title: Strip club

text: Among clubs, there is a variety of different ways to deliver entertainment, and fee structures commonly differ between clubs. A cover charge (entry fee also known as a "door charge") is customary at many clubs, the amount of which can vary by factors such as day of visit, time of day, gender, and other factors. To make the charge more acceptable to customers, some clubs include bonus items in the admission price, such as drink tickets that can be redeemed once inside. Some clubs also have drink fees tied to interaction with performers. The bigger the drink, the longer the time permitted with the dancer. This practice is more common in European strip clubs and African or Asian hostess clubs. Champagne Room pricing (where time with an exotic dancer in a private room on the premises can be purchased) is a variation on that same theme.


title: Strip club

text: In the U.S., striptease dancers are generally classified as independent contractors. A few smaller strip clubs may pay a weekly wage but, in most cases, a dancer's income is derived entirely from tips and other fees, which they collect from customers. In most clubs, dancers must pay a "stage fee" or "house fee" to work a given shift. In these cases, strippers receive payment in the form of tips and payment for specific services offered by the club (such as lap dances). Many clubs also take a percentage of fees charged for each private dance. It is also customaryand often required in the United Statesfor dancers to pay a "tip out", usually at the end of their shift, to the supporting staff, such as DJs, house moms, make-up artists, servers, bartenders, and bouncers. This can be a set fee or a percentage of money earned. For the customer, the fee structure of a club is determined by management policy.


title: Strip club

text: In many smaller clubs, multiple staff roles are filled by the same person, such as a bartender and manager. In extreme cases, one person fills all the support functions within a club. Some clubs hire attractive women onto the staff, as bartenders and shot girls, to complement the strippers. They can also double as stage and lap dance entertainers, depending on the club. The positions of paid staff are discretionary. Turnover can be frequent, but standard employment laws do apply and have been enforced through the courts and other regulatory means. A highly publicized 2010 case in the United States concerned a pregnant bartender in New York. She alleged that Cafe Royale in Farmingdale, New York, discriminated against her because pregnancy is "unsexy". Hiring of staff and performers in the United States is almost always voluntary on the part of the club and worker. Some strip clubs have hosted job fairs to address staffing needs. While not a common practice in the United States, globally, women are regularly compelled into working as strippers with the knowledge of club management.


title: Strip club

text: The ability to attract first-time patrons is critical to a nightclub's success. As such, promotions, advertising, and special offers are the typical means to market a nightclub. Marketing strategies for strip clubs include attracting new customers, increasing the frequency of visits by existing customers, and establishing a higher level of name recognition. Target markets can include the business-convention traveler, local professionals, and business people. College students are also a secondary target market. Advertising is essential for strip clubs, but local regulations and public reaction can make it challenging. For this reason, clubs around the world advertise on the World Wide Web. Advertising can include discount passes, virtual club tours, and dancer schedules.


title: Strip club

text: U.S. company VCGH, Inc. uses a variety of highly targeted methods to reach its customers, including local radio, billboard trucks, Internet, newspaper and magazine advertisements, and professional sporting events. Its advertising and marketing expenses decreased by approximately 3.9% to US$2,805,260 from US$2,921,327 over the year ended December 31, 2008. Advertising and marketing expenses were approximately 5.1% of their total revenues in 2009 and 2008. The decrease was attributed to a shift in advertising, including using billboard trucks for mobile advertising versus leasing fixed billboard signs. By contrast, in public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Rick's Cabaret International reported an increase in its advertising budget from US$2,231,005 in 2008 to US$8,091,745 in 2009, growing from 3.9% to 10.8% of total annual revenue.


title: Strip club

text: In the U.S. city of Seattle, Washington, the city's Major League Baseball franchise, the Seattle Mariners, initially sued in King County Superior Court to prevent Dreamgirls cabaret from opening. The team's attorneys argued that the strip club's existence would adversely affect families that visit the stadium. The suit was dropped after the Mariners reached a compromise which included limits on outdoor advertising, window displays, and signs. The compromise specified that the clubs video screens would only show text on kids days at the stadium, and not images of strippers. In May 2010, there was public controversy because the club showed strippers on its large electronic display on "kids' day". Dreamgirls claimed that it is the team's responsibility to tell them when such a display is prohibited.


title: Strip club

text: Elite Cabaret, a Tempe city strip club, filed suit in 2007 against the City of Tempe in federal court. In the settlement that was reached, the two sides ended the legal wrangle amidst a host of stipulations. One clause is aimed at preventing the racy image promoted by strip clubs. The club is not allowed to depict the human body on the exterior of its building. Signs cannot say "nude", "topless", "girls" or similar words. The sign can only have the bar's name and terms like "cabaret" or "gentlemen's club". Strip club advertising and its associated controversy are not limited to the United States. In South Africa, well-known strip club chain Teazers generated media coverage and official complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA) over its suggestive billboards.


title: Strip club

text: The legal status of strip clubs has evolved over the course of time, with national and local laws becoming progressively more liberal on the issue around the world, although some countries (such as Iceland) have implemented strict limits and bans. Strip clubs are frequent targets of litigation around the world, and the sex industry, which includes strip clubs, is a hot button issue in popular culture and politics. Some clubs have been linked to organized crime, which has been known to use legitimate business as fronts for its illegal operations.


title: Strip club

text: With the legal system of the U.S. based on common law, motivations for lawsuits can range from legitimate legal grounds to cases filed with the intent of shaping case law to favor the socio-political aims of special interest groups. Clubs around the country have personnel and clientele that are purported to engage in not only sex acts on the premises, but also drug use and other criminalized activities. Incidents of such activity vary widely. Their prevalence is dependent on regional differences in the attitudes of management, entertainers, customers, and law enforcement. Strip clubs are obligated to enforce age limits for entry to the clubs and consumption of alcohol. If a club is found to have served a person under the age of 21 alcohol it can have its liquor license suspended or rescinded for repeated violations. Licenses can also be lost due to evidence of drug use in the club. Club owners have closed their businesses as a result of losing a liquor license.


title: Strip club

text: A widely cited U.S. local ordinance is San Diego (California) Municipal Code 33.3610, specific and strict in response to allegations of corruption among local officials, which included contacts in the nude entertainment industry. Among its provisions is the "six-foot rule", copied by other municipalities in requiring that dancers maintain a six-foot distance from patrons while performing. "Fully nude" clubs may be subject to additional requirements, such as restrictions on alcohol sales and "no-touch rules" between customers and dancers. To circumvent these rules, two "separate" barsone topless and one fully nudemay open adjacent to one another. In a small number of states and jurisdictions where it is legal for alcohol to be consumed but not sold, some clubs still allow customers to bring their own beverages.


title: Strip club

text: Still other rules forbid "full nudity" in certain districts, which can vary among different areas within the same town. Some parts of the U.S. have laws forbidding the exposure of female nipples or even areolas, thus requiring female dancers to cover these with pasties. These laws are not, however, known to be applied to the exposure of male nipples. Managers, dancers, and other club workers can be cited or arrested by local or federal authorities for violating nudity, drug, and other violations. In February 2010, the U.S. city of Detroit, Michigan, banned fully exposed breasts in its strip clubs, following the example of Houston, Texas, which began enforcing a similar ordinance in 2008. The Detroit city council has since softened the rules; eliminating the requirement for pasties but keeping other restrictions. Both municipalities were reputed to have suffered rampant occurrences of illicit activities, including prostitution, all linked to striptease establishments within their cities' limits. Detroit has also drawn attention from the federal government for incidents of human trafficking in its strip clubs. In 2010, the state of Missouri passed a law similar to that of Houston and Detroit, banning full nudity in strip clubs across the state.


title: Strip club

text: Strip clubs have also received attention in the Americas outside the United States. There have been several attempts to amend the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), passed in 2001. The 2009 version of the bill (Bill C-45: An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act) contained provisions intended to tighten the issuing of visas to exotic dancers, to combat human trafficking. In August 2009, the city of Rio de Janeiro, while bidding for the 2014 World Cup, shut down one of its most notorious clubs, the Help discothèque. There were plans to bulldoze the club and "replace it with a music-themed museum" with US firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro as architects, backed by Rio's governor Sergio Cabral who was also backing the 2016 Summer Olympics bid. In November 2009, officials in Rio de Janeiro threatened to sue American comedian Robin Williams for disparaging comments made on a late-night talk show. One of his comments on its Olympics bid, "Rio sent 50 strippers and a pound of blow. It wasn't really fair, you know?" was replayed several times on news shows in Brazil and prompted a public response from its mayor. The Olympic Committee for Rio had its lawyers investigate whether there were grounds for a lawsuit, but no charges were filed.


title: Strip club

text: In 2009, the United Kingdom passed the Policing and Crime Act following concerns about an increase in the number of strip clubs in the country. Any strip clubs where live entertainment takes place more than 11 times a year must apply for a sexual entertainment venue licence from their local authorities. Such clubs are routinely opposed by those who feel that these 'lower the tone' of particular neighbourhoods. The legislation caused a reduction in the number of relevant premises, from about 350 in the early 2000s to fewer than 200, across the UK. In 2014, the East London Strippers Collective was formed to improve working conditions in strip clubs. Their concerns included poorly-maintained working environments, exploitative business practises including the levying of fees, commission and fines, and a lack of employment protection and job security.


title: Strip club

text: The Irish government had, at one time, special visa categories for 'entertainers,' which enabled the trafficking of women for strip clubs and prostitution.


title: Strip club

text: In 2001, the former immigration chief in Cyprus was found guilty of accepting bribes to issue work permits to foreign women (in this case from Ukraine), to work as strippers in clubs, with some forced into prostitution. Throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and the Netherlands, studies have shown that Russian individuals and organized crime groups are importing women from Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States, and Central Europe into the Russian sex industry to work in stripping, prostitution, peep and show club services, and massage and escort services, among others.


