title: John Muir

text: Muir built a small cabin along Yosemite Creek, designing it so that a section of the stream flowed through a corner of the room so he could enjoy the sound of running water. He lived in the cabin for two years and wrote about this period in his book "First Summer in the Sierra" (1911). Muir's biographer, Frederick Turner, notes Muir's journal entry upon first visiting the valley and writes that his description "blazes from the page with the authentic force of a conversion experience".


title: John Muir

text: During these years in Yosemite, Muir was unmarried, often unemployed, with no prospects for a career, and had "periods of anguish", writes naturalist author John Tallmadge. He did marry in 1880 to Louisa Strentzel. He went into business for 10 years with his father-in-law managing the orchards on the family 2600 acre farm in Martinez, California. John and Louisa had two daughters, Wanda Muir Hanna and Helen Muir Funk. He was sustained by the natural environment and by reading the essays of naturalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote about the very life that Muir was then living. On excursions into the back country of Yosemite, he traveled alone, carrying "only a tin cup, a handful of tea, a loaf of bread, and a copy of Emerson." He usually spent his evenings sitting by a campfire in his overcoat, reading Emerson under the stars. As the years passed, he became a "fixture in the valley", respected for his knowledge of natural history, his skill as a guide, and his vivid storytelling. Visitors to the valley often included scientists, artists, and celebrities, many of whom made a point of meeting with Muir.


title: John Muir

text: Muir maintained a close friendship for 38 years with William Keith, a California landscape painter. They were both born the same year in Scotland and shared a love for the mountains of California.


title: John Muir

text: In 1871, after Muir had lived in Yosemite for three years, Emerson, with a number of academic friends from Boston, arrived in Yosemite during a tour of the Western United States. The two men met, and according to Tallmadge, "Emerson was delighted to find at the end of his career the prophet-naturalist he had called for so long ago ... And for Muir, Emerson's visit came like a laying on of hands." Emerson spent one day with Muir, and he offered him a teaching position at Harvard, which Muir declined. Muir later wrote, "I never for a moment thought of giving up God's big show for a mere profship!"


title: John Muir

text: Pursuit of his love of science, especially geology, often occupied his free time. Muir soon became convinced that glaciers had sculpted many of the features of the Yosemite Valley and surrounding area. This notion was in strong contradiction to the accepted contemporary theory, promulgated by Josiah Whitney (head of the California Geological Survey), which attributed the formation of the valley to a catastrophic earthquake. As Muir's ideas spread, Whitney tried to discredit Muir by branding him as an amateur. But Louis Agassiz, the premier geologist of the day, saw merit in Muir's ideas and lauded him as "the first man I have ever found who has any adequate conception of glacial action".


title: John Muir

text: In 1871, Muir discovered an active alpine glacier below Merced Peak, which helped his theories gain acceptance.


title: John Muir

text: A large earthquake centered near Lone Pine in Owens Valley strongly shook occupants of Yosemite Valley in March 1872. The quake woke Muir in the early morning, and he ran out of his cabin "both glad and frightened", exclaiming, "A noble earthquake!" Other valley settlers, who believed Whitney's ideas, feared that the quake was a prelude to a cataclysmic deepening of the valley. Muir had no such fear and promptly made a moonlit survey of new talus piles created by earthquake-triggered rockslides. This event led more people to believe in Muir's ideas about the formation of the valley.


title: John Muir

text: In addition to his geologic studies, Muir also investigated the plant life of the Yosemite area. In 1873 and 1874, he made field studies along the western flank of the Sierra on the distribution and ecology of isolated groves of Giant Sequoia. In 1876, the American Association for the Advancement of Science published Muir's paper on the subject.


title: John Muir

text: Muir made four trips to Alaska, as far as Unalaska and Barrow. Muir, Mr. Young (Fort Wrangell missionary) and a group of Native American Guides first traveled to Alaska in 1879 and were the first Euro-Americans to explore Glacier Bay. Muir Glacier was later named after him. He traveled into British Columbia a third of the way up the Stikine River, likening its Grand Canyon to "a Yosemite that was a hundred miles long". Muir recorded over 300 glaciers along the river's course.


title: John Muir

text: He returned for further explorations in southeast Alaska in 1880 and in 1881 was with the party that landed on Wrangel Island on the USS "Corwin" and claimed that island for the United States. He documented this experience in journal entries and newspaper articles—later compiled and edited into his book "The Cruise of the Corwin". In 1888 after seven years of managing the Strentzel fruit ranch in Alhambra Valley, California, his health began to suffer. He returned to the hills to recover, climbing Mount Rainier in Washington and writing "Ascent of Mount Rainier".


title: John Muir

text: Muir threw himself into the preservationist role with great vigor. He envisioned the Yosemite area and the Sierra as pristine lands. He thought the greatest threat to the Yosemite area and the Sierra was domesticated livestock—especially domestic sheep, which he referred to as "hoofed locusts". In June 1889, the influential associate editor of "The Century" magazine, Robert Underwood Johnson, camped with Muir in Tuolumne Meadows and saw firsthand the damage a large flock of sheep had done to the grassland. Johnson agreed to publish any article Muir wrote on the subject of excluding livestock from the Sierra high country. He also agreed to use his influence to introduce a bill to Congress to make the Yosemite area into a national park, modeled after Yellowstone National Park.


title: John Muir

text: On September 30, 1890, the U.S. Congress passed a bill that essentially followed recommendations that Muir had suggested in two "Century" articles, "The Treasures of the Yosemite" and "Features of the Proposed National Park", both published in 1890. But to Muir's dismay, the bill left Yosemite Valley under state control, as it had been since the 1860s.


title: John Muir

text: In early 1892, Professor Henry Senger, a philologist at the University of California, Berkeley, contacted Muir with the idea of forming a local 'alpine club' for mountain lovers. Senger and San Francisco attorney Warren Olney sent out invitations "for the purpose of forming a 'Sierra Club'. Mr. John Muir will preside". On May 28, 1892, the first meeting of the Sierra Club was held to write articles of incorporation. One week later Muir was elected president, Warren Olney was elected vice-president, and a board of directors was chosen that included David Starr Jordan, president of the new Stanford University. Muir remained president until his death 22 years later.


title: John Muir

text: The Sierra Club immediately opposed efforts to reduce Yosemite National Park by half, and began holding educational and scientific meetings. At one meeting in the fall of 1895 that included Muir, Joseph LeConte, and William R. Dudley, the Sierra Club discussed the idea of establishing 'national forest reservations', which were later called National Forests. The Sierra Club was active in the successful campaign to transfer Yosemite National Park from state to federal control in 1906. The fight to preserve Hetch Hetchy Valley was also taken up by the Sierra Club, with some prominent San Francisco members opposing the fight. Eventually a vote was held that overwhelmingly put the Sierra Club behind the opposition to Hetch Hetchy Dam.


title: John Muir

text: In July 1896, Muir became associated with Gifford Pinchot, a national leader in the conservation movement. Pinchot was the first head of the United States Forest Service and a leading spokesman for the sustainable use of natural resources for the benefit of the people. His views eventually clashed with Muir's and highlighted two diverging views of the use of the country's natural resources. Pinchot saw conservation as a means of managing the nation's natural resources for long-term sustainable commercial use. As a professional forester, his view was that "forestry is tree farming", without destroying the long-term viability of the forests. Muir valued nature for its spiritual and transcendental qualities. In one essay about the National Parks, he referred to them as "places for rest, inspiration, and prayers." He often encouraged city dwellers to experience nature for its spiritual nourishment. Both men opposed reckless exploitation of natural resources, including clear-cutting of forests. Even Muir acknowledged the need for timber and the forests to provide it, but Pinchot's view of wilderness management was more resource-oriented.


title: John Muir

text: Their friendship ended late in the summer of 1897 when Pinchot released a statement to a Seattle newspaper supporting sheep grazing in forest reserves. Muir confronted Pinchot and demanded an explanation. When Pinchot reiterated his position, Muir told him: "I don't want any thing more to do with you". This philosophical divide soon expanded and split the conservation movement into two camps: the preservationists, led by Muir; and Pinchot's camp, who co-opted the term "conservation". The two men debated their positions in popular magazines, such as "Outlook", "Harper's Weekly", "Atlantic Monthly", "World's Work", and "Century". Their contrasting views were highlighted again when the United States was deciding whether to dam Hetch Hetchy Valley. Pinchot favored damming the valley as "the highest possible use which could be made of it". In contrast, Muir proclaimed, "Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the hearts of man".


title: John Muir

text: In 1899, Muir accompanied railroad executive E. H. Harriman and esteemed scientists on the famous exploratory voyage along the Alaska coast aboard the luxuriously refitted steamer, the "George W. Elder." He later relied on his friendship with Harriman to pressure Congress to pass conservation legislation.


title: John Muir

text: In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt accompanied Muir on a visit to Yosemite. Muir joined Roosevelt in Oakland, California, for the train trip to Raymond. The presidential entourage then traveled by stagecoach into the park. While traveling to the park, Muir told the president about state mismanagement of the valley and rampant exploitation of the valley's resources. Even before they entered the park, he was able to convince Roosevelt that the best way to protect the valley was through federal control and management.


title: John Muir

text: After entering the park and seeing the magnificent splendor of the valley, the president asked Muir to show him the real Yosemite. Muir and Roosevelt set off largely by themselves and camped in the back country. The duo talked late into the night, slept in the brisk open air of Glacier Point, and were dusted by a fresh snowfall in the morning. It was a night Roosevelt never forgot. He later told a crowd, "Lying out at night under those giant Sequoias was like lying in a temple built by no hand of man, a temple grander than any human architect could by any possibility build." Muir, too, cherished the camping trip. "Camping with the President was a remarkable experience", he wrote. "I fairly fell in love with him".


title: John Muir

text: Muir then increased efforts by the Sierra Club to consolidate park management. In 1906 Congress transferred the Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley to the park.


