title: Philippine peso

text: Fractional currency was supplied by cutting the Spanish dollar coin, most commonly into eight wedges each worth one Spanish real. Locally produced crude copper or bronze coins called cuartos or barrillas (hence the Tagalog/Filipino words "cuarta" or "kwarta", "money" and "barya" "coin" or "loose change") were also struck in the Philippines by order of the Spanish government, with 20 cuartos being equal to one real (hence, 160 cuartos to a peso). The absence of officially minted cuartos in the 19th century was alleviated in part by counterfeit two-cuarto coins made by Igorot copper miners in the Cordilleras.


title: Philippine peso

text: A currency system derived from coins imported from Spain, China and neighboring countries was fraught with various difficulties. Money came in different coinages, and fractional currency in addition to the real and the cuarto also existed. Money has nearly always been scarce in Manila, and when it was abundant it was shipped to the provinces or exported abroad to pay for exports. An 1857 decree requiring the keeping of accounts in pesos and centimos (worth 1/100th of a peso) was of little help to the situation given the existence of copper cuartos worth 160 to a peso.


title: Philippine peso

text: The Spanish gold onza (or 8-escudo coin) was of identical weight to the Spanish dollar but was officially valued at 16 silver pesos, thus putting the peso on a bimetallic standard, worth either the silver Mexican peso (27.07 g 0.903 fine, or 0.786 troy ounce XAG) or 1/16th the gold onza (1.6915 g 0.875 fine, or 0.0476 troy ounce XAU), with a gold/silver ratio of 16. Its divergence with the value of gold in international trade featured prominently in the continued monetary crises of the 19th century. In the 1850s the low price of gold in the international markets triggered the outflow of silver coins. In 1875 the adoption of the gold standard in Europe triggered a rise in the international price of gold and the replacement of gold coins with silver Mexican pesos.


title: Philippine peso

text: As the price of silver fell further, Mexican peso imports were forbidden from 1877, and only Mexican pesos dated 1877 or earlier were legally equivalent to Philippine-minted pesos and "peso fuerte" banknotes. However, Spain and its colonies failed to establish a proper gold standard. The Philippine peso and the Spanish "duro" (Spain's "peso" or five-peseta coin) thus went on a "fiduciary coin" (or fiat coin) standard; while worth more than the Mexican peso due to its scarcity in circulation, both coins traded at a fluctuating discount versus the gold peso. While pre-1877 Mexican pesos were reminted into Philippine 10-, 20- and 50-centimo coins until the 1890s, these coins were continuously smuggled in connivance with Customs officials due to their higher fiat value in the Philippines.


title: Philippine peso

text: After 1898 the United States colonial administration repealed this "fictitious gold standard" in favor of the unlimited importation of Mexican pesos, and the Philippine peso became a silver standard currency with its value dropping to half a gold peso.


title: Philippine peso

text: Concurrent with these events is the establishment of the Casa de Moneda de Manila in the Philippines in 1857, the mintage starting 1861 of gold 1, 2 and 4 peso coins according to Spanish standards (the 4-peso coin being 6.766 grams of 0.875 gold), and the mintage starting 1864 of fractional 50, 20 and 10 centimo silver coins also according to Spanish standards (with 100 centimos containing 25.96 grams of 0.900 silver; later lowered to 0.835 silver in 1881).


title: Philippine peso

text: In 1897 Spain introduced 1-peso silver coins with the bust of King Alfonso XIII, as well as 5- and 10-"centimos de peseta" coins for circulation in the Philippines as 1- and 2-"centimos de peso". The Spanish-Filipino peso remained in circulation and were legal tender in the islands until 1904, when the American authorities demonetized them in favor of the new US-Philippine peso.


title: Philippine peso

text: The first paper money circulated in the Philippines was the Philippine peso fuerte issued in 1851 by the country's first bank, the El Banco Español Filipino de Isabel II. Convertible to either silver pesos or gold onzas, its volume of 1,800,000 pesos was small relative to about 40,000,000 silver pesos in circulation at the end of the 19th century.


title: Philippine peso

text: A fanciful etymology for the term "pera" holds that it was inspired by the Carlist Wars where Queen Isabel II was supposedly called "La Perra" (The Bitch) by her detractors, and thus coins bearing the image of Isabel II were supposedly called "perras", which became "pera". A less outlandish Spanish origin, if the term is indeed derived from Spanish, could be the Spanish coins of 10- and 5-"centimos de peseta" (valued locally at 2- and 1-"centimos de peso") which were nicknamed "" and "", where the "bitch" or female dog is a sarcastic reference to the Spanish lion. Arguments against either theory are that the coins bearing the face of Isabel II were nicknamed "Isabelinas" and that the "perra" coins were only introduced to the Philippines in 1897.


title: Philippine peso

text: Asserting its independence after the Philippine Declaration of Independence on June 12, 1898, the "República Filipina" (Philippine Republic) under General Emilio Aguinaldo issued its own coins and paper currency backed by the country's natural resources. The coins were the first to use the name "centavo" for the subdivision of the peso. The island of Panay also issued revolutionary coinage. After Aguinaldo's capture by American forces in Palanan, Isabela on March 23, 1901, the revolutionary peso ceased to exist.


title: Philippine peso

text: After the United States took control of the Philippines, the United States Congress passed the Philippine Coinage Act of 1903, established the unit of currency to be a theoretical gold peso (not coined) consisting of 12.9 grains of gold 0.900 fine (0.0241875 XAU). This unit was equivalent to exactly half the value of a U.S. dollar. Its peg to gold was maintained until the gold content of the U.S. dollar was reduced in 1934. Its peg of ₱2 to the U.S. dollar was maintained until independence in 1946.


title: Philippine peso

text: The act provided for the coinage and issuance of Philippine silver pesos substantially of the weight and fineness as the Mexican peso, which should be of the value of 50 cents gold and redeemable in gold at the insular treasury, and which was intended to be the sole circulating medium among the people. The act also provided for the coinage of subsidiary and minor coins and for the issuance of silver certificates in denominations of not less than 2 nor more than 10 pesos (maximum denomination increased to 500 pesos from 1905).


title: Philippine peso

text: It also provided for the creation of a gold-standard fund to maintain the parity of the coins so authorized to be issued and authorized the insular government to issue temporary certificates of indebtedness bearing interest at a rate not to exceed 4 percent per annum, payable not more than one year from date of issue, to an amount which should not at any one time exceed 10 million dollars or 20 million pesos.


title: Philippine peso

text: When the Philippines became a U.S. Commonwealth in 1935, the coat of arms of the Philippine Commonwealth was adopted and replaced the arms of the U.S. Territories on the reverse of coins while the obverse remained unchanged. This seal is composed of a much smaller eagle with its wings pointed up, perched over a shield with peaked corners, above a scroll reading "Commonwealth of the Philippines". It is a much busier pattern, and widely considered less attractive.


title: Philippine peso

text: In 1942, at the height of the resistance against the Japanese invasion in Corregidor island, US-Philippine forces managed to ship off to Australia most of the gold and significant assets held in reserve by Manila's banks, but they had to discard an estimated ₱ 15 million worth of silver pesos into the sea off Caballo Bay rather than surrender it to the Japanese. After the war these assets would be returned to Philippine banks, and most of the discarded pesos would be recovered but in badly corroded condition.


title: Philippine peso

text: The Japanese occupiers then introduced fiat notes for use in the Philippines. Emergency circulating notes (also termed "guerrilla pesos") were also issued by banks and local governments, using crude inks and materials, which were redeemable in silver pesos after the end of the war. The puppet state under José P. Laurel outlawed possession of guerrilla currency and declared a monopoly on the issuance of money and anyone found to possess guerrilla notes could be arrested or even executed. Because of the fiat nature of the currency, the Philippine economy felt the effects of hyperinflation.


title: Philippine peso

text: Combined U.S. and Philippine Commonwealth military forces including recognized guerrilla units continued printing Philippine pesos, so that, from October 1944 to September 1945, all earlier issues except for the emergency guerrilla notes were considered illegal and were no longer legal tender.


title: Philippine peso

text: Republic Act No. 265 created the Central Bank of the Philippines (now the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) on January 3, 1949, in which was vested the power of administering the banking and credit system of the country. Under the act, all powers in the printing and mintage of Philippine currency was vested in the CBP, taking away the rights of the banks such as Bank of the Philippine Islands and the Philippine National Bank to issue currency.


title: Philippine peso

text: The Philippines faced various post-war problems due to the slow recovery of agricultural production, trade deficits due to the need to import needed goods, and high inflation due to the lack of goods. The CBP embarked on a fixed exchange system during the 1950s where the peso's convertibility was maintained at ₱2 per US$1 by various measures to control and conserve the country's international reserves.


title: Philippine peso

text: This system, combined with other “Filipino First” efforts to curtail importations, helped reshape the country's import patterns and improve the balance of payments. Such restrictions, however, gave rise to a black market where dollars routinely traded for above ₱3/$. The CBP's allocation system which rations a limited supply of dollars at ₱2/$ to purchase priority imports was exploited by parties with political connections. Higher black market exchange rates drove remittances and foreign investments away from official channels.


title: Philippine peso

text: By 1962 the task of maintaining the old ₱2/$ parity while defending available reserves has become untenable under the new Diosdado Macapagal administration, opening up a new "decontrol era" from 1962 to 1970 where foreign exchange restrictions were dismantled and a new free-market exchange rate of ₱3.90/$ was adopted since 1965. This move helped balance foreign exchange supply versus demand and greatly boosted foreign investment inflows and international reserves. However, a weak manufacturing base that can't capture market share in (mostly imported) consumer goods meant that devaluation only fueled inflation, and by the time the decontrol era ended in 1970 another devaluation to ₱6.43/$ was needed.


title: Philippine peso

text: In 1967, coinage adopted Filipino language terminology instead of English, banknotes following suit in 1969. Consecutively, the currency terminologies as appearing on coinage and banknotes changed from the English "centavo" and "peso" to the Filipino "sentimo" and "piso". However, "centavo" is more commonly used by Filipinos in everyday speech.


