title: Sonora

text: To enhance tourism in areas away from the primary beaches, the state of Sonora has set up several tourist routes for promotion as well as gained "Pueblo Mágico" status for one of its smaller cities. The Ruta de las Missiones ("Missions Route") covers the principle stops of Jesuit missionary Eusebio Kino, as the worked to establish the many religious institutions which are part of the state's identity. These include the churches and missions in Caborca, Pitiquito, Oquitoa, Átil, Tubutama, Imuris, Cucurpe and Magdalena. In Magdalena, Father Kino remains are at the Padre Kino mausoleum. The Ruta del Río (River Route) follows a seriers of villages and towns along the Sonora River. The state recommends this route in the fall when the chili pepper and peanut harvest occurs. The route includes the settlements of Ures, Baviácora, Aconchi, San Felipe de Jesús, Huépac, Banámichi, Arizpe, Bacoachi and Cananea. The Ruta de la Sierra Alta ("High Mountain Route") winds its way through the highlands of the Sierra Madre Occidental to see the significant peaks and towns of the area. Destinations include the towns Moctezuma, Villa Hidalgo, Huásabas, Granados, Huachinera, Bavispe, Nácori Chico, Fronteras, Nacozari and Cumpas, which have other attractions such as old haciendas, streams, forests and other forms of nature.


title: Sonora

text: The Ruta Sierra Mar ("Mountain Sea Route") is located in the south of the state among the towns around Álamos, Navojoa and Huatabampo, which contain a large number of colonial-era constructions. Attractions include the above-mentioned cities along with the Adolfo Ruiz Cortínez, Tetajiosa and El Venadito dams and the town of Etchojoa, which are surrounded by areas of desert and areas with tropical vegetation, around the Mayo River. The route begins in the mountains of Álamos and ends at the beaches of Huatabampo. Travelers can engage in a number of activities such as hunting, birdwatching, boating, kayaking and photography. The Ruta Yécora (Yécora Route) leaves from the capital of Hermosillo and makes its way to the town of Yécora, which is one of the highest communities in the mountains of the state. The Yécora area is known for its hunting and the area contains species that can only be found in this part of the state. From Hermosillo to Yécora, there are of highway, which pass through a number of towns and natural vistas. These include La Colorado mine, San José de Pima on the Mátape River, Tecoripa, San Javier which is surrounded by various hills, Tónichi, Ónavas, Tepoca, San Nicolás and the Mesa de Campanero forest.


title: Sonora

text: Sonora has one Pueblo Mágico, which is Álamos, which was called Ostimuri by the native population. This town was founded in 1683, when a mineral deposit by the name of La Europea was discovered. The silver found here made it one of the richest towns in the region. The mines gave out in the 19th century and the town declined. Today, many of the old mansions and other buildings have been restored.


title: Sonora

text: There are also a number of natural reserve areas that are open to visitors and promoted for tourism. These include El Pinacate in the Altar Desert and the Colorado Delta and Upper Gulf of California biosphere reserve. Both of these are near the major resort area of Puerto Peñasco and are some of the driest areas of Mexico.


title: Sonora

text: Much of the state's economic activity is related to its border with the United States state of Arizona. People from both countries regularly cross the border to shop. The border crossings are essential to many of the communities that straddle the border, not only in the main crossings in Nogales and Agua Prieta, but also in the smaller ones such as Naco. On each side of the border, there is a fifteen km strip, which is designated as a commercial trade zone, where both Mexicans and United States citizens can enter with limited visa requirements. Many Arizonans travel and cross one of the crossings to eat and shop, mostly to experience something different from doing the same at home. Most spend only the day. The most popular of these border crossings is Nogales, which is just over an hour south from Tucson by highway. The main shopping street in Nogales is Avenida Obregón, which is crowded with pharmacies with lower prices than in the United States, stores selling knock offs of designer names such as Louis Vuitton, Cuban cigars, tequila, cheaper cigarettes and Mexican handcrafts, including some of the best work from artisans from Puebla, Guadalajara, Michoacán and Oaxaca. Although these stores cater mostly to Americans crossing the border, it is still possible to negotiate prices. Many of these communities on the Mexican side also have bars close to the port of entry, taking advantage of Mexico's lower drinking age of 18.


title: Sonora

text: The more important aspect of the border crossing is the commercial shipping that goes through, especially the Nogales port. There are two crossings at Nogales, one which connects the downtowns of the two cities, mostly for non-commercial traffic, and the Mariposa Port of Entry outside of the twin cities for trucks and commercial traffic. NAFTA increased cross border shipping. Counting traffic going both north and south, the Nogales port handles about three-quarters of all border crossing between Sonora and Arizona. Nogales is a major port of entry for Mexican agricultural products heading to the United States and Canada. In 2005, 268,163 commercial trucks moved through the port, up from 242,435 in 2004, handling about 7.6% of all United States-Mexico truck traffic. Most of the merchandise that passes through Sonora on its way to the United States winds up in western states such as Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Montana, as well as into Canada.


title: Sonora

text: The volume of traffic, along with new security measures which have been put into place since 2001, create traffic jams of trucks and other vehicles, especially during the winter when demand for products grown in Mexico's warm climates peaks. These jams can result in lines about eight miles long. For trucks moving into Sonora and south, inspection stations at Vícam and near the Sinaloa border also cause delays. Delays in shipping cause more produce to rot before it can get to the consumer.


title: Sonora

text: The last reason for the importance of the border is the maquiladora industries, which have made areas such as Nogales grow significantly. Many of Sonora's incoming migrants from other parts of Mexico come to work at these factories.


title: Sonora

text: There are a number of different crafts made in the state, which are often distinguished by the use of certain materials and of certain designs. The best known of these is the carving of figures from ironwood ("palo fierro" in Spanish), which is a very dense, almost black wood that sinks in water. This wood was often used in braziers in the past because it would burn for a very long time. This carving is the specialty of the Yaquis and the Seris. Before it can be carved, this wood must be dried thoroughly, a process that can take up to five years. If this is not done, the wood takes on an ochre color, rather than its characteristic shiny near black. Objects made from this wood are almost always decorative in nature in a wide variety of shapes such as sahuaro and other cacti, eagles, turtles, dolphins and other flora and fauna of the state, along with crosses. The last is popular among indigenous groups as it is believed that such guard against the envy of others and other ills. Objects made of this wood are very much in demand on the international market, but indigenous craftsmen cannot compete with factory-made pieces.


title: Sonora

text: The higher elevations of the state and riverbanks contain large quantities of trees. Aconchi is one of the villages of the state with a well-established tradition of making furniture, with almost forty workshops. Many of these are in rustic or colonial style. In Arizpe and Álamos, they specialize in a type of chair made by bending and combining long flexible branches of willow and “guásima” (Guazuma ulmifolia) In the town of Tubutama, they make clocks of mesquite wood.


title: Sonora

text: Basketmaking is still widely practiced in the state, with hand-made wares available in local markets such as in Bahía Kino, Punta Chueca and El Desemboque. Those made near the ocean often have marine designs. Baskets made of reeds are made in Ures along with hats. In Aconchi, palm fronds are used to make hats and baskets called guaris, used for food storage. In various locations, a basket variety called “caritas" are made in a globe shape and have a lid. This is a specialty of the Seris. These are typically made by women, with small baskets taking a month to make. Larger ones can take up to two years. Most coritas are bought by foreigners as the work needed to create them makes them expensive.


title: Sonora

text: Leather goods such as belts, shoes, jackets, wallets and more in made in locations such as Nácori Chico, Moctezuma, Pitiquito, Bacoachi, Banámichi, Huásbas, Arivechi and Ures. This craft is a result of the state's history of cattle ranching. The mining industry gave rise to the working of metals, especially copper in Cananea. Items include pots, pans, plates and decorative items. Álamos is known for items made in brass and wrought iron.


title: Sonora

text: Jewelry such as necklaces, bracelets and earrings are often made using materials from the sea such as various types of shells and spines from marine animals. This is a specialty in Puerto Peñasco and of the Seris. The latter also use materials such as the tails of rattlesnakes and animal teeth. Some of the Seris’ best work is located in a museum in Bahia Kino. There is also jewelry, especially necklaces made with various seeds, small twigs and river stones. In Oquitoa, they made ceremonial crowns of glass in various colors. These are most often used to decorate the tombs of loved ones on Day of the Dead. The Yaquis make unique belts using the paws of deer as well as elaborate masks for ceremonies. However, these people generally do not commercialize their wares, with the exception of cloth dolls in local markets.


title: Sonora

text: Newspapers of Sonora include: "El Gran Diario de Sonora Agua Prieta", "El Gran Diario de Sonora Caborca", "El Gran Diario de Sonora Hermosillo", "El Gran Diario de Sonora Magdalena", "El Gran Diario de Sonora Nogales", "El Gran Diario de Sonora Puerto Peñasco", "El Imparcial", "El Informador del Mayo", "Entorno Informativo", "Expreso Hermosillo", "La I Noticias para Mi Hermosillo", "La Voz del Puerto", "Tribuna (Sonora)", and "Tribuna de San Luis."


title: Sonora

text: The most prolific art of the state is literature, which includes poetry, novels, plays and essays. To promote the state's talent, the state government sponsors a number of literary competitions, the most prestigious of which is the Libro de Sonora. It also sponsors scholarships to universities and other institutions. Important contemporary writers from the state include poet and playwright Abigael Bohórquez, novelist Gerardo Cornejo Murrieta, writer and musician Armando Zamora, writer and literary critic Ignacio Mondaca Romero, narrator César Gándara, essayist and journalist Eve Gil, short story and novel writer Sylvia Aguilar Zéleny and poet and novelist Iván Figueroa.


title: Sonora

text: The major indigenous dances include the Deer Dance, the Pascola and the Matachines, which is mostly performed in Huatabampo. Herbal medicine is still widely practiced, especially in rural areas.