title: John Muir

text: In his life, Muir published six volumes of writings, all describing explorations of natural settings. Four additional books were published posthumously. Several books were subsequently published that collected essays and articles from various sources. Miller writes that what was most important about his writings was not their quantity, but their "quality". He notes that they have had a "lasting effect on American culture in helping to create the desire and will to protect and preserve wild and natural environments".


title: John Muir

text: His first appearance in print was by accident, writes Miller; a person he did not know submitted, without his permission or awareness, a personal letter to his friend Jeanne Carr, describing "Calypso borealis", a rare flower he had encountered. The piece was published anonymously, identified as having been written by an "inspired pilgrim". Throughout his many years as a nature writer, Muir frequently rewrote and expanded on earlier writings from his journals, as well as articles published in magazines. He often compiled and organized such earlier writings as collections of essays or included them as part of narrative books.


title: John Muir

text: Muir's friendship with Jeanne Carr had a lifelong influence on his career as a naturalist and writer. They first met in the fall of 1860, when, at age 22, he entered a number of his homemade inventions in the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society Fair. Carr, a fair assistant, was asked by fair officials to review Muir's exhibits to see if they had merit. She thought they did and "saw in his entries evidence of genius worthy of special recognition", notes Miller. As a result, Muir received a diploma and a monetary award for his handmade clocks and thermometer. During the next three years while a student at the University of Wisconsin, he was befriended by Carr and her husband, Ezra, a professor at the same university. According to Muir biographer Bonnie Johanna Gisel, the Carrs recognized his "pure mind, unsophisticated nature, inherent curiosity, scholarly acumen, and independent thought". Jeanne Carr, 35 years of age, especially appreciated his youthful individuality, along with his acceptance of "religious truths" that were much like her own.


title: John Muir

text: Muir was often invited to the Carrs' home; he shared Jeanne's love of plants. In 1864, he left Wisconsin to begin exploring the Canadian wilderness and, while there, began corresponding with her about his activities. Carr wrote Muir in return and encouraged him in his explorations and writings, eventually having an important influence over his personal goals. At one point she asked Muir to read a book she felt would influence his thinking, Lamartine's "The Stonemason of Saint Point". It was the story of a man whose life she hoped would "metabolize in Muir", writes Gisel, and "was a projection of the life she envisioned for him". According to Gisel, the story was about a "poor man with a pure heart", who found in nature "divine lessons and saw all of God's creatures interconnected".


title: John Muir

text: After Muir returned to the United States, he spent the next four years exploring Yosemite, while at the same time writing articles for publication. During those years, Muir and Carr continued corresponding. She sent many of her friends to Yosemite to meet Muir and "to hear him preach the gospel of the mountains", writes Gisel. The most notable was naturalist and author Ralph Waldo Emerson. The importance of Carr, who continually gave Muir reassurance and inspiration, "cannot be overestimated", adds Gisel. It was "through his letters to her that he developed a voice and purpose". She also tried to promote Muir's writings by submitting his letters to a monthly magazine for publication. Muir came to trust Carr as his "spiritual mother", and they remained friends for 30 years. In one letter she wrote to Muir while he was living in Yosemite, she tried to keep him from despairing as to his purpose in life.


title: John Muir

text: The value of their friendship was first disclosed by a friend of Carr's, clergyman and writer G. Wharton James. After obtaining copies of their private letters from Carr, and despite pleadings from Muir to return them, he instead published articles about their friendship, using those letters as a primary source. In one such article, his focus was Muir's debt to Carr, stating that she was his "guiding star" who "led him into the noble paths of life, and then kept him there".


title: John Muir

text: Muir's friend, zoologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, writes that Muir's style of writing did not come to him easily, but only with intense effort. "Daily he rose at 4:30 o'clock, and after a simple cup of coffee labored incessantly. ... he groans over his labors, he writes and rewrites and interpolates". Osborn notes that he preferred using the simplest English language, and therefore admired above all the writings of Carlyle, Emerson and Thoreau. "He is a very firm believer in Thoreau and starts by reading deeply of this author". His secretary, Marion Randall Parsons, also noted that "composition was always slow and laborious for him. ... Each sentence, each phrase, each word, underwent his critical scrutiny, not once but twenty times before he was satisfied to let it stand". Muir often told her, "This business of writing books is a long, tiresome, endless job".


title: John Muir

text: Miller speculates that Muir recycled his earlier writings partly due to his "dislike of the writing process". He adds that Muir "did not enjoy the work, finding it difficult and tedious". He was generally unsatisfied with the finished result, finding prose "a weak instrument for the reality he wished to convey". However, he was prodded by friends and his wife to keep writing and as a result of their influence he kept at it, although never satisfied. Muir wrote in 1872, "No amount of word-making will ever make a single soul to 'know' these mountains. One day's exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books". In one of his essays, he gave an example of the deficiencies of writing versus experiencing nature.


title: John Muir

text: Muir believed that to discover truth, he must turn to what he believed were the most accurate sources. Muir had a strict, Scottish Presbyterian upbringing. In his book, "The Story of My Boyhood and Youth" (1913), he writes that during his childhood, his father made him read the Bible every day. Muir eventually memorized three-quarters of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament. Muir's father read Josephus's "War of the Jews" to understand the culture of first-century Judea, as it was written by an eyewitness, and illuminated the culture during the period of the New Testament. But as Muir became attached to the American natural landscapes he explored, Williams notes that he began to see another "primary source for understanding God: the Book of Nature". According to Williams, in nature, especially in the wilderness, Muir was able to study the plants and animals in an environment that he believed "came straight from the hand of God, uncorrupted by civilization and domestication". As Tallmadge notes, Muir's belief in this "Book of Nature" compelled him to tell the story of "this creation in words any reader could understand". As a result, his writings were to become "prophecy, for [they] sought to change our angle of vision".


title: John Muir

text: Williams notes that Muir's philosophy and world view rotated around his perceived dichotomy between civilization and nature. From this developed his core belief that "wild is superior". His nature writings became a "synthesis of natural theology" with scripture that helped him understand the origins of the natural world. According to Williams, philosophers and theologians such as Thomas Dick suggested that the "best place to discover the true attributes of deity was in Nature". He came to believe that God was always active in the creation of life and thereby kept the natural order of the world. As a result, Muir "styled himself as a John the Baptist", adds Williams, "whose duty was to immerse in 'mountain baptism' everyone he could". Williams concludes that Muir saw nature as a great teacher, "revealing the mind of God", and this belief became the central theme of his later journeys and the "subtext" of his nature writing.


title: John Muir

text: During his career as writer and while living in the mountains, Muir continued to experience the "presence of the divine in nature", writes Holmes. His personal letters also conveyed these feelings of ecstasy. Historian Catherine Albanese stated that in one of his letters, "Muir's eucharist made Thoreau's feast on wood-chuck and huckleberry seem almost anemic". Muir was extremely fond of Thoreau and was probably influenced more by him than even Emerson. Muir often referred to himself as a "disciple" of Thoreau.


title: John Muir

text: During his first summer in the Sierra as a shepherd, Muir wrote field notes that emphasized the role that the senses play in human perceptions of the environment. According to Williams, he speculated that the world was an unchanging entity that was interpreted by the brain through the senses, and, writes Muir, "If the creator were to bestow a new set of senses upon us ... we would never doubt that we were in another world ..." While doing his studies of nature, he would try to remember everything he observed as if his senses were recording the impressions, until he could write them in his journal. As a result of his intense desire to remember facts, he filled his field journals with notes on precipitation, temperature, and even cloud formations.


title: John Muir

text: However, Muir took his journal entries further than recording factual observations. Williams notes that the observations he recorded amounted to a description of "the sublimity of Nature", and what amounted to "an aesthetic and spiritual notebook". Muir felt that his task was more than just recording "phenomena", but also to "illuminate the spiritual implications of those phenomena", writes Williams. For Muir, mountain skies, for example, seemed painted with light, and came to "... symbolize divinity". He often described his observations in terms of light.


title: John Muir

text: Muir biographer Steven Holmes notes that Muir used words like "glory" and "glorious" to suggest that light was taking on a religious dimension: "It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the notion of glory in Muir's published writings, where no other single image carries more emotional or religious weight", adding that his words "exactly parallels its Hebraic origins", in which biblical writings often indicate a divine presence with light, as in the burning bush or pillar of fire, and described as "the glory of God".


title: John Muir

text: Muir often used the term "home" as a metaphor for both nature and his general attitude toward the "natural world itself", notes Holmes. He often used domestic language to describe his scientific observations, as when he saw nature as providing a home for even the smallest plant life: "the little purple plant, tended by its Maker, closed its petals, crouched low in its crevice of a home, and enjoyed the storm in safety". Muir also saw nature as his own home, as when he wrote friends and described the Sierra as "God's mountain mansion". He considered not only the mountains as home, however, as he also felt a closeness even to the smallest objects: "The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly. No wonder when we consider that we all have the same Father and Mother".


title: John Muir

text: In his later years, he used the metaphor of nature as home in his writings to promote wilderness preservation.


title: John Muir

text: Not surprisingly, Muir's deep-seated feeling about nature as being his true home led to tension with his family at his home in Martinez, California. He once told a visitor to his ranch there, "This is a good place to be housed in during stormy weather, ... to write in, and to raise children in, but it is not my home. Up there", pointing towards the Sierra Nevada, "is my home".


title: John Muir

text: Muir's attitude toward Native Americans evolved over his life. His earliest encounters, during his childhood in Wisconsin, were with Winnebago Indians, who begged for food and stole his favorite horse. In spite of that, he had a great deal of sympathy for their "being robbed of their lands and pushed ruthlessly back into narrower and narrower limits by alien races who were cutting off their means of livelihood". His early encounters with the Paiute in California left him feeling ambivalent after seeing their lifestyle, which he described as "lazy" and "superstitious". Ecofeminist philosopher Carolyn Merchant has criticized Muir, believing that he wrote disparagingly of the Native Americans he encountered in his early explorations. Later, after living with Indians, he praised and grew more respectful of their low impact on the wilderness, compared to the heavy impact by European Americans. However, in his journals, he often describes those he encounters as "dirty," "irregular" and "unnatural."


