title: Bobby Wagner

text: On December 2, Wagner logged 12 combined tackles, one sack, two tackles for loss, and two takeaways near the goal line in a 43–16 home win over the San Francisco 49ers. For his first takeaway, in the second quarter, he forced a fumble from Jeffery Wilson at the Seahawk 5-yard line, recovered it at the 3, and returned it 11 yards to the 14. Later, in the fourth quarter, he intercepted a pass from Nick Mullens at the 2-yard line and ran it back 98 yards for a touchdown, his first career pick six, to set the Seahawk franchise record for longest play. He earned NFC Defensive Player of the Week honors for his game against San Francisco. On December 10, against the Minnesota Vikings, Wagner was a part of many key third and fourth down stops as well as blocking a field goal by kicker Dan Bailey. The block proved to be controversial with the NFL eventually saying he should have been called for a penalty after using his teammates for leverage. Wagner was named first-team All Pro along with teammate Michael Dickson. The Seahawks finished second in the NFC West and made the playoffs as the No. 5-seed. In the loss to the Dallas Cowboys, he had five total tackles. He was named to the Pro Bowl and earned First Team All-Pro. He was ranked 15th by his fellow players on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2019.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: On July 26, 2019, Wagner signed a three-year, $54 million contract extension with the Seahawks through the 2022 season with $40.2 million guaranteed, making him the highest-paid middle linebacker in the league.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: In Week 8 against the Atlanta Falcons, Wagner recorded a sack on Matt Schaub and recovered a fumble lost by Devonta Freeman in the 27–20 win.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: In Week 9 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Wagner recorded a team high 11 tackles and sacked Jameis Winston once in the 40–34 overtime win.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: In Week 15 against the Carolina Panthers, Wagner recorded his first interception of the season off a pass thrown by Kyle Allen during the 30–24 win.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: In Week 16 against the Arizona Cardinals, Wagner recorded a team high 13 tackles and sacked Kyler Murray once during the 27–13 loss. He was named to the Pro Bowl and earned First Team All-Pro honors for the 2019 season. He was ranked 13th by his fellow players on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2020.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: In Week 8 against the San Francisco 49ers, Wagner recorded a team high 11 tackles and sacked Jimmy Garoppolo twice during the 37–27 win.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: On November 4, 2020, Wagner was named the NFC Defensive Player of the Week for his performance in Week 8. He earned Pro Bowl and First Team All-Pro honors. He was ranked 25th by his fellow players on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2021.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: In the of the playoffs against the Los Angeles Rams, Wagner led the team with 16 tackles (11 solo) and sacked John Wolford once during the 30–20 loss.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: Following the 2021 season, Wagner was named second-team All Pro which ended his five-season streak of first-team All-Pro selections. He earned an eighth consecutive Pro Bowl nomination. He was ranked 29th by his fellow players on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2022.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: Wagner signed a five-year contract worth up to $65 million with the Los Angeles Rams on March 31, 2022.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: The Beechcraft King Air is a line of American utility aircraft produced by Beechcraft. The King Air line comprises a number of twin-turboprop models that have been divided into two families. The Model 90 and 100 series developed in the 1960s are known as King Airs, while the later T-tail Model 200 and 300 series were originally marketed as Super King Airs, with the name "Super" being dropped by Beechcraft in 1996 (although it is still often used to differentiate the 200 and 300 series King Airs from their smaller stablemates).


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: The King Air was the first aircraft in its class and was produced continuously from 1964 to 2021. It outsold all of its turboprop competitors combined. It has recently faced competition from jet aircraft such as the Embraer Phenom 100, Honda HA-420 HondaJet and Cessna Citation Mustang; as well as from newer turboprop aircraft including the Piaggio P180 Avanti, and single-engine Piper Malibu Meridian, Pilatus PC-12, and Socata TBM.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: The Model 90 King Air was conceived as the Model 120 in 1961. On May 15, 1963, Beechcraft began test flights of the proof-of-concept Model 87, a modified Queen Air with Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-6 engines. On July 14, Beech announced a new type, and a month later began accepting orders for the "King Air", with deliveries to commence in Autumn 1964. On January 24, 1964, the first definitive prototype, by now designated Model 65-90 and also fitted with PT6A-6 engines, flew for the first time. After 10 months of test flying, in 1964 the Model 87 was delivered to the United States Army as the NU-8F. The first production aircraft was delivered on October 8, and by the end of the month, 152 aircraft had been ordered; by year's end, seven had been built.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: In 1966, after 112 65-90s were completed, production switched to the Model 65-A90 with PT6A-20 engines. As a measure of the type's popularity, 206 65-A90s were built in less than two years when production switched to the Model B90, the first of these rolling off the production line in 1968. Military versions built during these years included the 65-A90-1, 65-A90-2, 65-A90-3, and 65-A90-4, all being unpressurised models based on the Model 87. These were produced for the US Army which designated them U-21s of various sub-models; many were fitted out for electronic battlefield surveillance. A total of 162 of these were built between 1967 and 1971.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: A total of 184 B90 models were produced before the Model C90 was introduced in 1971, with wingspan increased over earlier models by to 50 ft 3 in (15.32 m), Maximum Take-Off Weight (MTOW) increased by to 9,650 lb (4,378 kg), and PT6A-20A engines. The broadly similar Model E90 was introduced the following year, with PT6A-28 engines; the two were produced in parallel. Further refinement of the 90 series resulted in the Model F90 and follow-on Model F90-1. The F-models featured the T-tail of the Model 200 King Air mated to the fuselage and wings of the E90, with PT6A-135 engines of 750 shp (560 kW) driving four-bladed propellers. The F90 prototype flew on January 16, 1978 and 203 production versions followed between 1979 and 1983, when the F90 was superseded by the F90-1. The F90 prototype was re-engined with Garrett AiResearch TPE-331 engines to test the feasibility of a Model G90, but this model was not put into production.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: The Model C90-1 entered production in 1982 after 507 C90s and 347 E90s had been built, and featured PT6A-21 engines and improvements to the pressurization system. 54 were built. The following year the F90-1 was put into production with redesigned engine cowlings, upgraded PT6A-135A engines, hydraulic landing gear, and triple-fed electrical bus; only 33 were built by the time production terminated in 1985. The C90-1 was soon followed by the Model C90A, which featured the redesigned engine cowlings of the F90-1. The C90A received an increase in MTOW in 1987, being certified to 10,100 lb (4,580 kg). The C90A model was in production until 1992, by which time 235 had been built, all but 74 with the increased MTOW.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: Only two C90As were built in 1992, the Model C90B followed that year with airframe improvements, four-bladed propellers, and propeller synchrophasing, all in an effort to reduce cabin noise. This model also had PT6A-21s; the first production C90B was fitted with the 10,000th PT6 engine delivered to Beechcraft. In 1994 a cheaper version was introduced as the C90SE (Special Edition), with three-bladed propellers, standardised interior and mechanical instruments instead of the Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS) fitted to the C90B. A total of 456 C90Bs and C90SEs were delivered by the time production of these models ended in late 2005.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: In July 2005, during the Oshkosh Airshow, Beechcraft introduced the C90GT. The C90GT was fitted with PT6A-135As, flat rated to the same as the earlier King Airs. This engine change increased performance due to lower operating temperatures, improving both cruise speed and climb rate. With a 275 kt (509 km/h, 316 mph) cruise speed, the C90GT was highly competitive with the new generation of Very Light Jets over short to medium distances, while providing a larger and more luxurious cabin. C90GT deliveries commenced at the beginning of 2006. On May 21, 2007, during the 7th Annual European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition in Geneva, Beechcraft announced the Model C90GTi updated version of the C90GT, featuring the Rockwell Collins Proline 21 avionics package previously only offered for the B200 and B300 King Airs. Deliveries commenced in 2008 after 97 C90GTs were delivered to customers over the previous two years. In 2015, the C90GTx was introduced with additional upgrades. In 2019, the C90 unit cost was US$2.75M, and the $4.2M for the C90GTi.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: In March 2021, Beechcraft discontinued the C90GTx, thus ending the Model 90 production run. Textron, Beechcraft's parent company, stated that it intends to support the existing 90 series fleet indefinitely given the large number of aircraft being actively operated.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: The Model 100 is a stretched derivative of the Model 90 featuring five cabin windows instead of the Model 90's three; MTOW increased by 1,300 lb (590 kg) over the 90, to 10,600 lb (4,810 kg). The 100 used the wings, tail, and engines (two PT6A-28 engines, although rated at 680 shp) from the Model 99 airliner, itself a development of the Queen Air (as was the Model 90).