title: Strip club

text: In March 2010, Iceland outlawed striptease. Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, Iceland's prime minister, said: "The Nordic countries are leading the way on women's equality, recognizing women as equal citizens rather than commodities for sale." The politician behind the bill, Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir, said: "It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold."


title: Strip club

text: Strip clubs are regulated differently around the world. In some countries, ties to criminal elements (as defined by international law) can be much more pronounced.


title: Strip club

text: In Eastern Europe and Asia, common incidents of strip club crime involve customers being quoted a price upon entering a club, only to find out later that management expects a much higher payment before customers are permitted to leave. Intimidation and possibly the threat of violence are used to compel customers to comply.


title: Strip club

text: The Japanese government, similar to Canada and Ireland, had special visa categories for "entertainers". These enabled the trafficking of women for strip clubs and prostitution.


title: Strip club

text: In South Africa, there has been public controversy over incidents of prostitution and violence related to its strip clubs. In June 2010, 17 customers were arrested, during a raid at a strip club in Cape Town, for committing unspecified illegal acts. 35 Eastern European dancers were also arrested for working at the club without the correct documents.


title: Strip club

text: In 2008, the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research in Sydney, Australia, reported 1,600 people were charged with committing a range of 27 criminal offenses in the state's "places of worship". Oddly, the figures showed only 282 people were charged with the same offenses in premises classified as adult entertainment establishments. A breakdown of the statistical figures showed that 85 people were assaulted in places of worship, compared to 66 at adult entertainment locations. Incidents of both sexual assault and harassing and threatening behavior were also greater at places of worship. The report included churches, synagogues, monasteries, mosques, convents, cathedrals and chapels as places of worship. Premises listed as adult entertainment sites included strip clubs, sex shops, brothels, massage parlors, gay clubs, gaming houses, and gambling clubs. The bureau's interpretation was that people were just as likely to be assaulted or robbed in the sanctity of a church as they were in sex industry venues.


title: Strip club

text: The strip club as an outlet for salacious entertainment is a recurrent theme in popular culture. In the media, clubs are portrayed primarily as gathering places of vice and ill repute. Both clubs themselves and various features of the business are highlighted in these references. Comedian Chris Rock also pokes fun at the champagne room in his spoken word track, "No Sex (In the Champagne Room)", on his 1999 album, "Bigger & Blacker". Wyclef Jean later noted Rock's comment in his own reflection on strippers, "Perfect Gentleman". In 2016, rapper Shawty Lo's funeral procession stopped at his favorite strip club, The Blue Flame Lounge in Atlanta, where patrons and mourners honored his casket with a moment of silence.


title: Strip club

text: The image of strippers as known today evolved through the late 1960s and 1970s in the U.S. and in international cultures which embraced American striptease. By the 1980s, the pole dancing and highly explicit imagery associated with today's performers was widely accepted and frequently portrayed in film, television, and theater.


title: Strip club

text: In addition to lesser-known videos such as "A Night at the Revuebar" (1983), the 1980s also featured mainstream films involving strippers and their work as part of the central narrative. These included "Flashdance" (1983), which told the story of blue-collar worker Alexandra (Alex) Owens (Jennifer Beals), who works as an exotic dancer in a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, bar at night and at a steel mill as a welder during the day. "Blaze" (1989) features Lolita Davidovitch as notorious stripper Blaze Starr. Starr herself appears in the film in a cameo role. "Exotica" (1994), directed by Atom Egoyan, is set in a Canadian lap-dance club, and portrays a man's (Bruce Greenwood) obsession with a schoolgirl stripper named Christina (Mia Kirshner). "Showgirls" (1995) was directed by Paul Verhoeven and starred Elizabeth Berkley and Gina Gershon. "Striptease" (1996), was an adaptation of the novel starring Demi Moore. "The Players Club" (1998) starred LisaRaye as a girl who becomes a stripper to earn enough money to enter college and study journalism.


title: Strip club

text: In "Jekyll and Hyde" (1997), the character of Lucy Harris (originally portrayed by Linda Eder) works as a prostitute and stripper in a small London club called The Red Rat, where she meets a multi-dimension man named Doctor Henry Jekyll, who turns into his evil persona Mr. Edward Hyde. Lucy performs the song 'Bring on the Men' during a show at the Red Rat (which was later replaced with 'Good 'n' Evil' in the Broadway production, some claiming 'Bring on the Men' was too 'risqué'). In "Neighbours" (1985), the character of Daphne is originally a stripper at Des's bucks party, and eventually goes on to marry him. "Married... with Children" (1987–97) often featured Al Bundy, Jefferson D'Arcy, and the NO MA'AM crew spending a night at the Nudie Bar. In the six season of "The Sopranos" (1999–2007), business was often conducted at the Bada Bing strip club.


title: Strip club

text: By the 2000s, visits to strip clubs by characters in action movies were a common occurrence. "Dancing at the Blue Iguana" (2000) is a feature film starring Daryl Hannah. The female cast of the film researched the film by dancing at strip clubs and created their parts and their storylines to be as realistic as possible. "The Raymond Revuebar the Art of Striptease" (2002) is a documentary, directed by Simon Weitzman. "Los Debutantes" (2003) is a Chilean film set in a strip-club in Santiago. "Portraits of a Naked Lady Dancer" (2004) is a documentary, directed by Deborah Rowe. In " Closer" (2004), Natalie Portman plays Alice, a young stripper just arrived in London from America. "Crazy Horse Le Show" (2004) features dance routines from the Crazy Horse, Paris. "I Know Who Killed Me" (2007) stars Lindsay Lohan as Dakota Moss, an alluring stripper involved in the machinations of a serial killer, and features a long striptease sequence at a strip club. In 2009, a DVD called "Crazy Horse Paris" featuring Dita Von Teese was released. "Barely Phyllis" is a play on Phyllis Dixey which was first staged at the Pomegranate Theatre, Chesterfield in 2009. A strip club is prominently featured in the film "Megean and Andrew go to a Strip Club" (2011) in which the title characters go to a strip club. "Stripsearch" (2001–), an ongoing Australian reality television show which centers around the training of male strippers. In "" (2007), in the two-part season 6 finale, titled "Don't You Want Me", Alex Nunez resorts to stripping after her mother and herself do not have enough money to pay the rent on their apartment.


title: Strip club

text: One of the most famous strip clubs in the U.S. is on Route 17 in Lodi, New Jersey. It was featured on the television show "The Sopranos". The club is actually a go-go bar, serving alcohol with dancers, and it does not offer nudity. It is called "Satin Dolls" in real life, but is known more universally around the world and in the show as "The Bada Bing". The Gold Club was an Atlanta adult entertainment club receiving national attention for the indictment of several of its owners, managers, and employees. The Gold Club trial received significant attention because numerous significant professional athletes were called to testify. The club was closed after the convictions of its owner plus several managers and employees.


title: Strip club

text: "Sapphire Gentlemen's Club" in Las Vegas has been billed as the world's largest strip club. In 2006 it sold at auction for US$80 million. Tampa, Florida, is well known for its strip clubs, including the famous "Mons Venus". Howard Stern, a radio host and television personality, makes frequent mention of 'Rick's Cabaret' which operates in several cities. Bangkok and Pattaya in Thailand are world-famous for their go bars offering a variety of extra services.


title: Strip club

text: Given the variety of club formats and laws governing the operation of strip clubs around the world, a definitive and objective list of top clubs is not practical. The popularity of a given club is an indicator of its quality, as is the word of mouth among customers who have visited a cross section of clubs in different regions. A 2013 article published by the AskMen.com portal posted a list of the top 10 strip clubs in the world. According to their criteria, which included aesthetics, quality of girls, services, and such, the top clubs at the time were:


title: Strip club

text: U.S. style striptease remains a global phenomenon and culturally accepted form of entertainment, despite its scrutiny in legal circles and popular media. Over half of clubs still open from the list are located outside the United States. Popular internet sites for strip club enthusiasts also have Top Club lists calculated from input from their online visitors. The Ultimate Strip Club List has a Top 100 Strip Clubs list, generated by analyzing the ratings for all of its clubs as entered by individual reviewers. Its list regularly includes strip clubs from outside the U.S. and the site details clubs from countries across six continents. The Strip Club Network, calculates its online Strip Club List: Top 100 Clubs, by the total number of views that each club information page has received on their website.


title: North Caucasus

text: The North Caucasus, (; ; ; , , , , ) or Ciscaucasia (), is a subregion of Eastern Europe in the Eurasian continent. It is the northern part of the wider Caucasus region, and is entirely a part of Russia, sandwiched between the Sea of Azov and Black Sea to the west, and the Caspian Sea to the east. The region shares land borders with Georgia and Azerbaijan to the south. Krasnodar is the largest city within the North Caucasus.


title: North Caucasus

text: Politically, the North Caucasus is made up of Russian republics and krais. It lies north of the Main Caucasian Range, which separates it from the South Caucasus. As part of Russia, the territory falls within the North Caucasian and Southern Federal Districts and consists of Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai, and the constituent republics, approximately from west to east: the Republic of Adygea, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia–Alania, Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Republic of Dagestan and to the north: Kalmykia.


title: North Caucasus

text: Geographically, the term North Caucasus also refers to the northern slope and western extremity of the Greater Caucasus mountain range, as well as a part of its southern slope to the West. The Pontic–Caspian steppe area is often also encompassed under the notion of "Ciscaucasus", thus the northern boundary of the Forecaucasus steppe is generally considered to be the Manych River. Owing to its mild climate compared to much of Russia, the region has been described as Russia's "sunbelt".


title: North Caucasus

text: Ancient cultures of the Northern Caucasus are known as Klin-Yar community, with the most notable culture being the ancient Koban culture. Other haplogroups were Haplogroup J1 and Haplogroup G-M285.