title: John Muir

text: Muir was given the Stickeen (Muir's spelling, coastal tribe) name "Ancoutahan", meaning "adopted chief".


title: John Muir

text: In response to claims about Muir's attitudes about Native Americans, Sierra Club national Board member Chad Hanson wrote, "Muir wrote repeatedly about the intelligence and dignity of Native Americans, and honored how traditional Indigenous peoples lived in peaceful coexistence with Nature and wild creatures, expressing his view that Native peoples ‘rank above’ white settlers, who he increasingly described as selfish, base, and lacking honor. This would become a constant theme in Muir's writings, as he attacked the dominant white culture's destructive and greedy ways, and its anthrosupremacist mindset that placed humans above all else and recognized no intrinsic value in ecosystems or wildlife species beyond whatever profit could be gained by exploiting them."


title: John Muir

text: Muir spoke and wrote about the equality of all people, "regardless of color, or race", and wrote about the immorality of slavery in his final book, "Travels in Alaska". During his time in Alaska he also wrote...how we were all children of one father; sketched the characteristics of the different races of mankind, showing that no matter how far apart their countries were, how they differed in color, size, language, etc. and no matter how different and how various the ways in which they got a living, that the white man and all the people of the world were essentially alike, that we all had ten fingers and toes and our bodies were the same, whether white, brown, black or different colors, and speak different languages.


title: John Muir

text: In his earlier years, Muir did make some disparaging remarks about African Americans. In "A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf," Muir described African Americans as "well trained" but "making a great deal of noise and doing little work. One energetic white man, working with a will, would easily pick as much cotton as half a dozen Sambos and Sallies." Describing the sight of two African Americans at a campfire, he wrote, "I could see their ivory gleaming from the great lips, and their smooth cheeks flashing off light as if made of glass. Seen anywhere but in the South, the glossy pair would have been taken for twin devils, but here it was only a Negro and his wife at their supper.". However, at no point in Muir's personal journey to the Gulf did he support or empathize with the Southern cause, avoiding entreaties from Southern hosts when they prodded him.


title: John Muir

text: In 2020, in light of the movement to remove Confederate monuments across the country, Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, wrote a controversial editorial accusing Muir of racist thoughts and announced that the club would shift towards investing in racial justice work and determine which of its monuments need to be renamed or removed. On July 22, 2020, the Sierra Club wrote:Muir was not immune to the racism peddled by many in the early conservation movement. He made derogatory comments about Black people and Indigenous peoples that drew on deeply harmful racist stereotypes, though his views evolved later in his life. As the most iconic figure in Sierra Club history, Muir's words and actions carry an especially heavy weight. They continue to hurt and alienate Indigenous people and people of color who come into contact with the Sierra Club.


title: John Muir

text: Although some of Muir's associates cited by Brune and others, such as Joseph LeConte, David Starr Jordan, and Henry Fairfield Osborn were closely related to the early eugenics movement in the United States., Muir did not espouse such beliefs as he strongly believed in the equality of all people.


title: John Muir

text: Aaron Mair, who in 2015 became the first Black president of the Sierra Club board, stated that the contents and framing of Muir in Brune's post "are a misrepresentation". Mair went on to state that Michael Brune, "did not consult him or the other two Black board members before pushing ahead on what he called a “revisionist” and “ahistorical” account of Muir's writings, thoughts and life." Mair, along with two other Sierra Club board members, Chad Hanson and Mary Ann Nelson, wrote a response to Brune's attack on Muir, writing:...while some of Muir’s colleagues promoted White supremacist myths and exclusionary views regarding national parks and forests, Muir spoke out about the importance of making these areas accessible and encouraging all people to experience them, writing, “Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.” He came to believe deeply in the equality of all people, writing, “We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places."


title: John Muir

text: With population growth continuing in San Francisco, political pressure increased to dam the Tuolumne River for use as a water reservoir. Muir passionately opposed the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley because he found Hetch Hetchy as stunning as Yosemite Valley. Muir, the Sierra Club and Robert Underwood Johnson fought against inundating the valley. Muir wrote to President Roosevelt pleading for him to scuttle the project. Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft, suspended the Interior Department's approval for the Hetch Hetchy right-of-way. After years of national debate, Taft's successor Woodrow Wilson signed the bill authorizing the dam into law on December 19, 1913. Muir felt a great loss from the destruction of the valley, his last major battle. He wrote to his friend Vernon Kellogg, "As to the loss of the Sierra Park Valley [Hetch Hetchy] it's hard to bear. The destruction of the charming groves and gardens, the finest in all California, goes to my heart."


title: John Muir

text: In 1878, when he was nearing the age of 40, Muir's friends "pressured him to return to society". Soon after he returned to the Oakland area, he was introduced by Jeanne Carr to Louisa Strentzel, daughter of a prominent physician and horticulturist with a fruit orchard in Martinez, California, northeast of Oakland. In 1880, after he returned from a trip to Alaska, Muir and Strentzel married. John Muir went into partnership with his father-in-law John Strentzel, and for ten years directed most of his energy into managing this large fruit farm. Although Muir was a loyal, dedicated husband, and father of two daughters, "his heart remained wild", writes Marquis. His wife understood his needs, and after seeing his restlessness at the ranch would sometimes "shoo him back up" to the mountains. He sometimes took his daughters with him.


title: John Muir

text: The house and part of the ranch are now the John Muir National Historic Site. In addition, the W.H.C. Folsom House, where Muir worked as a printer, is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


title: John Muir

text: Muir died, aged 76, at California Hospital in Los Angeles on December 24, 1914, of pneumonia. He had been in Daggett, California, to see his daughter, Helen Muir Funk. His grandson, Ross Hanna, lived until 2014, when he died at age 91.


title: John Muir

text: During his lifetime John Muir published over 300 articles and 12 books. He co-founded the Sierra Club, which helped establish a number of national parks after he died. Today the club has over 2.4 million members.


title: John Muir

text: Muir has been called the "patron saint of the American wilderness" and its "archetypal free spirit". "As a dreamer and activist, his eloquent words changed the way Americans saw their mountains, forests, seashores, and deserts", said nature writer Gretel Ehrlich. He not only led the efforts to protect forest areas and have some designated as national parks, but his writings presented "human culture and wild nature as one of humility and respect for all life".


title: John Muir

text: Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of "Century Magazine", which published many of Muir's articles, states that he influenced people's appreciation of nature and national parks, which became a lasting legacy:


title: John Muir

text: Muir exalted wild nature over human culture and civilization, believing that all life was sacred. Turner describes him as "a man who in his singular way rediscovered America. ... an American pioneer, an American hero". The primary aim of Muir's nature philosophy, writes Wilkins, was to challenge mankind's "enormous conceit", and in so doing, he moved beyond the Transcendentalism of Emerson to a "biocentric perspective on the world". He did so by describing the natural world as "a conductor of divinity", and his writings often made nature synonymous with God. His friend, Henry Fairfield Osborn, observed that as a result of his religious upbringing, Muir retained "this belief, which is so strongly expressed in the Old Testament, that all the works of nature are directly the work of God". In the opinion of Enos Mills, a contemporary who established Rocky Mountain National Park, Muir's writings would "likely to be the most influential force in this century".


title: John Muir

text: Since 1970, the University of the Pacific has housed many of Muir's books and personal papers, including journals, notes, correspondence, among others. In 2019, the University of the Pacific was given full ownership of the Muir collection, which had been expanding over the years. The university has a John Muir Center for Environmental Studies, the Muir Experience, as well as other programs related to Muir and his work.


title: John Muir

text: California celebrates John Muir Day on April 21 each year. Muir was the first person honored with a California commemorative day when legislation signed in 1988 created John Muir Day, effective from 1989 onward. Muir is one of three people so honored in California, along with Harvey Milk Day and Ronald Reagan Day.


title: John Muir

text: "Mountain Days", a 2000 musical by Craig Bohmler and Mary Bracken Phillips, celebrates Muir's life and was performed annually in a custom-built amphitheater in Muir's adult hometown of Martinez, California.


title: John Muir

text: John Muir was featured on two U.S. commemorative postage stamps. A 5-cent stamp issued on April 29, 1964, was designed by Rudolph Wendelin, and showed Muir's face superimposed on a grove of redwood trees, and the inscription, "John Muir Conservationist". A 32-cent stamp issued on February 3, 1998, was part of the "Celebrate the Century" series, and showed Muir in Yosemite Valley, with the inscription "John Muir, Preservationist". An image of Muir, with the California condor and Half Dome, appears on the California state quarter released in 2005. A quotation of his appears on the reverse side of the Indianapolis Prize Lilly Medal for conservation. On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted John Muir into the California Hall of Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.


title: John Muir

text: The John Muir Trust is a Scottish charity established as a membership organization in 1983 to conserve wild land and wild places. It has more than 11,000 members internationally.


title: John Muir

text: The John Muir Birthplace Charitable Trust is a Scottish charity whose aim is to support John Muir's birthplace in Dunbar, which opened in 2003 as an interpretative centre focused on Muir's work. A statue of Muir as a boy by the Ukrainian sculptor Valentin Znoba had been unveiled outside the house in 1997.


title: John Muir

text: Muirite (a mineral), "Erigeron muirii", "Carlquistia muirii" (two species of aster), "Ivesia muirii" (a member of the rose family), "Troglodytes troglodytes muiri" (a wren), "Ochotona princeps muiri" (a pika), "Thecla muirii" (a butterfly), "Calamagrostis muiriana (a Sierra Nevada subalpine-alpine grass)" and "Amplaria muiri" (a millipede) were all named after John Muir.