title: Sonora

text: Musicians include waltz composer Rodolfo Campodónico, opera singer Alfonso Ortiz Tirado, Arturo Márquez and classical music composer Pedro Vega Granillo. And most prominently "El Gallo De Oro" Valentin Elizalde Valencia


title: Sonora

text: The Orquesta Filharmonica de Sonora (Sonora Philharmonic Orchestra) is a state-sponsored institution that offers concerts in all of the entity's major cities. Since its creation, it has been accompanied by artists such as Olivia Gorra, Carlos Prieto, Martha Félix, Felipe Chacón and Fernando de la Mora. It has also participated in numerous events such as the 23rd anniversary of Radio Sonora, the Noche de Arte at the ITESM Sonora campus, the Festival Tetabiakte and the Dr. Alfonso Ortiz Festival. There is also an organization for minors called the Orquesta Juvenil de Sonora.


title: Sonora

text: The most important museums in the state are the Museo de Sonora, the Museo Costumbrista de Sonora, Museo Étnico de los Yaquis, Museo Étnico de los Seris, Museo de la Lucha Obrera, Museo de la Casa del General and the Museo del Niño la Burbuja, which are visited by over 180,000 people per year.


title: Sonora

text: Since colonial times, much of the economy of the state has traditionally been linked to livestock, especially cattle, with "vaqueros", or cowboys, being an important part of the state's identity. Today, most are employed in industry and tourism, but the dress and folklore of the "vaquero" is still important. Jeans and cowboy hats are still extremely popular, especially with men. The cowboy lifestyle is associated with the pickup truck. This influence extends into popular music.


title: Sonora

text: The most popular musical styles of the area is "norteño" ("northern"), which includes Banda. "norteño" music developed from the late 19th until the beginning of the 20th century, all along the borderlands of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, with the influence of waltz, polkas, mazurkas and corridos. One important instrument for the genre is the accordion, introduced to the area by German immigrants. Sonoran versions of this music developed from the 1920s to the 1960s. Many of the best known early works have anonymous composers. In the 1950s, with the widespread use of radio, the popularity of the genre rose as the "norteño" music of Nuevo León, Durango and other states were heard. These versions often included music written by Sonoran composers such as Amor de Madre by Jesús “El Chito” Peralta, Cuatro Milpas, Mundo Engañoso, El Venadito, La Higuerita and El Tarachi by Aristeo Silvas Antúnez and La Barca de Guaymas by José López Portillo. The music especially resonated with youth which worked in fields and on ranches.


title: Sonora

text: The first formal "norteño" group from Sonora was Los Cuatreros de Sonora, formed by the Carvajal brothers. In contrast to bands from other states, which were duets, Sonoran bands were trios before becoming quartets and quintets with the addition of more musical instruments. Lyrics most often deal with the important moments of everyday life which are celebrated and embellished. Only recently has "norteño" music been accepted by social classes outside those with which it developed. "Norteño" groups of Sonora, often referred to as "taca-tacas", can now be heard at social events at all socioeconomic levels.


title: Sonora

text: The region has been an area of study for archeologists, anthropologists and historians, who have worked on prehispanic ruins and fossilized bones. However, much of the research in this area is still in its initial descriptive stage with many basic questions still unanswered. Sonora is considered a cultural zone separate from Mesoamerica, although there may have been some Mesoamerican influence. The major differences between Sonoran cultures and Mesoamerica include dry climate farming, although the same basics of corn, squash and beans are produced. There is also a heavier reliance on wild resources. More important was the lack of true cities during this area's prehispanic history, with small settlements clustered around water sources and weak hierarchical systems. The cultures here also share some traits with those of the United States Southwest, but are distinct from these as well.


title: Sonora

text: The Cerro de Trincheras ("Trench Hill") is an archeological site, with petroglyphs, plazas and astronomical observatories. The exact purpose of the area has been disputed, but the area reached its height between 1300 and 1450 CE, when it had a population of about 1,000, which made its living growing corn, squash, cotton and agave. Its largest structure is called La Cancha ("The Ballcourt"), which is at the base of the north side of the hill. It is a rectangular patio marked by rocks piled on its edges, measuring . Some researchers believe it was some kind of ball court and others believe it was a kind of open-air theater. On the hill itself is an observatory, which gives views of the area. Most of the area's artifacts of stone and shell were found here. The Plaza de Caracol (Snail Plaza) is marked by a meter and a half high stone wall in an open spiral, most likely used for ceremonies.


title: Sonora

text: As in other parts of Mexico, Sonoran cuisine is basically a mixture of indigenous and Spanish influences. When the Spaniards moved north from the Mexico City area, they found that the diet of the area was simpler, with the basics of corn, beans and squash, but without the further variety as existed in the lusher south. The Spaniards had a great impact on the diet of the region. They brought European staples of wheat, beef, dairy products, pork and more, as well as dishes and ingredients from the center and south of Mexico, such as tortillas, more varieties of chile peppers and tamales. The cowboy/"vaquero" culture has been an important aspect of Sonora's culture since the colonial period and much of the cuisine is based on what cowboys ate on the range, even though most Sonorans no longer work outdoors. Sonoran cuisine is not limited to the present state. Arizona, especially in southern border area, has a cuisine that is also heavy on wheat, cheese and beef introduced by the Spaniards, back when the area was part of Sonora. Both states continue the cowboy tradition. Because Sonora is a border state, its cuisine has received significant influence from the United States as well.


title: Sonora

text: Two important staples in the diet are seafood and beef, the latter playing a larger role in the cuisine of Sonora than in the rest of Mexico. Beef is often cooked over an open flame, and Sonorans prefer robust cuts such as brisket and skirt steak. Machaca, or "carne seca", is still enjoyed, although refrigeration has eliminated the need to dry meat. Sonora also has a reputation for producing fine cuts of beef, but the lean Spanish cattle of the colonial period have been replaced by Angus, Herefords and Holsteins. Dishes based on or usually containing beef include "carne desebrada", "carne con rajas verdes", burritos, "carne con chile colorado", beef "chorizo", "carne seca", machaca, "menudo", "gorditas" and meatballs. Seafood is an important staple, especially along the coast as there is a large variety of fish and shellfish in the Gulf of California. Seafood is generally cooked in very simple dishes, such as fish tacos, seafood soups, rice with shrimp or squid and shrimp meatballs. Favored fish include cabrilla, flounder, marlin, sardines, manta rays and various types of jacks.


title: Sonora

text: Tortillas are the base of the diet, but they are made from wheat, rather than corn. In Sonora, these tortillas are much larger than those prepared elsewhere and paper thin. Dairy products are common in dishes with chile peppers playing a smaller role. However, one important native chile pepper is the "chiltepín" ("Capsicum annuum var. aviculare"), which people continue to harvest wild in the mountains of northwestern Mexico. In a dry year, about can be harvested in Sonora, with as much as during a wet year.


title: Sonora

text: The cuisine contains a number of soups and stews, which combine native ingredients with Mexico-wide staples of beef, pork and corn. Seafood soups are popular along the coast. These dishes include "pozole de trigo", "pozole de res", "menudo con pata", "verdolagas" ("Portulaca oleracea") broth, "sopa de elote", "caldo de calabazas" and "sopa de camarón". Tamales are made with cornmeal dough and fillings such as beans, vegetables, potatoes, "chile colorado" and other ingredients, wrapped in dried corn husks and steamed. Tamale fillings vary in the state but the most popular include fresh corn with cream, green chile strips with cheese, beef with "chile colorado" and seafood.


title: Sonora

text: The various cultures that have come through the state have influenced the development of breads, desserts and sweets. Most sweets are made from cow's milk, sugar cane, peanuts, rice, nuts, sesame seeds and piloncillo. These include "pipitoria", "jamoncillo", "cubierto de viznaga", "cubiertos de calabaza", "cubiertos de camote", squash in honey, "piloncillo", "pitahaya" ice cream, crystallized oranges and limes, cakes made from corn and rice pudding.


title: Sonora

text: Bacanora is a local liquor that has been made for decades in the town of the same name, located in the center of the state. Its base is an agave plant ("agave lechuguilla" or "agave angustifolia") like mezcal and tequila, and it comes in various styles including aged. It has a distinct flavor. It is estimated that half a million plants are harvested from the wilds to make this beverage each year, leading to concerns of overexploitation.


title: Sonora

text: Public education is offered from preschool to university level studies. Development of the educational system has lowered the rates of illiteracy. The state has 1,475 preschools, 1,847 primary schools, 623 middle schools, 92 technical high schools and 203 high schools. Sonora sponsors a number of scholarships for low income students through the Instituto de Crédito Educativo del Estado de Sonora. and it also sponsors scholarships for students in the arts.


title: Sonora

text: The main public institution of higher education in the state is the Universidad de Sonora, whose main campus is in Hermosillo. Founded in 1938 by state decree, the university has grown while retaining its identity. In 1953, students and professors were given more say in operations. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were occasional student protests which disrupted operations. In 1973, the institution undertook reorganization in response to the student strikes. The instuition offers degrees in over forty specialities through six divisions. Masters and doctorates are mostly offered in science and technology.


title: Sonora

text: The Instituto Tecnológico de Sonora (ITSON, Sonora Technology Institute) has about 17,000 students and offers twenty-three bachelor's degrees, eight masters programs, and three doctorate programs among its six campuses. The institution was formed through the initiative of the Cajemense Society in Ciudad Obregón in 1955, but received its current name in 1962. Originally it was a technical training school, but it was reorganized as a university in 1973. Today, it is the largest technological institution in the state.


title: Sonora

text: Sonora lies on the corridor which as connected the central Mexican highlands (Mexico City) north into the United States along the Pacific Coast at least since the colonial period, and there is evidence this corridor existed in the pre-Hispanic period as well. Today, it is still a major corridor for travel and shipping, with rail lines and Federal Highway 15 following it. The state contains a total of 24,396 km of highways. Rail lines mostly consist of those which lead into the United States. The major commercial port is in Guaymas, with smaller ones, mostly for tourism located in San Carlos, Puerto Peñasco and Bahia Kino. The state has four airports in the cities of Hermosillo, Puerto Peñasco, Ciudad Obregón and Nogales. These airports connect the state with 112 other locations both in Mexico and abroad. Airlines that operate out of them have included Aeromexico, Volaris, Interjet, and Vivaaerobus.