title: North Caucasus

text: Ciscaucasus was historically covered by the Pontic–Caspian steppe, mostly on fertile calcareous chernozyom soils, which has been almost completely tilled and grazed. It is bounded by the Sea of Azov on the west, and the Caspian Sea on the east. According to the "Concise Atlas of the World, Second Edition" (2008), the Ciscaucasus region lies on the European side of the "commonly-accepted division" that separates Europe from Asia.


title: North Caucasus

text: The Northern Caucasus was conquered by Russia after the Russo-Circassian War. Much of the Northern Caucasus seceded from Russia in March 1917 as the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus, taking advantage of the instability caused by the February Revolution and becoming a minor participant in the Russian Civil War. Mountainous Republic troops engaged in fierce clashes against the invading White General Anton Denikin's Volunteer Army, before the latter's defeat at the hands of the Red Army. The region was informally occupied by the Soviet Union shortly afterwards, and the republic was forced into accepting a nonviolent annexation in January 1921. It was reformed into the Mountainous ASSR, which was later dissolved in October 1924, replaced by a series of autonomous Okrugs and Oblasts.


title: North Caucasus

text: The outer border of the Soviet Union's North Caucasus Krai was the same as that of present-day North Caucasus Economic Region (Raion) which includes an oblast (Rostov Oblast), two krais (Krasnodar Krai and Stavropol Krai), and seven republics. The former North Caucasus Military District (Okrug) also included Astrakhan Oblast, Volgograd Oblast, and the Republic of Kalmykia. Its administrative center was Rostov-on-Don until 10 January 1934, Pyatigorsk until January 1936, then Ordzhonikidze (today Vladikavkaz) and, from 15 December 1936, Voroshilovsk (today Stavropol).


title: North Caucasus

text: In June 2022, the US State Department advised citizens not to travel to the North Caucasus, including Chechnya and Mount Elbrus, due to terrorism, kidnapping, and risk of civil unrest.


title: North Caucasus

text: The North Caucasus, especially in its mountainous territories, has the highest life expectancy in Russia. The region is known for a large number of centenarians.


title: Thermal power station

text: A thermal power station is a type of power station in which heat energy is converted to electrical energy. In a steam-generating cycle heat is used to boil water in a large pressure vessel to produce high-pressure steam, which drives a steam turbine connected to an electrical generator. The low-pressure exhaust from the turbine enters a steam condenser where it is cooled to produce hot condensate which is recycled to the heating process to generate more high pressure steam. This is known as a Rankine cycle.


title: Thermal power station

text: The design of thermal power stations depends on the intended energy source: fossil fuel, nuclear and geothermal power, solar energy, biofuels, and waste incineration are all used. Certain thermal power stations are also designed to produce heat for industrial purposes; for district heating; or desalination of water, in addition to generating electrical power.


title: Thermal power station

text: Fuels such as natural gas or oil can also be burnt directly in gas turbines (internal combustion). These plants can be of the open cycle or the more efficient combined cycle type.


title: Thermal power station

text: Almost all coal-fired power stations, petroleum, nuclear, geothermal, solar thermal electric, and waste incineration plants, as well as all natural gas power stations are thermal. Natural gas is frequently burned in gas turbines as well as boilers. The waste heat from a gas turbine, in the form of hot exhaust gas, can be used to raise steam by passing this gas through a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG). The steam is then used to drive a steam turbine in a combined cycle plant that improves overall efficiency. Power stations burning coal, fuel oil, or natural gas are often called "fossil fuel power stations". Some biomass-fueled thermal power stations have appeared also. Non-nuclear thermal power stations, particularly fossil-fueled plants, which do not use cogeneration are sometimes referred to as "conventional power stations".


title: Thermal power station

text: Commercial electric utility power stations are usually constructed on a large scale and designed for continuous operation. Virtually all electric power stations use three-phase electrical generators to produce alternating current (AC) electric power at a frequency of 50 Hz or 60 Hz. Large companies or institutions may have their own power stations to supply heating or electricity to their facilities, especially if steam is created anyway for other purposes. Steam-driven power stations have been used to drive most ships in most of the 20th century. Shipboard power stations usually directly couple the turbine to the ship's propellers through gearboxes. Power stations in such ships also provide steam to smaller turbines driving electric generators to supply electricity. Nuclear marine propulsion is, with few exceptions, used only in naval vessels. There have been many turbo-electric ships in which a steam-driven turbine drives an electric generator which powers an electric motor for propulsion.


title: Thermal power station

text: Cogeneration plants, often called combined heat and power (CHP) facilities, produce both electric power and heat for process heat or space heating, such as steam and hot water.


title: Thermal power station

text: The reciprocating steam engine has been used to produce mechanical power since the 18th century, with notable improvements being made by James Watt. When the first commercially developed central electrical power stations were established in 1882 at Pearl Street Station in New York and Holborn Viaduct power station in London, reciprocating steam engines were used. The development of the steam turbine in 1884 provided larger and more efficient machine designs for central generating stations. By 1892 the turbine was considered a better alternative to reciprocating engines; turbines offered higher speeds, more compact machinery, and stable speed regulation allowing for parallel synchronous operation of generators on a common bus. After about 1905, turbines entirely replaced reciprocating engines in almost all large central power stations.


title: Thermal power station

text: The largest reciprocating engine-generator sets ever built were completed in 1901 for the Manhattan Elevated Railway. Each of seventeen units weighed about 500 tons and was rated 6000 kilowatts; a contemporary turbine set of similar rating would have weighed about 20% as much.


title: Thermal power station

text: The energy efficiency of a conventional thermal power station is defined as saleable energy produced as a percent of the heating value of the fuel consumed. A simple cycle gas turbine achieves energy conversion efficiencies from 20 to 35%. Typical coal-based power plants operating at steam pressures of 170 bar and 570 °C run at efficiency of 35 to 38%, with state-of-the-art fossil fuel plants at 46% efficiency. Combined-cycle systems can reach higher values. As with all heat engines, their efficiency is limited, and governed by the laws of thermodynamics.


title: Thermal power station

text: The Carnot efficiency dictates that higher efficiencies can be attained by increasing the temperature of the steam. Sub-critical pressure fossil fuel power stations can achieve 36–40% efficiency. Supercritical designs have efficiencies in the low to mid 40% range, with new "ultra critical" designs using pressures above 4400 psi (30.3 MPa) and multiple stage reheat reaching 45-48% efficiency. Above the critical point for water of and 3212 psi (22.06 MPa), there is no phase transition from water to steam, but only a gradual decrease in density.


title: Thermal power station

text: Currently most nuclear power stations must operate below the temperatures and pressures that coal-fired plants do, in order to provide more conservative safety margins within the systems that remove heat from the nuclear fuel. This, in turn, limits their thermodynamic efficiency to 30–32%. Some advanced reactor designs being studied, such as the very-high-temperature reactor, Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor, and supercritical water reactor, would operate at temperatures and pressures similar to current coal plants, producing comparable thermodynamic efficiency.


title: Thermal power station

text: The energy of a thermal power station not utilized in power production must leave the plant in the form of heat to the environment. This waste heat can go through a condenser and be disposed of with cooling water or in cooling towers. If the waste heat is instead used for district heating, it is called cogeneration. An important class of thermal power station is that associated with desalination facilities; these are typically found in desert countries with large supplies of natural gas, and in these plants freshwater production and electricity are equally important co-products.


title: Thermal power station

text: Other types of power stations are subject to different efficiency limitations. Most hydropower stations in the United States are about 90 percent efficient in converting the energy of falling water into electricity while the efficiency of a wind turbine is limited by Betz's law, to about 59.3%, and actual wind turbines show lower efficiency.


title: Thermal power station

text: The direct cost of electric energy produced by a thermal power station is the result of cost of fuel, capital cost for the plant, operator labour, maintenance, and such factors as ash handling and disposal. Indirect social or environmental costs, such as the economic value of environmental impacts, or environmental and health effects of the complete fuel cycle and plant decommissioning, are not usually assigned to generation costs for thermal stations in utility practice, but may form part of an environmental impact assessment. Those indirect costs belong to the broader concept of externalities.


title: Thermal power station

text: In the nuclear plant field, "steam generator" refers to a specific type of large heat exchanger used in a pressurized water reactor (PWR) to thermally connect the primary (reactor plant) and secondary (steam plant) systems, which generates steam. In a boiling water reactor (BWR), no separate steam generator is used and water boils in the reactor core.


title: Thermal power station

text: In some industrial settings, there can also be steam-producing heat exchangers called "heat recovery steam generators" (HRSG) which utilize heat from some industrial process, most commonly utilizing hot exhaust from a gas turbine. The steam generating boiler has to produce steam at the high purity, pressure and temperature required for the steam turbine that drives the electrical generator.


title: Thermal power station

text: Geothermal plants do not need boilers because they use naturally occurring steam sources. Heat exchangers may be used where the geothermal steam is very corrosive or contains excessive suspended solids.


title: Thermal power station

text: A fossil fuel steam generator includes an economizer, a steam drum, and the furnace with its steam generating tubes and superheater coils. Necessary safety valves are located at suitable points to protect against excessive boiler pressure. The air and flue gas path equipment include: forced draft (FD) fan, air preheater (AP), boiler furnace, induced draft (ID) fan, fly ash collectors (electrostatic precipitator or baghouse), and the flue-gas stack.


title: Thermal power station

text: The boiler feed water used in the steam boiler is a means of transferring heat energy from the burning fuel to the mechanical energy of the spinning steam turbine. The total feed water consists of recirculated "condensate" water and purified "makeup water". Because the metallic materials it contacts are subject to corrosion at high temperatures and pressures, the makeup water is highly purified before use. A system of water softeners and ion exchange demineralizers produces water so pure that it coincidentally becomes an electrical insulator, with conductivity in the range of 0.3–1.0 microsiemens per centimeter. The makeup water in a 500 MWe plant amounts to perhaps 120 US gallons per minute (7.6 L/s) to replace water drawn off from the boiler drums for water purity management, and to also offset the small losses from steam leaks in the system.