title: John Muir

text: In 2006, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.


title: Peerage of England

text: The Peerage of England comprises all peerages created in the Kingdom of England before the Act of Union in 1707. In that year, the Peerages of England and Scotland were replaced by one Peerage of Great Britain. There are five peerages in the United Kingdom in total.


title: Peerage of England

text: English Peeresses obtained their first seats in the House of Lords under the Peerage Act 1963 from which date until the passage of the House of Lords Act 1999 all Peers of England could sit in the House of Lords.


title: Peerage of England

text: The ranks of the English peerage are, in descending order, duke, marquess, earl, viscount, and baron. While most newer English peerages descend only in the male line, many of the older ones (particularly older baronies) can descend through females. Such peerages follow the old English inheritance law of moieties so all daughters (or granddaughters through the same root) stand as co-heirs, so some such titles are in such a state of abeyance between these.


title: Peerage of England

text: Baronets, while holders of hereditary titles, as such are not peers and not entitled to stand for election in the House of Lords. Knights, dames and holders of other non-hereditary orders, decorations, and medals are also not peers.


title: Peerage of England

text: The following tables only show extant peerages. For lists of every peerage created at a particular rank, including extinct, dormant, and abeyant peerages, see:


title: Peerage of England

text: Each peer is listed only by their highest English title. Peers known by a higher title in one of the other peerages are shown in blue, and peers with more than one title of the same rank in the Peerage of England are shown in orange.


title: John W. Henry

text: John William Henry II (born September 13, 1949) is an American businessman and investor and the founder of John W. Henry & Company, an investment management firm. He is the principal owner of Liverpool Football Club, the Boston Red Sox, "The Boston Globe", and co-owner of RFK Racing. As of November 2021, "Forbes" estimated his net worth to be $3.6 billion.


title: John W. Henry

text: John William Henry II was born on September 13, 1949 in Quincy, Illinois. His parents were soybean farmers, and he split his time growing up between Illinois and Arkansas. His asthmatic condition at the age of 15 prompted his family to move to Apple Valley, California. After his graduation from Victor Valley High School in Victorville, he attended Victor Valley College, then the University of California (at Riverside, Irvine, and Los Angeles), where he majored in philosophy but did not graduate — partly the result of performing on the road in two bands, Elysian Fields and Hillary.


title: John W. Henry

text: Henry started trading corn and soybean futures to learn the basics of hedging the price risk of holding an inventory of these commodities, whether in storage or out in the field. In 1976, a commodities broker at Reynolds Securities asked him to advise other farmers, but he declined. After spending a summer in Norway with his first wife, Mai, Henry developed a mechanical trend following method for managing a futures trading account. He tested his trend-reversal method—which was never out of the market but always held a position (either long or short) in every one of the markets in the account's "basket" of commodities—"using his own money" (in the words of his marketing literature of 1983). When that test proved successful, he founded John W. Henry & Company in 1981, opened a small office across the street from the airport in Irvine, California, and began marketing his management to the largest commodity brokerage firms in America. That proved so successful by 1983 that he moved to considerably larger quarters at Fashion Island in Newport Beach. In 1989, Henry moved to Westport, Connecticut. Two years later, Henry established a second office in Boca Raton.


title: John W. Henry

text: The firm's management methods make mechanical, non-discretionary trading decisions in response to systematic determinations of reversals in each market's direction, with the explicit intention of precluding not only human emotion, but also any subjective evaluation of factors outside of price behavior (such as the so-called fundamentals), to trigger each decision to be long or short each market, or not.


title: John W. Henry

text: In March 2006, "Boston" estimated Henry's net worth at $1.1 billion but noted that his firm had recently experienced difficulties.


title: John W. Henry

text: On November 9, 2012, the firm announced that it would stop managing clients' money by December 31, 2012, and Henry confirmed that total assets under the firm's management had fallen from $2.5 billion in 2006 to less than $100 million as of late 2012.


title: John W. Henry

text: John W. Henry grew up a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, especially their star Stan Musial. After acquiring his fortune, his first foray into professional sports was in purchasing a Minor League Baseball team, the Tucson Toros of the Pacific Coast League, in 1989. He was also one of the founders of the Senior Professional Baseball Association, a winter league in Florida composed of retired major league players. Henry co-owned the winning team in the 1989–90 season, the West Palm Beach Tropics, managed by former Boston Red Sox "Impossible Dream" (1967) manager, Dick Williams. Henry sold his interest in 1990, and the league went out of business the following year. In 1990, Henry negotiated to purchase the Orlando Magic NBA team, for a short time was the lead general for an expansion team which became the Colorado Rockies, and headed a group attempting to land an NHL expansion bid in Florida, which would eventually be given to Phil and Tony Esposito, who created the Tampa Bay Lightning. Subsequently, Henry negotiated to buy the Miami Heat and later the New Jersey Nets.


title: John W. Henry

text: Henry entered Major League Baseball with his purchase of a small interest in the New York Yankees in 1991. Henry became the sole owner of the Florida Marlins in 1999, purchasing the club from Wayne Huizenga for a reported $158 million. In January 2002, Henry sold the Marlins in a multi-franchise deal to Jeffrey Loria, then owner of the Montreal Expos (now the Washington Nationals).


title: John W. Henry

text: Following his sale of the Marlins, Henry led a purchase of the Boston Red Sox with partners Tom Werner and the New York Times Company from the Yawkey Trust headed by John Harrington. Henry, as principal owner and Werner, as chairman, assembled a front office team headed up by Larry Lucchino with the express goal of "breaking the Curse of the Bambino." He also hired baseball sabermetrics pioneer Bill James, whose work became widely known following the publication of "Moneyball" in 2003. Henry accomplished his championship goal in the 2004 World Series, against his former childhood favorite Cardinals, and beat the Cardinals again in 2013. The team also won the 2007 World Series against a franchise with which Henry had pre-expansion involvement, the Rockies, and the 2018 World Series against the Dodgers. Henry is also responsible for saving Fenway Park from the wrecking ball. The previous Red Sox owners had planned on building a new Fenway Park next door, but Henry chose to keep and renovate (including new seats over the Green Monster) the current Fenway Park, which celebrated its centennial in 2012.


title: John W. Henry

text: Henry was in the news in August 2017, when he said the team would lead a campaign to change the name of Yawkey Way, where Fenway Park is located. The Red Sox had been the last team in Major League Baseball to integrate, and Henry said, "I am still haunted by what went on here a long time before we arrived." The change was approved by the City of Boston in April 2018, and the name reverted to Jersey Street in May 2018.


title: John W. Henry

text: Henry and Werner established New England Sports Ventures in 2001. The company owns the Boston Red Sox, 80% of the New England Sports Network (which also carries the NHL's Boston Bruins), Fenway Park, Fenway Sports Management (a sports marketing and management firm), various real estate properties surrounding Fenway Park, English Football club Liverpool F.C., and are majority owners of the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League.


title: John W. Henry

text: In 2009, the company made its first foray into European sports with an unsuccessful bid for the French Ligue 1 club Olympique de Marseille.


title: John W. Henry

text: In October 2010 the Fenway Sports Group took over Liverpool F.C. The UEFA Financial Fair Play Regulations may have been a factor in the decision. The previous owners, Tom Hicks and George N. Gillett, Jr., had become extremely unpopular among Liverpool fans for their failure to deliver on the promise of a new stadium or on the promise that no debt would be placed onto the club, as well as disrespectful treatment of its manager and front office and for their allegedly misleading statements about planned and past investment in players. Having lost around £154 million on the pressured sale of their debt-ridden club, Hicks and Gillett announced that they would sue co-owners and creditors for at least $1.6 billion for the "extraordinary swindle" they suffered. In January 2013, Hicks and Gillett had lost a Court of Appeal case and agreed to drop the suit.


title: John W. Henry

text: On February 26, 2012 Liverpool won the 2012 Football League Cup Final at Wembley Stadium, beating Cardiff City 3–2 on penalties after the game finished 1–1 after 90 minutes and 2–2 after extra time. This was Liverpool's first trophy since the 2006 FA Cup Final win over West Ham United on May 13, 2006 at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. In May 2012 he made a controversial decision by firing manager and club icon Kenny Dalglish citing the club's poor league results. This was regarded as a poor decision by some football pundits such as Dalglish's friend Alan Hansen, given Dalglish's success in lifting the club from four points above the relegation zone to a cup win. In July 2012, after successfully persuading Brendan Rodgers to become the new manager, John Henry stated the reason behind parting company with Dalglish had not been due to failing to win the FA Cup, nor the Suarez case (as assumed by Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson), but due to the club's poor league performance in the second half of the 2011–12 season.


title: John W. Henry

text: Rodgers almost took Liverpool to their first Premier League title in over 20 years during the 2013–14 season; however, poor performances in the subsequent season and a bad start to the 2015–16 season saw Henry sack Brendan Rodgers as Liverpool manager on October 4, 2015. On October 8, 2015, Henry appointed Jürgen Klopp as the new manager of Liverpool F.C. The move was praised by Liverpool supporters and seen as a show of Henry's ambition for the club. Klopp led Liverpool to two finals during the 2015-16 season (the League Cup and the Europa League). In 2018 Liverpool reached the Champions League final for the first time in 11 years. In 2019 Liverpool reached the Champions League Final for the second consecutive year and won it, beating fellow English club Tottenham Hotspur, 2–0. Liverpool went on to win the Premier League title in the 2019-20 season; Liverpool's first league title in 30 years, and their first since the Premier League was formed.


title: John W. Henry

text: In April 2021, Liverpool were announced as a founding member of the European Super League, which would have effectively ended the pyramid system of European football and placed Liverpool in a closed league without prospects for meritocratic relegation and promotion. Liverpool and the five other English clubs involved backed out within two days after a strong backlash. This prompted Henry to issue an official apology to Liverpool fans, taking responsibility for the events that had occurred.