title: Five-spice powder

text: Five-spice powder () is a spice mixture of five or more spices used predominantly in almost all branches of Chinese cuisine. It is also used in Hawaiian cuisine and Vietnamese cuisine. The five flavors of the spices (sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and savory) refers to the five traditional Chinese elements.


title: Five-spice powder

text: Other recipes may contain anise seed, ginger root, nutmeg, turmeric, "Amomum villosum" pods (), "Amomum cardamomum" pods (), licorice, Mandarin orange peel or galangal.


title: Five-spice powder

text: In Southern China, "Cinnamomum loureiroi" and Mandarin orange peel are commonly used as substitutes for "Cinnamomum cassia" and cloves respectively. These ingredients collectively produce southern five-spice powders' distinctive, slightly different flavor profile. In one study, the potential antioxidant capacities of Chinese five-spice powder (consisting of Szechuan pepper, fennel seed, cinnamon, star anise, and clove) with varying proportion of individual spice ingredients was investigated through four standard methods. The results suggest that clove is the major contributor to the high antioxidant capacities of the five-spice powder whereas the other four ingredients contribute to the flavor.


title: Five-spice powder

text: Five spice may be used with fatty meats such as pork, duck or goose. It is used as a spice rub for chicken, duck, pork and seafood, in red cooking recipes, or added to the breading for fried foods. Five spice is used in recipes for Cantonese roasted duck, as well as beef stew. It is used as a marinade for Vietnamese broiled chicken. The five-spice powder mixture has followed the Chinese diaspora and has been incorporated into other national cuisines throughout Asia.


title: Five-spice powder

text: In Hawaii, some restaurants place a shaker of the spice on each patron's table. A seasoned salt can be easily made by dry-roasting common salt with five-spice powder under low heat in a dry pan until the spice and salt are well mixed.


title: Five-spice powder

text: Five-spice powder can also add complexity and savoriness to sweets and savory dishes alike. It has a traditional use as an antiseptic and used to cure indigestion.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: Rudolf Ivanovich Abel (), real name William August Fisher (11 July 1903 – 15 November 1971), was a Soviet intelligence officer. He adopted his alias when arrested on charges of conspiracy by the FBI in 1957.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: Fisher was born and grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North of England in the United Kingdom to Russian émigré parents. He moved to Russia in the 1920s, and served in the Soviet military before undertaking foreign service as a radio operator in Soviet intelligence in the late 1920s and early 30s. He later served in an instructional role before taking part in intelligence operations against the Germans during World War II. After the war, he began working for the KGB, which sent him to the United States where he worked as part of a spy ring based in New York City.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: In 1957, the U.S. Federal Court in New York convicted Fisher on three counts of conspiracy as a Soviet spy for his involvement in what became known as the Hollow Nickel Case and sentenced him to 30 years' imprisonment at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, Georgia. He served just over four years of his sentence before he was exchanged for captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. Back in the Soviet Union, he lectured on his experiences. He died in 1971 at the age of 68. His real identity and country of birth were only revealed after his death.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: Fisher was born William August Fisher on 11 July 1903, in the Benwell area of Newcastle upon Tyne, the second son of Heinrich and Lyubov Fisher. Revolutionaries of the Tsarist era, his father was of German origins and his mother was of Russian descent. Fisher's father, a revolutionary activist, taught and agitated with Vladimir Lenin at Saint Petersburg Technological Institute. In 1896, he was arrested for sedition and sentenced to three years internal exile. As Heinrich Fisher had served a sentence for offenses against the Russian Imperial Crown, he was forced to flee to the United Kingdom in 1901, the alternative being deportation to Germany or imprisonment in Russia for avoidance of military service. While living in the United Kingdom, Fisher's father, a keen Bolshevik, took part in gunrunning, shipping arms from northeast England to Russia's Baltic coast.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: Fisher and his brother, Henry, won scholarships to Whitley Bay High School and Monkseaton High School. Though Fisher was not as hard-working as Henry, he showed aptitude for science, mathematics, languages, art and music, inherited in part from his father's abilities. Encouraging their son's love of music, Fisher's parents gave him piano lessons; he also learned to play the guitar. It was during this period that Fisher developed an interest in amateur radio, constructing rudimentary spark transmitters and receivers.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: Fisher became an apprentice draughtsman at Swan Hunter, Wallsend, and attended evening classes at Rutherford College before being accepted into London University in 1920. Though Fisher qualified for university, the costs prohibited him from attending. In 1921, following the Russian Revolution, the Fisher family left Newcastle upon Tyne to return to Moscow.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: Fluent in English, Russian, German, Polish and Yiddish, Fisher worked for the Comintern as a translator following his family's return to the Soviet Union. Trained as a radio operator, he served in a Red Army radio battalion in 1925 and 1926. He then worked briefly in the radio research institute before being recruited by the OGPU, a predecessor of the KGB, in May 1927. That year he married Elena Lebedeva, a harp student at Moscow Conservatoire. They had one child together, a daughter named Evelyn who was born on 8 October 1929. During his interview with the OGPU, it was determined he should adopt a Russian-sounding name and William August Fisher became Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher. Following his recruitment, he worked for the OGPU as a radio operator in Norway, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and France. He returned to the Soviet Union in 1936, as head of a school that trained radio operators destined for duty in illegal residences. One of the students was the Canadian-born Russian spy Kitty Harris, who was later more widely known as "The Spy with Seventeen Names".