title: Thermal power station

text: The feed water cycle begins with condensate water being pumped out of the condenser after traveling through the steam turbines. The condensate flow rate at full load in a 500 MW plant is about 6,000 US gallons per minute (400 L/s).


title: Thermal power station

text: The water is pressurized in two stages, and flows through a series of six or seven intermediate feed water heaters, heated up at each point with steam extracted from an appropriate duct on the turbines and gaining temperature at each stage. Typically, in the middle of this series of feedwater heaters, and before the second stage of pressurization, the condensate plus the makeup water flows through a deaerator that removes dissolved air from the water, further purifying and reducing its corrosiveness. The water may be dosed following this point with hydrazine, a chemical that removes the remaining oxygen in the water to below 5 parts per billion (ppb). It is also dosed with pH control agents such as ammonia or morpholine to keep the residual acidity low and thus non-corrosive.


title: Thermal power station

text: The boiler is a rectangular furnace about on a side and tall. Its walls are made of a web of high pressure steel tubes about in diameter.


title: Thermal power station

text: Fuel such as pulverized coal is air-blown into the furnace through burners located at the four corners, or along one wall, or two opposite walls, and it is ignited to rapidly burn, forming a large fireball at the center. The thermal radiation of the fireball heats the water that circulates through the boiler tubes near the boiler perimeter. The water circulation rate in the boiler is three to four times the throughput. As the water in the boiler circulates it absorbs heat and changes into steam. It is separated from the water inside a drum at the top of the furnace. The saturated steam is introduced into superheat pendant tubes that hang in the hottest part of the combustion gases as they exit the furnace. Here the steam is superheated to to prepare it for the turbine.


title: Thermal power station

text: Plants that use gas turbines to heat the water for conversion into steam use boilers known as heat recovery steam generators (HRSG). The exhaust heat from the gas turbines is used to make superheated steam that is then used in a conventional water-steam generation cycle, as described in the gas turbine combined-cycle plants section.


title: Thermal power station

text: The water enters the boiler through a section in the convection pass called the economizer. From the economizer it passes to the steam drum and from there it goes through downcomers to inlet headers at the bottom of the water walls. From these headers the water rises through the water walls of the furnace where some of it is turned into steam and the mixture of water and steam then re-enters the steam drum. This process may be driven purely by natural circulation (because the water is the downcomers is denser than the water/steam mixture in the water walls) or assisted by pumps. In the steam drum, the water is returned to the downcomers and the steam is passed through a series of steam separators and dryers that remove water droplets from the steam. The dry steam then flows into the superheater coils.


title: Thermal power station

text: The boiler furnace auxiliary equipment includes coal feed nozzles and igniter guns, soot blowers, water lancing, and observation ports (in the furnace walls) for observation of the furnace interior. Furnace explosions due to any accumulation of combustible gases after a trip-out are avoided by flushing out such gases from the combustion zone before igniting the coal.


title: Thermal power station

text: The steam drum (as well as the superheater coils and headers) have air vents and drains needed for initial start up.


title: Thermal power station

text: Fossil fuel power stations often have a superheater section in the steam generating furnace. The steam passes through drying equipment inside the steam drum on to the superheater, a set of tubes in the furnace. Here the steam picks up more energy from hot flue gases outside the tubing, and its temperature is now superheated above the saturation temperature. The superheated steam is then piped through the main steam lines to the valves before the high-pressure turbine.


title: Thermal power station

text: Nuclear-powered steam plants do not have such sections but produce steam at essentially saturated conditions. Experimental nuclear plants were equipped with fossil-fired superheaters in an attempt to improve overall plant operating cost.


title: Thermal power station

text: The condenser condenses the steam from the exhaust of the turbine into liquid to allow it to be pumped. If the condenser can be made cooler, the pressure of the exhaust steam is reduced and efficiency of the cycle increases.


title: Thermal power station

text: The surface condenser is a shell and tube heat exchanger in which cooling water is circulated through the tubes. The exhaust steam from the low-pressure turbine enters the shell, where it is cooled and converted to condensate (water) by flowing over the tubes as shown in the adjacent diagram. Such condensers use steam ejectors or rotary motor-driven exhausts for continuous removal of air and gases from the steam side to maintain vacuum.


title: Thermal power station

text: For best efficiency, the temperature in the condenser must be kept as low as practical in order to achieve the lowest possible pressure in the condensing steam. Since the condenser temperature can almost always be kept significantly below 100 °C where the vapor pressure of water is much less than atmospheric pressure, the condenser generally works under vacuum. Thus leaks of non-condensible air into the closed loop must be prevented.


title: Thermal power station

text: Typically the cooling water causes the steam to condense at a temperature of about and that creates an absolute pressure in the condenser of about , i.e. a vacuum of about relative to atmospheric pressure. The large decrease in volume that occurs when water vapor condenses to liquid creates the vacuum that generally increases the efficiency of the turbines.


title: Thermal power station

text: The limiting factor is the temperature of the cooling water and that, in turn, is limited by the prevailing average climatic conditions at the power station's location (it may be possible to lower the temperature beyond the turbine limits during winter, causing excessive condensation in the turbine). Plants operating in hot climates may have to reduce output if their source of condenser cooling water becomes warmer; unfortunately this usually coincides with periods of high electrical demand for air conditioning.


title: Thermal power station

text: The condenser generally uses either circulating cooling water from a cooling tower to reject waste heat to the atmosphere, or once-through cooling (OTC) water from a river, lake or ocean. In the United States, about two-thirds of power plants use OTC systems, which often have significant adverse environmental impacts. The impacts include thermal pollution and killing large numbers of fish and other aquatic species at cooling water intakes.


title: Thermal power station

text: The heat absorbed by the circulating cooling water in the condenser tubes must also be removed to maintain the ability of the water to cool as it circulates. This is done by pumping the warm water from the condenser through either natural draft, forced draft or induced draft cooling towers (as seen in the adjacent image) that reduce the temperature of the water by evaporation, by about 11 to 17 °C (20 to 30 °F)—expelling waste heat to the atmosphere. The circulation flow rate of the cooling water in a 500 MW unit is about 14.2 m/s (500 ft/s or 225,000 US gal/min) at full load.


title: Thermal power station

text: The condenser tubes are typically made stainless steel or other alloys to resist corrosion from either side. Nevertheless, they may become internally fouled during operation by bacteria or algae in the cooling water or by mineral scaling, all of which inhibit heat transfer and reduce thermodynamic efficiency. Many plants include an automatic cleaning system that circulates sponge rubber balls through the tubes to scrub them clean without the need to take the system off-line.


title: Thermal power station

text: The cooling water used to condense the steam in the condenser returns to its source without having been changed other than having been warmed. If the water returns to a local water body (rather than a circulating cooling tower), it is often tempered with cool 'raw' water to prevent thermal shock when discharged into that body of water.


title: Thermal power station

text: Another form of condensing system is the air-cooled condenser. The process is similar to that of a radiator and fan. Exhaust heat from the low-pressure section of a steam turbine runs through the condensing tubes, the tubes are usually finned and ambient air is pushed through the fins with the help of a large fan. The steam condenses to water to be reused in the water-steam cycle. Air-cooled condensers typically operate at a higher temperature than water-cooled versions. While saving water, the efficiency of the cycle is reduced (resulting in more carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of electricity).


title: Thermal power station

text: From the bottom of the condenser, powerful condensate pumps recycle the condensed steam (water) back to the water/steam cycle.


title: Thermal power station

text: Power station furnaces may have a reheater section containing tubes heated by hot flue gases outside the tubes. Exhaust steam from the high-pressure turbine is passed through these heated tubes to collect more energy before driving the intermediate and then low-pressure turbines.


title: Thermal power station

text: External fans are provided to give sufficient air for combustion. The Primary air fan takes air from the atmosphere and, first warms the air in the air preheater for better economy. Primary air then passes through the coal pulverizers, and carries the coal dust to the burners for injection into the furnace. The Secondary air fan takes air from the atmosphere and, first warms the air in the air preheater for better economy. Secondary air is mixed with the coal/primary air flow in the burners.


title: Thermal power station

text: The induced draft fan assists the FD fan by drawing out combustible gases from the furnace, maintaining slightly below atmospheric pressure in the furnace to avoid leakage of combustion products from the boiler casing.


title: Thermal power station

text: A steam turbine generator consists of a series of steam turbines interconnected to each other and a generator on a common shaft.


title: Thermal power station

text: There is usually a high-pressure turbine at one end, followed by an intermediate-pressure turbine, and finally one, two, or three low-pressure turbines, and the shaft that connects to the generator. As steam moves through the system and loses pressure and thermal energy, it expands in volume, requiring increasing diameter and longer blades at each succeeding stage to extract the remaining energy. The entire rotating mass may be over 200 metric tons and long. It is so heavy that it must be kept turning slowly even when shut down (at 3 rpm) so that the shaft will not bow even slightly and become unbalanced. This is so important that it is one of only six functions of blackout emergency power batteries on site. (The other five being emergency lighting, communication, station alarms, generator hydrogen seal system, and turbogenerator lube oil.)


title: Thermal power station

text: For a typical late 20th-century power station, superheated steam from the boiler is delivered through diameter piping at and to the high-pressure turbine, where it falls in pressure to and to in temperature through the stage. It exits via diameter cold reheat lines and passes back into the boiler, where the steam is reheated in special reheat pendant tubes back to . The hot reheat steam is conducted to the intermediate pressure turbine, where it falls in both temperature and pressure and exits directly to the long-bladed low-pressure turbines and finally exits to the condenser.