title: Philippine peso

text: The CBP's final era from 1970 until the BSP's reestablishment in 1993 involved a "managed float system" with no more fixed parity commitments versus the dollar. The CBP only committed to maintain orderly foreign exchange market conditions and to reduce short-term volatility. Difficulties continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s in managing inflation and keeping exchange rates stable, and was complicated further by the CBP lacking independence in government especially when the latter incurs fiscal shortfalls. The worst episode occurred when a confidence crisis in the Ferdinand Marcos administration triggered a capital flight among investors between August 1983 to February 1986, nearly doubling the exchange rate from ₱11/$ to ₱20/$ and also doubling the prices of goods.


title: Philippine peso

text: Positive political and economic developments in the 1990s paved the way for further economic liberalization and an opportunity to unburden the central bank of objectives that are inconsistent with keeping inflation stable. The New Central Bank Act (Republic Act No 7653) of June 14, 1993 replaces the old CBP with a new Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas mandated explicitly to maintain price stability, and enjoying fiscal and administrative autonomy to insulate it from government interference. This, along with the further liberalization of various foreign exchange regulations, puts the Philippine peso on a fully floating exchange rate system. The market decides on the level in which the peso trades versus foreign currencies based on the BSP's ability to maintain a stable inflation rate on goods and services as well as sufficient international reserves to fund exports. Black market exchange rates as seen in the past are now nonexistent since official markets now reflect underlying supply and demand.


title: Philippine peso

text: The Philippine peso has since traded versus the U.S. dollar in a range of ₱24–46 from 1993 to 1999, ₱40–56 from 2000 to 2009, and ₱40–54 from 2010 to 2019. The previous 1903–1934 definition of a peso as 12.9 grains of 0.9 gold (or 0.0241875 XAU) is now worth ₱2,266.03 based on gold prices as of November 2021.


title: Philippine peso

text: The smallest currency unit is called centavo in English (from Spanish "centavo"). Following the adoption of the "Pilipino series" in 1967, it became officially known as "sentimo" in Filipino (from Spanish "céntimo"). However, "centavo" and its local spellings, "síntabo" and "sentabo", are still used as synonyms in Tagalog. It is the most widespread preferred term over "sentimo" in other Philippine languages, including Abaknon, Bikol, Cebuano, Cuyonon, Ilocano, and Waray, In Chavacano, centavos are referred to as "céns" (also spelled "séns").


title: Philippine peso

text: Tagalog language words for the different centavo-denominated coins were more common in the 20th century before the decrease in their use afterwards.


title: Philippine peso

text: The Spanish administration opened the "Casa de Moneda de Manila" (or Manila mint) in 1857 in order to supply coins for the Philippines, minting silver coins of 10 centimos, 20 centimos, and 50 centimos; and gold coins of 1 peso, 2 pesos and 4 pesos.


title: Philippine peso

text: The American government minted currency under the Philippine Coinage Act of 1903 in its mints in the United States, in base-metal denominations of half centavo, one centavo and five centavos; and in silver denominations of 10 centavos, 20 centavos, 50 centavos and 1 peso. They eventually deemed it more economical and convenient to mint coins in the Philippines, hence the re-opening of the Manila Mint in 1920, which produced coins until the Commonwealth Era excluding 1/2 centavo and regular-issue 1-peso coins (commemorative 1-peso coins were minted in 1936).


title: Philippine peso

text: In 1937 the eagle-and-shield reverse design was changed into the coat-of-arms of the Commonwealth of the Philippines while retaining the legend "United States of America". During the Second World War, no coins were minted from 1942 to 1943 due to the Japanese Occupation. Minting resumed in 1944–45 for the last time under the Commonwealth. Coins only resumed in 1958 after an issuance of centavo-denominated fractional banknotes from 1949 to 1957.


title: Philippine peso

text: In 1958, the new English coinage series entirely of base metal was introduced, consisting of bronze 1 centavo, brass 5 centavos and nickel-brass 10 centavos, 25 centavos and 50 centavos. The 20-centavo denomination was discontinued.


title: Philippine peso

text: In 1967, the Pilipino-language coin series was introduced with the peso and centavo renamed into "piso" and "sentimo". It consisted of aluminum 1-sentimo, brass 5-sentimo, and nickel-brass 10, 25 and 50 sentimo. The 1-piso coin was reintroduced in 1972.


title: Philippine peso

text: In 1975, the Ang Bagong Lipunan Series was introduced. It consisted of aluminum 1-sentimo, brass 5-sentimo, cupro-nickel 10-sentimo, 25-sentimo and 1-piso, and a pure nickel 5-piso coin which rarely circulated.


title: Philippine peso

text: In 1983, the Flora and Fauna Series was introduced. It consisted of aluminum 1-, 5- and 10-sentimo, brass 25-sentimo, and cupro-nickel 50-sentimo, 1-piso and a new 2-piso coin. From 1991 to 1994 the sizes of coins from 25-sentimo to 2-piso were reduced under the Improved Flora and Fauna Series, and a new nickel-brass 5-piso coin was introduced.


title: Philippine peso

text: In 1995, the New Design coin series was introduced with the aim of replacing and demonetizing all previously issued coin series on January 3, 1998. It initially consisted of copper-plated steel 1-, 5- and 10-sentimo, brass 25-sentimo, copper-nickel 1-piso and nickel-brass 5-piso. In 2000, the bimetallic 10-piso coin was added to the series. In 2004 the composition of the 25-sentimo and 1-piso was changed to brass-plated steel and nickel-plated steel, respectively.


title: Philippine peso

text: The current series, the New Generation Currency Series was introduced in 2017, consisting of nickel-plated steel 1-, 5- ,25-sentimo and 1-, 5- and 10-piso. In December 2019 the bimetallic plated-steel 20-piso coin was introduced, together with a modified nine-sided 5-piso coin issued in response to numerous complaints that the round steel 5-piso coin looked too much like the 1-piso and 10-piso.


title: Philippine peso

text: Denominations worth P0.25 (~$0.005) and below are still issued but have been increasingly regarded as a nuisance. Proposals to retire and demonetize all coins less than one peso in value have been rejected by the government and the BSP.


title: Philippine peso

text: In 1852, the Philippines first issued banknotes under "El Banco Español Filipino de Isabel II" (the present Bank of the Philippine Islands) in denominations of 10, 25, 50 and 200 "pesos fuertes" (strong pesos).


title: Philippine peso

text: By 1903, the American colonial Insular Government issued Silver Certificates in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 500 pesos, backed by silver coin or U.S. gold at a fixed rate of 2:1. These were supplemented by banknotes of the Bank of the Philippine Islands in 1908, banknotes of the Philippine National Bank in 1916, and Treasury Certificates of the Philippine Treasury in 1918 backed by United States Government bonds. Only the latter remained legal tender after Philippine independence in 1946.


title: Philippine peso

text: The dimensions of all banknotes issued under the US-Philippine administration, 16 x 6.6 cm, has been used ever since on all Philippine banknotes (except pre-1958 centavo notes), and was introduced during William Howard Taft's tenure as governor-general of the Philippines. In view of its highly successful run, President Taft then appointed a committee that reported favorably on the advantages and savings from changing the size of United States banknotes to Philippine-size.


title: Philippine peso

text: Since 1928 the sizes of the U.S. dollar Federal Reserve Notes and Philippine banknotes have therefore been nearly identical.


title: Philippine peso

text: In 1949, the Central Bank of the Philippines took over paper money issue. Its first notes were Treasury Certificates printed under US administration overprinted with "Victory - Central Bank of the Philippines". These were followed in 1951 by regular-issue English Series banknotes in denominations of 5, 10, 20 and 50 centavos, 1 peso, 2 pesos, 5 pesos, 10 pesos, 20 pesos, 50 pesos, 100 pesos, 200 pesos and 500 pesos. The centavo notes (except for the 50-centavo note, which would be later known as the half-peso note) were discontinued in 1958 when the English Series coins were first minted.


title: Philippine peso

text: In 1967, the CBP adopted the Filipino language on its Pilipino Banknote Series, using the name Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, and in 1969 introduced the Pilipino Series of notes in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 piso. The Ang Bagong Lipunan Series was introduced in 1973 and included 2-piso notes.


title: Philippine peso

text: A radical change occurred in 1985, when the CBP issued the New Design Series with 500-piso notes introduced in 1987, 1000-piso notes (for the first time) in 1991 and 200-piso notes in 2002.


title: Philippine peso

text: The New Design Series was the name used to refer to Philippine banknotes issued from 1985 to 1993. It was then renamed as the BSP Series due to the re-establishment of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas in 1993. It was succeeded by the New Generation Currency Series issued on December 16, 2010.


title: Philippine peso

text: The New Design/BSP Series banknotes were printed from 1985 to 2013 (1985–1995 for the 5 peso notes, 1985–2001 for the 10 peso notes, 1986–2012 for the 20 peso notes, 1991–2012 for the 1000 peso notes, 2002–2013 for the 200 peso notes, and 1987–2013 for 50, 100, and 500 peso notes). Existing banknotes remained legal tender until December 31, 2015. The notes were originally to be demonetized by January 1, 2017, but the deadline for exchanging the old banknotes was extended twice, on June 30, 2017, and December 29, 2017. After that date, all NDS/BSP banknotes were demonetized and are no longer a liability of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.


title: Philippine peso

text: In 2009, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) announced that it has launched a massive redesign for current banknotes and coins to further enhance security features and improve durability. The members of the numismatic committee include BSP Deputy Governor Diwa Guinigundo and Ambeth Ocampo, Chairman of the National Historical Institute. The new banknote designs feature famous Filipinos and iconic natural wonders. Philippine national symbols will be depicted on coins. The BSP started releasing the initial batch of new banknotes in December 2010.


title: Philippine peso

text: Several, albeit disputable, errors have been discovered on banknotes of the New Generation series and discussed over social media. Among these are the exclusion of Batanes from the Philippine map on the reverse of all denominations, the mislocation of the Puerto Princesa Subterranean Underground River on the reverse of the 500-peso note and the Tubbataha Reef on the 1000-peso note, and the incorrect coloring on the beak and feathers of the blue-naped parrot on the 500-peso, but these were eventually realized to be due to the color limitations of intaglio printing. The scientific names of the animals featured on the reverse sides of all banknotes were incorrectly rendered in the 2010 series, but were corrected starting 2017.