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: The Model 100 was flown for the first time on March 17, 1969 and unveiled to the public in May. A total of 89 Model 100s were built before it was superseded by the Model A100 in 1972, with a further increase in MTOW to 11,500 lb (5,220 kg), fuel capacity increased by , and four-bladed propellers. A total of 157 A100s were built by the time production of this model ceased in 1979. The next in the series was the B100, which featured Garrett AiResearch TPE-331 engines as an alternative to the Pratt & Whitneys offered on other King Airs, and another increase in MTOW to 11,800 lb (5,350 kg). The B100 was introduced in 1976 and was produced concurrently with the A100 for several years; manufacture ceased in 1983 after 137 were built. The Model 200 Super King Air was developed from the Model 100, with the same fuselage design being used for both models (with some differences, mainly associated with the different tails). The Model 200 had different wings and a T-tail and entered service in 1974.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) has operated a total of 40 C90 and C90A King Airs, with deliveries beginning in 1973. These have been given various designations by the JMSDF and consist of 34 TC-90 trainers, five LC-90 transports and a single UC-90 which is configured for photographic aerial survey. The TC-90s and the UC-90 are operated by the 202nd Naval Air Training Squadron (JMSDF) based at Tokushima Air Base, while the LC-90s are attached to various Lockheed P-3 "Kokutai" (Squadrons) and Air Transport Squadron 61 as liaison aircraft. In late 2005 the JMSDF marked 500,000 accident-free flying hours of the TC-90 trainer fleet. Philippine maintenance staff will also be trained.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: The JMSDF made plans to lease at least five TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines to conduct maritime patrols. Two aircraft were transferred free of charge in March 2017. From November 2016 to November 2017 six Philippine Navy pilots were trained to fly the aircraft at Tokushima Airport. Maintenance staff are also being trained. There are plans to transfer three more aircraft.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: The U.S. military has used King Air 90s in various roles, primarily VIP and liaison transport, with designations including the VC-6A, the T-44 Pegasus, and the U-21 Ute. The U-21 Ute used by the US Army was the most common version.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: Most U-21s were unpressurized Model 87 derivatives, but there were also five U-21Fs based on the A100 King Air; and three U-21Js, which Beechcraft designated Model A100-1, but were actually the first three production Model 200 Super King Airs (C/Ns BB-3, BB-4 and BB-5, after prototypes C/N BB-1 and BB-2 had been built). The majority of U-21s were delivered as U-21As (102 65-A90-1s), but there were also four RU-21As (65-A90-1s), three RU-21Bs (65-A90-2s), two RU-21Cs (65-A90-3s), 18 RU-21Ds (65-A90-1s), 16 RU-21Es (65-A90-4s), and 17 RU-21Gs (65-A90-1s). The RU-21Es (except one written off) were later converted to U-21Hs and RU-21Hs, with two U-21Hs and an RU-21H being further converted to JU-21Hs. In 1993, the three surviving RU-21As that remained in military service were retired and sent to JW Duff Aircraft Salvage in Denver Colorado. On November 14, 2015, one of aircraft, (67-18113) was donated by Dynamic Aviation to the 138th Aviation Company Memorial to restore the aircraft to be displayed at Orlando International Airport. The majority of the U-21 series were retired in the second half of the 1990s and most are now owned by Dynamic Aviation of Bridgewater, Virginia. Some have been modified as spraying aircraft and are used on insect control work.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: The T-44A Pegasus is a trainer version, designated the Model H90 by Beechcraft, used to train United States Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Air Force pilots to fly multi-engine aircraft. A total of 61 were delivered to the US Navy between 1977 and 1980. In August 2006, the Navy announced that after 29 years of operation, the T-44A fleet would be upgraded with modernized avionics systems, and redesignated T-44Cs.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: Two VC-6A aircraft were operated by the US military. One was a Model 65-A90 operated by the US Army and serialled 66-15361, the other a B90, designated as a VC-6A (66-7943), was operated by the United States Air Force and used by President Johnson. (See below.)


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: During the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, the United States Air Force acquired a Model B90 King Air "off-the-shelf". With the military designation VC-6A, the aircraft, serialled 66-7943, was used to transport President Johnson between Bergstrom Air Force Base (near Austin, Texas) and the Johnson family ranch near Johnson City, Texas. When Johnson was aboard, the aircraft used the callsign Air Force One. After Johnson left office, the aircraft continued to serve in the 89th Military Airlift Wing as a VIP transport until its retirement in 1985. This aircraft is now on display, with other presidential aircraft, at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: A number of aftermarket modifications and upgrades are available for 90 and 100 Series King Airs. An engine upgrade involves earlier-build 90 Series aircraft being re-engined with the PT6A-135A engines of the C90GT. A more radical re-engining program involves the replacement of the PT6s in C90 and E90 King Airs with TPE-331s.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: Among the numerous airframe modifications available: a cargo conversion for the 90 model, the CargoLiner, which replaces the rear door with a large pallet accessible cargo door, a heavy duty floor structure and cabin cargo liner, also a crew hatch for cockpit access for the crew in the 90, 100, and 200; a Wing Front Spar Reinforcement Kit for both 90 and 100 Series aircraft,; a modification for the entire King Air line that entails reworking and extending the nose to house a baggage compartment as well as the avionics normally found in the noses of King Air aircraft. Modifications available for the King Air 100 include a belly cargo pod similar to those fitted to the Beech 99 and the Model 1300 version of the King Air 200 series.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: In addition to its use by military and government users, the King Air is also used by many non-governmental organizations, as well as by corporate and private users. This includes commercial use by air-taxi and air charter companies.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: The Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia previously operated a large number of 90 Series King Airs, but retired the last example in 2006, standardizing on the King Air 200 Series and the Pilatus PC-12 for its fleet requirements.


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: A total of more than 3,100 King Air 90 and 100 series aircraft have been delivered as of August 2008:


title: Beechcraft King Air

text: The ICAO designator, such as might be used in a PIREP or a flight plan, for the various King Airs are BE9T (F90 and F90-1), BE9L (all other model 90s), and BE10 (model 100). With the exception of the F90 and F90-1, all 90 Series King Airs have been produced under the same Type Certificate (Number 3A20) used for Queen Air production. All 100 Series King Airs were produced under the same Type Certificate (Number A14CE) used for Model 99 production.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide (chemical formula: WC) is a chemical compound (specifically, a carbide) containing equal parts of tungsten and carbon atoms. In its most basic form, tungsten carbide is a fine gray powder, but it can be pressed and formed into shapes through sintering for use in industrial machinery, cutting tools, chisels, abrasives, armor-piercing shells and jewelry.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide is approximately twice as stiff as steel, with a Young's modulus of approximately 530–700 GPa, and is double the density of steel—nearly midway between that of lead and gold. It is comparable with corundum (α-) in hardness and can be polished and finished only with abrasives of superior hardness such as cubic boron nitride and diamond powder, wheels and compounds.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Historically referred to as Wolfram, "Wolf Rahm", wolframite ore was then later carburized and cemented with a binder creating a composite now called "tungsten carbide". Tungsten is Swedish for "heavy stone".


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Colloquially among workers in various industries (such as machining), tungsten carbide is often simply called "carbide."


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide is prepared by reaction of tungsten metal and carbon at 1,400–2,000 °C. Other methods include a lower temperature fluid bed process that reacts either tungsten metal or blue with CO/ mixture and between 900 and 1,200 °C.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: WC can also be produced by heating WO with graphite: directly at 900 °C or in hydrogen at 670 °C following by carburization in argon at 1,000 °C. Chemical vapor deposition methods that have been investigated include:


title: Tungsten carbide

text: There are two well-characterized compounds of tungsten and carbon, WC and tungsten semicarbide, . Both compounds may be present in coatings and the proportions can depend on the coating method.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Another meta-stable compound of tungsten and carbon can be created by heating the WC phase to high temperatures using plasma, then quenching in inert gas (plasma spheroidization). This process causes macrocrystalline WC particles to spheroidize and results in the non-stoichiometric high temperature phase existing in a meta-stable form at room temperature. The fine microstructure of this phase provides high hardness (2800-3500 HV) combined with good toughness when compared with other tungsten carbide compounds. The meta-stable nature of this compound results in reduced high temperature stability.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: At high temperatures WC decomposes to tungsten and carbon and this can occur during high-temperature thermal spray, e.g., in high velocity oxygen fuel (HVOF) and high energy plasma (HEP) methods.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Oxidation of WC starts at . It is resistant to acids and is only attacked by hydrofluoric acid/nitric acid (HF/) mixtures above room temperature. It reacts with fluorine gas at room temperature and chlorine above and is unreactive to dry up to its melting point. Finely powdered WC oxidizes readily in hydrogen peroxide aqueous solutions. At high temperatures and pressures it reacts with aqueous sodium carbonate forming sodium tungstate, a procedure used for recovery of scrap cemented carbide due to its selectivity.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide has a high melting point at , a boiling point of when under a pressure equivalent to , a thermal conductivity of 110 W·m·K, and a coefficient of thermal expansion of 5.5 µm·m·K.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide is extremely hard, ranking about 9 to 9.5 on the Mohs scale, and with a Vickers number of around 2600. It has a Young's modulus of approximately 530–700 GPa, a bulk modulus of 630–655 GPa, and a shear modulus of 274 GPa. It has an ultimate tensile strength of 344 MPa, an ultimate compression strength of about 2.7 GPa and a Poisson's ratio of 0.31.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: The speed of a longitudinal wave (the speed of sound) through a thin rod of tungsten carbide is 6220 m/s.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide's low electrical resistivity of about 0.2 "µ"Ω·m is comparable with that of some metals (e.g. vanadium 0.2 "µ"Ω·m).