title: Rudolf Abel

text: Despite his foreign birth and the accusation that his brother-in-law was a Trotskyist, Fisher narrowly escaped the Great Purge. However, in 1938 he was dismissed from the NKVD, which the OGPU had been renamed to in 1934. During World War II, he again trained radio operators for clandestine work behind German lines. Having been adopted as a protégé by Pavel Sudoplatov, he took part in Operation Scherhorn (, ) in August 1944. Sudoplatov later described this operation as "the most successful radio deception game of the war".<ref name="Sudoplatov/Schecter 1994–1995, p. 168">Sudoplatov/Schecter (1994–1995), p. 168.</ref> Fisher's role in this operation was rewarded with what his superiors regarded as one of the most prestigious postings in Soviet foreign intelligence, the United States.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: After rejoining the KGB in 1946, Fisher was trained as a spy for entry into the United States. In October 1948, using a Soviet passport, he travelled from Leningradsky Station to Warsaw. In Warsaw, he discarded his Soviet passport and using a U.S. passport travelled via Czechoslovakia and Switzerland to Paris. His new passport bore the name Andrew Kayotis, the first of Fisher's false identities. The real Andrew Kayotis was Lithuanian born and had become an American citizen after migrating to the United States. Kayotis had applied for and received a visa to visit the Soviet Union. However, the Soviets retained his passport, which Fisher eventually used. Kayotis had been in poor health and died while visiting relatives in Vilnius, Lithuania. Fisher, as Kayotis, then travelled aboard the from Le Havre, France, to North America, disembarking at Quebec. Still using Kayotis' passport, he went to Montreal and crossed into the United States on 17 November.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: On 26 November, Fisher met with Soviet "illegal" Josef Romvoldovich Grigulevich (codenamed "MAKS" or "ARTUR"). Grigulevich gave Fisher a genuine birth certificate, a forged draft card and a forged tax certificate, all under the name of Emil Robert Goldfus, along with $1,000. After handing back Kayotis's passport and documents, Fisher assumed the name Goldfus. His codename was "MARK". The real Goldfus had died at only 14 months, having been born on August 2, 1902, in New York. Goldfus's birth certificate was obtained by the NKVD at the end of the Spanish Civil War, when the Centre would collect identity documents from International Brigades members for use in espionage operations.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: In July 1949, Fisher met with a "legal" KGB resident from the Soviet consulate general, who provided him with money. Shortly afterwards Fisher was ordered to reactivate the "Volunteer" network to smuggle atomic secrets to Russia. Members of the network had stopped cooperating after postwar security was tightened at Los Alamos. Lona Cohen (codenamed "LESLE") and her husband Morris Cohen (codenamed "LUIS" and "VOLUNTEER") had run the Volunteer network and were seasoned couriers. Theodore "Ted" Hall (codenamed "MLAD"), a physicist, was the most important agent in the network in 1945, passing atomic secrets from Los Alamos. The Volunteer network grew to include "Aden" and "Serb", nuclear physicists contacted by Hall, and "Silver". Fisher spent most of his first year organizing his network. While it is not known for certain where Fisher went or what he did, it is believed he travelled to Santa Fe, New Mexico, the collection point for stolen diagrams from the Manhattan Project. Kitty Harris, a former pupil of Fisher's, had spent a year in Santa Fe during the war, where she passed secrets from physicists to couriers. During this period, Fisher received the Order of the Red Banner, an important Soviet medal normally reserved for military personnel.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: In 1950, Fisher's illegal residency was endangered by the arrest of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, for whom Lona Cohen had been a courier. The Cohens were quickly spirited to Mexico before moving on to Moscow. They were to resurface in the United Kingdom using the identities of Peter and Helen Kroger. Fisher was relieved when the Rosenbergs did not disclose any information about him to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), but the arrests heralded a bleak outlook for his new spy network. However, on 21 October 1952, as instructed by Moscow, Reino Häyhänen left a thumbtack on a signpost in New York's Central Park. The thumbtack signaled to Fisher that Häyhänen, his new assistant, had arrived. Codenamed "VIK", Häyhänen arrived in New York on the RMS "Queen Mary", under the alias Eugene Nikolai Maki. The real Maki had been born in the United States to a Finnish-American father and a New York mother in 1919. In 1927, the family migrated to Estonia. In 1948, the KGB had called Häyhänen to Moscow where they issued him a new assignment. In 1949, Häyhänen freely obtained Maki's birth certificate. He had then spent three years in Finland taking over Maki's identity.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: After arriving in New York, Häyhänen spent the next two years establishing his identity. During that time he received money from his superiors left in dead-letter boxes in the Bronx and Manhattan. It is known he occasionally drew attention to himself by indulging in heavy drinking sessions and heated arguments with his Finnish wife Hannah. For six months Häyhänen checked the thumbtack and no one had made contact. He also checked a dead-drop location he had memorized. There he found a hollowed-out nickel. However, prior to opening the coin Häyhänen had misplaced it, either buying a newspaper with it or using it as a subway token. For the next seven months the hollow nickel travelled around the New York City economy, unopened. The trail of the hollow nickel ended when a thirteen-year-old newsboy was collecting for his weekly deliveries. The newsboy accidentally dropped the nickel and it broke in half, revealing a microphotograph containing a series of numbers. The newsboy handed the nickel to a New York detective, who in turn forwarded it to the FBI. From 1953 to 1957, though every effort was made to decipher the microphotograph, the FBI was unable to solve the mystery.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: Late in 1953, Fisher moved to Brooklyn and rented a room in a boarding house on Hicks Street. He also rented a fifth-floor studio at the Ovington Studios Building on Fulton Street. Since he was posing as an artist and photographer, nobody questioned his irregular working hours and frequent disappearances. Over time his artistic technique improved and he became a competent painter, though he disliked abstract painting, preferring more conventional styles. He mingled with New York artists, who were surprised by his admiration for the Russian painter Isaak Levitan, although Fisher was careful not to discuss Stalinist "socialist realism". The only visitors to Fisher's studio were artist friends with whom he felt safe from suspicion. In particular, he became a friend of Burton Silverman. Fisher sometimes related made-up stories of previous lives, as a Boston accountant and a lumberjack in the Pacific Northwest.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: In 1954, Häyhänen began working as Fisher's assistant. He was to deliver a report from a Soviet agent at the United Nations secretariat, to a dead-letter box for collection. However the report never arrived. Fisher was disturbed by Häyhänen's lack of work ethics and his obsession with alcohol. In the spring of 1955, Fisher and Häyhänen visited Bear Mountain Park, and buried $5,000, (), destined for the wife of the Soviet spy Morton Sobell, who in 1951 was sentenced to thirty years in jail.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: In 1955, Fisher, exhausted by the constant pressure, returned to Moscow for six months of rest and recuperation, leaving Häyhänen in charge. While in Moscow, Fisher informed his superiors of his dissatisfaction with Häyhänen. Upon his return to New York in 1956, he found that his carefully constructed network had been left to disintegrate in his absence. Fisher checked his drop points only to find messages several months old, while Häyhänen's radio transmissions had routinely been sent from the same location using incorrect radio frequencies. The money Häyhänen received from the KGB to support the network was instead spent on alcohol and prostitutes.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: By early 1957, Fisher had lost patience with Häyhänen and demanded that Moscow recall his deputy. In January 1957, Häyhänen received a message from Moscow promoting him to Lieutenant Colonel and granting him leave in the Soviet Union. Upon hearing he was due to return to Moscow, Häyhänen was fearful that he would be severely disciplined or even executed. Häyhänen fabricated stories to justify his delay, claiming to Fisher that the FBI had taken him off the RMS "Queen Mary". Fisher, unsuspecting, advised Häyhänen to leave the U.S. immediately to avoid FBI surveillance and handed him $200 for travel expenses. Prior to his departure, Häyhänen returned to Bear Mountain Park and retrieved the buried $5,000 for his own use. Häyhänen arrived in Paris on May Day, having sailed from the U.S. aboard "La Liberté". Making contact with the KGB residency he received another $200 for his journey to Moscow. Four days later, instead of continuing his journey to the Soviet Union he entered the American embassy in Paris, announcing that he was a KGB officer and asking for asylum.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: When Häyhänen announced himself at the embassy on 4 May, he appeared drunk. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials at the Paris embassy did not find Häyhänen's story credible. They were not convinced he might actually be a Russian spy until he produced a hollow Finnish 5-mark coin. Upon opening the coin a square of microfilm was revealed. On 11 May, the CIA returned him to the United States and handed him over to the FBI. As a member of a Soviet spy ring operating on American soil, Häyhänen came under the FBI's jurisdiction and they began verifying his story.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: Upon his arrival in the United States, Häyhänen was interrogated by the FBI and proved very cooperative. He admitted his first Soviet contact in New York had been "MIKHAIL" and upon being shown a series of photographs of Soviet officials identified "MIKHAIL" as Mikhail Svirin. Svirin, however, had returned to Moscow two years previously. The FBI then turned its attention to Svirin's replacement. Häyhänen was able only to provide Fisher's codename, "MARK", and a description. He was, however, able to tell the FBI about Fisher's studio and its location. Häyhänen was also able to solve the mystery of the "hollow nickel," which the FBI had been unable to decipher for four years.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: The KGB did not discover Häyhänen's defection until August, although it is more than likely they notified Fisher earlier when Häyhänen failed to arrive in Moscow. As a precaution, Fisher was ordered to leave the United States. Escape was complicated because, if "MARK" had been compromised by Häyhänen, Fisher's other identities could have been compromised as well. Fisher could not leave the country as Martin Collins, Emil Goldfus, or even the long-forgotten Andrew Kayotis. The KGB Center, with the help of KGB's Ottawa resident, set about procuring two new passports for Fisher in the names of Robert Callan and Vasili Dzogol, but this process would take time. The Canadian Communist Party succeeded in obtaining a new passport for Fisher in the name of Robert Callan. Fisher, however, was arrested before he could adopt his new identity and leave the United States.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: In April 1957, Fisher told his artist friends he was going south on a seven-week vacation. Less than three weeks later, acting on Häyhänen's information, surveillance was established near Fisher's photo studio. On 28 May 1957, in a small park opposite Fulton Street, FBI agents spotted a man acting nervously. From time to time the man got up, walked around, and eventually left. FBI agents were convinced he fit the description of "MARK". The surveillance continued on "MARK" and, on the night of 13 June, a light was seen to go on in Fisher's studio at 10:00 pm.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: On 15 June 1957, Häyhänen was shown a photograph of Fisher taken by the FBI with a hidden camera. Häyhänen confirmed that it was "MARK" in the photograph. Once the FBI had a positive identification, they stepped up surveillance, following Fisher from his studio to the Hotel Latham. Fisher was aware of the "tail" but, as he had no passport to leave the country, he devised a plan to be used upon his capture. Fisher decided that he would not turn traitor as Häyhänen had done because he still trusted the KGB and he knew that if he cooperated with the FBI, he would not see his wife and daughter again.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: At 7:00 am on 21 June 1957, Fisher answered a knock on the door to his room, Room 839. Upon opening the door, he was confronted by FBI agents who addressed him as "colonel" and stated that they had "information concerning [his] involvement in espionage." Fisher knew that the FBI's use of his rank could have only come from Häyhänen. Fisher said nothing to the FBI and, after spending twenty-three minutes staring at Fisher, the FBI agents called in the waiting Immigration and Naturalization Service officers who arrested Fisher and detained him under section 242 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: Fisher was then flown to the Federal Alien Detention Facility in McAllen, Texas, and held there for six weeks. During this period Fisher stated that his "real" name was Rudolf Ivanovich Abel and that he was a Soviet citizen, although he refused to discuss his intelligence activities. The name "Rudolf Ivanovich Abel" was that of a deceased friend and a KGB colonel; Fisher knew as soon as The Centre saw the name Abel on the front pages of American newspapers they would realize he had been captured.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: During Fisher's detainment the FBI had been searching his hotel room and photo studio, where they discovered espionage equipment including shortwave radios, cipher pads, cameras and film for producing microdots, a hollow shaving brush, and numerous "trick" containers including hollowed-out bolts. In Fisher's New York hotel room the FBI found $4,000, a hollow ebony block containing a 250-page Russian codebook, a hollow pencil containing encrypted messages on microfilm and a key to a safe-deposit box containing another $15,000 in cash. Also discovered were photographs of the Cohens and recognition phrases to establish contact between agents who had never met before.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: As Fisher was no longer considered an alleged illegal alien, but rather an alleged spy, he was flown from Texas to New York on 7 August 1957, to answer the indictment. Fisher was subsequently indicted to stand trial as a Russian spy. The Brooklyn Bar Association approached several prominent trial lawyers with political ambitions, all of whom declined the case. They then contacted James B. Donovan. Because he had served as a wartime counsel in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and had years of courtroom experience, the Bar Association believed Donovan was uniquely qualified to act as Fisher's defense lawyer. At Donovan's initial meeting with Fisher, the latter accepted Donovan as his defense counsel. Donovan subsequently brought in attorney Thomas M. Debevoise to assist him; Fisher was tried in Federal Court at New York City during October 1957, on three counts:


title: Rudolf Abel

text: Häyhänen, Fisher's former assistant, testified against him at the trial. The prosecution failed to find any other alleged members of Fisher's spy network, if there were any. The jury retired for three and a half hours and returned on the afternoon of October 25, 1957, finding Fisher guilty on all three counts. On 15 November 1957, Judge Mortimer W. Byers imposed on Fisher a total sentence of thirty years and fines of $3,000. In "Abel v. United States", the United States Supreme Court upheld his conviction by a vote of 5–4.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: Fisher, or "Rudolf Ivanovich Abel", was to serve his sentence (as prisoner 80016–A) at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, Georgia. He occupied himself with painting, learning silk-screening, playing chess, and writing logarithmic tables for the sheer enjoyment of it. He became friends with two other convicted Soviet spies. One of these was Morton Sobell, whose wife had failed to receive the $5,000 embezzled by Häyhänen. The other prisoner was Kurt Ponger, an Austrian who had been sentenced for conspiracy to commit espionage.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: Fisher served just over four years of his sentence. On 10 February 1962, he was exchanged for the shot-down American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. The exchange took place on the Glienicke Bridge that linked West Berlin with Potsdam, which became famous during the Cold War as the "Bridge of Spies". At precisely the same time, at Checkpoint Charlie, Frederic Pryor was released by the East German Stasi into the waiting arms of his father. A few days later Fisher, reunited with his wife Elena and daughter Evelyn, flew home. For the sake of its own reputation it suited the KGB to portray "Abel's" nine years of being an undetected agent in the United States as a triumph by a dedicated NKVD member. The myth of the master spy Rudolf Abel replaced the reality of Fisher's illegal residency, even as the party hierarchy was well aware that Fisher had achieved nothing of real significance. During his eight years as an illegal resident he appears not to have recruited, or even identified, a single potential agent.


title: Rudolf Abel

text: After his return to Moscow, Fisher was employed by the Illegals Directorate of the KGB's First Chief Directorate, giving speeches and lecturing school children on intelligence work, but became increasingly disillusioned. He made a notable appearance in the foreword to the Soviet spy film "Dead Season" and also worked as a consultant on the film. Fisher, who was a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer on 15 November 1971. His ashes were interred at the Donskoye Cemetery under his real name; next to Konon Molody, who had died the previous year. A few Western correspondents were invited there to view for themselves the true identity of the spy who never "broke".