title: Philippine peso

text: By February 2016, the BSP started to circulate new 100-peso notes which were modified to have a stronger mauve or violet color. This was "in response to suggestions from the public to make it easier to distinguish from the 1000-peso bank note". The public could still use the New Generation Currency 100-peso notes with fainter colors as they are still acceptable.


title: Philippine peso

text: In 2019, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) introduced a 20-piso coin that will eventually replace the 20-piso note. The latter remained in production until its printing materials were used up; it will remain legal tender, disappearing gradually as individual notes become unfit for circulation.


title: Philippine peso

text: Commemorative banknotes have been issued by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to memorialize events of historic significance to the Philippines.


title: Philippine peso

text: The most common method of commemoration is by adding a commemorative overprint on the watermark area of a circulating denomination. There also exist especially printed commemorative higher-denomination non-circulating banknotes, in the following denominations:


title: Philippine peso

text: The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) was established on July 3, 1993, as the Philippines’ central bank, succeeding the previous Central Bank of the Philippines which was established in 1949. Its primary monetary policy objective is "to promote a low and stable inflation conducive to a balanced and sustainable economic growth."


title: Philippine peso

text: It achieves this objective through "inflation targeting", a monetary policy approach where an inflation target is publicly announced, which the BSP then commits to achieve over a two-year horizon by using these monetary policy tools:


title: Philippine peso

text: Inflation forecasts exceeding targets are addressed by a "contractionary policy" to bring down inflation to target by increasing policy rates, increasing reserve requirements, or selling government securities - all resulting in reduced liquidity. An "expansionary policy" to counteract low inflation brought by economic pessimism involves the opposite steps - lower policy rates, lower reserve requirements, or buying government securities.


title: Philippine peso

text: The official exchange rate was ₱2 against the U.S. dollar from 1946 to 1962, devalued to ₱3.90/$ in 1962, and devalued again to ₱6.43/$ in 1970. Black market exchange rates during these periods, however, were nearly always higher than official rates.


title: Philippine peso

text: Several depreciations followed, with the peso trading at ₱18/$ in 1984 from the dirty float at ₱11.25/$ in 1983 and ₱21/$ in 1986. In the early 1990s, the peso depreciated again to ₱28/$. Due to the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the peso depreciated from ₱26/$ in July 1997 to ₱46/$ in 1998 and to about ₱50/$ in 2001 before appreciating to ₱41/$ in 2007. In the 2010s, it was appreciated to ₱42 in 2012, before depreciating to ₱54/$ in 2018. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the peso appreciated as much as ₱47/$ in 2021. In 2022, the peso depreciated to its all-time low of ₱59/$, likely as a result of the economic impact of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. Black market exchange rates as seen in the past are now nonexistent since official exchange rates now reflect underlying supply and demand rather than political considerations.


title: Philippine peso

text: In 2005, About 78 million 100-peso notes with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s surname misspelled as "Arrovo" were printed and planned to be circulated. The error was only found out after 2 million of the notes were circulated and the BSP had ordered an investigation.


title: Philippine peso

text: The incorrect manner in which scientific names were printed in the 2010 New Generation Currency Series were addressed in 2017 revisions.


title: Philippine peso

text: In December 2017, a 100 peso banknote which had no face of Manuel A. Roxas and no electrotype 100 was issued. The Facebook post was shared over 24,000 times. The BSP said that the banknotes are due to a rare misprint.


title: Philippine peso

text: By August 2006, it became publicly known that the 1-peso coin has the same size as the 1 United Arab Emirates dirham coin. , 1-peso is only worth 8 fils (0.08 dirham), leading to vending machine fraud in the UAE.


title: Philippine peso

text: In 2017, a one-peso coin that was allegedly minted in 1971 was said to bear the design of the novel Noli Me Tángere by Jose Rizal at the back of the coin. The coin was allegedly sold for up to ₱1,000,000. The holder of the said coin was interviewed by "Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho" about this, but potential buyers made no serious offers to purchase the coin, and the BSP said that it did not release any coin of the said design. The BSP also mentioned that the coin is thinner than the circulating coin which gives the possibility that someone might have tampered it and replaced it with a different design.


title: Philippine peso

text: In June 2018, a Facebook page posted a ₱10,000 note with a portrait of President Ramon Magsaysay on the front and a water buffalo and Mount Pinatubo on the back. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas did not issue this banknote and stressed that only 6 denominations are in current circulation (20-, 50-, 100-, 200-, 500- and 1000 pesos). The Facebook page of the BSP said that it was fake. The signature was also of former governor of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Amando Tetangco Jr. It was found out that the photo was from a different user who found a fake 10,000 peso banknote in a book at a library.


title: Philippine peso

text: In July 2022, a Facebook user posted a ₱1,000 banknote (polymer variant) that is slightly folded and complained how SM supermalls rejected the said banknote due to it being folded while also warning the public to not fold their ₱1,000 polymer banknotes. SM supermalls in Facebook and the BSP later wrote official statements announcing that folded polymer notes are still being accepted.


title: LP record

text: The LP (from "long playing" or "long play") is an analog sound storage medium, a phonograph record format characterized by: a speed of  rpm; a 12- or 10-inch (30- or 25-cm) diameter; use of the "microgroove" groove specification; and a vinyl (a copolymer of vinyl chloride acetate) composition disk. Introduced by Columbia in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry. Apart from a few relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound, it remained the standard format for record albums (during a period in popular music known as the album era) until its gradual replacement from the 1980s to the early 2000s, first by cassettes, then by compact discs, and finally by digital music distribution. Beginning in the late 2000s, the LP has experienced a resurgence in popularity.


title: LP record

text: At the time the LP was introduced, nearly all phonograph records for home use were made of an abrasive shellac compound which resulted in noisy playback; they had much larger grooves, and played at approximately 78 RPM, limiting the playing time of a 12-inch diameter record to less than five minutes per side. The new product was a 12 or 10-inch (30 or 25 cm) fine-grooved disc made of PVC ("vinyl") and played with a smaller-tipped "microgroove" stylus at a speed of  rpm. Each side of a 12-inch LP can play for about 22 minutes. Only the microgroove standard was new, as both vinyl and the  rpm speed had been used for special purposes for many years, as well as in one unsuccessful earlier attempt by RCA Victor to introduce a long-playing record for home use.


title: LP record

text: Although the LP was suited to classical music because of its extended continuous playing time, it also allowed a collection of ten or more pop music recordings to be put on a single disc. Previously such collections, as well as longer classical music broken up into several parts, had been sold as sets of 78 rpm records in a specially imprinted "record album" consisting of individual record sleeves bound together in book form. The use of the word "album" persisted for the one-disc LP equivalent.


title: LP record

text: The prototype of the LP was the soundtrack disc used by the Vitaphone motion picture sound system, developed by Western Electric and introduced in 1926. For soundtrack purposes, the less-than-five minutes of playing time of each side of a conventional 12-inch 78 rpm disc was not acceptable. The sound had to play continuously for at least 11 minutes, long enough to accompany a full reel of 35 mm film projected at 24 frames per second. The disc diameter was increased to 16 inches (40 cm) and the speed was reduced to revolutions per minute. Unlike their microgooved LP descendants, they were made with the same large "standard groove" used by 78s.


title: LP record

text: Unlike conventional records, the groove started at the inside of the recorded area near the label and proceeded outward toward the edge. Like 78s, early soundtrack discs were pressed in an abrasive shellac compound and played with a single-use steel needle held in a massive electromagnetic pickup with a tracking force of 2 ounce-force (0.55 N). A new needle was used each time the film and disc were played.


title: LP record

text: By mid-1931 all motion picture studios were recording on optical soundtracks, but sets of soundtrack discs, mastered by dubbing from the optical tracks and scaled down to 12 inches to cut costs, were made as late as 1936 for distribution to theaters still equipped with disc-only sound projectors.


title: LP record

text: From 1928 onward, syndicated radio programming was distributed on 78 rpm discs. The desirability of longer continuous playing time soon led to the adoption of the Vitaphone soundtrack disc format. Beginning in about 1930, 16-inch  rpm discs playing about 15 minutes per side were used for most of these "electrical transcriptions".


title: LP record

text: Longer programs, which required several disc sides, pioneered the system of recording odd-numbered sides inside-out and even-numbered sides outside-in so that the sound quality would match from the end of one side to the start of the next. Although a pair of turntables was used to avoid any pauses for disc-flipping, the sides had to be pressed and arranged so that no disc being played had to be turned over to play the next side in the sequence. For example, a three-disc set designed for manual sequencing would have the sides labeled 1–2, 3–4 and 5–6, and the listener would manually flip each disc as the side ended; for an automatic record changer turntable, the sequencing would be 1–6, 2–5 and 3–4, with the listener flipping over the stack of discs once the third side ended; with broadcast sequence, the ordering would be 1–4, 2–5 and 3–6 so that the studio engineer could play side 1 on one turntable, segue directly into side 2 on a second turntable, and then queue up side 3 on the first turntable.


title: LP record

text: Some transcriptions were recorded with a vertically modulated "hill and dale" groove, also known as vertical cut recording. This was found to allow deeper bass (because turntable rumble was laterally modulated in early radio station turntables) and also an extension of the high-end frequency response.


title: LP record

text: Initially, transcription discs were pressed only in shellac, but by 1932 pressings in RCA Victor's vinyl-based "Victrolac" were appearing. Other plastics were sometimes used. By the late 1930s, vinyl was standard for nearly all kinds of pressed discs except ordinary commercial 78s, which continued to be made of shellac.


title: LP record

text: Beginning in the mid-1930s, one-off 16-inch  rpm lacquer discs were used by radio networks to archive recordings of their live broadcasts, and by local stations to delay the broadcast of network programming or to prerecord their own productions.