title: Tungsten carbide

text: WC is readily wetted by both molten nickel and cobalt. Investigation of the phase diagram of the W-C-Co system shows that WC and Co form a pseudo binary eutectic. The phase diagram also shows that there are so-called η-carbides with composition that can be formed and the brittleness of these phases makes control of the carbon content in WC-Co cemented carbides important. In the presence of a molten phase such as cobalt, abnormal grain growth is known to occur in the sintering of tungsten carbide, with this having significant effects on the performance of the product material.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: There are two forms of WC, a hexagonal form, α-WC (hP2, space group Pm2, No. 187), and a cubic high-temperature form, β-WC, which has the rock salt structure. The hexagonal form can be visualized as made up of a simple hexagonal lattice of metal atoms of layers lying directly over one another (i.e. not close packed), with carbon atoms filling half the interstices giving both tungsten and carbon a regular trigonal prismatic, 6 coordination. From the unit cell dimensions the following bond lengths can be determined: the distance between the tungsten atoms in a hexagonally packed layer is 291 pm, the shortest distance between tungsten atoms in adjoining layers is 284 pm, and the tungsten carbon bond length is 220 pm. The tungsten-carbon bond length is therefore comparable to the single bond in (218 pm) in which there is strongly distorted trigonal prismatic coordination of tungsten.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Sintered tungsten carbide–cobalt cutting tools are very abrasion resistant and can also withstand higher temperatures than standard high-speed steel (HSS) tools. Carbide cutting surfaces are often used for machining tough materials such as carbon steel or stainless steel, and in applications where steel tools would wear quickly, such as high-quantity and high-precision production. Because carbide tools maintain a sharp cutting edge better than steel tools, they generally produce a better finish on parts, and their temperature resistance allows faster machining. The material is usually called cemented carbide, solid carbide, hardmetal or tungsten-carbide cobalt. It is a metal matrix composite, where tungsten carbide particles are the aggregate, and metallic cobalt serves as the matrix. It has been found wear and oxidation properties of cemented carbide can be improved by replacing cobalt with Iron Aluminide.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide, in its monolithic sintered form, or much more often in cemented tungsten carbide cobalt composite (see above), is often used in armor-piercing ammunition, especially where depleted uranium is not available or is politically unacceptable. projectiles were first used by German Luftwaffe tank-hunter squadrons in World War II. However, owing to the limited German reserves of tungsten, material was reserved for making machine tools and small numbers of projectiles. It is an effective penetrator due to its combination of great hardness and very high density.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide ammunition is now generally of the sabot type. SLAP, or saboted light armour penetrator, where a plastic sabot discards at the barrel muzzle, is one of the primary types of saboted small arms ammunition. Non-discarding jackets, regardless of the jacket material, are not perceived as sabots but as bullets. Both of the designs are, however, common in designated light armor-piercing small arms ammunition. Discarding sabots such as are used with M1A1 Abrams main gun are more commonplace in precision high-velocity gun ammunition.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide is used extensively in mining in top hammer rock drill bits, downhole hammers, roller-cutters, long wall plough chisels, long wall shearer picks, raiseboring reamers, and tunnel boring machines. In these applications it is also used for wear and corrosion resistant components in inlet control for well screens, sub-assemblies, seal rings and bushings common in oil and gas drilling. It is generally utilised as a button insert, mounted in a surrounding matrix of steel that forms the substance of the bit. As the tungsten carbide button is worn away the softer steel matrix containing it is also worn away, exposing yet more button insert.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide is also an effective neutron reflector and as such was used during early investigations into nuclear chain reactions, particularly for weapons. A criticality accident occurred at Los Alamos National Laboratory on 21 August 1945 when Harry Daghlian accidentally dropped a tungsten carbide brick onto a plutonium sphere, known as the demon core, causing the subcritical mass to go supercritical with the reflected neutrons.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Trekking poles, used by many hikers for balance and to reduce pressure on leg joints, generally use carbide tips in order to gain traction when placed on hard surfaces (like rock); carbide tips last much longer than other types of tip.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: While ski pole tips are generally not made of carbide, since they do not need to be especially hard even to break through layers of ice, rollerski tips usually are. Roller skiing emulates cross country skiing and is used by many skiers to train during warm weather months.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Sharpened carbide tipped spikes (known as studs) can be inserted into the drive tracks of snowmobiles. These studs enhance traction on icy surfaces. Longer v-shaped segments fit into grooved rods called wear rods under each snowmobile ski. The relatively sharp carbide edges enhance steering on harder icy surfaces. The carbide tips and segments reduce wear encountered when the snowmobile must cross roads and other abrasive surfaces.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Car, motorcycle and bicycle tires with tungsten carbide studs provide better traction on ice. They are generally preferred to steel studs because of their superior resistance to wear.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide may be used in farriery, the shoeing of horses, to improve traction on slippery surfaces such as roads or ice. Carbide-tipped hoof nails may be used to attach the shoes; in the United States, borium – chips of tungsten carbide in a matrix of softer metal such as bronze or mild steel – may be welded to small areas of the underside of the shoe before fitting.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide is also used for making surgical instruments meant for open surgery (scissors, forceps, hemostats, blade-handles, etc.) and laparoscopic surgery (graspers, scissors/cutter, needle holder, cautery, etc.). They are much costlier than their stainless-steel counterparts and require delicate handling, but give better performance.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide, typically in the form of a cemented carbide (carbide particles brazed together by metal), has become a popular material in the bridal jewelry industry due to its extreme hardness and high resistance to scratching. Even with high-impact resistance, this extreme hardness also means that it can occasionally be shattered under certain circumstances. Some consider this useful, since an impact would shatter a tungsten ring, quickly removing it, where precious metals would bend flat and require cutting. Tungsten carbide is roughly 10 times harder than 18k gold. In addition to its design and high polish, part of its attraction to consumers is its technical nature. Special tools, such as locking pliers, may be required if such a ring must be removed quickly (e.g. due to medical emergency following a hand injury accompanied by swelling).


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide is widely used to make the rotating ball in the tips of ballpoint pens that disperse ink during writing.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide is a common material used in the manufacture of gauge blocks, used as a system for producing precision lengths in dimensional metrology.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: English guitarist Martin Simpson is known to use a custom-made tungsten carbide guitar slide. The hardness, weight, and density of the slide give it superior sustain and volume compared to standard glass, steel, ceramic, or brass slides.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: Tungsten carbide has been investigated for its potential use as a catalyst and it has been found to resemble platinum in its catalysis of the production of water from hydrogen and oxygen at room temperature, the reduction of tungsten trioxide by hydrogen in the presence of water, and the isomerisation of 2,2-dimethylpropane to 2-methylbutane. It has been proposed as a replacement for the iridium catalyst in hydrazine-powered satellite thrusters.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: A tungsten carbide coating has been utilized on brake discs in high performance automotive applications to improve performance, increase service intervals and reduce brake dust.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: The primary health risks associated with tungsten carbide relate to inhalation of dust, leading to silicosis-like pulmonary fibrosis. Cobalt-cemented tungsten carbide is also anticipated to be a human carcinogen by the American National Toxicology Program.


title: Tungsten carbide

text: You can create a complex new form with 3D printing. Also, a created add value is the faster lead time for mining companies or oil platforms.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Theodor W. Adorno ( , ; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; 11 September 1903 – 6 August 1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, musicologist, and composer.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, whose work has come to be associated with thinkers such as Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse, for whom the works of Freud, Marx, and Hegel were essential to a critique of modern society. As a critic of both fascism and what he called the culture industry, his writings—such as "Dialectic of Enlightenment" (1947), "Minima Moralia" (1951) and "Negative Dialectics" (1966)—strongly influenced the European New Left.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Amidst the vogue enjoyed by existentialism and positivism in early 20th-century Europe, Adorno advanced a dialectical conception of natural history that critiqued the twin temptations of ontology and empiricism through studies of Kierkegaard and Husserl. As a classically trained pianist whose sympathies with the twelve-tone technique of Arnold Schoenberg resulted in his studying composition with Alban Berg of the Second Viennese School, Adorno's commitment to avant-garde music formed the backdrop of his subsequent writings and led to his collaboration with Thomas Mann on the latter's novel "Doctor Faustus", while the two men lived in California as exiles during the Second World War. Working for the newly relocated Institute for Social Research, Adorno collaborated on influential studies of authoritarianism, antisemitism and propaganda that would later serve as models for sociological studies the Institute carried out in post-war Germany.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Upon his return to Frankfurt, Adorno was involved with the reconstitution of German intellectual life through debates with Karl Popper on the limitations of positivist science, critiques of Heidegger's language of authenticity, writings on German responsibility for the Holocaust, and continued interventions into matters of public policy. As a writer of polemics in the tradition of Nietzsche and Karl Kraus, Adorno delivered scathing critiques of contemporary Western culture. Adorno's posthumously published "Aesthetic Theory", which he planned to dedicate to Samuel Beckett, is the culmination of a lifelong commitment to modern art which attempts to revoke the "fatal separation" of feeling and understanding long demanded by the history of philosophy and explode the privilege aesthetics accords to content over form and contemplation over immersion.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Theodor W. Adorno (alias: Theodor Adorno-Wiesengrund) was born as Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund in Frankfurt am Main on 11 September 1903, the only child of Maria Calvelli-Adorno della Piana (1865–1952) and Oscar Alexander Wiesengrund (1870–1946). His mother, a Catholic from Corsica, was once a professional singer, while his father, an assimilated Jew who had converted to Protestantism, ran a successful wine-export business. Proud of her origins, Maria wanted her son's paternal surname to be supplemented by the addition of her own name, Adorno. Thus his earliest publications carried the name Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno; upon his application for US citizenship, his name was modified to Theodor W. Adorno.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: His childhood was marked by the musical life provided by his mother and aunt: Maria was a singer who could boast of having performed in Vienna at the Imperial Court, while her sister, Agathe, who lived with them, had made a name for herself as both a singer and pianist. He was not only a precocious child but, as he recalled later in life, a child prodigy who could play pieces by Beethoven on the piano by the time he was twelve.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: At the age of six, he attended the Deutschherren middle school, before transferring to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gymnasium, where he studied from 1913 to 1921. Prior to his graduation at the top of his class, Adorno was already swept up by the revolutionary mood of the time, as is evidenced by his reading of Georg Lukács's "The Theory of the Novel" that year, as well as by his fascination with Ernst Bloch's "The Spirit of Utopia", of which he would later write:


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno's intellectual nonconformism was also shaped by the repugnance he felt towards the nationalism which swept through the Reich during the First World War. Along with future collaborators Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer and Bloch, Adorno was profoundly disillusioned by the ease with which Germany's intellectual and spiritual leaders—among them Max Weber, Max Scheler, Georg Simmel, as well as his friend Siegfried Kracauer—came out in support of the war. The younger generation's distrust for traditional knowledge arose from the way in which this tradition had discredited itself.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Over time, Oscar Wiesengrund's firm established close professional and personal ties with the factory of Karplus & Herzberger in Berlin. The eldest daughter of the Karplus family, Margarete, or Gretel, moved in the intellectual circles of Berlin, where she was acquainted with Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht and Bloch, each of whom Adorno would become familiar with during the mid-1920s; after fourteen years, Gretel Karplus and Adorno were married in 1937.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: At the end of his schooldays, Adorno not only benefited from the rich concert offerings of Frankfurt—where one could hear performances of works by Schoenberg, Schreker, Stravinsky, Bartók, Busoni, Delius and Hindemith—but also began studying music composition at the Hoch Conservatory while taking private lessons with well-respected composers Bernhard Sekles and Eduard Jung. At around the same time, he befriended Siegfried Kracauer, the "Frankfurter Zeitung"s literary editor, of whom he would later write:


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Leaving gymnasium to study philosophy, psychology and sociology at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Adorno continued his readings with Kracauer, turning now to Hegel and Kierkegaard, and began publishing concert reviews and pieces of music for distinguished journals like the "Zeitschrift für Musik", the "Neue Blätter für Kunst und Literatur" and later for the "Musikblätter des Anbruch". In these articles Adorno championed avant-garde music at the same time as he critiqued the failings of musical modernity, as in the case of Stravinsky's "The Soldier's Tale", which in 1923 he called a "dismal Bohemian prank". In these early writings he was unequivocal in his condemnation of performances that either sought or pretended to achieve a transcendence that Adorno, in line with many intellectuals of the time, regarded as impossible: "No cathedral", he wrote, "can be built if no community desires one." In the summer of 1924 Adorno received his doctorate with a study of Edmund Husserl under the direction of the unorthodox neo-Kantian Hans Cornelius. Before his graduation Adorno had already met his most important intellectual collaborators, Horkheimer and Benjamin. Through Cornelius's seminars, Adorno met Horkheimer, through whom he was then introduced to Friedrich Pollock.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: During the summer of 1924, the Viennese composer Alban Berg's "Three Fragments from Wozzeck", op. 7, premiered in Frankfurt, at which time Adorno introduced himself to Berg and both agreed the young philosopher and composer would study with Berg in Vienna. Upon moving to Vienna in February 1925, Adorno immersed himself in the musical culture that had grown up around Schoenberg: in addition to his twice-weekly sessions with Berg, Adorno continued his studies on piano with Eduard Steuermann and befriended the violinist Rudolf Kolisch. In Vienna he and Berg attended public lectures by the satirist Karl Kraus, and he met Lukács, who had been living in Vienna after the failure of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Berg, whom Adorno called "my master and teacher", was among the most prescient of his young pupil's early friends:


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: After leaving Vienna, Adorno traveled through Italy, where he met with Kracauer, Benjamin, and the economist Alfred Sohn-Rethel, with whom he developed a lasting friendship, before returning to Frankfurt. In December 1926 Adorno's "Two Pieces for String Quartet", op. 2, were performed in Vienna, which provided a welcome interruption from his preparations for the habilitation. After writing the "Piano Pieces in strict twelve-tone technique", as well as songs later integrated into the "Six Bagatelles for Voice and Piano", op. 6, Adorno presented his habilitation manuscript, "The Concept of the Unconscious in the Transcendental Theory of the Psyche" ("Der Begriff des Unbewußten in der transzendentalen Seelenlehre"), to Cornelius in November 1927. Cornelius advised Adorno to withdraw his application on the grounds that the manuscript was too close to his own way of thinking. In the manuscript Adorno attempted to underline the epistemological status of the unconscious as it emerged from Freud's early writings. Against the function of the unconscious in both Nietzsche and Spengler, Adorno argued that Freud's notion of the unconscious serves as a "sharp weapon ... against every attempt to create a metaphysics of the instincts and to deify full, organic nature." Undaunted by his academic prospects, Adorno threw himself once again into composition. In addition to publishing numerous reviews of opera performances and concerts, Adorno's "Four Songs for Medium Voice and Piano", op. 3, were performed in Berlin in January 1929. Between 1928 and 1930 Adorno took on a greater role within the editorial committee of the "Musikblätter des Anbruch". In a proposal for transforming the journal, he sought to use "Anbruch" for championing radical modern music against what he called the "stabilized music" of Pfitzner, the later Richard Strauss, as well as the neoclassicism of Stravinsky and Hindemith. During this period he published the essays "Night Music", "On Twelve-Tone Technique" and "Reaction and Progress". Yet his reservations about twelve-tone orthodoxy became steadily more pronounced. According to Adorno, twelve-tone technique's use of atonality can no more be regarded as an authoritative canon than can tonality be relied on to provide instructions for the composer.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: At this time Adorno struck up a correspondence with the composer Ernst Krenek, discussing problems of atonality and twelve-tone technique. In a 1934 letter he sounded a related criticism of Schoenberg:


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: At this point Adorno reversed his earlier priorities: now his musical activities came second to the development of a philosophical theory of aesthetics. Thus, in the middle of 1929 he accepted Paul Tillich's offer to present an habilitation on Kierkegaard, which Adorno eventually submitted under the title "The Construction of the Aesthetic". At the time, Kierkegaard's philosophy exerted a strong influence, chiefly through its claim to pose an alternative to Idealism and Hegel's philosophy of history. Yet when Adorno turned his attention to Kierkegaard, watchwords like "anxiety," "inwardness" and "leap"—instructive for existentialist philosophy—were detached from their theological origins and posed, instead, as problems for aesthetics. As the work proceeded—and Kierkegaard's overcoming of Hegel's idealism was revealed to be a mere interiorization—Adorno excitedly remarked in a letter to Berg that he was writing without looking over his shoulder at the faculty who would soon evaluate his work. Receiving favourable reports from Professors Tillich and Horkheimer, as well as Benjamin and Kracauer, the university conferred on Adorno the "venia legendi" in February 1931; on the very day his revised study was published, 23 March 1933, Hitler seized dictatorial powers.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Several months after qualifying as a lecturer in philosophy, Adorno delivered an inaugural lecture at the Institute for Social Research, an independent organization that had recently appointed Horkheimer as its director and, with the arrival of the literary scholar Leo Lowenthal, social psychologist Erich Fromm and philosopher Herbert Marcuse, sought to exploit recent theoretical and methodological advances in the social sciences. His lecture, "The Actuality of Philosophy," created a scandal. In it Adorno not only deviated from the theoretical program Horkheimer had laid out a year earlier but challenged philosophy's very capacity for comprehending reality as such: "For the mind," Adorno announced, "is indeed not capable of producing or grasping the totality of the real, but it may be possible to penetrate the detail, to explode in miniature the mass of merely existing reality." In line with Benjamin's "The Origin of German Tragic Drama" and preliminary sketches of the Arcades Project, Adorno likened philosophical interpretation to experiments that should be conducted "until they arrive at figurations in which the answers are legible, while the questions themselves vanish." Having lost its position as the Queen of the Sciences, philosophy must now radically transform its approach to objects so that it might "construct keys before which reality springs open."