title: Thermal power station

text: The generator, typically about long and in diameter, contains a stationary stator and a spinning rotor, each containing miles of heavy copper conductor. There is generally no permanent magnet, thus preventing black starts. In operation it generates up to 21,000 amperes at 24,000 volts AC (504 MWe) as it spins at either 3,000 or 3,600 rpm, synchronized to the power grid. The rotor spins in a sealed chamber cooled with hydrogen gas, selected because it has the highest known heat transfer coefficient of any gas and for its low viscosity, which reduces windage losses. This system requires special handling during startup, with air in the chamber first displaced by carbon dioxide before filling with hydrogen. This ensures that a highly explosive hydrogen–oxygen environment is not created.


title: Thermal power station

text: The power grid frequency is 60 Hz across North America and 50 Hz in Europe, Oceania, Asia (Korea and parts of Japan are notable exceptions), and parts of Africa. The desired frequency affects the design of large turbines, since they are highly optimized for one particular speed.


title: Thermal power station

text: The electricity flows to a distribution yard where transformers increase the voltage for transmission to its destination.


title: Thermal power station

text: The steam turbine-driven generators have auxiliary systems enabling them to work satisfactorily and safely. The steam turbine generator, being rotating equipment, generally has a heavy, large-diameter shaft. The shaft therefore requires not only supports but also has to be kept in position while running. To minimize the frictional resistance to the rotation, the shaft has a number of bearings. The bearing shells, in which the shaft rotates, are lined with a low-friction material like Babbitt metal. Oil lubrication is provided to further reduce the friction between shaft and bearing surface and to limit the heat generated.


title: Thermal power station

text: As the combustion flue gas exits the boiler it is routed through a rotating flat basket of metal mesh which picks up heat and returns it to incoming fresh air as the basket rotates. This is called the air preheater. The gas exiting the boiler is laden with fly ash, which are tiny spherical ash particles. The flue gas contains nitrogen along with combustion products carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides. The fly ash is removed by fabric bag filters in baghouses or electrostatic precipitators. Once removed, the fly ash byproduct can sometimes be used in the manufacturing of concrete. This cleaning up of flue gases, however, only occurs in plants that are fitted with the appropriate technology. Still, the majority of coal-fired power stations in the world do not have these facilities. Legislation in Europe has been efficient to reduce flue gas pollution. Japan has been using flue gas cleaning technology for over 30 years and the US has been doing the same for over 25 years. China is now beginning to grapple with the pollution caused by coal-fired power stations.


title: Thermal power station

text: Where required by law, the sulfur and nitrogen oxide pollutants are removed by stack gas scrubbers which use a pulverized limestone or other alkaline wet slurry to remove those pollutants from the exit stack gas. Other devices use catalysts to remove nitrous oxide compounds from the flue-gas stream. The gas travelling up the flue-gas stack may by this time have dropped to about . A typical flue-gas stack may be tall to disperse the remaining flue gas components in the atmosphere. The tallest flue-gas stack in the world is tall at the Ekibastuz GRES-2 Power Station in Kazakhstan.


title: Thermal power station

text: In the United States and a number of other countries, atmospheric dispersion modeling studies are required to determine the flue-gas stack height needed to comply with the local air pollution regulations. The United States also requires the height of a flue-gas stack to comply with what is known as the "good engineering practice" (GEP) stack height. In the case of existing flue gas stacks that exceed the GEP stack height, any air pollution dispersion modeling studies for such stacks must use the GEP stack height rather than the actual stack height.


title: Thermal power station

text: Since there is continuous withdrawal of steam and continuous return of condensate to the boiler, losses due to blowdown and leakages have to be made up to maintain a desired water level in the boiler steam drum. For this, continuous make-up water is added to the boiler water system. Impurities in the raw water input to the plant generally consist of calcium and magnesium salts which impart hardness to the water. Hardness in the make-up water to the boiler will form deposits on the tube water surfaces which will lead to overheating and failure of the tubes. Thus, the salts have to be removed from the water, and that is done by a water demineralising treatment plant (DM). A DM plant generally consists of cation, anion, and mixed bed exchangers. Any ions in the final water from this process consist essentially of hydrogen ions and hydroxide ions, which recombine to form pure water. Very pure DM water becomes highly corrosive once it absorbs oxygen from the atmosphere because of its very high affinity for oxygen.


title: Thermal power station

text: The capacity of the DM plant is dictated by the type and quantity of salts in the raw water input. However, some storage is essential as the DM plant may be down for maintenance. For this purpose, a storage tank is installed from which DM water is continuously withdrawn for boiler make-up. The storage tank for DM water is made from materials not affected by corrosive water, such as PVC. The piping and valves are generally of stainless steel. Sometimes, a steam blanketing arrangement or stainless steel doughnut float is provided on top of the water in the tank to avoid contact with air. DM water make-up is generally added at the steam space of the surface condenser (i.e., the vacuum side). This arrangement not only sprays the water but also DM water gets deaerated, with the dissolved gases being removed by a de-aerator through an ejector attached to the condenser.


title: Thermal power station

text: In coal-fired power stations, the raw feed coal from the coal storage area is first crushed into small pieces and then conveyed to the coal feed hoppers at the boilers. The coal is next pulverized into a very fine powder. The pulverizers may be ball mills, rotating drum grinders, or other types of grinders.


title: Thermal power station

text: Some power stations burn fuel oil rather than coal. The oil must kept warm (above its pour point) in the fuel oil storage tanks to prevent the oil from congealing and becoming unpumpable. The oil is usually heated to about 100 °C before being pumped through the furnace fuel oil spray nozzles.


title: Thermal power station

text: Boilers in some power stations use processed natural gas as their main fuel. Other power stations may use processed natural gas as auxiliary fuel in the event that their main fuel supply (coal or oil) is interrupted. In such cases, separate gas burners are provided on the boiler furnaces.


title: Thermal power station

text: Barring gear (or "turning gear") is the mechanism provided to rotate the turbine generator shaft at a very low speed after unit stoppages. Once the unit is "tripped" (i.e., the steam inlet valve is closed), the turbine coasts down towards standstill. When it stops completely, there is a tendency for the turbine shaft to deflect or bend if allowed to remain in one position too long. This is because the heat inside the turbine casing tends to concentrate in the top half of the casing, making the top half portion of the shaft hotter than the bottom half. The shaft therefore could warp or bend by millionths of inches.


title: Thermal power station

text: This small shaft deflection, only detectable by eccentricity meters, would be enough to cause damaging vibrations to the entire steam turbine generator unit when it is restarted. The shaft is therefore automatically turned at low speed (about one percent rated speed) by the barring gear until it has cooled sufficiently to permit a complete stop.


title: Thermal power station

text: An auxiliary oil system pump is used to supply oil at the start-up of the steam turbine generator. It supplies the hydraulic oil system required for steam turbine's main inlet steam stop valve, the governing control valves, the bearing and seal oil systems, the relevant hydraulic relays and other mechanisms.


title: Thermal power station

text: At a preset speed of the turbine during start-ups, a pump driven by the turbine main shaft takes over the functions of the auxiliary system.


title: Thermal power station

text: While small generators may be cooled by air drawn through filters at the inlet, larger units generally require special cooling arrangements. Hydrogen gas cooling, in an oil-sealed casing, is used because it has the highest known heat transfer coefficient of any gas and for its low viscosity which reduces windage losses. This system requires special handling during start-up, with air in the generator enclosure first displaced by carbon dioxide before filling with hydrogen. This ensures that the highly flammable hydrogen does not mix with oxygen in the air.


title: Thermal power station

text: The hydrogen pressure inside the casing is maintained slightly higher than atmospheric pressure to avoid outside air ingress, and up to about two atmospheres pressure to improve heat transfer efficiency. The hydrogen must be sealed against outward leakage where the shaft emerges from the casing. Mechanical seals around the shaft are installed with a very small annular gap to avoid rubbing between the shaft and the seals on smaller turbines, with labyrinth type seals on larger machines.. Seal oil is used to prevent the hydrogen gas leakage to atmosphere.


title: Thermal power station

text: The generator also uses water cooling. Since the generator coils are at a potential of about 22 kV, an insulating barrier such as Teflon is used to interconnect the water line and the generator high-voltage windings. Demineralized water of low conductivity is used.


title: Thermal power station

text: The generator voltage for modern utility-connected generators ranges from in smaller units to in larger units. The generator high-voltage leads are normally large aluminium channels because of their high current as compared to the cables used in smaller machines. They are enclosed in well-grounded aluminium bus ducts and are supported on suitable insulators. The generator high-voltage leads are connected to step-up transformers for connecting to a high-voltage electrical substation (usually in the range of 115 kV to 765 kV) for further transmission by the local power grid.


title: Thermal power station

text: The necessary protection and metering devices are included for the high-voltage leads. Thus, the steam turbine generator and the transformer form one unit. Smaller units may share a common generator step-up transformer with individual circuit breakers to connect the generators to a common bus.


title: Thermal power station

text: Most of the power station operational controls are automatic. However, at times, manual intervention may be required. Thus, the plant is provided with monitors and alarm systems that alert the plant operators when certain operating parameters are seriously deviating from their normal range.


title: Thermal power station

text: A central battery system consisting of lead–acid cell units is provided to supply emergency electric power, when needed, to essential items such as the power station's control systems, communication systems, generator hydrogen seal system, turbine lube oil pumps, and emergency lighting. This is essential for a safe, damage-free shutdown of the units in an emergency situation.


title: Thermal power station

text: To dissipate the thermal load of main turbine exhaust steam, condensate from gland steam condenser, and condensate from Low Pressure Heater by providing a continuous supply of cooling water to the main condenser thereby leading to condensation.


title: Thermal power station

text: The consumption of cooling water by inland power stations is estimated to reduce power availability for the majority of thermal power stations by 2040–2069.