title: LP record

text: In the late 1940s, magnetic tape recorders were adopted by the networks to pre-record shows or repeat them for airing in different time zones, but 16-inch vinyl pressings continued to be used into the early 1960s for non-network distribution of prerecorded programming. Use of the LP microgroove standard began in the late 1950s, and in the 1960s the size of discs was reduced to 12 inches, becoming physically indistinguishable from ordinary LPs.


title: LP record

text: Unless the quantity required was very small, pressed discs were a more economical medium for distributing high-quality audio than tape, and CD mastering was, in the early years of that technology, very expensive, so the use of LP-format transcription discs continued into the 1990s. The "King Biscuit Flower Hour" is a late example, as are Westwood One's "The Beatle Years" and "Doctor Demento" programs, which were sent to stations on LP at least through 1992.


title: LP record

text: RCA Victor introduced an early version of a long-playing record for home use in September 1931. These "Program Transcription" discs, as Victor called them, played at  rpm and used a somewhat finer and more closely spaced groove than typical 78s. They were to be played with a special "Chromium Orange" chrome-plated steel needle. The 10-inch discs, mostly used for popular and light classical music, were normally pressed in shellac, but the 12-inch discs, mostly used for "serious" classical music, were pressed in Victor's new vinyl-based "Victrolac" compound, which provided a much quieter playing surface. These records could hold up to 15 minutes per side. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski, was the first 12-inch recording issued. Compton Pakensham, reviewing the event in "The New York Times" wrote, "What we were not prepared for was the quality of reproduction...incomparably fuller."


title: LP record

text: However, many of the subsequent issues were not new recordings but simply dubs made from existing 78 rpm record sets. The dubs were audibly inferior to the original 78s. Two-speed turntables with the  rpm speed were included only on expensive high-end machines, which sold in very small numbers, and most people had little money to spend on groceries, let alone phonograph records in the depths of the Great Depression. Record sales in the US had dropped from a high of 105.6 million records sold in 1921 to 5.5 million in 1933 because of competition from radio and the effects of the Depression. Few if any new Program Transcriptions were recorded after 1933, and two-speed turntables soon disappeared from RCA Victor's phonographs. Except for a few recordings of background music for funeral parlors, the last of the issued titles had been purged from the Victor record catalog by the end of the decade. The failure of the new product left RCA Victor with a low opinion of the prospects for any sort of long-playing record, influencing product development decisions during the coming decade.


title: LP record

text: CBS Laboratories head research scientist Peter Goldmark led Columbia's team to develop a phonograph record that would hold at least 20 minutes per side. Although Goldmark was the chief scientist who selected the team, he delegated most of the experimental work to William S. Bachman, whom Goldmark had lured from General Electric, and Howard H. Scott.


title: LP record

text: Research began in 1939, was suspended during World War II, and then resumed in 1945. Columbia Records unveiled the LP at a press conference in the Waldorf Astoria on June 18, 1948, in two formats: in diameter, matching that of 78 rpm singles, and in diameter. The initial release of 101 recordings were: 58 12-inch classical LPs (ML 4001 to 4057, ML 4071), 12 10-inch classics (ML 2001 to 2012), twelve 12-inch light classic /ML 4058 - 4067, ML 4069, ML 4070/, eight 10-inch light classic /ML 2013 - ML 2019/ and eleven 10-inch popular numbers (CL 6001 to 6011). According to the Columbia's Initial LP Catalog, published in Billboard on 3.07.1948, all classical LPs were organized in alphabetical order of composers. So, this list is opened by ML 4002 with Bach's Concerto in D minor for 2 violins and orchestra by Adolf Busch and Frances Magnes, with the Busch Chamber Players and Concerto No. 2 in E major by Adolf Busch, with the Busch Chamber Players. Columbia may have planned for the album ML 4001 to be the LP opening the initial list of 101 LPs. However, Bach's A minor Violin Concerto by Tibor Varga, foreseen for Side A, could not be released on LP, because of some contractual reasons, probably. So, without Bach, with Mendelssohn, ML 4001 landed in alphabetical list under M like Mendelsson.


title: LP record

text: When the LP was introduced in 1948, the 78 was the conventional format for phonograph records. By 1952, 78s still accounted for slightly more than half of the units sold in the United States, and just under half of the dollar sales. The 45, oriented toward the single song, accounted for just over 30% of unit sales and just over 25% of dollar sales. The LP represented not quite 17% of unit sales and just over 26% of dollar sales.


title: LP record

text: Ten years after their introduction, the share of unit sales for LPs in the US was almost 25%, and of dollar sales 58%. Most of the remainder was taken up by the 45; 78s accounted for only 2% of unit sales and 1% of dollar sales.


title: LP record

text: The popularity of the LP ushered in the "Album Era" of English-language popular music, beginning in the late 1950s, as performers took advantage of the longer playing time to create coherent themes or concept albums. "The rise of the LP as a form—as an artistic entity, as they used to say—has complicated how we perceive and remember what was once the most evanescent of the arts", Robert Christgau wrote in "" (1981). "The album may prove a '70s totem—briefer configurations were making a comeback by decade's end. But for the '70s it will remain the basic musical unit, and that's OK with me. I've found over the years that the long-playing record, with its twenty-minute sides and four-to-six compositions/performances per side, suits my habits of concentration perfectly."


title: LP record

text: Although the popularity of LPs began to decline in the late 1970s with the advent of Compact Cassettes, and later compact discs, the LP survives as a format to the present day. Vinyl LP records enjoyed a resurgence in the early 2010s. Vinyl sales in the UK reached 2.8 million in 2012. US vinyl sales in 2017 reached 15.6 million and 27 million for 2020.


title: LP record

text: The LP was soon confronted by the "45", a diameter fine-grooved vinyl record playing at 45 rpm, introduced by RCA Victor in 1949. To compete with the LP, boxed album sets of 45s were issued, along with EP (extended play) 45s, which squeezed two or even three selections onto each side. Despite intense marketing efforts by RCA Victor, the 45 ultimately succeeded only in replacing the 78 as the preferred format for singles.


title: LP record

text: The "last hurrah" for the 78 rpm record in the US was the microgroove 78 series pressed for the Audiophile label (Ewing Nunn, Saukville, Wis.) in the early 1950s. This series was labeled AP-1 through about AP-40, pressed on grainless red vinyl. Today AP-1 through AP-5 are very scarce. By very tightly packing the fine groove, a playing time of 17 minutes per side was achieved. Within a couple of years Audiophile switched to .


title: LP record

text: Reel-to-reel magnetic tape recorders posed a new challenge to the LP in the 1950s, but the higher cost of pre-recorded tapes was one of several factors that confined tape to a niche market. Cartridge and cassette tapes were more convenient and less expensive than reel-to-reel tapes, and they became popular for use in automobiles beginning in the mid-1960s. The LP was not seriously challenged as the primary medium for listening to recorded music at home until the 1970s, however, when the audio quality of the cassette was greatly improved by better tape formulations and noise-reduction systems. By 1983, cassettes were outselling LPs in the US.


title: LP record

text: The Compact Disc (CD) was introduced in 1982. It offered a recording that was, theoretically, completely noiseless and not audibly degraded by repeated playing or slight scuffs and scratches. At first, the much higher prices of CDs and CD players limited their target market to affluent early adopters and audiophiles; but prices came down, and by 1988 CDs outsold LPs. The CD became the top-selling format, over cassettes, in 1992.


title: LP record

text: Along with phonograph records in other formats, some of which were made of other materials, LPs are now widely referred to simply as "vinyl". Since the late 1990s there has been a vinyl revival. Demand has increased in niche markets, particularly among audiophiles, DJs, and fans of indie music, but most music sales as of 2018 came from online downloads and online streaming because of their availability, convenience, and price.


title: LP record

text: With the advent of sound film or "talkies", the need for greater storage space made  rpm records more appealing. Soundtracks – played on records synchronized to movie projectors in theatres – could not fit onto the mere five minutes per side that 78s offered. When initially introduced, 12-inch LPs played for a maximum of about 23 minutes per side, 10-inch records for around 15. They were not an immediate success, however, as they were released during the height of the Great Depression, and seemed frivolous to the many impoverished of the time. It wasn't until "microgroove" was developed by Columbia Records in 1948 that Long Players (LPs) reached their maximum playtime, which has continued to modern times.


title: LP record

text: Economics and tastes initially determined which kind of music was available on each format. Recording company executives believed upscale classical music fans would be eager to hear a Beethoven symphony or a Mozart concerto without having to flip over multiple, four-minute-per-side 78s, and that pop music fans, who were used to listening to one song at a time, would find the shorter time of the 10-inch LP sufficient. As a result, the 12-inch format was reserved solely for higher-priced classical recordings and Broadway shows. Popular music continued to appear only on 10-inch records.


title: LP record

text: Their beliefs were wrong. By the mid-1950s, the 10-inch LP, like its similarly sized 78 rpm cousin, lost the format war and was discontinued. Ten-inch records briefly reappeared as mini-LPs in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the United States and Australia as a marketing alternative.


title: LP record

text: In 1952, Columbia Records introduced "extended-play" LPs that played for as long as 52 minutes, or 26 minutes per side. These were used mainly for the original cast albums of Broadway musicals, such as "Kiss Me, Kate" and "My Fair Lady", or to fit an entire play, such as the 1950 production of "Don Juan in Hell", onto two LPs. The 52-minute playing time remained rare, however, because of mastering limitations, and most LPs continued to be issued with a 30- to 45-minute playing time.


title: LP record

text: A small number of albums exceeded the 52-minute limit. These records had to be cut with much narrower spacing between the grooves, which allowed for a smaller dynamic range on the records, and meant that playing the record with a worn needle could damage the record. It also resulted in a much quieter sound with increased surface noise. The list of long-playing vinyl records includes the 90-minute 1976 LP "90 Minutes with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops", made by Radio Shack; Genesis' "Duke", with each side exceeding 27 minutes; Bob Dylan's 1976 album "Desire", with side two lasting almost thirty minutes; Def Leppard's 1987 album "Hysteria", with each side exceeding 30 minutes; Iron Maiden's 1984 release Powerslave and its follow up "Somewhere in Time" both required this special manufacturing, as each surpassed the 52 minute maximum; Todd Rundgren's 1975 album "Initiation", totaling 67 min 32 s over two sides; Paul's Boutique by the Beastie Boys; and André Previn's "Previn Plays Gershwin", with the London Symphony Orchestra, whose sides each exceeded 30 minutes; side two of Pink Floyd's "Atom Heart Mother" and both sides of "the Division Bell" and "Wings' Greatest" all exceed 28 minutes. Finally, several recordings of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony were reissued on single discs; these LPs contained about 35 minutes on each side, with the third movement split into two parts.