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Following Horkheimer's taking up the directorship of the institute, a new journal, "Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung", was produced to publish the research of Institute members both before and after its relocation to the United States. Though Adorno was not an Institute member, the journal published many of his essays, including "The Social Situation of Music" (1932), "On Jazz" (1936), "On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening" (1938) and "Fragments on Wagner" (1938). In his new role as social theorist, Adorno's philosophical analysis of cultural phenomena heavily relied on the language of historical materialism, as concepts like reification, false consciousness and ideology came to play an ever more prominent role in his work. At the same time, however, and owing to both the presence of another prominent sociologist at the institute, Karl Mannheim, as well as the methodological problem posed by treating objects—like "musical material"—as ciphers of social contradictions, Adorno was compelled to abandon any notion of "value-free" sociology in favour of a form of ideology critique that held on to an idea of truth. Before his emigration in autumn 1934, Adorno began work on a "Singspiel" based on Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" titled "The Treasure of Indian Joe", which he never completed; by the time he fled Hitler's Germany Adorno had already written over 100 opera or concert reviews and 50 critiques of music composition.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: As the Nazi party became the largest party in the Reichstag, Horkheimer's 1932 observation proved typical for his milieu: "Only one thing is certain", he wrote, "the irrationality of society has reached a point where only the gloomiest predictions have any plausibility." In September Adorno's right to teach was revoked; in March, as the swastika was run up the flagpole of town hall, the Frankfurt criminal police searched the institute's offices. Adorno's house on Seeheimer Strasse was similarly searched in July and his application for membership in the Reich Chamber of Literature denied on the grounds that membership was limited to "persons who belong to the German nation by profound ties of character and blood. As a non-Aryan," he was informed, "you are unable to feel and appreciate such an obligation." Soon afterwards Adorno was forced into 15 years of exile.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: After the possibility of transferring his habilitation to the University of Vienna came to nothing, Adorno considered relocating to Britain upon his father's suggestion. With the help of the Academic Assistance Council, Adorno registered as an advanced student at Merton College, Oxford, in June 1934. During the next four years at Oxford, Adorno made repeated trips to Germany to see both his parents and Gretel, who was still working in Berlin. Under the direction of Gilbert Ryle, Adorno worked on a dialectical critique of Husserl's epistemology. By this time, the Institute for Social Research had relocated to New York City and begun making overtures to Adorno. After months of strained relations, Horkheimer and Adorno reestablished their essential theoretical alliance during meetings in Paris. Adorno continued writing on music, publishing "The Form of the Phonograph Record" and "Crisis of Music Criticism" with the Viennese musical journal "23", "On Jazz" in the institute's "Zeitschrift", "Farewell to Jazz" in "Europäische Revue". But Adorno's attempts to break out of the sociology of music were twice thwarted: neither the study of Mannheim he had been working on for years nor extracts from his study of Husserl were accepted by the "Zeitschrift". Impressed by Horkheimer's book of aphorisms, "Dawn and Decline", Adorno began working on his own book of aphorisms, what later became "Minima Moralia". While at Oxford, Adorno suffered two great losses: his Aunt Agathe died in June 1935, and Berg died in December of the same year. To the end of his life, Adorno never abandoned the hope of completing Berg's unfinished opera Lulu.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: At this time Adorno was in intense correspondence with Walter Benjamin about the latter's "Arcades Project". After receiving an invitation from Horkheimer to visit the Institute in New York, Adorno sailed for New York on 9 June 1937 and stayed for two weeks. While he was in New York, Horkheimer's essays "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" and "Traditional and Critical Theory," which would soon become instructive for the institute's self-understanding, were the subject of intense discussion. Soon after his return to Europe, Gretel moved to Britain, where she and Adorno were married on 8 September 1937; a little over a month later, Horkheimer telegrammed from New York with news of a position Adorno could take with the Princeton Radio Project, then under the directorship of the Austrian sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld. Yet Adorno's work continued with studies of Beethoven and Richard Wagner (published in 1939 as "Fragments on Wagner"), drafts of which he read to Benjamin during their final meeting, in December on the Italian Riviera. According to Benjamin, these drafts were astonishing for "the precision of their materialist deciphering" as well as the way in which "musical facts ... had been made socially transparent in a way that was completely new to me." In his Wagner study, the thesis later to characterize "Dialectic of Enlightenment"—man's domination of nature—first emerges. Adorno sailed for New York on 16 February 1938. Soon after settling into his new home on Riverside Drive, Adorno met with Lazarsfeld in Newark, New Jersey, to discuss the Project's plans for investigating the impact of broadcast music.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Although he was expected to embed the Project's research within a wider theoretical context, it soon became apparent that the Project was primarily concerned with data collection to be used by administrators for establishing whether groups of listeners could be targeted by broadcasts specifically aimed at them. Expected to make use of devices with which listeners could press a button to indicate whether they liked or disliked a particular piece of music, Adorno bristled with distaste and astonishment: "I reflected that culture was simply the condition that precluded a mentality that tried to measure it." Thus Adorno suggested using individual interviews to determine listener reactions and, only three months after meeting Lazarsfeld, completed a 160-page memorandum on the Project's topic, "Music in Radio." Adorno was primarily interested in how the musical material was affected by its distribution through the medium of radio and thought it imperative to understand how music was affected by its becoming part of daily life. "The meaning of a Beethoven symphony," he wrote, "heard while the listener is walking around or lying in bed is very likely to differ from its effect in a concert-hall where people sit as if they were in church." In essays published by the institute's "Zeitschrift", Adorno dealt with the atrophy of musical culture that had become instrumental in accelerating tendencies—toward conformism, trivialization and standardization—already present in the larger culture. Unsurprisingly, Adorno's studies found little resonance among members of the project. At the end of 1939, when Lazarsfeld submitted a second application for funding, the musical section of the study was left out. Yet during the two years during which he worked on the Project, Adorno was prolific, publishing "The Radio Symphony", "A Social Critique of Radio Music", and "On Popular Music", texts that, along with the draft memorandum and other unpublished writings, are found in Robert Hullot-Kentor's translation, "Current of Music". In light of this situation, Horkheimer soon found a permanent post for Adorno at the institute.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: In addition to helping with the "Zeitschrift", Adorno was expected to be the institute's liaison with Benjamin, who soon passed on to New York the study of Charles Baudelaire he hoped would serve as a model of the larger "Arcades Project". In correspondence, the two men discussed the difference in their conceptions of the relationship between critique and artworks that had become manifest through Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility". At around the same time Adorno and Horkheimer began planning for a joint work on "dialectical logic", which would later become "Dialectic of Enlightenment". Alarmed by reports from Europe, where Adorno's parents suffered increasing discrimination and Benjamin was interned in Colombes, they entertained few delusions about their work's practical effects. "In view of what is now threatening to engulf Europe," Horkheimer wrote, "our present work is essentially destined to pass things down through the night that is approaching: a kind of message in a bottle." As Adorno continued his work in New York with radio talks on music and a lecture on Kierkegaard's doctrine of love, Benjamin fled Paris and attempted to make an illegal border crossing. After learning that his Spanish visa was invalid and fearing deportation back to France, Benjamin took an overdose of morphine tablets. In light of recent events, the Institute set about formulating a theory of antisemitism and fascism. On one side were those who supported Franz Leopold Neumann's thesis according to which National Socialism was a form of "monopoly capitalism"; on the other were those who supported Friedrich Pollock's "state capitalist theory." Horkheimer's contributions to this debate, in the form of the essays "The Authoritarian State", "The End of Reason", and "The Jews and Europe", served as a foundation for what he and Adorno planned to do in their book on dialectical logic.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: In November 1941 Adorno followed Horkheimer to what Thomas Mann called "German California", setting up house in a Pacific Palisades neighborhood of German émigrés that included Bertolt Brecht and Schoenberg. Adorno arrived with a draft of his "Philosophy of New Music", a dialectical critique of twelve-tone music that Adorno felt, while writing it, was a departure from the theory of art he had spent the previous decades elaborating. Horkheimer's reaction to the manuscript was wholly positive: "If I have ever in the whole of my life felt enthusiasm about anything, then I did on this occasion," he wrote after reading the manuscript. The two set about completing their joint work, which transformed from a book on dialectical logic to a rewriting of the history of rationality and the Enlightenment. First published in a small mimeographed edition in May 1944 as "Philosophical Fragments", the text waited another three years before achieving book form when it was published with its definitive title, "Dialectic of Enlightenment", by the Amsterdam publisher Querido Verlag. This "reflection on the destructive aspect of progress" proceeded through the chapters that treated rationality as both the liberation from and further domination of nature, interpretations of both Homer's "Odyssey" and the Marquis de Sade, as well as analyses of the culture industry and antisemitism.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: With their joint work completed, the two turned their attention to studies on antisemitism and authoritarianism in collaboration with the Nevitt Sanford-led Public Opinion Study Group and the American Jewish Committee. In line with these studies, Adorno produced an analysis of the Californian radio preacher Martin Luther Thomas. Fascist propaganda of this sort, Adorno wrote, "simply takes people for what they are: genuine children of today's standardized mass culture who have been robbed to a great extent of their autonomy and spontaneity". The result of these labors, the 1950 study "The Authoritarian Personality", was pioneering in its combination of quantitative and qualitative methods of collecting and evaluating data as well as its development of the F-scale personality test.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: After the USA entered the war in 1941, the situation of the émigrés, now classed "enemy aliens", became increasingly restricted. Forbidden from leaving their homes between 8pm and 6am and from going more than five miles from their houses, émigrés like Adorno, who was not naturalized until November 1943, were severely restricted in their movements.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: In addition to the aphorisms that conclude "Dialectic of Enlightenment", Adorno put together a collection of aphorisms in honor of Horkheimer's 50th birthday that were later published as "Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life". These fragmentary writings, inspired by a renewed reading of Nietzsche, treated issues like emigration, totalitarianism, and individuality, as well as everyday matters such as giving presents, dwelling and the impossibility of love. In California Adorno made the acquaintance of Charlie Chaplin and became friends with Fritz Lang and Hanns Eisler, with whom he completed a study of film music in 1944. In this study the authors pushed for the greater usage of avant-garde music in film, urging that music be used to supplement, not simply accompany, films' visual aspect. Adorno also assisted Thomas Mann with his novel "Doktor Faustus" after the latter asked for his help. "Would you be willing," Mann wrote, "to think through with me how the work—I mean Leverkühn's work—might look; how you would do it if you were in league with the Devil?"


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: At the end of October 1949, Adorno left America for Europe just as "The Authoritarian Personality" was being published. Before his return, Adorno had reached an agreement with a Tübingen publisher to print an expanded version of "Philosophy of New Music" and completed two compositions: "Four Songs for Voice and Piano by Stefan George, op.7", and "Three Choruses for Female Voices from the Poems of Theodor Däubler, op. 8".


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Upon his return, Adorno helped shape the political culture of West Germany. Until his death in 1969, twenty years after his return, Adorno contributed to the intellectual foundations of the Federal Republic, as a professor at Frankfurt University, critic of the vogue enjoyed by Heideggerian philosophy, partisan of critical sociology, and teacher of music at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music. Adorno resumed his teaching duties at the university soon after his arrival, with seminars on "Kant's Transcendental Dialectic", aesthetics, Hegel, "Contemporary Problems in the Theory of Knowledge", and "The Concept of Knowledge". Adorno's surprise at his students' passionate interest in intellectual matters did not, however, blind him to continuing problems within Germany: The literary climate was dominated by writers who had remained in Germany during Hitler's rule, the government re-employed people who had been active in the Nazi apparatus and people were generally loath to own up to their own collaboration or the guilt they thus incurred. Instead, the ruined city of Frankfurt continued as if nothing had happened, holding on to ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the good despite the atrocities, hanging on to a culture that had itself been lost in rubble or killed off in the concentration camps. All the enthusiasm Adorno's students showed for intellectual matters could not erase the suspicion that, in the words of Max Frisch, culture had become an "alibi" for the absence of political consciousness. Yet the foundations for what would come to be known as "The Frankfurt School" were soon laid: Horkheimer resumed his chair in social philosophy and the Institute for Social Research, rebuilt, became a lightning rod for critical thought.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Starting with his 1947 essay "Wagner, Nietzsche and Hitler", Adorno produced a series of influential works to describe psychological fascist traits. One of these works was "The Authoritarian Personality" (1950), published as a contribution to the "Studies in Prejudice" performed by multiple research institutes in the US, and consisting of 'qualitative interpretations' that uncovered the authoritarian character of test persons through indirect questions. The books have had a major influence on sociology and remain highly discussed and debated. In 1951 he continued on the topic with his essay "Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda", in which he said that "Psychological dispositions do not actually cause fascism; rather, fascism defines a psychological area which can be successfully exploited by the forces which promote it for entirely non-psychological reasons of self-interest."


