various sizes to meet the demand of "consorts", or ensembles playing works written for these groups of instruments.


title: Musical instrument

text: Instrument builders developed other features that endure today. For example, while organs with multiple keyboards and pedals already existed, the first organs with solo stops emerged in the early fifteenth century. These stops were meant to produce a mixture of timbres, a development needed for the complexity of music of the time. Trumpets evolved into their modern form to improve portability, and players used mutes to properly blend into chamber music.


title: Musical instrument

text: Beginning in the seventeenth century, composers began writing works to a higher emotional degree. They felt that polyphony better suited the emotional style they were aiming for and began writing musical parts for instruments that would complement the singing human voice. As a result, many instruments that were incapable of larger ranges and dynamics, and therefore were seen as unemotional, fell out of favor. One such instrument was the shawm. Bowed instruments such as the violin, viola, baryton, and various lutes dominated popular music. Beginning in around 1750, however, the lute disappeared from musical compositions in favor of the rising popularity of the guitar. As the prevalence of string orchestras rose, wind instruments such as the flute, oboe, and bassoon were readmitted to counteract the monotony of hearing only strings.


title: Musical instrument

text: In the mid-seventeenth century, what was known as a hunter's horn underwent a transformation into an "art instrument" consisting of a lengthened tube, a narrower bore, a wider bell, and a much wider range. The details of this transformation are unclear, but the modern horn or, more colloquially, French horn, had emerged by 1725. The slide trumpet appeared, a variation that includes a long-throated mouthpiece that slid in and out, allowing the player infinite adjustments in pitch. This variation on the trumpet was unpopular due to the difficulty involved in playing it. Organs underwent tonal changes in the Baroque period, as manufacturers such as Abraham Jordan of London made the stops more expressive and added devices such as expressive pedals. Sachs viewed this trend as a "degeneration" of the general organ sound.


title: Musical instrument

text: During the Classical and Romantic periods of music, lasting from roughly 1750 to 1900, many musical instruments capable of producing new timbres and higher volume were developed and introduced into popular music. The design changes that broadened the quality of timbres allowed instruments to produce a wider variety of expression. Large orchestras rose in popularity and, in parallel, the composers determined to produce entire orchestral scores that made use of the expressive abilities of modern instruments. Since instruments were involved in collaborations of a much larger scale, their designs had to evolve to accommodate the demands of the orchestra.


title: Musical instrument

text: Some instruments also had to become louder to fill larger halls and be heard over sizable orchestras. Flutes and bowed instruments underwent many modifications and design changes—most of them unsuccessful—in efforts to increase volume. Other instruments were changed just so they could play their parts in the scores. Trumpets traditionally had a "defective" range—they were incapable of producing certain notes with precision. New instruments such as the clarinet, saxophone, and tuba became fixtures in orchestras. Instruments such as the clarinet also grew into entire "families" of instruments capable of different ranges: small clarinets, normal clarinets, bass clarinets, and so on.


title: Musical instrument

text: Accompanying the changes to timbre and volume was a shift in the typical pitch used to tune instruments. Instruments meant to play together, as in an orchestra, must be tuned to the same standard lest they produce audibly different sounds while playing the same notes. Beginning in 1762, the average concert pitch began rising from a low of 377 vibrations to a high of 457 in 1880 Vienna. Different regions, countries, and even instrument manufacturers preferred different standards, making orchestral collaboration a challenge. Despite even the efforts of two organized international summits attended by noted composers like Hector Berlioz, no standard could be agreed upon.