title: John W. Henry

text: In 2007, Henry's Fenway Sports Group bought a 50% stake in Jack Roush's Roush Racing stock car racing team. Driver Matt Kenseth won the Auto Club 500 at the California Speedway in February 2007 marking Henry's first win as an owner. In February 2009 the team won their first Daytona 500 with Matt Kenseth. Henry is currently listed as the owner of the #17 Ford driven by NASCAR Cup Series driver Chris Buescher.


title: John W. Henry

text: In September 2004 Henry and David Kaemmer founded iRacing.com Motorsport Simulations for developing a racing simulation service aimed at both real-world racers and racing simulator enthusiasts. The service was launched in August 2008.


title: John W. Henry

text: In the predawn hours of August 3, 2013, both "The Boston Globe" and "The New York Times" carried stories on their web sites reporting that Henry had agreed to purchase the former along with the "Telegram & Gazette" newspaper of Worcester, Massachusetts and related New England media properties for $70 million in cash from The New York Times Company, which had paid $1.1 billion for "The Globe" in 1993. The "Globe"s story described Henry as "a personally shy businessman with a history of bold bets." The "Times" story quoted "Times" spokesperson Eileen Murphy as confirming the sale deal.


title: John W. Henry

text: The stories noted that Henry had initially been among a group of partners who had joined in bidding on "The Globe" properties, but ended up agreeing to acquire them individually. However, "The Times" story reported him saying: "In coming days there will be announcements concerning those joining me in this community commitment and effort."


title: John W. Henry

text: After the announcement, the ownership of "The San Diego Union-Tribune" (then known as "U-T San Diego") alleged that it had outbid Henry for "The Globe" but that the management of The Times Company had not fairly handled the process, to the detriment of Times Company shareholders.


title: John W. Henry

text: In 2014, Henry sold the Worcester "Telegram & Gazette" to Halifax Media Group, which had previously purchased 16 former New York Times Company newspapers in 2011.


title: John W. Henry

text: Henry was briefly portrayed by Arliss Howard in the 2011 film "Moneyball", which follows Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane and his quest to build a winning team in 2002. Towards the end of the film, Beane travels to Boston's Fenway Park where he meets with Henry, who wants Beane to become the new GM of the Red Sox. The film notes that Beane turned down a five-year, $12.5 million contract with Boston and returned to Oakland, but adds that the Red Sox, despite failing to hire Beane, did implement many of his "Moneyball" ideas and would go on to win the 2004 World Series, marking the first Red Sox championship in 86 years.


title: History of photography

text: The history of photography began in remote antiquity with the discovery of two critical principles: camera obscura image projection and the observation that some substances are visibly altered by exposure to light. There are no artifacts or descriptions that indicate any attempt to capture images with light sensitive materials prior to the 18th century.


title: History of photography

text: Around 1717, Johann Heinrich Schulze captured cut-out letters on a bottle of a light-sensitive slurry, but he apparently never thought of making the results durable. Around 1800, Thomas Wedgwood made the first reliably documented, although unsuccessful attempt at capturing camera images in permanent form. His experiments did produce detailed photograms, but Wedgwood and his associate Humphry Davy found no way to fix these images.


title: History of photography

text: In 1826, Nicéphore Niépce first managed to fix an image that was captured with a camera, but at least eight hours or even several days of exposure in the camera were required and the earliest results were very crude. Niépce's associate Louis Daguerre went on to develop the daguerreotype process, the first publicly announced and commercially viable photographic process. The daguerreotype required only minutes of exposure in the camera, and produced clear, finely detailed results. The details were introduced to the world in 1839, a date generally accepted as the birth year of practical photography.


title: History of photography

text: The metal-based daguerreotype process soon had some competition from the paper-based calotype negative and salt print processes invented by William Henry Fox Talbot and demonstrated in 1839 soon after news about the daguerreotype reached Talbot. Subsequent innovations made photography easier and more versatile. New materials reduced the required camera exposure time from minutes to seconds, and eventually to a small fraction of a second; new photographic media were more economical, sensitive or convenient. Since the 1850s, the collodion process with its glass-based photographic plates combined the high quality known from the Daguerreotype with the multiple print options known from the calotype and was commonly used for decades. Roll films popularized casual use by amateurs. In the mid-20th century, developments made it possible for amateurs to take pictures in natural color as well as in black-and-white.


title: History of photography

text: The commercial introduction of computer-based electronic digital cameras in the 1990s soon revolutionized photography. During the first decade of the 21st century, traditional film-based photochemical methods were increasingly marginalized as the practical advantages of the new technology became widely appreciated and the image quality of moderately priced digital cameras was continually improved. Especially since cameras became a standard feature on smartphones, taking pictures (and instantly publishing them online) has become a ubiquitous everyday practice around the world.


title: History of photography

text: The coining of the word "photography" is usually attributed to Sir John Herschel in 1839. It is based on the Greek "φῶς" ("phōs"; genitive "phōtos"), meaning "light", and "γραφή" ("graphê"), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing of light".


title: History of photography

text: A natural phenomenon, known as camera obscura or pinhole image, can project a (reversed) image through a small opening onto an opposite surface. This principle may have been known and used in prehistoric times. The earliest known written record of the camera obscura is to be found in Chinese writings by Mozi, dated to the 4th century BCE. Until the 16th century the camera obscura was mainly used to study optics and astronomy, especially to safely watch solar eclipses without damaging the eyes.


title: History of photography

text: In the later half of the 16th century some technical improvements were developed: a biconvex lens in the opening (first described by Gerolamo Cardano in 1550) and a diaphragm restricting the aperture (Daniel Barbaro in 1568) gave a brighter and sharper image. In 1558 Giambattista della Porta advised using the camera obscura as a drawing aid in his popular and influential books. Della Porta's advice was widely adopted by artists and since the 17th century portable versions of the camera obscura were commonly used — first as a tent, later as boxes. The box type camera obscura was the basis for the earliest photographic cameras when photography was developed in the early 19th century.


title: History of photography

text: The notion that light can affect various substances — for instance, the sun tanning of skin or fading of textile — must have been around since very early times. Ideas of fixing the images seen in mirrors or other ways of creating images automatically may also have been in people's minds long before anything like photography was developed. However, there seem to be no historical records of any ideas even remotely resembling photography before 1700, despite early knowledge of light-sensitive materials and the camera obscura.


title: History of photography

text: In 1614 Angelo Sala noted that sunlight will turn powdered silver nitrate black, and that paper wrapped around silver nitrate for a year will turn black.


title: History of photography

text: Around 1717, German polymath Johann Heinrich Schulze accidentally discovered that a slurry of chalk and nitric acid into which some silver particles had been dissolved was darkened by sunlight. After experiments with threads that had created lines on the bottled substance after he placed it in direct sunlight for a while, he applied stencils of words to the bottle. The stencils produced copies of the text in dark red, almost violet characters on the surface of the otherwise whitish contents. The impressions persisted until they were erased by shaking the bottle or until overall exposure to light obliterated them. Schulze named the substance "Scotophors" when he published his findings in 1719. He thought the discovery could be applied to detect whether metals or minerals contained any silver and hoped that further experimentation by others would lead to some other useful results. Schulze's process resembled later photogram techniques and is sometimes regarded as the very first form of photography.


title: History of photography

text: The early science fiction novel "Giphantie" (1760) by the Frenchman Tiphaigne de la Roche described something quite similar to (color) photography, a process that fixes fleeting images formed by rays of light: "They coat a piece of canvas with this material, and place it in front of the object to capture. The first effect of this cloth is similar to that of a mirror, but by means of its viscous nature the prepared canvas, as is not the case with the mirror, retains a facsimile of the image. The mirror represents images faithfully, but retains none; our canvas reflects them no less faithfully, but retains them all. This impression of the image is instantaneous. The canvas is then removed and deposited in a dark place. An hour later the impression is dry, and you have a picture the more precious in that no art can imitate its truthfulness." De la Roche thus imagined a process that made use of a special substance in combination with the qualities of a mirror, rather than the camera obscura. The dark place in which the pictures dried suggests that he thought about the light sensitivity of the material, but he attributed the effect to its viscous nature.


title: History of photography

text: In 1777, the chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele was studying the more intrinsically light-sensitive silver chloride and determined that light darkened it by disintegrating it into microscopic dark particles of metallic silver. Of greater potential usefulness, Scheele found that ammonia dissolved the silver chloride, but not the dark particles. This discovery could have been used to stabilize or "fix" a camera image captured with silver chloride, but was not picked up by the earliest photography experimenters.


title: History of photography

text: Scheele also noted that red light did not have much effect on silver chloride, a phenomenon that would later be applied in photographic darkrooms as a method of seeing black-and-white prints without harming their development.


title: History of photography

text: Although Thomas Wedgwood felt inspired by Scheele's writings in general, he must have missed or forgotten these experiments; he found no method to fix the photogram and shadow images he managed to capture around 1800 (see below).


title: History of photography

text: Elizabeth Fulhame's book "An essay on combustion" described her experiments of the effects of light on silver salts. She is better known for her discovery of what is now called catalysis, but Larry J. Schaaf in his history of photography considered her work on silver chemistry to represent a major step in the development of photography.


title: History of photography

text: English photographer and inventor Thomas Wedgwood is believed to have been the first person to have thought of creating permanent pictures by capturing camera images on material coated with a light-sensitive chemical. He originally wanted to capture the images of a camera obscura, but found they were too faint to have an effect upon the silver nitrate solution that was recommended to him as a light-sensitive substance. Wedgwood did manage to copy painted glass plates and captured shadows on white leather, as well as on paper moistened with a silver nitrate solution. Attempts to preserve the results with their "distinct tints of brown or black, sensibly differing in intensity" failed.