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: In 1952 Adorno participated in a group experiment, revealing residual National Socialist attitudes among the recently democratized Germans. He then published two influential essays, "The Meaning of Working Through the Past" (1959), and "Education after Auschwitz" (1966), in which he argued on the survival of the uneradicated National Socialism in the mind-sets and institutions of the post-1945 Germany, and that there is still a real risk that it could rise again. Later on, however, Jean Améry—who had been tortured at Auschwitz—would sharply object that Adorno, rather than addressing such political concerns, was exploiting Auschwitz for his metaphysical phantom "absolute negativity" ("absolute Negativität"), using a language intoxicated by itself ("von sich selber bis zur Selbstblendung entzückte Sprache").


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: In September 1951 Adorno returned to the United States for a six-week visit, during which he attended the opening of the Hacker Psychiatry Foundation in Beverly Hills, met Leo Lowenthal and Herbert Marcuse in New York and saw his mother for the last time. After stopping in Paris, where he met Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Michel Leiris and René Leibowitz, Adorno delivered a lecture entitled "The Present State of Empirical Social Research in Germany" at a conference on opinion research. Here he emphasized the importance of data collection and statistical evaluation while asserting that such empirical methods have only an auxiliary function and must lead to the formation of theories which would "raise the harsh facts to the level of consciousness."


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: With Horkheimer as dean of the Arts Faculty, then rector of the university, responsibilities for the institute's work fell upon Adorno. At the same time, however, Adorno renewed his musical work: with talks at the Kranichsteiner Musikgesellschaft, another in connection with a production of Ernst Krenek's opera "Leben des Orest", and a seminar on "Criteria of New Music" at the Fifth International Summer Course for New Music at Kranichstein. Adorno also became increasingly involved with the publishing house of Peter Suhrkamp, inducing the latter to publish Benjamin's "Berlin Childhood Around 1900", Kracauer's writings and a two-volume edition of Benjamin's writings. Adorno's own recently published "Minima Moralia" was not only well received in the press, but also met with great admiration from Thomas Mann, who wrote to Adorno from America in 1952:


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Yet Adorno was no less moved by other public events: protesting the publication of Heinrich Mann's novel "Professor Unrat" with its film title, "The Blue Angel"; declaring his sympathy with those who protested the scandal of big-game hunting and penning a defense of prostitutes.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Because Adorno's American citizenship would have been forfeited by the middle of 1952 had he continued to stay outside the country, he returned once again to Santa Monica to survey his prospects at the Hacker Foundation. While there he wrote a content analysis of newspaper horoscopes (now collected in "The Stars Down to Earth"), and the essays "Television as Ideology" and "Prologue to Television"; even so, he was pleased when, at the end of ten months, he was enjoined to return as co-director of the institute.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Back in Frankfurt, he renewed his academic duties and, from 1952 to 1954, completed three essays: "Notes on Kafka", "Valéry Proust Museum", and an essay on Schoenberg following the composer's death, all of which were included in the 1955 essay collection "Prisms". In response to the publication of Thomas Mann's "The Black Swan", Adorno penned a long letter to the author, who then approved its publication in the literary journal "Akzente". A second collection of essays, "Notes to Literature", appeared in 1958. After meeting Samuel Beckett while delivering a series of lectures in Paris the same year, Adorno set to work on "Trying to Understand Endgame," which, along with studies of Proust, Valéry, and Balzac, formed the central texts of the 1961 publication of the second volume of his "Notes to Literature". Adorno's entrance into literary discussions continued in his June 1963 lecture at the annual conference of the Hölderlin Society. At the Philosophers' Conference of October 1962 in Münster, at which Habermas wrote that Adorno was "A writer among bureaucrats", Adorno presented "Progress".


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Although the "Zeitschrift" was never revived, the Institute nevertheless published a series of important sociological books, including "Sociologica" (1955), a collection of essays, "Gruppenexperiment" (1955), "Betriebsklima", a study of work satisfaction among workers in Mannesmann, and "Soziologische Exkurse", a textbook-like anthology intended as an introductory work about the discipline.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Throughout the fifties and sixties, Adorno became a public figure, not simply through his books and essays, but also through his appearances in radio and newspapers. In talks, interviews, and round-table discussions broadcast on Hessen Radio, South-West Radio, and Radio Bremen, Adorno discussed topics as diverse as "The Administered World" (September 1950), "What is the Meaning of 'Working Through the Past?"' (February 1960) to "The Teaching Profession and its Taboos" (August 1965). Additionally, he frequently wrote for "Frankfurter Allgemeine", "Frankfurter Rundschau", and the weekly "Die Zeit".


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: At the invitation of Wolfgang Steinecke, Adorno took part in the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music in Kranichstein from 1951 to 1958. Yet conflicts between the so-called Darmstadt school, which included composers like Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Karel Goeyvaerts, Luciano Berio and Gottfried Michael Koenig, soon arose, receiving explicit expression in Adorno's 1954 lecture, "The Aging of the New Music", where he argued that atonality's freedom was being restricted to serialism in much the same way as it was once restricted by twelve-tone technique. With his friend Eduard Steuermann, Adorno feared that music was being sacrificed to stubborn rationalization. During this time Adorno not only produced a significant series of notes on Beethoven (which was never completed and only published posthumously), but also published "Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy" in 1960. In his 1961 return to Kranichstein, Adorno called for what he termed a "musique informelle", which would possess the ability "really and truly to be what it is, without the ideological pretense of being something else. Or rather, to admit frankly the fact of non-identity and to follow through its logic to the end."


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: At the same time Adorno struck up relationships with contemporary German-language poets such as Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann. Adorno's 1949 dictum—"To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric"—posed the question of what German culture could mean after Auschwitz; his own continual revision of this dictum—in "Negative Dialectics", for example, he wrote that "Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream"; while in "Commitment," he wrote in 1962 that the dictum "expresses in negative form the impulse which inspires committed literature"—was part of post-war Germany's struggle with history and culture. Adorno additionally befriended the writer and poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger as well as the film-maker Alexander Kluge.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: In 1963, Adorno was elected to the post of chairman of the German Sociological Society, where he presided over two important conferences: in 1964, on "Max Weber and Sociology" and in 1968 on "Late Capitalism or Industrial Society". A debate launched in 1961 by Adorno and Karl Popper, later published as the "Positivist Dispute in German Sociology", arose out of disagreements at the 1959 14th German Sociology Conference in Berlin.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno's critique of the dominant climate of post-war Germany was also directed against the pathos that had grown up around Heideggerianism, as practiced by writers like Karl Jaspers and Otto Friedrich Bollnow, and which had subsequently seeped into public discourse. His 1964 publication of "The Jargon of Authenticity" took aim at the halo such writers had attached to words like "angst", "decision" and "leap". After seven years of work, Adorno completed "Negative Dialectics" in 1966, after which, during the summer semester of 1967 and the winter semester of 1967–68, he offered regular philosophy seminars to discuss the book chapter by chapter. Among the students at these seminars were the Americans Angela Davis and Irving Wohlfarth. One objection, which would soon take on ever greater importance, was that critical thought must adopt the standpoint of the oppressed, to which Adorno replied that negative dialectics was concerned "with the dissolution of standpoint thinking itself."


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: At the time of "Negative Dialectics" publication, student protests fragilized West German democracy. Trends in the media, an educational crisis in the universities, the Shah of Iran's 1967 state visit, German support for the war in Vietnam and the emergency laws combined to create a highly unstable situation. Like many of his students, Adorno too opposed the emergency laws, as well as the war in Vietnam, which, he said, proved the continued existence of the "world of torture that had begun in Auschwitz". The situation only deteriorated with the police shooting of Benno Ohnesorg at a protest against the Shah's visit. This death, as well as the subsequent acquittal of the responsible officer, were both commented upon in Adorno's lectures. As politicization increased, rifts developed within both the institute's relationship with its students as well as within the Institute itself. Soon Adorno himself would become an object of the students' ire. At the invitation of Peter Szondi, Adorno was invited to the Free University of Berlin to give a lecture on Goethe's "Iphigenie in Tauris". After a group of students marched to the lectern, unfurling a banner that read "Berlin's left-wing fascists greet Teddy the Classicist," a number of those present left the lecture in protest after Adorno refused to abandon his talk in favour of discussing his attitude on the current political situation. Adorno shortly thereafter participated in a meeting with the Berlin Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS) and discussed "Student Unrest" with Szondi on West German Radio. But as 1968 progressed, Adorno became increasingly critical of the students' disruptions to university life. His isolation was only compounded by articles published in the magazine "alternative", which, following the lead of Hannah Arendt's articles in "Merkur", claimed Adorno had subjected Benjamin to pressure during his years of exile in Berlin and compiled Benjamin's "Writings" and "Letters" with a great deal of bias. In response, Benjamin's longtime friend Gershom Scholem, wrote to the editor of "Merkur" to express his disapproval of the "in part, shameful, not to say disgraceful" remarks by Arendt.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Relations between students and the West German state continued deteriorating. In spring 1968, a prominent SDS spokesman, Rudi Dutschke, was gunned down in the streets; in response, massive demonstrations took place, directed in particular against the Springer Press, which had led a campaign to vilify the students. An open appeal published in "Die Zeit", signed by Adorno, called for an inquiry into the social reasons that gave rise to this assassination attempt as well as an investigation into the Springer Press' manipulation of public opinion. At the same time, however, Adorno protested against disruptions of his own lectures and refused to express his solidarity with their political goals, maintaining instead his autonomy as a theoretician. Adorno rejected the so-called unity of theory and praxis advocated by the students and argued that the students' actions were premised upon a mistaken analysis of the situation. The building of barricades, he wrote to Marcuse, is "ridiculous against those who administer the bomb." Adorno would refer to the radical students as stormtroopers (Sturmabteilung) in jeans."