title: LP record

text: Spoken word and comedy albums require a smaller dynamic range compared to musical records. Therefore, they can be cut with narrower spaces between the grooves. "The Comic Strip", released by Springtime Records in 1981, has a side A lasting 38 min 4 s, and a side B lasting 31 min 8 s, for a total of 69 min 12 s.


title: LP record

text: Turntables called automatic record changers could play records stacked vertically on a spindle. This arrangement encouraged the production of multiple-record sets in automatic sequence. A two-record set had Side 1 and Side 4 on one record, and Side 2 and Side 3 on the other, so the first two sides could play in a changer without the listener's intervention. An alternative type of record changer pushed the played disc off the turntable into a hopper, instead of having discs drop on top of each other. Then the stack was flipped over. Larger boxed sets used appropriate automatic sequencing (1–8, 2–7, 3–6, 4–5) to allow continuous playback, but this created difficulties when searching for an individual track.


title: LP record

text: Vinyl records are vulnerable to dust, heat warping, scuffs, and scratches. Dust in the groove is usually heard as noise and may be ground into the vinyl by the passing stylus, causing lasting damage. A warp can cause a regular "wow" or fluctuation of musical pitch, and if substantial it can make a record physically unplayable. A scuff will be heard as a swishing sound. A scratch will create an audible tick or pop once each revolution when the stylus encounters it. A deep scratch can throw the stylus out of the groove; if it jumps to a place farther inward, part of the recording is skipped; if it jumps outward to a part of the groove it just finished playing, it can get stuck in an infinite loop, playing the same bit over and over until someone stops it. This last type of mishap, which in the era of brittle shellac records was more commonly caused by a crack, spawned the simile "like a broken record" to refer to annoying and seemingly endless repetition.


title: LP record

text: Records used in radio stations can suffer cue burn, which results from disc jockeys placing the needle at the beginning of a track, turning the record back and forth to find the exact start of the music, then backing up about a quarter turn, so that when it is released the music will start immediately after the fraction of a second needed for the disc to come up to full speed. When this is done repeatedly, the affected part of the groove is heavily worn and a hissing sound will be noticeable at the start of the track.


title: LP record

text: The process of playing a vinyl record with a stylus is by its very nature to some degree a destructive process. Wear to either the stylus or the vinyl results in diminished sound quality. Record wear can be reduced significantly by the use of a high-quality, correctly adjusted turntable and tonearm, a high-compliance magnetic cartridge with a high-end stylus in good condition, and careful record handling, with non-abrasive removal of dust before playing and other cleaning if necessary. Wear from playback is eliminated by using an optical record player, as no needle comes into contact with the record.


title: LP record

text: The average LP has about of groove on each side. The average tangential needle speed relative to the disc surface is approximately . It travels fastest on the outside edge, unlike audio CDs, which change their speed of rotation to provide constant linear velocity (CLV). (By contrast, CDs play from the inner radius outward, the reverse of phonograph records.)


title: LP record

text: Thin, closely spaced spiral grooves that allowed for increased playing time on a  rpm microgroove LP led to a faint pre-echo warning of upcoming loud sounds. The cutting stylus unavoidably transferred some of the subsequent groove wall's impulse signal into the previous groove wall. It was discernible by some listeners throughout certain recordings but a quiet passage followed by a loud sound would allow anyone to hear a faint pre-echo of the loud sound occurring 1.8 seconds ahead of time. This problem could also appear as post-echo, with a ghost of the sound arriving 1.8 seconds after its main impulse. Pre- and post-echo can be avoided by the use of direct metal mastering.


title: LP record

text: The first LP records introduced used fixed pitch grooves just like their 78 predecessors. The use of magnetic tape for the production of the master recordings allowed the introduction of variable pitch grooves. The magnetic tape reproducer used to transfer the recording to the master disc was equipped with an auxiliary playback head positioned ahead of the main head by a distance equal to one revolution of the disc. The sole purpose of this head was to monitor the amplitude of the recording. If the sound level from both the auxiliary and main magnetic heads was loud, the cutting head on the disc recording lathe was driven at its normal speed. If the sound level from both magnetic heads was quieter, however, then the disc cutting head could be driven at a lower speed reducing the groove pitch with no danger of the adjacent grooves colliding with each other. The playing time of the disc was therefore increased by an amount dependent on the duration of quieter passages.


title: LP record

text: The record manufacturers had also realised that by reducing the amplitude of the lower frequencies recorded in the groove, it was possible to decrease the spacing between the grooves and further increase the playing time. These low frequencies were then restored to their original level on playback. Furthermore, if the amplitude of the high frequencies was artificially boosted on recording the disc and then subsequently reduced to their original level on playback, the noise introduced by the disc would be reduced by a similar amount. This gave rise to an equalization frequency response applied during record coupled with an inverse of the response applied on playback. Each disc manufacturer applied its own version of an equalization curve (mostly because each manufacturer's equalization curve was protected by interlocking patents). Low-end reproduction equipment applied a compromise playback equalization that reproduced most discs reasonably well. By contrast, amplifiers for audiophile equipment were equipped with an equalization selector with a position for most, if not all, disc manufacturers. The net effect of equalization is to allow longer playing time and lower background noise while maintaining full fidelity of music or other content.


title: LP record

text: In 1954, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) introduced a standard equalization curve to be used by all record manufacturers. Consequently, both low-quality and audiophile reproducers alike could replay any recording with the correct equalization. There are two versions of the reproduction RIAA equalization curve. The first curve is the inverse of the recording curve designed for cheaper equipment using crystal or ceramic reproduction cartridges. The second curve is intended for equipment fitted with magnetic reproduction cartridges where the output voltage is dependent on the frequency of the recorded signal (the voltage output is directly proportional to the frequency of the recorded signal; that is: the voltage doubles as the recorded frequency doubles).


title: LP record

text: The audio quality of LPs has increased greatly since their 1948 inception. While early LP recordings were monophonic, stereophony had been demonstrated in 1881 and Alan Blumlein had patented Stereophonic sound in 1931. Unsuccessful attempts were made to create stereophonic records starting in the 1920s, including Emory Cook's 1952 "binaural" LPs using two precisely spaced tracks on the record (one track for each channel) that had to be played with two monaural pick-ups on a tuning-fork-shaped tonearm. The modern system ultimately released by Audio Fidelity Records in November 1957 uses two modulation angles, equal and opposite 45 degrees from vertical (and so perpendicular to each other.) It can also be thought of as using traditional horizontal modulation for the sum of left and right channels (mono), making it essentially compatible with simple mono recordings, and vertical-plane modulation for the "difference" of the two channels.


title: LP record

text: The composition of vinyl used to press records (a blend of polyvinyl chloride and polyvinyl acetate) has varied considerably over the years. Virgin vinyl is preferred, but during the 1970s energy crisis, it became commonplace to use recycled vinyl. Sound quality suffered, with increased ticks, pops, and other surface noises. Other experiments included reducing the thickness of LPs, leading to warping and increased susceptibility to damage. Using a biscuit of 130 grams of vinyl had been the standard. Compare these to the original Columbia 12-inch LPs (ML 4001) at around 220 grams each. Besides the standard black vinyl, specialty records are also pressed on different colors of PVC/A or picture discs with a card picture sandwiched between two clear sides. Records in different novelty shapes have also been produced.


title: LP record

text: In 2018, an Austrian startup, Rebeat Innovation GmBH, received 4.8 million in funding to develop high definition vinyl records that purport to contain longer play times, louder volumes and higher fidelity than conventional vinyl LPs. Rebeat Innovation, headed by CEO Günter Loibl, has called the format 'HD Vinyl'. The HD process works by converting audio to a digital 3D topography map that is then inscribed onto the vinyl stamper via lasers, resulting in less loss of information. Many critics have expressed skepticism regarding the cost and quality of HD records.


title: LP record

text: In May 2019, at the Making Vinyl conference in Berlin, Loibl unveiled the Perfect Groove software for creating 3D topographic audio data files. This is a critical step in the production of HD Vinyl stampers, as they provide the map for subsequent laser-engraving. The audio engineering software was created with mastering engineers Scott Hull and Darcy Proper, a four-time Grammy winner. The demonstration offered the first simulations of what HD Vinyl records are likely to sound like, ahead of actual HD vinyl physical record production. Loibl discussed the Perfect Groove software at a presentation titled "Vinyl 4.0 The next generation of making records" before offering demonstrations to attendees.


title: LP record

text: Disc jockeys (or DJs) in clubs still frequently use vinyl records, as cueing tracks from cassette tapes is too slow and CDs did not allow creative playback options until the advent of the CDJ-1000 turntable in 2001. The term "DJ", which had always meant a person who played various pieces of music on the radio (originally 78s, then 45s, then tape cartridges and reels; now cuts from CDs or tracks on a computer) – a play on the horse-racing term "jockey" – has also come to encompass all kinds of skills in "scratching" (record playback manipulation) and mixing dance music, rapping over the music or even playing musical instruments, but the original dance club (non-radio) definition was simply somebody who played records, alternating between two turntables. The skill came in subtly matching beats or instruments from one song to the next, providing a consistent dance tempo. DJs also made occasional announcements and chatted on the side with patrons while songs were playing to take requests, similar to what radio disc jockeys have been doing since the 1940s.


title: Maltese dog

text: Maltese dog refers both to an ancient variety of dwarf canine from Italy and generally associated also with the island of Malta, and to a modern breed of dog in the toy group. The contemporary variety is genetically related to the Bichon, Bolognese, and Havanese breeds. The precise link, if any, between the modern and ancient species is not known. Nicholas Cutillo suggested that Maltese dogs might descend from spitz-type canines, and that the ancient variety probably was similar to the latter Pomeranian breeds with their short snout, pricked ears, and bulbous heads. These two varieties, according to Stanley Coren, were perhaps the first dogs employed as human companions.