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Eleanor Jean Parker (June 26, 1922 – December 9, 2013) was an American actress. She was nominated for three Academy Awards for her roles in the films "Caged" (1950), "Detective Story" (1951), and "Interrupted Melody" (1955), the first of which won her the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. She was also known for her roles in the films "Of Human Bondage" (1946), "Scaramouche" (1952), "The Naked Jungle" (1954), "The Man with the Golden Arm" (1955), "A Hole in the Head" (1959), "The Sound of Music" (1965), and "The Oscar" (1966).


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Eleanor Jean Parker was born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio, the daughter of Lola (née Isett) and Lester Day Parker. She moved with her family to East Cleveland, Ohio, where she attended public schools and graduated from Shaw High School. "Ever since I can remember, all I wanted to do is act", she said. "But I didn't just dream about it, I worked at it."


title: Eleanor Parker

text: She appeared in a number of school plays. After graduation, she went to Martha's Vineyard to work on her acting. She got a job as a waitress, and was offered a screen test by 20th Century Fox, but turned it down. Wanting to focus on films, she moved to California and started appearing at the Pasadena Playhouse.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: She was in the audience one night at Pasadena Playhouse when spotted by a Warners Bros talent scout, Irving Kumin. He offered her a test, and she accepted; the studio signed her to a long-term contract in June 1941.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: She was cast that year in the film "They Died with Their Boots On", but her scenes were cut. Her actual film debut was as Nurse Ryan in the short film "Soldiers in White" in 1942.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: She was given some decent roles in B films, "Busses Roar" (1942) and "The Mysterious Doctor" (1943), and had a small role in an expensive production, "Mission to Moscow" (1943), as Emlen Davies. This impressed Warners enough so when Joan Leslie was held up on "Rhapsody in Blue", Parker replaced her in a strong role in a prestige production, "Between Two Worlds" (1944), playing the suicidal wife of Paul Henreid's character.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: She stayed in support roles for "Crime by Night" (1944) and "The Last Ride" (1944), then was given the starring role opposite Dennis Morgan in "The Very Thought of You" (1944), replacing Ida Lupino. She was considered enough of a "name" to be given a cameo in "Hollywood Canteen" (1944). Warners gave her the choice role of Mildred Rogers in a new version of Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage" (1946); although director Edmund Goulding called Parker one of the five greatest actresses in America, previews were not favorable, and the film sat on the shelf for two years before being released to an underwhelming reception. However, in 1953, Parker called it her favorite role.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Parker later said the "big break" of her career was when she was cast opposite John Garfield in "Pride of the Marines" (1945). "It was a great part, and who wouldn't look good with John Garfield", she later said. "He was absolutely wonderful." However, two films that followed with Errol Flynn, the romantic comedy "Never Say Goodbye" (1946) and the drama "Escape Me Never" (1947), were box office disappointments.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Parker was suspended twice by Warners for refusing parts in filmsin "Stallion Road" (where she was replaced by Alexis Smith) and "Love and Learn".


title: Eleanor Parker

text: She made the comedy "Voice of the Turtle" (1947, aired today under the title "One for the Book") with Ronald Reagan and was in an adaptation of "The Woman in White" (1948). She refused to appear in "Somewhere in the City" (1948) so Warners suspended her again; Virginia Mayo played the role.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Parker then had two years off, during which time she married and had a baby. She turned down a role in "The Hasty Heart" (1949), which she wanted to do, but it would have meant going to England, and she did not want to leave her baby alone during its first year. "I probably received my salary for only six months during 1947 and 1948, but I can't regret that", she said. "All my life, I wanted a child, and anything that might happen to me professionally on that account would hardly seem a loss."


title: Eleanor Parker

text: She returned in "Chain Lightning" with Humphrey Bogart. "I've had my fling at roles that have little or no relation to most people's lives", she said in a 1949 interview. "I want to keep away from such assignments, as I can from now on, even though, as some may say, they mean exercising your skill and talent in acting."


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Parker heard about a film Warners were making of a woman in prison, "Caged" (1950), and actively lobbied the role. She got it, and won the 1950 Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. She also had a good role in the melodrama "Three Secrets" (1950).


title: Eleanor Parker

text: In February 1950, Parker left Warner Bros. after having been under contract there for eight years. Parker had understood that she would star in a film called "Safe Harbor", but Warner Bros. apparently had no intention of making it. Because of this misunderstanding, her agents negotiated her release.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Parker's career outside of Warners started badly with "Valentino" (1951) playing a fictionalized wife of Rudolph Valentino for producer Edward Small. She tried a comedy at 20th Century Fox with Fred MacMurray, "A Millionaire for Christy" (1951) (originally called "The Golden Goose").


title: Eleanor Parker

text: In 1951, Parker signed a contract with Paramount for one film a year, with an option for outside films. This arrangement began brilliantly with "Detective Story" (1951) for director William Wyler, playing Mary McLeod, the woman who doesn't understand the position of her unstable detective husband (played by Kirk Douglas); Parker was nominated for the Oscar in 1951 for her performance, which, to date, remains the shortest ever to be nominated in the category.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Parker followed "Detective Story" with her portrayal of an actress in love with a swashbuckling nobleman (played by Stewart Granger) in "Scaramouche" (1952), a role originally intended for Ava Gardner. Parker later claimed that Granger was the only person she didn't get along with during her entire career. However, they had good chemistry, and the film was a massive hit; MGM rushed her into "Above and Beyond" (1952), a biopic of Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. (Robert Taylor), the pilot of the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It was a solid hit. While Parker was making a third film for MGM, "Escape from Fort Bravo" (1953), she signed a five-year contract with the studio.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: She was named as star of a Sidney Sheldon script, "My Most Intimate Friend" and of "One More Time", from a script by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin directed by George Cukor, but neither film was made. Back at Paramount, Parker starred with Charlton Heston as a 1901 mail-order bride in "The Naked Jungle" (1954), directed by Byron Haskin and produced by George Pal.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Parker returned to MGM where she was reunited with Robert Taylor in an Egyptian adventure film, "Valley of the Kings" (1954), and a Western, "Many Rivers to Cross" (1955).


title: Eleanor Parker

text: "I maintain that if you work, believe in yourself, and do what is right for you without stepping all over others, the way somehow opens up", she said in 1953. "By that, I don't mean just sitting back. At Warners, they still have a mile-long list of my suspensions for refusing certain parts. Anyway, I never did a Western. Not once. It's paid off too."


title: Eleanor Parker

text: In a 1954 interview, she said her favorite films were "Caged" and "Detective Story" and her least favorite were "Chain Lightning", "Escape Me Never", "Valentino", and "Woman in White". She had commitments to make two films a year at MGM, and one a year at Paramount. "Personally, I prefer to be under contract", she said.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: MGM gave her one of her best roles as opera singer Marjorie Lawrence in "Interrupted Melody" (1955). This was a big hit and earned Parker a third Oscar nomination; she later said it was her favorite film.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Also in 1955, Parker appeared in the film adaptation of the National Book Award-winner "The Man with the Golden Arm" (1955), directed by Otto Preminger and released through United Artists. She played Zosh, a woman confined to a wheelchair and the wife of heroin-addicted would-be jazz drummer Frankie Machine (Frank Sinatra). It was a major commercial and critical success.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: In 1956, she was billed above the title with Clark Gable for the Raoul Walsh-directed Western comedy "The King and Four Queens", also for United Artists.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: It was then back at MGM for two movies, both dramas: "Lizzie" (1957), in the title role, as a woman with a split personality; "The Seventh Sin" (1957), a remake of "The Painted Veil" in the role originated by Greta Garbo and, once again, intended for Ava Gardner. Both films flopped at the box office and, as a result, Parker's plans to produce her own film, "L'Eternelle", about French resistance fighters, did not materialize.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Parker supported Frank Sinatra in a popular comedy, "A Hole in the Head" (1959). She returned to MGM for "Home from the Hill" (1960), co-starring with Robert Mitchum, then took over Lana Turner's role of Constance Rossi in "Return to Peyton Place", a 1961 sequel to the hit 1957 film. That was made by 20th Century Fox who also produced "Madison Avenue" (1961) with Parker.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: In 1960, she made her TV debut. "I look for the quality story and for parts that I think will be good or fun. People told me I was crazy to do "Hole in the Head" and "Home from the Hill", but both those pictures appealed to me. I did enough of the bad ones (films), while I was under contract – because I was being told to do them. That's the problem with being under contract. You do the pictures, or be suspended. Now, I don't want to work unless I have faith in the part. This has nothing to do with wanting to be famous, or anything like that. It's just that I love acting."


title: Eleanor Parker

text: In the early 1960s, she worked increasingly in television, with the occasional film role such as "Panic Button" (1964).