title: History of photography

text: It is unclear when Wedgwood's experiments took place. He may have started before 1790; James Watt wrote a letter to Thomas Wedgwood's father Josiah Wedgwood to thank him "for your instructions as to the Silver Pictures, about which, when at home, I will make some experiments". This letter (now lost) is believed to have been written in 1790, 1791 or 1799. In 1802, an account by Humphry Davy detailing Wedgwood's experiments was published in an early journal of the Royal Institution with the title "An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of Making Profiles, by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver".


title: History of photography

text: Davy added that the method could be used for objects that are partly opaque and partly transparent to create accurate representations of, for instance, "the woody fibres of leaves and the wings of insects". He also found that solar microscope images of small objects were easily captured on prepared paper. Davy, apparently unaware or forgetful of Scheele's discovery, concluded that substances should be found to eliminate (or deactivate) the unexposed particles in silver nitrate or silver chloride "to render the process as useful as it is elegant". Wedgwood may have prematurely abandoned his experiments because of his frail and failing health. He died at age 34 in 1805.


title: History of photography

text: Davy seems not to have continued the experiments. Although the journal of the nascent Royal Institution probably reached its very small group of members, the article must have been read eventually by many more people. It was reviewed by David Brewster in the "Edinburgh Magazine" in December 1802, appeared in chemistry textbooks as early as 1803, was translated into French and was published in German in 1811. Readers of the article may have been discouraged to find a fixer, because the highly acclaimed scientist Davy had already tried and failed. Apparently the article was not noted by Niépce or Daguerre, and by Talbot only after he had developed his own processes.


title: History of photography

text: French balloonist, professor and inventor Jacques Charles is believed to have captured fleeting negative photograms of silhouettes on light-sensitive paper at the start of the 19th century, prior to Wedgwood. Charles died in 1823 without having documented the process, but purportedly demonstrated it in his lectures at the Louvre. It was not publicized until François Arago mentioned it at his introduction of the details of the daguerreotype to the world in 1839. He later wrote that the first idea of fixing the images of the camera obscura or the solar microscope with chemical substances belonged to Charles. Later historians probably only built on Arago's information, and, much later, the unsupported year 1780 was attached to it. As Arago indicated the first years of the 19th century and a date prior to the 1802 publication of Wedgwood's process, this would mean that Charles' demonstrations took place in 1800 or 1801, assuming that Arago was this accurate almost 40 years later.


title: History of photography

text: In 1816, Nicéphore Niépce, using paper coated with silver chloride, succeeded in photographing the images formed in a small camera, but the photographs were negatives, darkest where the camera image was lightest and vice versa, and they were not permanent in the sense of being reasonably light-fast; like earlier experimenters, Niépce could find no way to prevent the coating from darkening all over when it was exposed to light for viewing. Disenchanted with silver salts, he turned his attention to light-sensitive organic substances.


title: History of photography

text: The oldest surviving photograph of the image formed in a camera was created by Niépce in 1826 or 1827. It was made on a polished sheet of pewter and the light-sensitive substance was a thin coating of bitumen, a naturally occurring petroleum tar, which was dissolved in lavender oil, applied to the surface of the pewter and allowed to dry before use. After a very long exposure in the camera (traditionally said to be eight hours, but now believed to be several days), the bitumen was sufficiently hardened in proportion to its exposure to light that the unhardened part could be removed with a solvent, leaving a positive image with the light areas represented by hardened bitumen and the dark areas by bare pewter. To see the image plainly, the plate had to be lit and viewed in such a way that the bare metal appeared dark and the bitumen relatively light.


title: History of photography

text: In partnership, Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône and Louis Daguerre in Paris refined the bitumen process, substituting a more sensitive resin and a very different post-exposure treatment that yielded higher-quality and more easily viewed images. Exposure times in the camera, although substantially reduced, were still measured in hours.


title: History of photography

text: Niépce died suddenly in 1833, leaving his notes to Daguerre. More interested in silver-based processes than Niépce had been, Daguerre experimented with photographing camera images directly onto a mirror-like silver-surfaced plate that had been fumed with iodine vapor, which reacted with the silver to form a coating of silver iodide. As with the bitumen process, the result appeared as a positive when it was suitably lit and viewed. Exposure times were still impractically long until Daguerre made the pivotal discovery that an invisibly slight or "latent" image produced on such a plate by a much shorter exposure could be "developed" to full visibility by mercury fumes. This brought the required exposure time down to a few minutes under optimum conditions. A strong hot solution of common salt served to stabilize or fix the image by removing the remaining silver iodide. On 7 January 1839, this first complete practical photographic process was announced at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, and the news quickly spread. At first, all details of the process were withheld and specimens were shown only at Daguerre's studio, under his close supervision, to Academy members and other distinguished guests. Arrangements were made for the French government to buy the rights in exchange for pensions for Niépce's son and Daguerre and present the invention to the world (with the exception of Great Britain, where an agent for Daguerre patented it) as a free gift. Complete instructions were made public on 19 August 1839. Known as the daguerreotype process, it was the most common commercial process until the late 1850s when it was superseded by the collodion process.


title: History of photography

text: French-born Hércules Florence developed his own photographic technique in 1832 or 1833 in Brazil, with some help of pharmacist Joaquim Corrêa de Mello (1816–1877). Looking for another method to copy graphic designs he captured their images on paper treated with silver nitrate as contact prints or in a camera obscura device. He did not manage to properly fix his images and abandoned the project after hearing of the Daguerreotype process in 1839 and didn't properly publish any of his findings. He reportedly referred to the technique as "photographie" (in French) as early as 1833, also helped by a suggestion of De Mello. Some extant photographic contact prints are believed to have been made in circa 1833 and kept in the collection of IMS.Henry Fox Talbot had already succeeded in creating stabilized photographic negatives on paper in 1835, but worked on perfecting his own process after reading early reports of Daguerre's invention. In early 1839, he acquired a key improvement, an effective fixer, from his friend John Herschel, a polymath scientist who had previously shown that hyposulfite of soda (commonly called "hypo" and now known formally as sodium thiosulfate) would dissolve silver salts. News of this solvent also benefited Daguerre, who soon adopted it as a more efficient alternative to his original hot salt water method.


title: History of photography

text: Talbot's early silver chloride "sensitive paper" experiments required camera exposures of an hour or more. In 1841, Talbot invented the calotype process, which, like Daguerre's process, used the principle of chemical development of a faint or invisible "latent" image to reduce the exposure time to a few minutes. Paper with a coating of silver iodide was exposed in the camera and developed into a translucent negative image. Unlike a daguerreotype, which could only be copied by photographing it with a camera, a calotype negative could be used to make a large number of positive prints by simple contact printing. The calotype had yet another distinction compared to other early photographic processes, in that the finished product lacked fine clarity due to its translucent paper negative. This was seen as a positive attribute for portraits because it softened the appearance of the human face. Talbot patented this process, which greatly limited its adoption, and spent many years pressing lawsuits against alleged infringers. He attempted to enforce a very broad interpretation of his patent, earning himself the ill will of photographers who were using the related glass-based processes later introduced by other inventors, but he was eventually defeated. Nonetheless, Talbot's developed-out silver halide negative process is the basic technology used by chemical film cameras today. Hippolyte Bayard had also developed a method of photography but delayed announcing it, and so was not recognized as its inventor.


title: History of photography

text: In 1839, John Herschel made the first glass negative, but his process was difficult to reproduce. Slovene Janez Puhar invented a process for making photographs on glass in 1841; it was recognized on June 17, 1852 in Paris by the Académie National Agricole, Manufacturière et Commerciale. In 1847, Nicephore Niépce's cousin, the chemist Niépce St. Victor, published his invention of a process for making glass plates with an albumen emulsion; the Langenheim brothers of Philadelphia and John Whipple and William Breed Jones of Boston also invented workable negative-on-glass processes in the mid-1840s.


title: History of photography

text: In 1851, English sculptor Frederick Scott Archer invented the collodion process. Photographer and children's author Lewis Carroll used this process. Carroll refers to the process as "Talbotype" in the story "A Photographer's Day Out".


title: History of photography

text: Herbert Bowyer Berkeley experimented with his own version of collodion emulsions after Samman introduced the idea of adding dithionite to the pyrogallol developer. Berkeley discovered that with his own addition of sulfite, to absorb the sulfur dioxide given off by the chemical dithionite in the developer, dithionite was not required in the developing process. In 1881, he published his discovery. Berkeley's formula contained pyrogallol, sulfite, and citric acid. Ammonia was added just before use to make the formula alkaline. The new formula was sold by the Platinotype Company in London as Sulphur-Pyrogallol Developer.


title: History of photography

text: Nineteenth-century experimentation with photographic processes frequently became proprietary. The German-born, New Orleans photographer Theodore Lilienthal successfully sought legal redress in an 1881 infringement case involving his "Lambert Process" in the Eastern District of Louisiana.


title: History of photography

text: The daguerreotype proved popular in response to the demand for portraiture that emerged from the middle classes during the Industrial Revolution. This demand, which could not be met in volume and in cost by oil painting, added to the push for the development of photography.


title: History of photography

text: Roger Fenton and Philip Henry Delamotte helped popularize the new way of recording events, the first by his Crimean War pictures, the second by his record of the disassembly and reconstruction of The Crystal Palace in London. Other mid-nineteenth-century photographers established the medium as a more precise means than engraving or lithography of making a record of landscapes and architecture: for example, Robert Macpherson's broad range of photographs of Rome, the interior of the Vatican, and the surrounding countryside became a sophisticated tourist's visual record of his own travels.


title: History of photography

text: In 1839, François Arago reported the invention of photography to stunned listeners by displaying the first photo taken in Egypt; that of Ras El Tin Palace.


title: History of photography

text: In America, by 1851 a broadsheet by daguerreotypist Augustus Washington was advertising prices ranging from 50 cents to $10. However, daguerreotypes were fragile and difficult to copy. Photographers encouraged chemists to refine the process of making many copies cheaply, which eventually led them back to Talbot's process.