title: Maltese dog

text: The modern variety traditionally has a silky, pure-white coat, hanging ears and a tail that curves over its back, and weighs up to . The Maltese does not shed. The Maltese is kept for companionship, for ornament, or for competitive exhibition.


title: Maltese dog

text: The old variety of Maltese appears to have been the most common or favourite pet, or certainly household dog, in antiquity.Dogs of various sizes and shapes are depicted on vases and amphorae. On one Attic amphora from about 500 BC, excavated at Vulci in the nineteenth century and now lost, an illustration of a small dog with a pointed muzzle is accompanied by the word μελιταῖε, 'melitaie'.


title: Maltese dog

text: Numerous references to these dogs are found in Ancient Greek and Roman literature. Ancient writers variously attribute its origin either to the island of Malta in the Mediterranean, called in Latin, – a name which derives from the Carthaginian city of that name on the island, Melite – or to the Adriatic island of Mljet, near Corfu and off the Dalmatian coast of modern Croatia, also called Melita in Latin. The uncertainty continues, but recent scholarship generally supports the identification with Malta.


title: Maltese dog

text: In Greece in the classical period a variety of diminutive dog (νανούδιον/"nanoúdion" -'dwarf dog') was called a Μελιταῖον κυνίδιον ("Melitaion kunídion", 'small dog from Melita'). In is unusual smallness it was variously likened to martens (ἴκτις/"iktis") or pangolins. The word 'Melita' in this adjectival form, attested in Aristotle, refers to the island of Malta, according to Busuttil. The Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, Aristotle's contemporary, according to the testimony of Diogenes Laertius, referred to himself as a 'Maltese dog' (κύων.. Μελιταῖος/"kúōn Melitaios"). A traditional story in Aesop's Fables contrasts the spoiling of a Maltese by his owner, compared to life of the toilsome neglect suffered by the master's ass. Envious of the spoiling attentions lavished on the pup, the ass tries to frolic and be winsome also, in order to enter his master's graces and be treated kindly, only to be beaten off and tethered to its manger.


title: Maltese dog

text: Around 280 BCE, the learned Hellenistic poet Callimachus, according to Pliny the Elder writing in the Ist century CE, identified Melite – the home of this ancient dog variety – as the Adriatic island, rather than Malta. Conversely, the poem "Alexandra" ascribed to his equally erudite contemporary Lycophron, which is now thought to have been composed around 190 BCE, also alludes to the island of Melite, but identified it as Malta. Strabo, writing in the early first century AD, attributed its origin to the island of Malta.


title: Maltese dog

text: Aristotle's successor Theophrastus (371 – c. 287 BC), in his sketch of moral types, "Characters", has a chapter on a type of person who exercises a petty pride in pursuing a showy ambition to be particularly fastidious in his taste (Μικροφιλοτιμία/"mikrophilotimía"). One feature he identifies with this character type is that if his pet dog dies he will erect a memorial slab commemorating his 'scion of Melita.' Athenaeus, in his voluminous early 3rd century CE Deipnosophistae (12:518-519), states that it was a characteristic of the Sicilian Sybarites, notorious for the extreme punctiliousness of their refined tastes, to delight in the company of owl-faced jester-dwarfs and Melite lap-dogs (rather than in their fellow human beings), with the latter accompanying them even when they went to exercise in the gymnasia.


title: Maltese dog

text: The Romans called them . During the first century, the Roman poet Martial wrote descriptive verses to a lap dog named "Issa" owned by his friend Publius. It has been claimed that Issa was a Maltese dog, and that various sources link this Publius with the Roman Governor Publius of Malta, but nothing is known of this Publius, other than that he was an unidentified friend of Paulus, a member of Martial's literary circle.


title: Maltese dog

text: Dog genomic experts state that despite the rich history of the ancient breed, the modern Maltese, like many other breeds, cannot be linked by pedigree to that ancient genealogy, but, rather, emerged in the Victorian era by regulating the crossing of existing varieties of dog to produce a type that could be registered as a distinct breed. The Maltese and similar breeds such as the Havanese, Bichon and Bolognese, are indeed related, perhaps through a common ancestor resulting from a severe bottleneck when a handful of petite canine varieties began to be selected for mating around two centuries ago.


title: Maltese dog

text: In his work , the first history of its kind, Abbé Jean Quintin, Secretary to the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, wrote in 1536 that, while classical authors wrote of Maltese dogs, which perhaps might formerly have been born there, the local Maltese people of his time were no longer familiar with the species.


title: Maltese dog

text: John Caius, physician to Queen Elizabeth I, writing of women's chamber pets, such as the "Comforter" or "Spanish Gentle," stated that they were known as 'Melitei' hailing from Malta, though the species he describes were actually Spaniels, perhaps of the recently imported King Charles Spaniel type. A variation of the latter was the Blenheim toy dog, bred by the Marlborough family, with its distinctive white and chestnut mantle. Red and white mantled varieties of these toy pets, the King Charles or Oxfordshire Blenheim breeds, were all the fashion in the 17th.century, down through the early decades of the 19th.century.


title: Maltese dog

text: In 1837 Edwin Landseer painted "The Lion Dog from Malta: The Last of his Tribe", a portrait of a dog named Quiz, a petite flossy white creature poised next to a huge Newfoundland dog, commissioned by Queen Victoria as a birthday present for her mother, the Duchess of Kent, whose dog it was. According to John Henry Welsh, shortly after Landseer's canvases, the London "fancy" of toy dog enthusiasts took to importing exemplars of the Chinese spaniel, with their short faces and snub noses, and crossbred these with pugs and bulldogs to select for puppies with a longer 'feather' or fleecing on their ears and limbs. Some time later, the London market began to deal in what were called 'Maltese' dogs. These had no known connection to that island, and one of the breeders, T. V. H. Lukey, associated with the English mastiff, stated that his own Maltese strain was imported from the Manilla Islands in 1841.


title: Maltese dog

text: A strain of this type was accepted as a distinct class at the Agricultural Hall Show in Islington in 1862, when a breeder, R. Mandeville, took first prize and continued to do so in subsequent years. From 1869 to 1879, Mandeville swept the board of most shows in Birmingham, Islington, the Crystal Palace, and Cremorne Gardens, and his kennels were considered to have furnished the finest strain for subsequent Maltese breeding. From the 19th. century onwards, the requirement emerged for the Maltese to have an exclusively white coat. Despite the unknown provenance, by the close of the century, the dog-expert William Drury noted that nearly all English writers of that period associated the breed with Malta, without adducing any evidence for the claim.


title: Maltese dog

text: A white dog was shown as a "Maltese Lion Dog" at the first Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York City in 1877. From that time they were occasionally crossed with poodles, and a stud book, based on the issue of two females, was established in 1901. By the 1950s, this registry counted roughly 50 dogs in its pedigree table. The Maltese was recognised as a breed by the American Kennel Club in 1888. It was definitively accepted by the Fédération Cynologique Internationale under the patronage of Italy in 1955.


title: Maltese dog

text: The coat is dense, glossy, silky and shiny, falling heavily along the body without curls or an undercoat. The colour is pure white, however a pale ivory tinge is permitted. Adult weight is usually . Bitches are about tall, dogs slightly more.