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: In September 1968 Adorno went to Vienna for the publication of "Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link". Upon his return to Frankfurt, events prevented his concentrating upon the book on aesthetics he wished to write: "Valid student claims and dubious actions," he wrote to Marcuse, "are all so mixed up together that all productive work and even sensible thought are scarcely possible any more." After striking students threatened to strip the institute's sociology seminar rooms of their furnishings and equipment, the police were brought in to close the building.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno began writing an introduction to a collection of poetry by Rudolf Borchardt, which was connected with a talk entitled "Charmed Language," delivered in Zurich, followed by a talk on aesthetics in Paris where he met Beckett again. Beginning in October 1966, Adorno took up work on "Aesthetic Theory". In June 1969 he completed "Catchwords: Critical Models". During the winter semester of 1968–69 Adorno was on sabbatical leave from the university and thus able to dedicate himself to the completion of his book of aesthetics.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: For the summer semester Adorno planned a lecture course entitled "An Introduction to Dialectical Thinking," as well as a seminar on the dialectics of subject and object. But at the first lecture Adorno's attempt to open up the lecture and invite questions whenever they arose degenerated into a disruption from which he quickly fled: after a student wrote on the blackboard "If Adorno is left in peace, capitalism will never cease," three women students approached the lectern, bared their breasts and scattered flower petals over his head. Yet Adorno continued to resist blanket condemnations of the protest movement which would have only strengthened the conservative thesis according to which political irrationalism was the result of Adorno's teaching. After further disruptions to his lectures, Adorno canceled the lectures for the rest of the seminar, continuing only with his philosophy seminar. In the summer of 1969, weary from these activities, Adorno returned once again to Zermatt, Switzerland, at the foot of Matterhorn to restore his strength. On August 6 he died of a heart attack.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Like most theorists of the Frankfurt School, Adorno was influenced by the works of Hegel, Marx and Freud. Their major theories fascinated many left-wing intellectuals in the first half of the 20th century. Lorenz Jäger speaks critically of Adorno's "Achilles' heel" in his political biography: that Adorno placed "almost unlimited trust in finished teachings, in Marxism, psychoanalysis, and the teachings of the Second Viennese School."


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno's adoption of Hegelian philosophy can be traced back to his inaugural lecture in 1931, in which he postulated: "only dialectically does philosophical interpretation seem possible to me" ("Gesammelte Schriften" 1: 338). Hegel rejected the idea of separating methods and content, because thinking is always thinking of something; dialectics for him is "the comprehended movement of the object itself." Like Gerhard Schweppenhäuser, Adorno adopted this claim as his own, and based his thinking on one of the Hegelian basic categories, the determinate negation, according to which something is not abstractly negated and dissolved into zero, but is preserved in a new, richer concept through its opposite.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno understood his "Three Studies of Hegel" as "preparation of a changed definition of dialectics" and that they stop "where the start should be" ("Gesammelte Schriften" 5: 249 f.). Adorno dedicated himself to this task in one of his later major works, the "Negative Dialectics" (1966). The title expresses "tradition and rebellion in equal measure." Drawing from Hegelian reason's speculative dialectic, Adorno developed his own "negative" dialectic of the "non-identical."


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Marx's "Critique of Political Economy" clearly shaped Adorno's thinking. As described by Jürgen Habermas, Marxist critique is, for Adorno, a "silent orthodoxy, whose categories [are revealed] in Adorno's cultural critique, although their influence is not explicitly named." Marx's influence on Adorno first came by way of György Lukács's "History and Class Consciousness" ("Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein"); from this text, Adorno took the Marxist categories of commodity fetishism and reification. These are closely related to Adorno's concept of trade, which stands in the center of his philosophy, not exclusively restricted to economic theory. Adorno's "exchange society" "(Tauschgesellschaft"), with its "insatiable and destructive appetite for expansion," is easily decoded as a description of capitalism. Furthermore, the Marxist concept of ideology is central for Adorno.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Class theory, which appears less frequently in Adorno's work, also has its origins in Marxist thinking. Adorno made explicit reference to class in two of his texts: the first, the subchapter "Classes and Strata" ("Klassen und Schichten"), from his "Introduction to the Sociology of Music"; the second, an unpublished 1942 essay, "Reflections on Class Theory", published postmortem in his "Collected Works".


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Psychoanalysis is a constitutive element of critical theory. Adorno read Sigmund Freud's work early on, although, unlike Horkheimer, he had never experienced psychoanalysis in practice. He first read Freud while working on his initial (withdrawn) habilitation thesis, "The Concept of the Unconscious in the Transcendental Theory of Mind" (1927). In it Adorno argued that "the healing of all neuroses is synonymous with the complete understanding of the meaning of their symptoms by the patient". In his essay "On the Relationship between Sociology and Psychology" (1955), he justified the need to "supplement the theory of society with psychology, especially analytically oriented social psychology" in the face of fascism. Adorno emphasized the necessity of researching prevailing psychological drives in order to explain the cohesion of a repressive society acting against fundamental human interests.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno always remained a supporter and defender of Freudian orthodox doctrine, "psychoanalysis in its strict form". From this position, he attacked Erich Fromm and later Karen Horney because of their revisionism. He expressed reservations about sociologized psychoanalysis as well as about its reduction to a therapeutic procedure.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno's work sets out from a central insight he shares with all early 20th century avant-garde art: the recognition of what is primitive in ourselves and the world itself. Neither Picasso's fascination with African sculpture nor Mondrian's reduction of painting to its most elementary component—the line—is comprehensible outside this concern with primitivism Adorno shared with the century's most radical art. At that time, the Western world, beset by world-wars, colonialist consolidation and accelerating commodification, sank into the very barbarism civilization had prided itself in overcoming. According to Adorno, society's self-preservation had become indistinguishable from societally sanctioned self-sacrifice: of "primitive" peoples, primitive aspects of the ego and those primitive, mimetic desires found in imitation and sympathy. Adorno's theory proceeds from an understanding of this primitive quality of reality which seeks to counteract whatever aims either to repress this primitive aspect or to further those systems of domination set in place by this return to barbarism. From this perspective, Adorno's writings on politics, philosophy, music and literature are a lifelong critique of the ways in which each tries to justify self-mutilation as the necessary price of self-preservation. According to Adorno's translator Robert Hullot-Kentor, the central motive of Adorno's work thus consists in determining "how life could be more than the struggle for self-preservation". In this sense, the principle of self-preservation, Adorno writes in "Negative Dialectics", is nothing but "the law of doom thus far obeyed by history." At its most basic, Adorno's thought is motivated by a fundamental critique of this law.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno was chiefly influenced by Max Weber's critique of disenchantment, Georg Lukács's Hegelian interpretation of Marxism, as well as Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history. Adorno, along with the other major Frankfurt School theorists Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, argued that advanced capitalism had managed to contain or liquidate the forces that would bring about its collapse and that the revolutionary moment, when it would have been possible to transform it into socialism, had passed. As he put it at the beginning of his "Negative Dialectics" (1966), philosophy is still necessary because the time to realise it was missed. Adorno argued that capitalism had become more entrenched through its attack on the objective basis of revolutionary consciousness and through liquidation of the individualism that had been the basis of critical consciousness. Adorno, as well as Horkheimer, critiqued all forms of positivism as responsible for technocracy and disenchantment and sought to produce a theory that both rejected positivism and avoided reinstating traditional metaphysics. Adorno and Horkheimer have been criticized for over-applying the term "positivism," especially in their interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper as positivists.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno criticized jazz and popular music, viewing it as part of the culture industry, that contributes to the present sustainability of capitalism by rendering it "aesthetically pleasing" and "agreeable".


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: In his early essays for the Vienna-based journal "Anbruch", Adorno claimed that musical progress is proportional to the composer's ability to constructively deal with the possibilities and limitations contained within what he called the "musical material." For Adorno, twelve-tone serialism constitutes a decisive, historically developed method of composition. The objective validity of composition, according to him, rests with neither the composer's genius nor the work's conformity with prior standards, but with the way in which the work coherently expresses the dialectic of the material. In this sense, the contemporary absence of composers of the status of Bach or Beethoven is not the sign of musical regression; instead, new music is to be credited with laying bare aspects of the musical material previously repressed: The musical material's liberation from number, the harmonic series and tonal harmony. Thus, historical progress is achieved only by the composer who "submits to the work and seemingly does not undertake anything active except to follow where it leads." Because historical experience and social relations are embedded within this musical material, it is to the analysis of such material that the critic must turn. In the face of this radical liberation of the musical material, Adorno came to criticize those who, like Stravinsky, withdrew from this freedom by taking recourse to forms of the past as well as those who turned twelve-tone composition into a technique which dictated the rules of composition.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno saw the culture industry as an arena in which critical tendencies or potentialities were eliminated. He argued that the culture industry, which produced and circulated cultural commodities through the mass media, manipulated the population. Popular culture was identified as a reason why people become passive; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture made people docile and content, no matter how terrible their economic circumstances. "Capitalist production so confines them, body and soul, that they fall helpless victims to what is offered them." The differences among cultural goods make them appear different, but they are in fact just variations on the same theme. He wrote that "the same thing is offered to everybody by the standardized production of consumption goods" but this is concealed under "the manipulation of taste and the official culture's pretense of individualism". By doing so, the culture industry appeals to every single consumer in a unique and personalized way, all while maintaining minimal costs and effort on their behalf. Consumers purchase the illusion that every commodity or product is tailored to the individual's personal preference, by incorporating subtle modifications or inexpensive "add-ons" in order to keep the consumer returning for new purchases, and therefore more revenue for the corporation system. Adorno conceptualized this phenomenon as "pseudo-individualisation" and the "always-the-same".