title: History of photography

text: Ultimately, the photographic process came about from a series of refinements and improvements in the first 20 years. In 1884 George Eastman, of Rochester, New York, developed dry gel on paper, or film, to replace the photographic plate so that a photographer no longer needed to carry boxes of plates and toxic chemicals around. In July 1888 Eastman's Kodak camera went on the market with the slogan "You press the button, we do the rest". Now anyone could take a photograph and leave the complex parts of the process to others, and photography became available for the mass-market in 1901 with the introduction of the Kodak Brownie.


title: History of photography

text: Charles Wheatstone developed his mirror stereoscope around 1832, but did not really publicize his invention until June 1838. He recognized the possibility of a combination with photography soon after Daguerre and Talbot announced their inventions and got Henry Fox Talbot to produce some calotype pairs for the stereoscope. He received the first results in October 1840, but was not fully satisfied as the angle between the shots was very big. Between 1841 and 1842 Henry Collen made calotypes of statues, buildings and portraits, including a portrait of Charles Babbage shot in August 1841. Wheatstone also obtained daguerreotype stereograms from Mr. Beard in 1841 and from Hippolyte Fizeau and Antoine Claudet in 1842. None of these have yet been located.


title: History of photography

text: David Brewster developed a stereoscope with lenses and a binocular camera in 1844. He presented two stereoscopic self portraits made by John Adamson in March 1849. A stereoscopic portrait of Adamson in the University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, dated "circa 1845', may be one of these sets. A stereoscopic daguerreotype portrait of Michael Faraday in Kingston College's Wheatstone collection and on loan to Bradford National Media Museum, dated "circa 1848", may be older.


title: History of photography

text: A practical means of color photography was sought from the very beginning. Results were demonstrated by Edmond Becquerel as early as the year of 1848, but exposures lasting for hours or days were required and the captured colors were so light-sensitive they would only bear very brief inspection in dim light.


title: History of photography

text: The first durable color photograph was a set of three black-and-white photographs taken through red, green, and blue color filters and shown superimposed by using three projectors with similar filters. It was taken by Thomas Sutton in 1861 for use in a lecture by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, who had proposed the method in 1855. The photographic emulsions then in use were insensitive to most of the spectrum, so the result was very imperfect and the demonstration was soon forgotten. Maxwell's method is now most widely known through the early 20th century work of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii. It was made practical by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel's 1873 discovery of a way to make emulsions sensitive to the rest of the spectrum, gradually introduced into commercial use beginning in the mid-1880s.


title: History of photography

text: Two French inventors, Louis Ducos du Hauron and Charles Cros, working unknown to each other during the 1860s, famously unveiled their nearly identical ideas on the same day in 1869. Included were methods for viewing a set of three color-filtered black-and-white photographs in color without having to project them, and for using them to make full-color prints on paper.


title: History of photography

text: The first widely used method of color photography was the Autochrome plate, a process inventors and brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière began working on in the 1890s and commercially introduced in 1907. It was based on one of Louis Duclos du Haroun's ideas: instead of taking three separate photographs through color filters, take one through a mosaic of tiny color filters overlaid on the emulsion and view the results through an identical mosaic. If the individual filter elements were small enough, the three primary colors of red, blue, and green would blend together in the eye and produce the same additive color synthesis as the filtered projection of three separate photographs.


title: History of photography

text: Autochrome plates had an integral mosaic filter layer with roughly five million previously dyed potato grains per square inch added to the surface. Then through the use of a rolling press, five tons of pressure were used to flatten the grains, enabling every one of them to capture and absorb color and their microscopic size allowing the illusion that the colors are merged. The final step was adding a coat of the light-capturing substance silver bromide, after which a color image could be imprinted and developed. In order to see it, reversal processing was used to develop each plate into a transparent positive that could be viewed directly or projected with an ordinary projector. One of the drawbacks of the technology was an exposure time of at least a second in bright daylight, with the time required quickly increasing in poor light. An indoor portrait required several minutes with the subject stationary. This was because the grains absorbed color fairly slowly, and a filter of a yellowish-orange color was required to keep the photograph from coming out excessively blue. Although necessary, the filter had the effect of reducing the amount of light that was absorbed. Another drawback was that the image could only be enlarged so much before the many dots that made up the image would become apparent.


title: History of photography

text: Competing screen plate products soon appeared, and film-based versions were eventually made. All were expensive, and until the 1930s none was "fast" enough for hand-held snapshot-taking, so they mostly served a niche market of affluent advanced amateurs.


title: History of photography

text: A new era in color photography began with the introduction of Kodachrome film, available for 16 mm home movies in 1935 and 35 mm slides in 1936. It captured the red, green, and blue color components in three layers of emulsion. A complex processing operation produced complementary cyan, magenta, and yellow dye images in those layers, resulting in a subtractive color image. Maxwell's method of taking three separate filtered black-and-white photographs continued to serve special purposes into the 1950s and beyond, and Polachrome, an "instant" slide film that used the Autochrome's additive principle, was available until 2003, but the few color print and slide films still being made in 2015 all use the multilayer emulsion approach pioneered by Kodachrome.


title: History of photography

text: In 1957, a team led by Russell A. Kirsch at the National Institute of Standards and Technology developed a binary digital version of an existing technology, the wirephoto drum scanner, so that alphanumeric characters, diagrams, photographs and other graphics could be transferred into digital computer memory. One of the first photographs scanned was a picture of Kirsch's infant son Walden. The resolution was 176x176 pixels with only one bit per pixel, i.e., stark black and white with no intermediate gray tones, but by combining multiple scans of the photograph done with different black-white threshold settings, grayscale information could also be acquired.


title: History of photography

text: The charge-coupled device (CCD) is the image-capturing optoelectronic component in first-generation digital cameras. It was invented in 1969 by Willard Boyle and George E. Smith at AT&T Bell Labs as a memory device. The lab was working on the Picturephone and on the development of semiconductor bubble memory. Merging these two initiatives, Boyle and Smith conceived of the design of what they termed "Charge 'Bubble' Devices". The essence of the design was the ability to transfer charge along the surface of a semiconductor. It was Dr. Michael Tompsett from Bell Labs however, who discovered that the CCD could be used as an imaging sensor. The CCD has increasingly been replaced by the active pixel sensor (APS), commonly used in cell phone cameras. These mobile phone cameras are used by billions of people worldwide, dramatically increasing photographic activity and material and also fueling citizen journalism.


title: History of photography

text: The web has been a popular medium for storing and sharing photos ever since the first photograph was published on the web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1992 (an image of the CERN house band Les Horribles Cernettes). Since then sites and apps such as Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Picasa (discontinued in 2016), Imgur, Photobucket and Snapchat have been used by many millions of people to share their pictures.


title: Schneider Electric

text: Schneider Electric SE is a French multinational company that specializes in digital automation and energy management. It addresses homes, buildings, data centers, infrastructure and industries, by combining energy technologies, real-time automation, software, and services.


title: Schneider Electric

text: Schneider Electric is a Fortune Global 500 company, publicly traded on the Euronext Exchange, and is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. In FY2020, the company posted revenues of €25.2 billion.


title: Schneider Electric

text: Schneider Electric is the parent company of Square D, APC, and others. It is also a research company.


title: Schneider Electric

text: Schneider Electric has had its head office in Rueil-Malmaison, France since 2000. This headquarters previously housed Schneider subsidiary Télémécanique while the parent company occupied a site in Boulogne-Billancourt.


title: Schneider Electric

text: The company uses an international operations model wherein its key personnel and large numbers of its staff are spread across main offices in Reuil-Malmaison, Hong Kong, Noida, and Boston.


title: Schneider Electric

text: In 1836, brothers Adolphe and Joseph-Eugene Schneider took over an abandoned foundry in Le Creusot, France. Two years later, they created Schneider & Cie, focusing primarily on the steel industry. Schneider & Cie rapidly grew, specializing in the production of heavy machinery and transportation equipment. In 1871, following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, it developed a main activity of manufacturing weapons with the encouragement of the government in Paris. It eventually became a complex group with industrial activities in many sites in France and abroad, including in Russia before 1917 and in Czechoslovakia between 1919 and 1938.


title: Schneider Electric

text: In the 1960s, Schneider was absorbed by Belgium's Empain group, which in 1969 merged it with its own corporate structures to form Empain-Schneider. In 1980–1981, the Empain family sold its controlling stake to Paribas, which was in turn nationalized in 1982. In the 1980s and 1990s, the company, by then again named Schneider, divested from steel and shipbuilding and focused mainly on electricity through strategic acquisitions. These included Télémécanique in 1988, Square D in 1991, and in 1992.


title: Schneider Electric

text: 1999: Schneider Group acquired Lexel. In May 1999, the Schneider Group was renamed Schneider Electric.


title: Schneider Electric

text: 2017: Schneider Electric took control of AVEVA Group PLC, a provider of engineering and industrial software based in the UK.


title: Schneider Electric

text: 2018: Schneider Electric acquired Larsen & Toubro's Electrical & Automation (E&A) business in a cash deal for (excluding the marine business and Servowatch Ltd., then currently a part of L&T E&A business).


title: Schneider Electric

text: 2020: In February 2020, Schneider made a €1.4 billion takeover bid for German company RIB Software, closing the deal in July 2020. In September 2020, Schneider Electric launched a new equipment that would help electricity distribution companies in Nigeria to fix grid faults.


title: Schneider Electric

text: Also in 2020, Schneider Electric acquired ProLeiT AG, a supplier of industrial control and MES software.


title: Schneider Electric

text: Schneider made its first attempt to combine with Aveva in 2015. Then, in 2017, Schneider managed to combine with the British Group, Aveva. Indeed, it was agreed that Schneider would take 60% stake in an enlarged industrial software business with Aveva. In 2022, Schneider took over the remaining shares of the British company. Nevertheless, Aveva, whose activities perfectly fit those of Schneider, would still exist as an independent entity.