title: Maltese dog

text: The Maltese is kept for companionship, for ornament, or for competitive exhibition. It is ranked 59th of 79 breeds assessed for intelligence by Stanley Coren.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is a 2018 interactive film in the science fiction anthology series "Black Mirror". It was written by series creator Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade. The film premiered on Netflix on 28 December 2018, its release date only officially announced the day before. Netflix did not confirm the interactive nature of "Bandersnatch" until its release, though there was much media speculation.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: In "Bandersnatch", viewers make decisions for the main character, the young programmer Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead), who is adapting a fantasy gamebook into a video game in 1984. Other characters include Mohan Thakur (Asim Chaudhry) and Colin Ritman (Will Poulter), who work at a video game company; Stefan's father, Peter (Craig Parkinson); and Stefan's therapist, Dr. Haynes (Alice Lowe). A postmodernist work with free will as a central theme, the film was named after a real video game planned for release by Imagine Software in 1984, the game in turn named after the bandersnatch, a creature of Lewis Carroll's creation.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Brooker and executive producer Annabel Jones were approached by Netflix about making an interactive film in May 2017, during which time Netflix had several such projects for children underway. Difficulty in writing the highly non-linear script led to Netflix's creation of a bespoke program called Branch Manager; the unique nature of the content required adaptations in the platform's use of cache memory. "Bandersnatch" was originally to be part of "Black Mirror"s fifth series, but its lengthy production led to its release as a standalone film, delaying the fifth series to June 2019.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Critical reception was mixed, with a positive response to the technical design of the film but criticism of the story's characterisation. There was mixed commentary about the narrative and the extent to which viewer choices affected the story. The film received average rankings in critics' lists of "Black Mirror" instalments by quality, but garnered numerous awards and nominations, winning two Primetime Emmy Awards. A lawsuit filed by Chooseco over the film's use of the term "choose-your-own-adventure" was filed in January 2019 and settled in November 2020.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: "Bandersnatch" is an interactive film. A brief tutorial, specific to the device being streamed on, explains to the viewer how to make choices. When presented with a choice point, the user has ten seconds to make a choice or a default decision is made for them. The average viewing is 90 minutes, though the quickest path ends after 40 minutes. There are 150 minutes of unique footage divided into 250 segments, yielding over one trillion possible paths that the viewer can take. In some cases, the same scene is reachable in multiple different ways but will present the viewer with different choices based on the way they reached it. In other cases, certain loops guide viewers to a specific narrative regardless of the choices they make.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Netflix reported that there are five "main" endings, with variants within each ending; some endings are intercut with credits, similar to other "Black Mirror" episodes. Producer Russell McLean said there are between ten and twelve endings, some of which are more concrete than others, and according to director David Slade, there are a few "golden eggs" endings that are difficult to achieve. No ending is considered "prescribed" over any other, according to series creator Charlie Brooker and executive producer Annabel Jones, particularly as they felt some endings were not truly endings in the traditional sense. In most cases, when the viewer reaches an ending, the interactive film gives the player the option to redo a last critical choice in order to explore different content, sometimes with a fast-forward through early parts of a storyline already seen. Some endings may become impossible to reach based on choices made by the viewer unless they opt to restart the film.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: In Britain in July 1984, a young programmer named Stefan Butler is adapting a "choose your own adventure" book owned by his late mother, "Bandersnatch" by Jerome F. Davies, into a revolutionary adventure game. Stefan pitches it to the video game company Tuckersoft, which is run by Mohan Thakur and employs the famous game creator Colin Ritman. Stefan is given the choice of accepting or rejecting help from the company in developing the game. If Stefan accepts, Colin says he chose the "wrong path". The game is released months later and critically panned as "designed by committee". Stefan considers trying again, and the film returns to the day of the offer, and the viewer is given the same choice.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Rejecting the offer, Stefan begins to work on the game on his own from his bedroom, given a September deadline. As the game becomes more complex, Stefan becomes stressed and is hostile to his father Peter. He visits Dr. R. Haynes' clinic for therapy. The viewer may have Stefan explain to Dr. Haynes about his mother's death: when he was five, Peter confiscated his stuffed rabbit toy. His mother was delayed by Stefan's refusal to leave without the rabbit and the train she took derailed, killing her. Stefan feels responsible for her death. Dr. Haynes prescribes Stefan medicine, which the viewer can choose to have Stefan take or flush down the toilet.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: The viewer may have Stefan accept an invitation to Colin's flat, where he lives with his girlfriend Kitty and infant daughter Pearl. The pair take hallucinogens and Colin rants about secret government mind-control programs and alternate timelines. To demonstrate his theories, Colin demands Stefan choose one of them to jump off the balcony. If Stefan jumps, he dies and the game is finished by Tuckersoft to poor reviews. If Colin jumps, the whole encounter is revealed to be a dream, but Colin is absent in future scenes.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: As the deadline to deliver the game looms, Stefan begins to feel he is being controlled by outside forces. Stefan finds his life mirroring that of Davies, about whom he learns through a book, and a documentary which Colin gives him. Like Davies, he sees recurring imagery of a "branching pathway" symbol, which seemingly led to Davies beheading his own wife. As he begins to mentally break down, the viewer has multiple options to explain to Stefan who has been controlling him, including the option for Stefan to be told that he is being watched on Netflix in the 21st century. The viewer may discover a locked safe that contains either Stefan's old toy rabbit or documents about him being monitored as part of an experiment.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: There are numerous possible endings. Stefan may choose to fight his therapist, after which it may be revealed that he is in a film set and that his "dad" is a fellow actor. One set of choices leads to Stefan seemingly crossing through a mirror to his five-year-old self to "die" with his mother in the train crash, causing him to suddenly die in the present. In other paths, the viewer has the option to make Stefan kill his father, then bury or chop up the body. Burying it leads to Stefan being jailed before the release of the game. Dismembering it leads to the successful release of the game, but Stefan goes to prison shortly afterwards and the game is recalled and destroyed. Other scenes show Mohan, Colin or Kitty arriving at Stefan's house, sometimes with the option to kill the characters. In some endings, the viewer is shown the critical reaction to the "Bandersnatch" game and the fate of Tuckersoft, which may go out of business. Other endings conclude in the present day with an adult Pearl, now a programmer for Netflix, attempting to adapt "Bandersnatch" into an interactive film. The viewer chooses for her to pour tea over her computer or destroy it, which implies she may go down the same path Davies and Stefan did.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: "Bandersnatch" was released on Netflix on 28 December 2018 in 28 languages. It was originally intended to be an episode of series five, its scope changing to a standalone movie due to its complexity. "Bandersnatch" was made after one of the series five episodes was filmed. Brooker compared the effort spent on "Bandersnatch" to that of four regular "Black Mirror" episodes. As a consequence, the fifth season of "Black Mirror" was delayed, its three episodes premiering on 5 June 2019.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: The film was written by Charlie Brooker. He and Annabel Jones were approached by Netflix in May 2017 about making an interactive episode; their initial instinct was to reject the offer, particularly over concerns about the lack of seamless transitions from earlier interactive films. However, by the time of a script meeting a few weeks later to review potential ideas for the upcoming fifth series of "Black Mirror", they had an idea for a plot that only worked as an interactive film. In it, a programmer would make a video game out of a choose-your-own-adventure book. Brooker had previously conceived of multiple endings for the third series episode "Playtest": a "nightmare mode" version of the episode, played when the viewer had seen the episode once before, would have ended with a much darker resolution.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Brooker initially envisaged the film as having one clear story, with a few different scenes at the end, until he had the idea of remembering earlier choices and incorporating them into later scenes. To keep the narrative focused with the numerous divergent endings, Brooker kept the story's core concept around the freedom of choice or the illusion of that freedom. Jones worked to develop believable characters that would fit with any of the film's possible endings. Discussions were had over the number of choices the viewer should make and how the film should be paced. The storylines and branches continued expanding into pre-production.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: The flash-forward ending involving Pearl Ritman was expected to be the one most commonly reached. Brooker remarked that he found himself in a similar position as Pearl in trying to work himself through pages of complex decision trees while writing the script. Several of the paths lead the viewer towards the choice of having Butler kill his father, though the viewer can avoid this. However, not all endings can be reached without Butler killing his father. McLean stated that this was done to give the viewer the sense of having their own control over the narrative. Endings in which a reviewer gives a star rating to "Bandersnatch" were designed to encourage users to go back, though there is no way that, simultaneously, the game can get a good review and Stefan can have a happy ending.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Brooker found a steep learning curve in the technology required to write the film's script. At Netflix's suggestion, Brooker wrote the 170-page script in Twine, a tool for writing interactive fiction, also using Scrivener, Final Draft and multiple versions of Microsoft Notepad. The basic structure of the film took the most time to write, and the script underwent seven different versions. As the first Netflix interactive content for adults, "Bandersnatch" required more complex choices than previous interactive works, leading Netflix staff to create a bespoke tool which they named Branch Manager. It only became available to Brooker a few months into the episode's development.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Brooker and the production considered how to present the choices to the player, initially considering GIF animation loops of the possible actions. Their initial designs confused test viewers, and they instead used text options, temporarily letterboxing the frame to make the choices clear. The lighting, sound design and aspect ratio of the film change while this takes place, designed to make the viewer feel pressure.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Streaming with seamless transitions from one scene to either of two choices requires the two subsequent scenes to be pre-cached, which meant that "Bandersnatch" could not be made available on some older devices, or Chromecast or Apple TV. To help viewers who may not be familiar with how adventure games work, the film includes an early, seemingly trivial choice of which breakfast cereal Stefan has. This not only shows the viewer how choices are presented during the film, but how their state is recalled by the Netflix app later in their viewing. In this case, the cereal selection informs a television advert in-movie. If no choices are selected, the film progresses by choices determined by Brooker to give the most basic version of the story.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: "Bandersnatch" was directed by David Slade, who previously directed series four episode "Metalhead". It starred Fionn Whitehead, Will Poulter, and Asim Chaudhry. Whitehead was only informed of the film's interactive nature after being offered the part. Davies was played by independent game developer Jeff Minter at Jones' suggestion, having previously appeared in a documentary made by Jones and Brooker. Some of Ritman's character was informed by Minter's own background. Writer Warren Ellis was also asked to portray Davies but could not commit to the open shooting schedule and travel that the show required.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Production took eight months, Netflix requiring assets to be locked in by the end of November 2018. The actors had two weeks to prepare, while filming lasted around 35 days, which was considerably longer than the average for a "Black Mirror" piece. Exterior filming took place at the shopping centre St George's Walk in Croydon, London, in April 2018. A flowchart was initially used on set but actors found it overcomplicated the situation. Whitehead and Poulter both compared the experience to theatre acting. Slade highlighted Colin as the hardest character to understand, as one scene needed to be shot three times, with Colin having different levels of knowledge at each stage. Slade told Poulter to focus not on how his character knew information, but simply that his character did know. Whitehead found it difficult to maintain his character's constant anxiety and tension.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: The soundtrack was composed by Brian Reitzell, who worked on it by writing separate scores for each of the major storylines, then filling in music for the scenes not already covered. Reitzell had previously worked on music for some video games, but had not worked on modular music of the same complexity, where music was required to sync up with choice point transitions. He aimed for the music to be tonally connected but not feel static or reused. Much of the musical equipment he used was from the 1980s, including video game sound chips and modified consoles. Music was required for the choice points, video games, flashbacks and recap fast-forwards within the film. Reitzell worked with Slade to make the soundtrack feel atmospheric. The film also uses many songs from the 1980s, including "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, "O Superman" by Laurie Anderson and "Too Shy" by Kajagoogoo. The viewer has some choice over music played, including a decision between "Hold Me Now" by the Thompson Twins and "Here Comes the Rain Again" by the Eurythmics.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Some ideas for the film went unused. At one point, trophies for unlocking scenes were considered, similar to Xbox achievements. Instead of a documentary on Jerome F Davies, it was conceived that Stefan could choose to watch an entire film with which viewers could interact. At a different point, Brooker wanted Stefan's father's blood to splatter across the viewer's cereal choice. A segment where the viewer enters the therapist's phone number was initially designed as a more difficult riddle, the codes "999" and "911" leading to alternate scenes of Stefan calling the police in the UK and US, respectively. Originally, Netflix meta-endings could only be unlocked after the first playthrough.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Whitehead reports that much more footage was shot than was used in the final version. The film features some scenes which viewers cannot access, as a result of late editing changes, including scenes being reordered. This is similar to video games, which often have unused content still stored in their files. One such scene was a third encounter between Stefan and Colin at the offices, in which Colin would start finishing Stefan's sentences; Brooker saw that at least one person had obtained the footage and shared it. Some material was cut from "Bandersnatch", such as Stefan killing Colin with a knife, as the work was deemed to be violent enough already. Additionally cut was a scene from the same choice point which showed Stefan dropping the knife and embracing Colin.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: On 27 December 2018, Netflix released a 90-second trailer for "Bandersnatch", establishing that the film would premiere the following day, on 28 December. On 3 January 2019, Netflix released two "featurettes" which look behind the scenes at the film.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: There was much media speculation prior to the film's announcement, spurred by news that "Black Mirror" had been renewed for a fifth series by March 2018. Early reports in April 2018, including by "Digital Spy" and on social media, said that filming for "Black Mirror" was occurring in Croydon, asserting it was for an episode titled "Bandersnatch". Around the start of December 2018, it was widely reported that Twitter users had spotted a since-deleted tweet from an official Netflix account, with a list of premiere dates including 28 December for "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch". The film was certified by the Korean and Dutch ratings board prior to its release, the former reporting that it was 5 hours and 12 minutes in length. On 19 December 2018, Netflix added the title "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch" as an upcoming film, with the tagline "Be right back", in reference to the earlier episode of the same name. Various runtimes including 2 minutes, 36 minutes and 90 minutes were listed in different territories. In late December, media reported on an image of the cast and a claim that Slade would direct the episode.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: The interactive nature of "Bandersnatch" was first publicly mentioned by Bloomberg News in October 2018, which cited an unnamed source that Netflix was developing an interactive episode of "Black Mirror" alongside several other interactive specials for release in 2018. A Netflix spokesperson, when asked by "The Verge", responded with: "Thanks for reaching out! You have the ability to choose your own response from Netflix: this or this." The first "this" contained a link to a GIF from "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" of a character saying "razzmatazz", and the second linking to a YouTube video of crickets chirping. No screeners were sent to critics in advance of the film's release, though Netflix invited select media writers to their headquarters about a month prior to release and gave them an opportunity to try the interactive film.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Only upon the film's release on 28 December did Netflix publicly confirm its interactive nature. Carla Engelbrecht, Netflix's director of product innovation, told "The Hollywood Reporter" that they did not officially announce that "Bandersnatch" would be an interactive episode so that viewers would not have "preconceived notions", such as an overestimation of the level of interactivity. Due to unpleasant comments following the release of "Bandersnatch", Poulter announced that he would reduce his Twitter activity for mental health reasons. In a November 2021 interview with "GQ", Poulter stated that he deleted his Twitter account in January 2019 after being harassed by keyboard warriors who mocked his appearance as Ritman. Poulter returned to Twitter in 2021, but he now uses it for platform causes that he supports like The Black Curriculum and Alzheimer's Research UK.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: A week following the film's premiere, Netflix sent out a hint on its social media pages directing users on how to discover an obscure scene. A week later, Netflix tweeted pieces of data about viewer choices in the episode. For instance, 73% of viewers chose for Stefan to initially accept the job at Tuckersoft and of what Netflix deemed to be the five endings, the least viewed was the one where Stefan boards the train with his mother as a child. Later, Netflix reported that 94% of viewers were actively making choices.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Following the release of "Bandersnatch" to Netflix, a live website for the fictional company Tuckersoft was made available. The site documented some of the fictional games discussed in the film and included a playable version of "Nohzdyve" that required the use of a ZX Spectrum computer or an emulator. The film was also advertised after its release on the London Underground. Within a week of its release, a number of mock "Tucker's Newsagent and Games" storefronts appeared in London and Birmingham, styled as a 1980s store with the various Tuckersoft games, and VHS tapes of other "Black Mirror" episodes.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Netflix had previously released interactive programmes for children, starting in 2017 with "Puss in Book". Netflix also released the 2015 Telltale Games interactive series "" on their website in November 2018. "Bandersnatch" was their first release targeted at adults. Netflix went on to produce additional shows using the Branch Manager tool. Bear Grylls' eight-episode interactive reality series "You vs. Wild", fashioned after "Man vs. Wild", was released in April 2019. An interactive special for the comedy "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" was released in May 2020.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: "The Verge" Jesse Damiani commented that interactivity as in "Bandersnatch" could potentially be used by Netflix to collect user-preference data and inform marketing choices, such as targeted product placement. In February, technology policy researcher Michael Veale requested the data that Netflix stored about his viewings of "Bandersnatch" under the General Data Protection Regulation. He criticised that the data, detailing every choice he had made, was not anonymised and was taken without explicit consent from the user. A 2019 paper by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras demonstrated how to infer viewers' choices in "Bandersnatch" through network packet analysis with 96% accuracy. The paper noted that this could be used to reveal viewer preferences "from benign (e.g., their food and music preferences) to sensitive (e.g., their affinity to violence and political inclination)", and noted a technical solution Netflix could implement.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Chooseco, the company founded by R. A. Montgomery to republish the "Choose Your Own Adventure" book series, filed a lawsuit against Netflix for trademark infringement by use of the phrase "choose your own adventure" in "Bandersnatch", seeking upwards of in damages. Chooseco claimed it trademarked the phrase in association with movies, books, and other forms of media, and that Netflix started negotiations with Chooseco in 2016 to license the phrase for films and animated series, which did not pan out. Netflix sought to have the suit summarily dismissed on a number of grounds related to trademark law and fair use allowances, but this was denied by the presiding judge based on evidence brought by Chooseco, the full case scheduled to proceed by February 2020. Netflix continued to seek dismissal, arguing that the "choose your own adventure" term had fallen into a generic trademark, and that the branch of the story where it shows Stefan being controlled by a person watching Netflix makes the work different from past "Choose Your Own Adventure" books which put the reader into the role of the protagonist. By November 2020, Netflix had conceded and offered to settle the case with Chooseco on undisclosed terms.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: A 1980s period piece and a work of science fiction, "Bandersnatch" also contains elements of comedy, horror and pathos. It has been described as a psychological thriller. The film heavily incorporates ideas of postmodernism, containing meta-commentary and an unreliable narrator, with free will as a central theme. Ed Cumming of "The Independent" commented that it contains themes of "authorial control, free will and fate". Beth Elderkin of "io9" wrote that "Bandersnatch" is about the absence of choice, and Stefan's life being outside of his control. Elderkin highlighted the "White Rabbit" ending, in which Stefan finds his rabbit under his bed as a child and joins his mother in dying on the train, as the one point where "free will is celebrated instead of derided". These ideas and themes of monitoring and control, as well as the 1984 setting, led to comparisons to George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Stuart Heritage of "The Guardian" wrote that "Brooker has popularised a new form of storytelling, then identified its tropes and dismantled them one by one."