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Parker's best-known screen role was playing Baroness Elsa Schraeder in the 1965 Oscar-winning musical "The Sound of Music". The Baroness was unsuccessful in keeping the affections of Captain Georg von Trapp (played by Christopher Plummer) after he falls in love with Maria (played by Julie Andrews).


title: Eleanor Parker

text: In 1966, she played an alcoholic widow in the crime drama "Warning Shot", a talent scout who discovers a Hollywood star in "The Oscar", and a rich alcoholic in "An American Dream". From the late 1960s, television would occupy more of her energies.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: In 1963, Parker appeared in the NBC medical drama about psychiatry "The Eleventh Hour" in the episode "Why Am I Grown So Cold?", for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award as Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. In 1964, she appeared in the episode "A Land More Cruel" on the ABC drama about psychiatry, "Breaking Point". In 1968, she portrayed a spy in "How to Steal the World", a film originally shown as the two-part concluding episodes of NBC's "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.".


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Parker starred with Michael Sarrazin and Gayle Hunnicutt in her final theatrical film of the 1960s, the tense thriller "Eye of The Cat" (1969), which was written by Joseph Stefano (Psycho 1960)


title: Eleanor Parker

text: In 1969–1970, Parker starred in the television series "Bracken's World", for which she was nominated for a 1970 Golden Globe Award as Best TV ActressDrama. "I wanted to do the series so I could stay put", she said. "Every movie I'm offered is shot in Europe or Asia or somewhere. I'm tired of running around." Parker left the series after the first 16 episodes, citing the limited nature of her role.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: After 1969, she worked steadily, but except for a small role in "Sunburn" (1979), her onscreen acting was on television. Parker appeared in the NBC series "Ghost Story" episode "Half a Death" (1972). Parker appeared in the TV Movie "Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring" (1971) and on TV in "Home for The Holidays" (1972). She starred in other made-for-TV movies and made guest appearances on series such as "Hawaii Five-O", "The Love Boat", "Hotel", and "Murder, She Wrote". Her final TV role was in the 1991 TV movie "Dead on the Money".


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Concurrent with her TV career, Parker starred in a number of theatrical productions, including the role of Margo Channing in "Applause", the Broadway musical version of the film "All About Eve". The role was originally played in the musical by Lauren Bacall and in "All About Eve" by Bette Davis. In 1976, she played Maxine in the Ahmanson Theater revival of "The Night of the Iguana". She was replaced in the Circle in the Square Theatre revival of "Pal Joey" during previews.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: For her contributions to the motion picture industry, Parker was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6340 Hollywood Boulevard.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Parker was raised a Protestant, and later converted to Judaism, telling the "New York Daily News" columnist Kay Gardella in August 1969: "I think we're all Jews at heart...I wanted to convert for a long time." She later embraced Messianic Judaism, and was a supporter of Messianic Jewish philosopher, teacher, and commentator Roy Masters, owner of the Foundation of Human Understanding in Grants Pass, Oregon. In 1978, she wrote the foreword to Masters's book "How Your Mind Can Keep You Well".


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Parker, a life-long Democrat, endorsed Adlai Stevenson for president in the 1952 presidential election.


title: Eleanor Parker

text: Eleanor Parker died on December 9, 2013, at a medical facility in Palm Springs, California, of complications of pneumonia. She was 91. Upon her death, she was cremated and her ashes were later buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills, Lot 3799, Eternal Love, the plot of her husband, Raymond Hirsch, who predeceased her in September 2001.


title: Genre

text: Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria, yet genres can be aesthetic, rhetorical, communicative, or functional. Genres form by conventions that change over time as cultures invent new genres and discontinue the use of old ones. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand-alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed-upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may have rigid, strictly adhered-to guidelines, while others may show great flexibility.


title: Genre

text: Genre began as an absolute classification system for ancient Greek literature, as set out in Aristotle's "Poetics". For Aristotle, poetry (odes, epics, etc.), prose, and performance each had specific design features that supported appropriate content of each genre. Speech patterns for comedy would not be appropriate for tragedy, for example, and even actors were restricted to their genre under the assumption that a type of person could tell one type of story best.


title: Genre

text: Genres proliferate and develop beyond Aristotle’s classifications in response to changes in audiences and creators. Genre has become a dynamic tool to help the public make sense out of unpredictability through artistic expression. Given that art is often a response to a social state, in that people write, paint, sing, dance, and otherwise produce art about what they know about, the use of genre as a tool must be able to adapt to changing meanings.


title: Genre

text: Musician Ezra LaFleur argues that discussion of genre should draw from Ludwig Wittgenstein's idea of family resemblance. Genres are helpful labels for communicating but do not necessarily have a single attribute that is the essence of the genre.


title: Genre

text: The term "genre" is much used in the history and criticism of visual art, but in art history has meanings that overlap rather confusingly. Genre painting is a term for paintings where the main subject features human figures to whom no specific identity attachesin other words, figures are not portraits, characters from a story, or allegorical personifications. These are distinguished from staffage: incidental figures in what is primarily a landscape or architectural painting. "Genre painting" may also be used as a wider term covering genre painting proper, and other specialized types of paintings such as still-life, landscapes, marine paintings and animal paintings.


title: Genre

text: The concept of the "hierarchy of genres" was a powerful one in artistic theory, especially between the 17th and 19th centuries. It was strongest in France, where it was associated with the Académie française which held a central role in academic art. The genres in hierarchical order are:


title: Genre

text: A literary "genre" is a category of literary composition. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or even (as in the case of fiction) length. Genre should not be confused with age category, by which literature may be classified as either adult, young adult, or children's. They also must not be confused with format, such as graphic novel or picture book. The distinctions between genres and categories are flexible and loosely defined, often with subgroups.


title: Genre

text: The most general genres in literature are (in loose chronological order) epic, tragedy, comedy, novel, and short story. They can all be in the genres prose or poetry, which shows best how loosely genres are defined. Additionally, a genre such as satire might appear in any of the above, not only as a subgenre but as a mixture of genres. Finally, they are defined by the general cultural movement of the historical period in which they were composed. In popular fiction, which is especially divided by genres, genre fiction is the more usual term.


title: Genre

text: In literature, genre has been known as an intangible taxonomy. This taxonomy implies a concept of containment or that an idea will be stable forever. The earliest recorded systems of genre in Western history can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. Gérard Genette, a French literary theorist and author of "The Architext", describes Plato as creating three Imitational genres: dramatic dialogue, pure narrative, and epic (a mixture of dialogue and narrative). Lyric poetry, the fourth and final type of Greek literature, was excluded by Plato as a non-mimetic mode. Aristotle later revised Plato's system by eliminating the pure narrative as a viable mode and distinguishing by two additional criteria: the object to be imitated, as objects could be either superior or inferior, and the medium of presentation such as words, gestures or verse. Essentially, the three categories of mode, object, and medium dialogue, epic (superior-mixed narrative), comedy (inferior-dramatic dialogue), and parody (inferior-mixed narrative). Genette continues by explaining the later integration of lyric poetry into the classical system during the romantic period, replacing the now removed pure narrative mode. Lyric poetry, once considered non-mimetic, was deemed to imitate feelings, becoming the third leg of a new tripartite system: lyrical, epical, and dramatic dialogue. This system, which came to "dominate all the literary theory of German romanticism (and therefore well beyond)…" (38), has seen numerous attempts at expansion or revision. However, more ambitious efforts to expand the tripartite system resulted in new taxonomic systems of increasing scope and complexity.


title: Genre

text: Genette reflects upon these various systems, comparing them to the original tripartite arrangement: "its structure is somewhat superior to…those that have come after, fundamentally flawed as they are by their inclusive and hierarchical taxonomy, which each time immediately brings the whole game to a standstill and produces an impasse" (74). Taxonomy allows for a structured classification system of genre, as opposed to a more contemporary rhetorical model of genre.


title: Genre

text: The basic genres of film can be regarded as drama, in the feature film and most cartoons, and documentary. Most dramatic feature films, especially from Hollywood fall fairly comfortably into one of a long list of film genres such as the Western, war film, horror film, romantic comedy film, musical, crime film, and many others. Many of these genres have a number of subgenres, for example by setting or subject, or a distinctive national style, for example in the Indian Bollywood musical.


title: Genre

text: A music genre is a conventional category that identifies pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. It is to be distinguished from "musical form" and "musical style", although in practice these terms are sometimes used interchangeably. There are numerous genres in Western classical music and popular music, as well as musical theatre and the music of non-Western cultures. The term is now perhaps over-used to describe relatively small differences in musical style in modern rock music, that also may reflect sociological differences in their audiences. Timothy Laurie suggests that in the context of rock and pop music studies, the "appeal of genre criticism is that it makes narratives out of musical worlds that often seem to lack them".


title: Genre

text: Music can be divided into different genres in several ways. The artistic nature of music means that these classifications are often arbitrary and controversial, and some genres may overlap. There are several academic approaches to genres. In his book "Form in Tonal Music", Douglass M. Green lists madrigal, motet, canzona, ricercar, and dance as examples of genres from the Renaissance period. According to Green, "Beethoven's "Op. 61" and Mendelssohn's "Op. 64" are identical in genre – both are violin concertos – but different in form. However, Mozart's "Rondo for Piano, K. 511", and the "Agnus Dei" from his "Mass, K. 317" are quite different in genre but happen to be similar in form." Some, like Peter van der Merwe, treat the terms "genre" and "style" as the same, saying that "genre" should be defined as pieces of music that share a certain style or "basic musical language".


title: Genre

text: Others, such as Allan F. Moore, state that "genre" and "style" are two separate terms, and that secondary characteristics such as subject matter can also differentiate between genres. A music genre or subgenre may be defined by the musical techniques, the styles, the context, and content and spirit of the themes. Geographical origin is sometimes used to identify a music genre, though a single geographical category will often include a wide variety of subgenres.


title: Genre

text: Several music scholars have criticized the priority accorded to genre-based communities and listening practices. For example, Laurie argues that "music genres do not belong to isolated, self-sufficient communities. People constantly move between environments where diverse forms of music are heard, advertised and accessorised with distinctive iconographies, narratives and celebrity identities that also touch on non-musical worlds."