title: Schneider Electric

text: Since 2019, Schneider Electric has been operating business units: Energy Management, Industrial Automation, and Services.


title: Schneider Electric

text: The Energy Management business provides products for the management of energy in medium voltage and grid automation, low voltage and building automation, secure power and cooling applications.


title: Schneider Electric

text: The Services business includes three divisions: Global Field Services, Energy and Sustainability Services, and Smart grid Services.


title: Schneider Electric

text: In 2016 Schneider Electric launched the next generation of EcoStruxure – an IoT-enabled architecture. The EcoStruxure platform uses Microsoft Azure.


title: Schneider Electric

text: In its Innovation Summit North America, Schneider Electric expressed its aim to assess emerging technologies, support and subsidize startups through guiding them. In FY2021, Schneider Electric announced that its research and development expenses were around 855 million euros.


title: XCOM

text: XCOM (originally called "X-COM") is a science fiction video game franchise featuring an elite international organization tasked with countering alien invasions of Earth. The series began with the strategy video game "" created by Julian Gollop's Mythos Games and MicroProse in 1994. The original lineup by MicroProse included six published and at least two canceled games, as well as two novels. The "X-COM" series, in particular its original entry, achieved a sizable cult following and has influenced many other video games; including the creation of a number of clones, spiritual successors, and unofficial remakes.


title: XCOM

text: A reboot series was published by 2K Games, beginning with the strategy video game "", developed by Firaxis Games and released in 2012 to critical and commercial success. It was followed by the prequel "" and the sequels "XCOM 2" and "".


title: XCOM

text: The "X-COM" core series consisted of four main games published by MicroProse: "" (also known as "X-COM: UFO Defense", PC and Amiga in 1994, Sony PlayStation in 1995), "" (PC in 1995, PlayStation in 1996), "" (PC in 1997) and "" (PC in 1998). The premise of the franchise is that an alien invasion beginning in 1999 prompts the creation of a clandestine paramilitary organization codenamed X-COM (an abbreviation of "Extraterrestrial Combat") by a coalition of funding nations. The player is charged with leading this force and tasked to secretly engage and research the alien threat. The sequels, against new alien invasions, are set underwater ("Terror from the Deep", set in 2040), in a futuristic megacity ("Apocalypse", set in 2084), and in space ("Interceptor", set in 2067 and making it a prequel to "Apocalypse").


title: XCOM

text: "UFO: Enemy Unknown", featuring a turn-based ground combat system, remains the most popular and successful game in the series, having been often featured on various lists of best video games of all time. The first sequel, "Terror from the Deep", was quickly created by MicroProse's internal team; based on the same game engine and used largely identical gameplay mechanics. "Apocalypse" took several new directions with the series, introducing an optional real-time combat system and shifting the aesthetics to a retro-futuristic style. A spin-off game, "Interceptor", constitutes a hybrid of a strategy game and a space combat flight simulator.


title: XCOM

text: After "Interceptor", Hasbro Interactive purchased MicroProse, acquiring its studios and the "X-COM" brand. There were talks of "X-COM" toys, comics, and even a cartoon show. A budget range, turn-based tactical play-by-mail multiplayer game "Em@il Games: X-COM" was released in 1999. In 2001, Hasbro published "", a poorly received third-person shooter loosely based on the events of "Enemy Unknown", marking a low point in the series. The "X-COM" games were also released as part of four compilation releases: "X-COM (Collector's Edition)" (1998), "X-COM Collection" (1999) and "X-COM: Complete Pack" (2008), as well as in "2K Huge Games Pack" in 2009.


title: XCOM

text: At least two more major titles have been planned for this series. One of them was "", a real-time strategy and tactics game "going back to the roots but in full 3D." Another was "" (also known as "X-COM 4" and the project "Fox Force Five"), an "Aliens"-inspired mix of strategy game and first-person perspective tactical shooter, using the licensed original Unreal Engine. However, both of these projects were cancelled after ex-MicroProse Hasbro Interactive studios were all shut down in 1999-2000 (with "Alliance" being later abortively reactivated in 2001-2002 before being quietly cancelled again without any official announcement). Terry Greer, a former senior artist and head of game design at MicroProse UK, disclosed: "We'd also discussed other avenues for future games including time travel, retaking the solar system (with interplanetary distances playing a significant role in recruitment and resources), and resistance movement concept where you had to fight back after the world was taken and humanity was totally under the alien yoke."


title: XCOM

text: "OpenXcom" is an open source re-implementation of the first game in the series intended to fix all the bugs and enable modding. "OpenApoc" is a similar open source project for "X-COM: Apocalypse".


title: XCOM

text: In 2010, 2K Marin announced they were working on re-imagining of "X-COM", relabeled as "XCOM". It was described as a tactical and strategic first-person shooter that would combine elements from the original "X-COM" alongside a new setting and viewpoint while keeping some main concepts from the original game series. The setting received a complete overhaul, now based in the early 1960s, with the original XCOM organization being a secret U.S. federal agency. Originally planned for 2011, the game was repeatedly redesigned by different studios before being finally released in 2013 as "" for Windows, OS X, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.


title: XCOM

text: In 2012, Firaxis Games (led by MicroProse co-founder Sid Meier) announced the development of a Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 strategy game "", a "re-imagination" of "UFO: Enemy Unknown" with real-time strategic view, turn-based combat and destructible tactical environments more in vein of the original "X-COM" game and set in a more contemporary setting than the "XCOM" game by 2K Marin. "XCOM: Enemy Unknown" was released later that same year to critical acclaim, winning multiple "Game of the Year" awards. "X-COM" creator Julian Gollop hailed it as "a phoenix rising from the ashes of the "X-COM" disaster," saying that "it’s amazing that after 20 years, a brand that had gone so badly in the wrong direction has finally been put right." It was also ported to Android, iOS, OS X, Linux, and PlayStation Vita.


title: XCOM

text: In 2013, Firaxis released a downloadable content for the base game "XCOM: Enemy Unknown" titled "". It was made available on Steam (which requires "Enemy Unknown" to play), as well as for iOS, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (those versions are standalone and do not require "Enemy Unknown").


title: XCOM

text: In 2015, Firaxis announced a sequel, "XCOM 2". It was released in 2016 for Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, OS X, and Linux (Later ported to several other platforms, including the Nintendo Switch, but not iOS). Its expansion, "", followed in 2017. The next game in the series, "", was released in April 2020, for Windows. Unlike the global scale of previous games, "Chimera Squad" focused on a specific city, giving the player control of a diverse squad of humans and aliens. The game introduced several changes to game mechanics, such as replacing randomly generated and customizable squad members with preset and unique soldiers, and utilizing "interleaved turns" (mixing turn order between the opposing teams during combat) instead of a team-by-team turn system.


title: XCOM

text: "" was a game for the PC and PlayStation 2 by Julian Gollop's Mythos Games (creators of "UFO: Enemy Unknown" and "X-COM: Apocalypse"), claimed to having been "essentially a remake of the first "X-Com" with 3D graphics." "The Dreamland Chronicles" was canceled in 2001 and Mythos Games soon ceased to exist.


title: XCOM

text: "Laser Squad Nemesis" is a 2002 low-budget PC turn-based tactics game developed by Gollop's next company Codo Technologies and very similar to the turn-based Battlescape combat system of the first "X-COM". In 2005, Codo Technologies and publisher Namco also released "", a Game Boy Advance turn-based tactical role-playing game that too was reminiscent of the early Battlescape system.


title: XCOM

text: "Phoenix Point" is a strategy and turn-based tactics video game for Windows, and OS X that has the open world, strategic layers of the "X-COM" style games of the 1990s like "Enemy Unknown" and "Apocalypse" together with the presentation and tactical mechanics of the more recent Firaxis reboot games. The game was developed by Gollop with Snapshot Games, an independent game studio in Bulgaria. "Phoenix Point", described as a spiritual successor to "X-COM", was released in December 2019.


title: XCOM

text: Two "X-COM" novels have been published based on the first game in the series: Diane Duane's "X-COM: UFO Defense - A Novel" (1995, ) and Vladimir Vasilyev's "Enemy Unknown" (1997). The reboot series' novel is titled "XCOM 2: Resurrection" by Greg Keyes and was published in 2015, bridging the plots of "XCOM" and its sequel. In 2017, a second novel was published with the title "XCOM 2: Escalation" by Rick Barba.


title: XCOM

text: MicroProse's manual/documentation writer John Possidente also wrote three short stories, "Decommissioning", "Manley's Deposition", and "Moray in the Wreck", taking place between the events of the first two games in the series. More recently, "X-COM" co-designer Dave Ellis and artist Jon McCoy released a free online tribute digital comic titled "Deep Rising", with music created by "X-COM" composer John Broomhall.


title: XCOM

text: A board game entitled "", designed by Eric M. Lang and based on the 2012 reboot, was released on January 28, 2015, by Fantasy Flight Games.


title: XCOM

text: The trademark for the "X-COM" name was filed on May 25, 1995, by MicroProse Software. According to Julian Gollop, "They wanted us to do a deal where we would sign over any rights that we might have in return for some cash plus a high royalty on "X-COM: Apocalypse". They more or less insisted on it, otherwise they were threatening to cancel the "Apocalypse" project, so there was a lot of bluff involved." Following the acquisition and subsequent merger of MicroProse with Hasbro, the X-COM intellectual property (IP) was also transferred to Hasbro Interactive on August 19, 1998. Due to financial difficulties, Hasbro Interactive was sold to Infogrames Entertainment SA on January 29, 2001. As part of this transfer, the "X-COM" IP was legally transferred to Infogrames on December 21, 2001 (shortly thereafter, Infogrames was renamed Atari SA). In 2005, Atari SA transferred several IPs to Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. and "X-COM" was transferred with them on June 12, 2005.