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno's analysis allowed for a critique of mass culture from the left which balanced the critique of popular culture from the right. From both perspectives—left and right—the nature of cultural production was felt to be at the root of social and moral problems resulting from the consumption of culture. However, while the critique from the right emphasized moral degeneracy ascribed to sexual and racial influences within popular culture, Adorno located the problem not with the content, but with the objective realities of the production of mass culture and its effects, e.g. as a form of reverse psychology. Thinkers influenced by Adorno believe that today's society has evolved in a direction foreseen by him, especially in regard to the past (Auschwitz), morals, or the Culture Industry. The latter has become a particularly productive, yet highly contested term in cultural studies. Many of Adorno's reflections on aesthetics and music have only just begun to be debated, as a collection of essays on the subject, many of which had not previously been translated into English, has only recently been collected and published as "Essays on Music".


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno's work in the years before his death was shaped by the idea of "negative dialectics", set out especially in his book of that title. A key notion in the work of the Frankfurt School since "Dialectic of Enlightenment" had been the idea of thought becoming an instrument of domination that subsumes all objects under the control of the (dominant) subject, especially through the notion of identity, i.e. of identifying as real in nature and society only that which harmonized or fit with dominant concepts, and regarding as unreal or non-existent everything that did not. Adorno's "negative dialectics" was an attempt to articulate a non-dominating thought that would recognize its limitations and accept the non-identity and reality of that which could not be subsumed under the subject's concepts. Indeed, Adorno sought to ground the critical bite of his sociological work in his critique of identity, which he took to be a reification in thought of the commodity form or exchange relation which always presumes a false identity between different things. The potential to criticise arises from the gap between the concept and the object, which can never go into the former without remainder. This gap, this non-identity in identity, was the secret to a critique of both material life and conceptual reflection.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno's reputation as a musicologist remains controversial. His sweeping criticisms of jazz and championing of the Second Viennese School in opposition to Stravinsky have caused him to fall out of favour. The distinguished American scholar Richard Taruskin declared Adorno to be "preposterously over-rated." The eminent pianist and critic Charles Rosen saw Adorno's book "The Philosophy of New Music" as "largely a fraudulent presentation, a work of polemic that pretends to be an objective study." Even a fellow Marxist such as the historian and jazz critic Eric Hobsbawm saw Adorno's writings as containing "some of the stupidest pages ever written about jazz". The British philosopher Roger Scruton saw Adorno as producing "reams of turgid nonsense devoted to showing that the American people are just as alienated as Marxism requires them to be, and that their cheerful life-affirming music is a 'fetishized' commodity, expressive of their deep spiritual enslavement to the capitalist machine." Irritation with Adorno's tunnel vision started even while he was alive. He may have championed Schoenberg, but the composer notably failed to return the compliment: "I have never been able to bear the fellow [...] It is disgusting, by the way, how he treats Stravinsky." Another composer, Luciano Berio said, in interview, "It's not easy to completely refute anything that Adorno writes – he was, after all, one of the most acute, and also one of the most negative intellects to excavate the creativity of the past 150 years... He forgets that one of the most cunning and interesting aspects of consumer music, the mass media, and indeed of capitalism itself, is their fluidity, their unending capacity for adaptation and assimilation."


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: On the other hand, the scholar Slavoj Žižek has written a foreword to Adorno's "In Search of Wagner", where Žižek attributes an "emancipatory impulse" to the same book, although Žižek suggests that fidelity to this impulse demands "a betrayal of the explicit theses of Adorno's Wagner study."


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Writing in the New Yorker in 2014, music critic Alex Ross, argued that Adorno's work has a renewed importance in the digital age: "The pop hegemony is all but complete, its superstars dominating the media and wielding the economic might of tycoons ... Culture appears more monolithic than ever, with a few gigantic corporations—Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon—presiding over unprecedented monopolies.".


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno's critique of commercial media capitalism continues to be influential. There is much scholarship influenced by Adorno on how Western entertainment industries strengthen transnational capitalism and reinforce a Western cultural dominance. Adornean critique can be found in works such as Tanner Mirrlees' "The US Empire's Culture Industry" which focus upon how Western commercial entertainment is artificially reinforced by transnational media corporations rather than being a local culture.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno states that a start to understand the recognition in respect of any particular song hit may be made by drafting a scheme which divides the experience of recognition into its different components. All the factors people enumerate are interwoven to a degree that would be impossible to separate from one another in reality. Adorno's scheme is directed towards the different objective elements involved in the experience of recognition, than the actual experience felt for the individual.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Adorno posits social totality as an automatic system. According to Horst Müller's "Kritik der kritischen Theorie" ("Critique of Critical Theory"), this assumption is consistent with Adorno's idea of society as a self-regulating system, from which one must escape (but from which nobody "can" escape). For him it was existent, but inhuman. Müller argues against the existence of such a system and claims that critical theory provides no practical solution for societal change. He concludes that Jürgen Habermas, in particular, and the Frankfurt School in general, misconstrue Marx.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: The phenomenon of standardization is "a concept used to characterize the formulaic products of capitalist-driven mass media and mass culture that appeal to the lowest common denominator in pursuit of maximum profit". According to Adorno we inhabit a media culture driven society which has product consumption as one of its main characteristics. Mass media is employed to deliver messages about products and services to consumers in order to convince these individuals to purchase the commodity they are advertising. Standardization consists of the production of large amounts of commodities to then pursue consumers in order to gain the maximum profit possible.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: They do this, as mentioned above, by individualizing products to give the illusion to consumers that they are in fact purchasing a product or service that was specifically designed for them. Adorno highlights the issues created with the construction of popular music, where different samples of music used in the creation of today's chart-topping songs are put together in order to create, re-create, and modify numerous tracks by using the same variety of samples from one song to another. He makes a distinction between "Apologetic music" and "Critical music". Apologetic music is defined as the highly produced and promoted music of the "pop music" industry: music that is composed of variable parts and interchanged to create several different songs. "The social and psychological functions of popular music [are that it] acts like a social cement" "to keep people obedient and subservient to the status quo of existing power structures."


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Serious music, according to Adorno, achieves excellence when its whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The example he gives is that of Beethoven's symphonies: "[his] greatness shows itself in the complete subordination of the accidentally private melodic elements to the form as a whole."


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: Standardization not only refers to the products of the culture industry but to the consumers as well: many times every day consumers are bombarded by media advertising. Consumers are pushed and shoved into consuming products and services presented to them by the media system. The masses have become conditioned by the culture industry, which makes the impact of standardization much more important. By not realizing the impact of social media and commercial advertising, the individual is caught in a situation where conformity is the norm. "During consumption the masses become characterized by the commodities which they use and exchange among themselves."


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: As a pioneer of a self-reflexive sociology who prefigured Bourdieu's ability to factor in the effect of reflection on the societal object, Adorno realized that some criticism (including deliberate disruption of his classes in the 1960s) could never be answered in a dialogue between equals if, as he seems to have believed, what the naive ethnographer or sociologist thinks of a human essence is always changing over time.


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: As Adorno believed that sociology needs to be self-reflective and self-critical, he also believed that the language the sociologist uses, like the language of the ordinary person, is a political construct in large measure that uses, often unreflectingly, concepts installed by dominant classes and social structures (such as our notion of "deviance" which includes both genuinely deviant individuals and "hustlers" operating below social norms because they lack the capital to operate above: for an analysis of this phenomenon, cf. Pierre Bourdieu's book "The Weight of the World"). He felt that those at the top of the Institute needed to be the source primarily of theories for evaluation and empirical testing, as well as people who would process the "facts" discovered ... including revising theories that were found to be false. For example, in an essay published in Germany on Adorno's return from the US, and reprinted in the "Critical Models" essays collection (), Adorno praised the egalitarianism and openness of US society based on his sojourn in New York and the Los Angeles area between 1935 and 1955: "Characteristic for the life in America [...]is a moment of peacefulness, kindness and generosity". ("Dem amerikanischen Leben eignet [...] ein Moment von Friedlichkeit, Gutartigkeit und Großzügigkeit".)


title: Theodor W. Adorno

text: One example of the clash of intellectual culture and Adorno's methods can be found in Paul Lazarsfeld, the American sociologist for whom Adorno worked in the late 1930s after fleeing Hitler. As Rolf Wiggershaus recounts in "The Frankfurt School, Its History, Theories and Political Significance" (MIT 1995), Lazarsfeld was the director of a project, funded and inspired by David Sarnoff (the head of RCA), to discover both the sort of music that listeners of radio liked and ways to improve their "taste", so that RCA could profitably air more classical music. Lazarsfeld, however, had trouble both with the prose style of the work Adorno handed in and what Lazarsfeld thought was Adorno's "lack of discipline in ... presentation".