title: Culture series

text: The "Culture" series is a science fiction series written by Scottish author Iain M. Banks and released from 1987 through to 2012. The stories centre on The Culture, a utopian, post-scarcity space society of humanoid aliens, and advanced superintelligent artificial intelligences living in artificial habitats spread across the Milky Way galaxy. The main themes of the series are the dilemmas that an idealistic, more-advanced civilization faces in dealing with smaller, less-advanced civilizations that do not share its ideals, and whose behaviour it sometimes finds barbaric. In some of the stories action takes place mainly in non-Culture environments, and the leading characters are often on the fringes of (or non-members of) the Culture, sometimes acting as agents of Culture (knowing and unknowing) in its plans to civilize the galaxy. Each novel is a self-contained story with new characters, although reference is occasionally made to the events of previous novels.


title: Culture series

text: The Culture is a society formed by various humanoid species and artificial intelligences about 9,000 years before the events of novels in the series. Since the majority of its biological population can have almost anything they want without the need to work, there is little need for laws or enforcement, and the culture is described by Banks as space socialism. It features a post-scarcity economy where technology is advanced to such a degree that all production is automated. Its members live mainly in spaceships and other off-planet constructs, because its founders wished to avoid the centralised political and corporate power-structures that planet-based economies foster. Most of the planning and administration is done by Minds, very advanced AIs.


title: Culture series

text: Although the Culture has more advanced technology and a more powerful economy than the vast majority of known civilizations, it is only one of the "Involved" civilizations that take an active part in galactic affairs. The much older Homomda are slightly more advanced at the time of "Consider Phlebas" (this is, however, set several centuries before the other books, and Culture technology and martial power continue to advance in the interim); the Morthanveld have a much larger population and economy, but are hampered by a more restrictive attitude to the role of AI in their society. The capabilities of all such societies are vastly exceeded by those of the Elder civilisations (semi-retired from Galactic politics but who remain supremely potent) and even more so by those of the Sublimed, entities which have abandoned their material form for existence in the form of non-corporeal, multi-dimensional energy being. The Sublimed generally refrain from intervention in the material world.


title: Culture series

text: Some other civilizations hold less favourable views of the Culture. At the time of their war with the Culture, the Idirans and some of their allies regarded the control that the Minds exercised over the Culture as a form of idolatry. The Homomda regard the Culture as idealistic and hyper-active. Some members of the Culture have seceded to form related civilizations, known collectively as the Ulterior. These include the Peace Faction, the AhForgetIt Tendency and the Zetetic Elench. Others simply drop out temporarily or permanently.


title: Culture series

text: The Culture series comprises nine novels and one short story collection. The list, ordered by date of publishing, is:


title: Culture series

text: Since the Culture's biological population commonly live as long as 400 years and have no need to work, they face the difficulty of giving meaning to their lives when the Minds and other intelligent machines can do almost anything better than the biological population can. Many try—few successfully—to join Contact, the Culture's combined diplomatic / military / government service, and fewer still are invited to the even more elite Special Circumstances (SC), Contact's secret service and special operations division. Normal Culture citizens vicariously derive meaning from their existence via the works of Contact and SC. Banks described the Culture as "some incredibly rich lady of leisure who does good, charitable works... Contact does that on a large scale." The same need to find a purpose for existence contributed to the majority of the Culture embarking semi-voluntarily on its only recent full-scale war, to stop the expansion of the militaristic and expansionist Idirans—otherwise the Culture's economic and technological advancement would only have been an exercise in hedonism.


title: Culture series

text: All of the stories feature the tension between the Culture's humane, anarcho-communist ideals and its need to intervene in the affairs of less enlightened and often less advanced civilisations.The first Culture novel, "Consider Phlebas", describes an episode in the Idiran War, which the Culture's Minds foresaw would cause billions of deaths on both sides, but which their utilitarian calculations predicted would be the best course in the long term. The Idiran War serves as a recurring reference point in most of the subsequent novels, influencing the Culture's development for centuries and dividing its residents—both humanoids and AI Minds—along the pacifist and interventionist ideals.


title: Culture series

text: In subsequent novels, the Culture—particularly SC and, to a lesser degree, Contact—continue to employ subterfuge, espionage, and even direct action (collectively called "dirty tricks") in order to protect itself and spread the Culture's "good works" and ideals. These dirty tricks include blackmailing persons, employing mercenaries, recruiting double agents, attempting to effect regime change, and even engaging in false flag operations against the Culture itself (potentially resulting in the death of billions). Though each of these individual actions would horrify the average Culture citizen, the Culture's Minds tend to justify these actions in terms of lives saved in the long-term, perhaps over the course of several hundred years. The Culture is willing to use not only preemptive, but also retaliatory actions in order to deter future hostile actions against itself. Banks commented that in order to prevent atrocities, "even the Culture throws away its usual moral rule-book." Andrew M. Butler noted that, "Having established the peaceful, utopian, game-playing tendencies of the Culture, ... in later volumes the Culture’s dirty tricks are more exposed."


title: Culture series

text: The Culture stories have been described as "eerily prescient". "Consider Phlebas" explicitly presents a clash of civilizations, although this phrase was used by Samuel P. Huntington and earlier authors. This is highlighted by the novel's description of the Idirans' expansion as a "jihad" and by its epigraphic verse from the Koran, "Idolatry is worse than carnage". However, it was as much a "holy war" from the Culture's point of view. Throughout the series, Contact and Special Circumstances show themselves willing to intervene, sometimes forcefully, in other civilizations to make them more Culture-like.


title: Culture series

text: Much of "Look to Windward" is a commentary on the Idiran-Culture war, from a viewpoint 800 years later, mainly reflecting grief over both personal and large-scale losses and guilt over actions taken in the war. It combines these with similar reflections on the catastrophic miscarriage of the Culture's attempt to dissolve the Chelgrians' oppressive caste system. In neither case, however, does distress over the consequences of Culture policy lead its representatives to reject that policy. The book illustrates the limitations of power, and also points out that Minds and other AIs are as vulnerable as biological persons to grief, guilt and regrets.


title: Culture series

text: According to critic Farah Mendelson, the Culture stories are space opera, with certain elements that are free from scientific realism, and Banks uses this freedom extravagantly in order to focus on the human and political aspects of his universe; he rejects the dystopian direction of present-day capitalism, which both cyberpunk and earlier space operas assume, in creating a post-scarcity society as the primary civilization of focus. Space opera had peaked in the 1930s, but started to decline as magazine editors such as John W. Campbell demanded more realistic approaches. By the 1960s many space operas were satires on earlier styles, such as Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat and Bill, the Galactic Hero stories, while televised and film space operas such as "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" were thought to have dumbed down the subgenre. The Culture stories did much to revive space opera.


title: Culture series

text: Banks has been described as "an incorrigible player of games" with both style and structure – and with the reader. In both the Culture stories and his work outside science fiction, there are two sides to Banks, the "merry chatterer" who brings scenes to life and "the altogether less amiable character" who "engineers the often savage structure of his stories". Banks uses a wide range of styles. "The Player of Games" opens in a leisurely manner as it presents the main character's sense of boredom and inertia, and adopts for the main storyline a "spare, functional" style that contrasts with the "linguistic fireworks" of later stories. Sometimes the styles used in "Excession" relate to the function and focal character of the scene: slow-paced and detailed for Dajeil, who is still mourning over traumatic events that happened decades earlier; a parody of huntin', shootin', and fishin' country gentlemen, sometimes reminiscent of P. G. Wodehouse, when describing the viewpoint of the Affront; the ship "Serious Callers Only", afraid of becoming involved in the conflict between factions of Minds, speaks in cryptic verse, while the "Sleeper Service", acting as a freelance detective, adopts a hardboiled style. On the other hand, Banks often wrong-foots readers by using prosaic descriptions for the grandest scenery, self-deprecation and humour for the most heroic actions, and a poetic style in describing one of the Affront's killings.


title: Culture series

text: He delights in building up expectations and then surprising the reader. Even in "The Player of Games", which has the simplest style and structure of the series, the last line of the epilogue reveals who was really pulling the strings all along. In all the Culture stories, Banks subverts many clichés of space opera. The Minds are not plotting to take over the universe, and no-one is following a grand plan. The darkly comic double-act of Ferbin and Holse in "Matter" is not something most writers would place in "the normally po-faced context of space opera". Even the names of Culture spaceships are jokes – for example "Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill", "Experiencing a Significant Gravitas Shortfall" (part of a running gag in the series) and "Liveware Problem" (see liveware).


title: Culture series

text: Banks often uses "outsiders" as viewpoint characters, and said that using an enemy of the Culture as the main character of "Consider Phlebas", the first story in the series, enabled him to present a more rounded view of the Culture. However, this character realises that his attempts to plan for anything that might conceivably happen on a mission are very similar to the way in which the Culture makes all its decisions, and by the end suspects he has chosen the wrong side.


title: Culture series

text: The focal character of "The Player of Games" is bored with the lack of real challenges in his life, is blackmailed into becoming a Culture agent, admires the vibrancy of the Azad Empire but is then disgusted by its brutality, and wins the final of the tournament by playing in a style that reflects the Culture's values.


title: Culture series

text: "Use of Weapons" features a non-Culture mercenary who accepts the benefits of association with the Culture, including immortality as the fee for his first assignment, and completes several dangerous missions as a Culture agent, but complains that he is kept in the dark about the aims of his missions and that in some of the wars he has fought maybe the Culture was backing both sides, with good reason.


title: Culture series

text: "Look to Windward" uses three commentators on the Culture, a near-immortal Behemothaur, a member of the race plunged into civil war by a Culture intervention that went wrong, and the ambassador of a race at similar technological level to the Culture's.


title: Culture series

text: The action scenes of the Culture stories are comparable to those of blockbuster films. In an interview, Banks said he would like "Consider Phlebas" to be filmed "with a very, very, very big budget indeed" and would not mind if the story were given a happy ending, provided the biggest action scenes were kept. On the other hand, "The Player of Games" relies mainly on the psychological tension of the games by which the ruler of the Azad Empire is selected.