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: The work was compared to a wide variety of media. Keith Spencer of "Salon" made comparisons to early internet-era hypertext fiction and the previous Netflix interactive work "Puss in Book", which has a broadly similar plot of a character being driven mad by the knowledge that they are controlled by an external force. David Griffin of "IGN" compared it to the adventure video game series "The Walking Dead", whose first installment was released in 2012, and the 2018 adventure game "". Karl Quinn of "The Sydney Morning Herald" compared the work to "Mosaic", a 2017 murder mystery released by HBO as an interactive app. Brooker also compared the story to the 1993 comedy fantasy "Groundhog Day", about a character who re-lives the same day repeatedly.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: The term "bandersnatch" originates from a fictional creature created by Lewis Carroll, which appears in his 1870s poems "Jabberwocky" and "The Hunting of the Snark". The former appears in the novel "Through the Looking-Glass", the sequel to "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". A planned video game by Imagine Software, "Bandersnatch", took its name from the creature. Its name was mentioned in an Easter egg in series three episode "Playtest", on the front cover of a magazine which is briefly shown onscreen. One of several expensive "megagames" which Imagine Software worked on, "Bandersnatch" was never released as the company went bankrupt in 1984. Imagine's closure was widely publicised because of the BBC's "Commercial Breaks" series which followed the company's closure and its cascading effects on the British video game industry. As an allusion, the film opens on 9 July 1984, the day Imagine Software closed.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: The story shares elements of the works of Philip K. Dick, who frequently wrote about alternate realities and timelines. Jerome F. Davies—the archetype of a tortured artist—can be seen as an allusion to Dick, who frequently used recreational drugs throughout his life, and at one point attempted to kill his wife. The original book cover of Dick's "Ubik" is prominently featured in Colin's apartment. Rosie Knight of "The Hollywood Reporter" compared Davies to writer William S. Burroughs, who killed his second wife. In "Bandersnatch", there is no ending in which Stefan is happy and the game gets a good review. Jackson McHenry of "Vulture" wrote that this implied "a link between mental illness, violence, and creativity". Brooker responded that the game itself could be "a force of evil" and said that "the less friction there is in Stefan's life, the more boring the story for an onlooker becomes".


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Like previous instalments of "Black Mirror", "Bandersnatch" makes allusions to earlier episodes. The "branching path" symbol which Davies and later Butler experience is a motif from the series two episode "White Bear". One of Tuckersoft's games is "Metl Hedd", a reference to "Metalhead", while Ritman is shown to be working on a game called "Nohzdyve", referencing the episode "Nosedive". Butler attends counselling at the Saint Juniper clinic, named after "San Junipero". References to a wide range of events associated with other "Black Mirror" episodes can be seen in news stories shown in brief shots of the pages of "The Sun" newspaper and on a television news crawl. The character Dr. R. Haynes alludes to Rolo Haynes, the proprietor of the titular showcase in "Black Museum". There are also Easter eggs to series five episodes which were yet to be released, such as the mention of "Smithereens" character Billy Bauer in a news ticker.


title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

text: Brooker, Slade and McLean discussed whether there was deeper meaning in the Easter eggs. Slade was reluctant to include the "Metl Hedd" game, not finding "the need for it". Slade commented that Tuckersoft could later have become TCKR, a company in "San Junipero" and thought that "Metalhead" was an event in the future rather than a simulation. McLean said that stories are developed in isolation, rather than by asking "how do we fit the story into this universe?" Brooker saw the Easter eggs as "a nice nod to superfans" which should not affect the creative process or force viewers to watch the stories in a particular order. Brooker and Poulter have suggested that the character of Colin Ritman could potentially show up in future "Black Mirror" stories, given that the character, in certain paths, seems to just disappear but has awareness of alternate timelines and realities.