title: Genre

text: The concept of genre is often applied, sometimes rather loosely, to other media with an artistic element, such as video game genres. Genre, and numerous minutely divided subgenres, affect popular culture very significantly, not least as they are used to classify it for publicity purposes. The vastly increased output of popular culture in the age of electronic media encourages dividing cultural products by genre to simplify the search for products by consumers, a trend the Internet has only intensified.


title: Genre

text: In philosophy of language, genre figures prominently in the works of philosopher and literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin's basic observations were of "speech genres" (the idea of heteroglossia), modes of speaking or writing that people learn to mimic, weave together, and manipulate (such as "formal letter" and "grocery list", or "university lecture" and "personal anecdote"). In this sense, genres are socially specified: recognized and defined (often informally) by a particular culture or community. The work of Georg Lukács also touches on the nature of literary genres, appearing separately but around the same time (1920s–1930s) as Bakhtin. Norman Fairclough has a similar concept of genre that emphasizes the social context of the text: Genres are "different ways of (inter)acting discoursally" (Fairclough, 2003: 26).


title: Genre

text: In the field of rhetoric, genre theorists usually understand genres as types of actions rather than types or forms of texts. On this perspective, texts are channels through which genres are enacted. Carolyn Miller's work has been especially important for this perspective. Drawing on Lloyd Bitzer's concept of rhetorical situation, Miller reasons that recurring rhetorical problems tend to elicit recurring responses; drawing on Alfred Schütz, she reasons that these recurring responses become "typified" – that is, socially constructed as recognizable types. Miller argues that these "typified rhetorical actions" (p. 151) are properly understood as genres.


title: Genre

text: Building off of Miller, Charles Bazerman and Clay Spinuzzi have argued that genres understood as actions derive their meaning from other genres – that is, other actions. Bazerman therefore proposes that we analyze genres in terms of "genre systems", while Spinuzzi prefers the closely related concept of "genre ecologies". Reiff and Bawarshi define genre analysis as a critical reading of people's patterns of communication in different situations.


title: Genre

text: This tradition has had implications for the teaching of writing in American colleges and universities. Combining rhetorical genre theory with activity theory, David Russell has proposed that standard English composition courses are ill-suited to teach the genres that students will write in other contexts across the university and beyond. Elizabeth Wardle contends that standard composition courses do teach genres, but that these are inauthentic "mutt genres" that are often of little use outside of composition courses.


title: Genre

text: Genre is effective as a tool in rhetoric because it allows a speaker to set the context for a rhetorical discussion. Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi suggest that rhetorical genres may be assigned based off of careful analysis of the subject matter and consideration of the audience.


title: Genre

text: Genre is related to Ludwig Wittgenstein's theory of Family resemblance in which he describes how genres act like a family tree, where members of a family are related, but not exact copies of one another.


title: Genre

text: This concept of genre originated from the classification systems created by Plato. Plato divided literature into the three classic genres accepted in Ancient Greece: poetry, drama, and prose. Poetry is further subdivided into epic, lyric, and drama. The divisions are recognized as being set by Aristotle and Plato; however, they were not the only ones. Many genre theorists added to these accepted forms of poetry.


title: Genre

text: The earliest recorded systems of genre in Western history can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. Gérard Genette explains his interpretation of the history of genre in "The Architext". He described Plato as the creator of three imitational, mimetic genres distinguished by mode of imitation rather than content. These three imitational genres include dramatic dialogue, the drama; pure narrative, the dithyramb; and a mixture of the two, the epic. Plato excluded lyric poetry as a non-mimetic, imitational mode. Genette further discussed how Aristotle revised Plato's system by first eliminating the pure narrative as a viable mode. He then uses two additional criteria to distinguish the system. The first of the criteria is the object to be imitated, whether superior or inferior. The second criterion is the medium of presentation: words, gestures, or verse. Essentially, the three categories of mode, object, and medium can be visualized along an XYZ axis. Excluding the criteria of medium, Aristotle's system distinguished four types of classical genres: tragedy, epic, comedy, and parody.


title: Genre

text: Genette explained the integration of lyric poetry into the classical system by replacing the removed pure narrative mode. Lyric poetry, once considered non-mimetic, was deemed to imitate feelings, becoming the third "Architext", a term coined by Gennette, of a new long-enduring tripartite system: lyrical; epical, the mixed narrative; and dramatic, the dialogue. This new system that came to "dominate all the literary theory of German romanticism" (Genette 38) has seen numerous attempts at expansion and revision. Such attempts include Friedrich Schlegel's triad of subjective form, the lyric; objective form, the dramatic; and subjective-objective form, the epic. However, more ambitious efforts to expand the tripartite system resulted in new taxonomic systems of increasing complexity. Gennette reflected upon these various systems, comparing them to the original tripartite arrangement: "its structure is somewhat superior to most of those that have come after, fundamentally flawed as they are by their inclusive and hierarchical taxonomy, which each time immediately brings the whole game to a standstill and produces an impasse".


title: Genre

text: Although genres are not always precisely definable, genre considerations are one of the most important factors in determining what a person will see or read. The classification properties of genre can attract or repel potential users depending on the individual's understanding of a genre.


title: Genre

text: Genre creates an expectation in that expectation is met or not. Many genres have built-in audiences and corresponding publications that support them, such as magazines and websites. Inversely, audiences may call out for change in an antecedent genre and create an entirely new genre.


title: Genre

text: The term may be used in categorizing web pages, like "news page" and "fan page", with both very different layout, audience, and intention (Rosso, 2008). Some search engines like Vivísimo try to group found web pages into automated categories in an attempt to show various genres the search hits might fit.


title: Genre

text: A subgenre is a subordinate within a genre. Two stories being the same genre can still sometimes differ in subgenre. For example, if a fantasy story has darker and more frightening elements of fantasy, it would belong in the subgenre of dark fantasy; whereas another fantasy story that features magic swords and wizards would belong to the subgenre of sword and sorcery.


title: Genre

text: A microgenre is a highly specialized, narrow classification of a cultural practice. The term has come into usage in the 21st century, and most commonly refers to music. It is also associated with the hyper-specific categories used in recommendations for television shows and movies on digital streaming platforms such as Netflix, and is sometimes used more broadly by scholars analyzing niche forms in other periods and other media.


title: Limerick (poetry)

text: A limerick ( ) is a form of verse, usually humorous and frequently rude, in five-line, predominantly trimeter with a strict rhyme scheme of AABBA, in which the first, second and fifth line rhyme, while the third and fourth lines are shorter and share a different rhyme. The following example is a limerick of unknown origin:


title: Limerick (poetry)

text: The form appeared in England in the early years of the 18th century. It was popularized by Edward Lear in the 19th century, although he did not use the term. Gershon Legman, who compiled the largest and most scholarly anthology, held that the true limerick as a folk form is always obscene, and cites similar opinions by Arnold Bennett and George Bernard Shaw, describing the clean limerick as a "periodic fad and object of magazine contests, rarely rising above mediocrity". From a folkloric point of view, the form is essentially transgressive; violation of taboo is part of its function.


title: Limerick (poetry)

text: The standard form of a limerick is a stanza of five lines, with the first, second and fifth rhyming with one another and having three feet of three syllables each; and the shorter third and fourth lines also rhyming with each other, but having only two feet of three syllables. The third and fourth lines are usually anapaestic, or one iamb followed by one anapaest. The first, second and fifth are usually either anapaests or amphibrachs.


title: Limerick (poetry)

text: The first line traditionally introduces a person and a place, with the place appearing at the end of the first line and establishing the rhyme scheme for the second and fifth lines. In early limericks, the last line was often essentially a repeat of the first line, although this is no longer customary.


title: Limerick (poetry)

text: Within the genre, ordinary speech stress is often distorted in the first line, and may be regarded as a feature of the form: "There "was" a young "man" from the "coast""; "There "once" was a "girl" from De"troit"..." Legman takes this as a convention whereby prosody is violated simultaneously with propriety. Exploitation of geographical names, especially exotic ones, is also common, and has been seen as invoking memories of geography lessons in order to subvert the decorum taught in the schoolroom; Legman finds that the exchange of limericks is almost exclusive to comparatively well-educated males, women figuring in limericks almost exclusively as "villains or victims". The most prized limericks incorporate a kind of twist, which may be revealed in the final line or lie in the way the rhymes are often intentionally tortured, or both. Many limericks show some form of internal rhyme, alliteration or assonance, or some element of word play. Verses in limerick form are sometimes combined with a refrain to form a limerick song, a traditional humorous drinking song often with obscene verses.


title: Limerick (poetry)

text: David Abercrombie, a phonetician, takes a different view of the limerick, and one which seems to accord better with the form. It is this: Lines one, two, and five have three feet, that is to say three stressed syllables, while lines three and four have two stressed syllables. The number and placement of the unstressed syllables is rather flexible. There is at least one unstressed syllable between the stresses but there may be more – as long as there are not so many as to make it impossible to keep the equal spacing of the stresses.


title: Limerick (poetry)

text: The origin of the name "limerick" for this type of poem is debated. The name is generally taken to be a reference to the City or County of Limerick in Ireland sometimes particularly to the Maigue Poets, and may derive from an earlier form of nonsense verse parlour game that traditionally included a refrain that included "Will [or won't] you come (up) to Limerick?"


title: Limerick (poetry)

text: Although the "New English Dictionary" records the first usage of the word limerick for this type of poem in England in 1898 and in the United States in 1902, in recent years several earlier examples have been documented, the earliest being an 1880 reference, in a Saint John, New Brunswick newspaper, to an apparently well-known tune,


title: Limerick (poetry)

text: The limerick form was popularized by Edward Lear in his first (1846) and a later work, (1872). Lear wrote 212 limericks, mostly considered nonsense literature. It was customary at the time for limericks to accompany an absurd illustration of the same subject, and for the final line of the limerick to be a variant of the first line ending in the same word, but with slight differences that create a nonsensical, circular effect. The humour is not in the "punch line" ending but rather in the tension between meaning and its lack.