title: Culture series

text: Banks is unspecific about many of the background details in the stories, such as the rules of the game that is the centrepiece of "The Player of Games", and cheerfully makes no attempt at scientific credibility.


title: Culture series

text: Banks says he conceived the Culture in the 1960s, and that it is a combination of wish fulfilment and a reaction against the predominantly right-wing science fiction produced in the United States. In his opinion, the Culture might be a "great place to live", with no exploitation of people or AIs, and whose people could create beings greater than themselves.


title: Culture series

text: Before his first published novel, "The Wasp Factory" (1984; not science fiction), was accepted in 1983, Banks wrote five books that were rejected, of which three were science fiction. In Banks' first draft of "Use of Weapons" in 1974, his third attempt at a novel, the Culture was just a backdrop intended to show that the mercenary agent was working for the "good guys" and was responsible for his own misdeeds. At the time he persuaded his friend Ken MacLeod to read it and MacLeod tried to suggest improvements, but the book had too much purple prose and a very convoluted structure. In 1984, shortly after "The Wasp Factory" was published, MacLeod was asked to read "Use of Weapons" again, and said there was "a good novel in there struggling to get out", and suggested the interleaved forwards and backwards narratives that appeared in the published version in 1990. The novella "The State of the Art", which provides the title of the 1991 collection, dates from 1979, the first draft of "The Player of Games" from 1980 and that of "Consider Phlebas" from 1982.


title: Culture series

text: The American edition of "Look to Windward" was listed by the editors of "SF Site" as one of the "Best SF and Fantasy Books of 2001" after the UK edition had missed out by just one place the previous year.


title: Culture series

text: "Use of Weapons" was listed in Damien Broderick's book "Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985–2010".


title: Culture series

text: As a posthumous tribute to Iain Banks, aerospace manufacturer SpaceX named two of its autonomous spaceport drone ships after sentient star ships "Just Read the Instructions" and "Of Course I Still Love You" which first appeared in the novel "The Player of Games. A" third drone craft was named "A Shortfall of Gravitas," inspired by the star ship "Experiencing a Significant Gravitas Shortfall" in "Look to Windward".


title: Culture series

text: A further tribute was paid by the Five Deeps Expedition which named all of its craft after Culture ships and drones.


title: Culture series

text: On an episode of Lex Fridman's podcast released on April 29, 2022, the artist Grimes said that Surface Detail of the Culture series is the greatest science fiction book ever written.


title: Traudl Junge

text: Gertraud "Traudl" Junge (; 16 March 1920 – 10 February 2002) was a German editor who worked as Adolf Hitler's last private secretary from December 1942 to April 1945. After typing Hitler's will, she remained in the Berlin "Führerbunker" until his death. Following her arrest and imprisonment in June 1945, both the Soviet and the U.S. militaries interrogated her. Later, in post-war West Germany, she worked as a secretary. In her old age, she decided to publish her memoirs, claiming ignorance of the Nazi atrocities during the war, but blaming herself for missing opportunities to investigate reports about them. Her story, based partly on her book "Until the Final Hour", formed a part of several dramatizations, in particular the 2004 German film "Downfall" about Hitler's final ten days.


title: Traudl Junge

text: Gertraud "Traudl" Humps was born in Munich, the daughter of a master brewer and lieutenant in the Reserve Army, Max Humps and his wife Hildegard (née Zottmann). She had a sister, Inge, born in 1923. She once expressed her desire to become a ballerina as a teenager but was not accepted by a dance school. She then trained as a secretary. When she heard about an opening on the Chancellery staff, she applied for it.


title: Traudl Junge

text: Traudl Humps began working for Hitler in December 1942. She was the youngest of his private secretaries. "I was 22 and I didn't know anything about politics; it didn't interest me," Junge said decades later, adding that she felt great guilt for "liking the greatest criminal ever to have lived".


title: Traudl Junge

text: She said: "I admit, I was fascinated by Adolf Hitler. He was a pleasant boss and a fatherly friend. I deliberately ignored all the warning voices inside me and enjoyed the time by his side, almost until the bitter end. It wasn't what he said, but the way he said things and how he did things."


title: Traudl Junge

text: Encouraged by Hitler, in June 1943, Traudl married Waffen-SS officer Hans Hermann Junge (1914–1944), who had been a valet and orderly to Hitler. Junge died in combat in France in August 1944. She worked at Hitler's side in Berlin, the Berghof in Berchtesgaden, at "Wolfsschanze" in East Prussia, and back again in Berlin in the "Führerbunker".


title: Traudl Junge

text: In 1945, Junge was with Hitler in Berlin. During Hitler's last days in Berlin, he would regularly eat lunch with his secretaries Junge and Gerda Christian. After the war, Junge recalled Gerda asking Hitler if he would leave Berlin. This was firmly rejected by Hitler. Both women recalled that Hitler in conversation made it clear that his body must not fall into the hands of the Soviets. He would shoot himself. Junge typed Hitler's last private and political will and testament in the "Führerbunker" the day before his suicide. Junge later wrote that while she was playing with the Goebbels children on 30 April, "Suddenly [...] there is the sound of a shot, so loud, so close, that we all fall silent. It echoes on through all the rooms. 'That was a bull's-eye,' cried Helmut [Goebbels] with no idea how right he is. The Führer is dead now."


title: Traudl Junge

text: On 1 May, Junge left the "Führerbunker" with a group led by Waffen-SS general Wilhelm Mohnke. Also in the group were Hitler's personal pilot Hans Baur, chief of Hitler's "Reichssicherheitsdienst" (RSD) bodyguard Hans Rattenhuber, secretaries Gerda Christian and Else Krüger, Hitler's dietician Constanze Manziarly, and physician Ernst-Günther Schenck. Junge, Christian and Krüger made it out of Berlin to the River Elbe. The remainder of the group were found by Soviet Red Army troops on 2 May while hiding in a cellar off the Schönhauser Allee. The Soviet troops handed over those who had been in the "Führerbunker" to SMERSH for interrogation, to reveal what had occurred in the bunker during the closing weeks of the war.


title: Traudl Junge

text: Although Junge had reached the Elbe, she was unable to reach the western Allied lines, and so she went back to Berlin. Getting there about a month after she had left, she had hoped to take a train to the west when they began running again. On 9 July, after living there for about a week under the alias Gerda Alt, she was arrested by two civilian members of the Soviet military administration and was kept in Berlin for interrogation. While in prison, she heard harrowing tales from her Soviet guards about what the German military had done to members of their families in the Soviet Union and came to realise that much of what she thought she knew about the war in the east was only what the Nazi propaganda ministry had told the German people, and that the treatment meted out to Germans by the Soviets was a response to what the Germans had done in the Soviet Union.


title: Traudl Junge

text: Junge was held in multiple jails, where she was often interrogated about her role in Hitler's entourage and the events surrounding Hitler's suicide. By December 1945, she had been released from prison but was restricted to the Soviet sector of Berlin. On New Year's Eve 1945, she was admitted to a hospital in the British sector for diphtheria, and remained there for two months. While she was there, her mother was able to secure for her the paperwork required to allow her to move from the British sector in Berlin to Bavaria. Receiving these on 2 February 1946, she travelled from Berlin and across the Soviet occupation zone (which was to become East Germany) to the British zone, and from there south to Bavaria in the American Zone. Junge was held by the Americans for a short time during the first half of 1946, and interrogated about her time in the "Führerbunker". She was then freed, and allowed to live in postwar West Germany.


title: Traudl Junge

text: After the war, Junge appeared in two episodes of the Thames Television (ITV) 1973 television documentary series "The World at War" – No. 16, "Inside the Reich" (1940–1944), and No. 21, "Nemesis: Germany (February – May 1945)". She was also interviewed for the 1975 book "The Bunker" by James P. O'Donnell and Uwe Bahnsen. She worked in secretarial jobs and for many years as chief secretary of the editorial staff of the weekly illustrated magazine "Quick". Junge twice resided briefly in Australia, where her younger sister lived, although her application for permanent residence was denied due to her past Nazi association.


title: Traudl Junge

text: In 1989, Junge's manuscript about her life throughout the war was published as part of the book "Voices from the Bunker" by Pierre Galante and Eugene Silianoff (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons). Also in that year, she was interviewed in the BBC documentary "The Fatal Attraction of Adolf Hitler", and discussed at length her impressions of Hitler and the final days with him in the "Führerbunker". In 1991, she appeared in the documentary series "Hitler's Henchmen" produced by German television channel ZDF. The 2002 release of her memoirs "Until the Final Hour", co-written with author Melissa Müller and describing the time she worked for Hitler, brought media coverage. She was also interviewed for the 2002 documentary film "Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary", which drew much attention.


title: Traudl Junge

text: Junge died from cancer in Munich on 10 February 2002 at the age of 81, reportedly having said shortly before her death, "Now that I've let go of my story, I can let go of my life." She is buried at Nordfriedhof München.


title: Traudl Junge

text: Further attention came two years later, when some of Junge's experiences with Hitler were portrayed in the Academy Award-nominated film "Downfall", wherein she is portrayed by actress Alexandra Maria Lara. Excerpts from her interviews are seen at the beginning and at the end of the film. At the end of the film, she states:


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Chloral hydrate is a geminal diol with the formula . It is a colorless solid. It has limited use as a sedative and hypnotic pharmaceutical drug. It is also a useful laboratory chemical reagent and precursor. It is derived from chloral (trichloroacetaldehyde) by the addition of one equivalent of water.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Chloral hydrate was discovered in 1832 by Justus von Liebig in Gießen when a chlorination (halogenation) reaction was performed on ethanol. Its sedative properties were observed by Rudolf Buchheim in 1861, but described in detail and published only in 1869 by Oscar Liebreich; subsequently, because of its easy synthesis, its use became widespread. It was widely used for sedation in asylums and in general medical practice, and also became a popular drug of abuse in the late 19th century. One recreational user was the poet and illustrator Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Chloral hydrate is soluble in both water and ethanol, readily forming concentrated solutions. A solution of chloral hydrate in ethanol called "knockout drops" was used to prepare a Mickey Finn. More reputable uses of chloral hydrate include as a clearing agent for chitin and fibers and as a key ingredient in Hoyer's mounting medium, which is used to prepare permanent or semipermanent microscope slides of small organisms, histological sections, and chromosome squashes. Because of its status as a regulated substance, chloral hydrate can be difficult to obtain. This has led to chloral hydrate being replaced by alternative reagents in microscopy procedures.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Chloral hydrate has not been approved by the FDA in the United States or the EMA in the European Union for any medical indication and is on the FDA list of unapproved drugs that are still prescribed by clinicians. Usage of the drug as a sedative or hypnotic may carry some risk given the lack of clinical trials. However, chloral hydrate products, licensed for short-term management of severe insomnia, are available in the United Kingdom. Chloral hydrate was voluntarily removed from the market by all manufacturers in the United States in 2012. Prior to that, chloral hydrate may have been sold as a "legacy" or "grandfathered" drug;" that is, a drug that existed prior to the time certain FDA regulations took effect and therefore, some pharmaceutical companies have argued, has never required FDA approval. New drugs did not have to be approved for safety until Congress passed the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the "FD&C Act") in 1938. Further, a new drug did not have to be proven effective until 1962, when Congress amended the Act. Manufacturers contend that such "legacy drugs," by virtue of the fact that they have been prescribed for decades, have gained a history for safety and efficacy.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Chloral hydrate is used for the short-term treatment of insomnia and as a sedative before minor medical or dental treatment. It was largely displaced in the mid-20th century by barbiturates and subsequently by benzodiazepines. It was also formerly used in veterinary medicine as a general anesthetic but is not considered acceptable for anesthesia or euthanasia of small animals due to adverse effects. It is also still used as a sedative prior to EEG procedures, as it is one of the few available sedatives that does not suppress epileptiform discharges.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: In therapeutic doses for insomnia, chloral hydrate is effective within 20 to 60 minutes. In humans it is metabolized within 7 hours into trichloroethanol and trichloroethanol glucuronide by erythrocytes and plasma esterases and into trichloroacetic acid in 4 to 5 days. It has a very narrow therapeutic window making this drug difficult to use. Higher doses can depress respiration and blood pressure.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Chloral hydrate is a starting point for the synthesis of other organic compounds. It is the starting material for the production of chloral, which is produced by the distillation of a mixture of chloral hydrate and sulfuric acid, which serves as the desiccant.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Notably, it is used to synthesize isatin. In this synthesis, chloral hydrate reacts with aniline and hydroxylamine to give a condensation product which cyclicizes in sulfuric acid to give the target compound:


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Moreover, chloral hydrate is used as a reagent for the deprotection of acetals, dithioacetals and tetrahydropyranyl ethers in organic solvents.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Chloral hydrate is also an ingredient used for Hoyer's solution, a mounting medium for microscopic observation of diverse plant types such as bryophytes, ferns, seeds, and small arthropods (especially mites). Other ingredients may include gum arabic and glycerol. An advantage of this medium includes a high refractive index and clearing (macerating) properties of small specimens (especially advantageous if specimens require observation with differential interference contrast microscopy).


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Chloral hydrate is an ingredient used to make Melzer's reagent, an aqueous solution that is used to identify certain species of fungi. The other ingredients are potassium iodide, and iodine. Whether tissue or spores react to this reagent is vital for the correct identification of some mushrooms.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Chloral hydrate was routinely administered in gram quantities. Prolonged exposure to the vapors is unhealthy, however, with a LD for 4-hour exposure of 440 mg/m. Long-term use of chloral hydrate is associated with a rapid development of tolerance to its effects and possible addiction as well as adverse effects including rashes, gastric discomfort and severe kidney, heart, and liver failure.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Acute overdosage is often characterized by nausea, vomiting, confusion, convulsions, slow and irregular breathing, cardiac arrhythmia, and coma. The plasma, serum or blood concentrations of chloral hydrate and/or trichloroethanol, its major active metabolite, may be measured to confirm a diagnosis of poisoning in hospitalized patients or to aid in the forensic investigation of fatalities. Accidental overdosage of young children undergoing simple dental or surgical procedures has occurred. Hemodialysis has been used successfully to accelerate clearance of the drug in poisoning victims. It is listed as having a "conditional risk" of causing torsades de pointes.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: In basic conditions the haloform reaction takes place and chloral hydrate is decomposed by hydrolysis to form chloroform.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Chloral hydrate is metabolized "in vivo" to trichloroethanol, which is responsible for secondary physiological and psychological effects.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Chloral hydrate is structurally and somewhat pharmacodynamically similar to ethchlorvynol, a pharmaceutical developed during the 1950's that was marketed as both a sedative and a hypnotic under the trade name Placidyl. In 1999, Abbott, the sole manufacturer of the drug in the United States at the time, decided to discontinue the product. After Abbott ceased production, the drug remained available for about a year. Despite the fact that it could have been manufactured generically, no other company in the United States chose to do so. The metabolite of chloral hydrate exerts its pharmacological properties via enhancing the GABA receptor complex and therefore is similar in action to benzodiazepines, nonbenzodiazepines and barbiturates. It can be moderately addictive, as chronic use is known to cause dependency and withdrawal symptoms. The chemical can potentiate various anticoagulants and is weakly mutagenic "in vitro" and "in vivo".


title: Chloral hydrate

text: In the United States, chloral hydrate is a schedule IV controlled substance and requires a physician's prescription. Its properties have sometimes led to its use as a date rape drug. The phrase, "slipping a mickey," originally referred specifically to adding chloral hydrate to a person's (alcoholic) drink without the person's knowledge.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Chloral hydrate was first synthesized by the chemist Justus von Liebig in 1832 at the University of Giessen. Through experimentation physiologist Claude Bernard clarified that the chloral hydrate was hypnotic as opposed to an analgesic. It was the first of a long line of sedatives, most notably the barbiturates, manufactured and marketed by the German pharmaceutical industry. Historically, chloral hydrate was utilized primarily as a psychiatric medication. In 1869, German physician and pharmacologist Oscar Liebreich began to promote its use to calm anxiety, especially when it caused insomnia. Chloral hydrate had certain advantages over morphine for this application, as it worked quickly without injection and had a consistent strength. It achieved wide use in both asylums and the homes of those socially refined enough to avoid asylums. Upper- and middle-class women, well-represented in the latter category, were particularly susceptible to chloral hydrate addiction. After the 1904 invention of barbital, the first of the barbiturate family, chloral hydrate began to disappear from use among those with means. It remained common in asylums and hospitals until the Second World War as it was quite cheap. Chloral hydrate had some other important advantages that kept it in use for five decades despite the existence of more advanced barbiturates. It was the safest available sedative until the middle of the twentieth century, and thus was particularly favored for children. It also left patients much more refreshed after a deep sleep than more recently invented sedatives. Its frequency of use made it an early and regular feature in "The Merck Manual".


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Chloral hydrate was also a significant object of study in various early pharmacological experiments. In 1875, Claude Bernard tried to determine if chloral hydrate exerted its action through a metabolic conversion to chloroform. This was not only the first attempt to determine whether different drugs were converted to the same metabolite in the body but also the first to measure the concentration of a particular pharmaceutical in the blood. The results were inconclusive. In 1899 and 1901 Hans Horst Meyer and Ernest Overton respectively made the major discovery that the general anaesthetic action of a drug was strongly correlated to its lipid solubility. However, chloral hydrate was quite polar but nonetheless a potent hypnotic. Overton was unable to explain this mystery. Thus, chloral hydrate remained one of the major and persistent exceptions to this breakthrough discovery in pharmacology. This anomaly was eventually resolved in 1948, when Claude Bernard's experiment was repeated. While chloral hydrate was converted to a different metabolite than chloroform, it was found that it was converted into the more lipophilic molecule 2,2,2-trichloroethanol. This metabolite fit much better with the Meyer–Overton correlation than chloral had. Prior to this, it had not been demonstrated that general anesthetics could undergo chemical changes to exert their action in the body.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Finally, chloral hydrate was also the first hypnotic to be used intravenously as a general anesthetic. In 1871, Pierre-Cyprien Oré began experiments on animals, followed by humans. While a state of general anesthesia could be achieved, the technique never caught on because its administration was more complex and less safe than the oral administration of chloral hydrate, and less safe for intravenous use than later general anesthetics were found to be.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: Chloral hydrate was used as one of the earliest synthetic drugs to treat insomnia. In 1912, Bayer introduced the drug phenobarbital under the brand name Luminal. In the 1930s, pentobarbital and secobarbital (better known by their original brand names Nembutal and Seconal, respectively) were synthesized. Chloral hydrate was still prescribed, although its predominance as a sedative and a hypnotic was largely eclipsed by barbiturates.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: In 1897, Bram Stoker's epistolary novel "Dracula", one of its characters, Doctor John Seward, recorded his use and his molecular formula in his phonographic diary:


title: Chloral hydrate

text: I cannot but think of Lucy, and how different things might have been. If I don't sleep at once, chloral, the modern Morpheus— CHClO . HO! I should be careful not to let it grow into a habit. No I shall take none to-night! I have thought of Lucy, and I shall not dishonor her by mixing the two.


title: Chloral hydrate

text: In the conclusion of Edith Wharton's 1905 novel "The House of Mirth", Lily Bart, the novel's heroine, becomes addicted to chloral hydrate and overdoses on the substance:


title: Chloral hydrate

text: She put out her hand and measured the soothing drops into a glass; but as she did so, she knew they would be powerless against the supernatural lucidity of her brain. She had long since raised the dose to its highest limit, but to-night she felt she must increase it. She knew she took a slight risk in doing so; she remembered the chemist's warning. If sleep came at all, it might be a sleep without waking.