title: Limerick (poetry)

text: Lear's limericks were often typeset in three or four lines, according to the space available under the accompanying picture.


title: Limerick (poetry)

text: The limerick form is so well known that it has been parodied in many ways. The following example is of unknown origin:


title: Limerick (poetry)

text: Other parodies deliberately break the rhyme scheme, like the following example, attributed to W.S. Gilbert:


title: Limerick (poetry)

text: The American film reviewer Ezra Haber Glenn has blended the limerick form with reviews of popular films, creating so-called "filmericks". For example, on Vittorio De Sica's Italian neorealist "Bicycle Thieves":


title: Limerick (poetry)

text: The British wordplay and recreational mathematics expert Leigh Mercer (1893–1977) devised the following mathematical limerick:


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: A bearing is a machine element that constrains relative motion to only the desired motion, and reduces friction between moving parts. The design of the bearing may, for example, provide for free linear movement of the moving part or for free rotation around a fixed axis; or, it may "prevent" a motion by controlling the vectors of normal forces that bear on the moving parts. Most bearings facilitate the desired motion by minimizing friction. Bearings are classified broadly according to the type of operation, the motions allowed, or to the directions of the loads (forces) applied to the parts.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Rotary bearings hold rotating components such as shafts or axles within mechanical systems, and transfer axial and radial loads from the source of the load to the structure supporting it. The simplest form of bearing, the "plain bearing", consists of a shaft rotating in a hole. Lubrication is used to reduce friction. In the "ball bearing" and "roller bearing", to reduce sliding friction, rolling elements such as rollers or balls with a circular cross-section are located between the races or journals of the bearing assembly. A wide variety of bearing designs exists to allow the demands of the application to be correctly met for maximum efficiency, reliability, durability and performance.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: The term "bearing" is derived from the verb "to bear"; a bearing being a machine element that allows one part to bear (i.e., to support) another. The simplest bearings are bearing surfaces, cut or formed into a part, with varying degrees of control over the form, size, roughness, and location of the surface. Other bearings are separate devices installed into a machine or machine part. The most sophisticated bearings for the most demanding applications are very precise components; their manufacture requires some of the highest standards of current technology.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: The invention of the rolling bearing, in the form of wooden rollers supporting, or bearing, an object being moved is of great antiquity. It may predate the invention of a wheel rotating on a plain bearing.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Though it is often claimed that the Egyptians used roller bearings in the form of tree trunks under sleds, this is modern speculation. The Egyptians' own drawings in the tomb of Djehutihotep show the process of moving massive stone blocks on sledges as using liquid-lubricated runners which would constitute plain bearings. There are also Egyptian drawings of plain bearings used with hand drills.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: The earliest recovered example of a rolling element bearing is a wooden ball bearing supporting a rotating table from the remains of the Roman Nemi ships in Lake Nemi, Italy. The wrecks were dated to 40 BC.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Leonardo da Vinci incorporated drawings of ball bearings in his design for a helicopter around the year 1500; this is the first recorded use of bearings in an aerospace design. However, Agostino Ramelli is the first to have published sketches of roller and thrust bearings. An issue with ball and roller bearings is that the balls or rollers rub against each other, causing additional friction. This can be reduced by enclosing each individual ball or roller within a cage. The captured, or caged, ball bearing was originally described by Galileo in the 17th century.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: The first practical caged-roller bearing was invented in the mid-1740s by horologist John Harrison for his H3 marine timekeeper. In this timepiece the caged bearing was only used for a very limited oscillating motion, but later on Harrison applied a similar bearing design with a true rotational movement in a contemporaneous regulator clock.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: The first patent on ball bearings was awarded to Philip Vaughan, a British inventor and ironmaster in Carmarthen in 1794. His was the first modern ball-bearing design, with the ball running along a groove in the axle assembly.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Bearings played a pivotal role in the nascent Industrial Revolution, allowing the new industrial machinery to operate efficiently. For example, they were used for holding wheel and axle assemblies to greatly reduce friction compared to prior non-bearing designs.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: The first plain and rolling-element bearings were wood, closely followed by bronze. Over their history bearings have been made of many materials, including ceramic, sapphire, glass, steel, bronze, and other metals. More recently, plastic bearings made of nylon, polyoxymethylene, polytetrafluoroethylene, and UHMWPE, among other materials, are also in use today.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Watch makers produce "jeweled" watches using sapphire plain bearings to reduce friction, thus allowing more precise time keeping.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Even basic materials can have impressive durability. Wooden bearings, for instance, can still be seen today in old clocks or in water mills where the water provides cooling and lubrication.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: The first patent for a radial style ball bearing was awarded to Jules Suriray, a Parisian bicycle mechanic, on 3 August 1869. The bearings were then fitted to the winning bicycle ridden by James Moore in the world's first bicycle road race, Paris-Rouen, in November 1869.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: In 1883, Friedrich Fischer, founder of FAG, developed an approach for milling and grinding balls of equal size and exact roundness by means of a suitable production machine, which set the stage for creation of an independent bearing industry. His hometown Schweinfurt later became a world leading center for ball bearing production.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: The modern, self-aligning design of ball bearing is attributed to Sven Wingquist of the SKF ball-bearing manufacturer in 1907, when he was awarded Swedish patent No. 25406 on its design.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Henry Timken, a 19th-century visionary and innovator in carriage manufacturing, patented the tapered roller bearing in 1898. The following year he formed a company to produce his innovation. Over a century the company grew to make bearings of all types, including specialty steel bearings and an array of related products and services.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Erich Franke invented and patented the wire race bearing in 1934. His focus was on a bearing design with a cross section as small as possible and which could be integrated into the enclosing design. After World War II he founded together with Gerhard Heydrich the company Franke & Heydrich KG (today Franke GmbH) to push the development and production of wire race bearings.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Richard Stribeck's extensive research on ball bearing steels identified the metallurgy of the commonly used 100Cr6 (AISI 52100), showing coefficient of friction as a function of pressure.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Designed in 1968 and later patented in 1972, Bishop-Wisecarver's co-founder Bud Wisecarver created vee groove bearing guide wheels, a type of linear motion bearing consisting of both an external and internal 90-degree vee angle.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: In the early 1980s, Pacific Bearing's founder, Robert Schroeder, invented the first bi-material plain bearing that was interchangeable with linear ball bearings. This bearing had a metal shell (aluminum, steel or stainless steel) and a layer of Teflon-based material connected by a thin adhesive layer.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Today's ball and roller bearings are used in many applications which include a rotating component. Examples include ultra high speed bearings in dental drills, aerospace bearings in the Mars Rover, gearbox and wheel bearings on automobiles, flexure bearings in optical alignment systems, and air bearings used in Coordinate-measuring machines.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: By far, the most common bearing is the plain bearing, a bearing which uses surfaces in rubbing contact, often with a lubricant such as oil or graphite. A plain bearing may or may not be a discrete device. It may be nothing more than the bearing surface of a hole with a shaft passing through it, or of a planar surface that bears another (in these cases, not a discrete device); or it may be a layer of bearing metal either fused to the substrate (semi-discrete) or in the form of a separable sleeve (discrete). With suitable lubrication, plain bearings often give entirely acceptable accuracy, life, and friction at minimal cost. Therefore, they are very widely used.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: However, there are many applications where a more suitable bearing can improve efficiency, accuracy, service intervals, reliability, speed of operation, size, weight, and costs of purchasing and operating machinery.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Thus, there are many types of bearings, with varying shape, material, lubrication, principle of operation, and so on.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Reducing friction in bearings is often important for efficiency, to reduce wear and to facilitate extended use at high speeds and to avoid overheating and premature failure of the bearing. Essentially, a bearing can reduce friction by virtue of its shape, by its material, or by introducing and containing a fluid between surfaces or by separating the surfaces with an electromagnetic field.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Combinations of these can even be employed within the same bearing. An example of this is where the cage is made of plastic, and it separates the rollers/balls, which reduce friction by their shape and finish.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Bearing design varies depending on the size and directions of the forces that they are required to support. Forces can be predominately radial, axial (thrust bearings), or bending moments perpendicular to the main axis.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Different bearing types have different operating speed limits. Speed is typically specified as maximum relative surface speeds, often specified ft/s or m/s. Rotational bearings typically describe performance in terms of the product "DN" where "D" is the mean diameter (often in mm) of the bearing and "N" is the rotation rate in revolutions per minute.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Generally, there is considerable speed range overlap between bearing types. Plain bearings typically handle only lower speeds, rolling element bearings are faster, followed by fluid bearings and finally magnetic bearings which are limited ultimately by centripetal force overcoming material strength.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Some applications apply bearing loads from varying directions and accept only limited play or "slop" as the applied load changes. One source of motion is gaps or "play" in the bearing. For example, a 10 mm shaft in a 12 mm hole has 2 mm play.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: Allowable play varies greatly depending on the use. As an example, a wheelbarrow wheel supports radial and axial loads. Axial loads may be hundreds of newtons force left or right, and it is typically acceptable for the wheel to wobble by as much as 10 mm under the varying load. In contrast, a lathe may position a cutting tool to ±0.002 mm using a ball lead screw held by rotating bearings. The bearings support axial loads of thousands of newtons in either direction and must hold the ball lead screw to ±0.002 mm across that range of loads


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: A second source of motion is elasticity in the bearing itself. For example, the balls in a ball bearing are like stiff rubber, and under load deform from round to a slightly flattened shape. The race is also elastic and develops a slight dent where the ball presses on it.


title: Bearing (mechanical)

text: The stiffness of a bearing is how the distance between the parts which are separated by the bearing varies with applied load. With rolling element bearings this is due to the strain of the ball and race. With fluid bearings it is due to how the pressure of the fluid varies with the gap (when correctly loaded, fluid bearings are typically stiffer than rolling element bearings).