title: Operation Dragoon

text: Over the next two weeks, more skirmishes occurred and the Allies were not able to cut off a major portion of the German forces, but the Germans were also not able to maintain any stable defense line as planned. On 10September, forward units of the VI Corps were able to establish contact with units from Patton's Third Army. Truscott hoped to be able to push through the Belfort Gap, but on 14September, he received orders from the Allied High Command to halt the offensive. Army GroupG was finally able to establish a stable defense line at the Vosges Mountains, thwarting further Allied advances. This, combined with the Allied need to reorganise their command structure as the forces from northern and southern France linked up, forced the Allies to stop their pursuit of the Germans, ending the offensive here.


title: Operation Dragoon

text: During their fighting retreat up the Rhône, the Germans also withdrew their remaining forces from their garrisons in southwestern France. These divisions raced north along the Atlantic coast and then swung towards the east at the Loire to link up with the rest of Army GroupG at Burgundy. While they did not have to fight the Western Allies as much as the Germans had done at the Rhône, they still had to advance through French partisan-dominated terrain. About 88,000 men moved north, leaving 20,000 in southwestern France behind. During the retreat, about 19,000 men were captured by the Allies and 60,000 men reached Army GroupG's line, where they were integrated into the defense of the Vosges Mountains.


title: Operation Dragoon

text: French resistance against the Nazi German occupation and the Vichy French puppet government increased drastically in the weeks leading up to the Dragoon landings. To fight the uprising, German units committed numerous atrocities and war crimes against French fighters, as well as civilians, in retaliatory acts. On 9June, after an attack on the German garrison at Tulle, the 2nd SS Panzer Division hanged about 99 civilians while moving towards northern France during the Tulle massacre. The next day, that division murdered 642 civilians in Oradour-sur-Glane during the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre and then proceeded to plunder and burn the town. German units also worked together with French collaborators to subdue partisans, for example against the partisan base at the Vercors massif, but with little lasting result.


title: Operation Dragoon

text: Atrocities continued during the German retreat from southern France as German soldiers plundered and burned down towns. French civilians were brought before military courts and sentenced to death because of alleged partisan activities. These atrocities did not help to subdue the French uprising. Instead, the German reprisals had the opposite effect and encouraged the French population to engage in partisan fighting.


title: Operation Dragoon

text: Operation Dragoon was considered a success by the Allied forces. It enabled them to liberate most of southern France in only four weeks, while inflicting heavy casualties on the German forces. However, the Allies failed to cut off the most valuable units of the retreating Army Group G, which retreated over a distance of in good order, into the Vosges Mountains on the German border, with the capability of continuing the fight. The main reason for the failure to capture or destroy Army GroupG was the Allied shortage of fuel, which began soon after the landing. The Allies had not anticipated the speed of their own advance, so could not adequately provide supplies and logistics to the leading Allied units.


title: Operation Dragoon

text: A significant benefit of Operation Dragoon was the use of the port facilities in southern France, especially the large ports at Marseille and Toulon. After Operation Cobra and Operation Dragoon, the Allied advance slowed almost to a halt in September due to a critical lack of supplies. The ports were quickly brought back into service, together with the railroad system in southern France. Thereafter, large quantities of supplies could be moved north to ease the supply situation. In October, 524,894 tons of supplies were unloaded, which was more than one-third of the Allied cargo shipped to the Western front.


title: Operation Dragoon

text: Operation Dragoon also had political implications. Two days after the landing, the Germans proceeded to dismantle the French State. Members of the "Sicherheitsdienst" stormed French government institutions and moved French officials, including Philippe Pétain, to Belfort in Eastern France. Later, they were moved to Sigmaringen in Germany, where they acted as a government in exile. With the collapse of the Vichy regime, troops of the Provisional Government of the French Republic re-established control of the French political institutions. Antony Beevor comments, "The landings in the south of France prompted a rapid German withdrawal and thus reduced the damage and suffering done to France."


title: Operation Dragoon

text: Despite these successes, criticism of Dragoon was made by some Allied generals and contemporary commentators such as Bernard Montgomery, Arthur R. Wilson and Chester Wilmot in the aftermath, mostly because of its geostrategic implications. Dragoon was argued to have diverted highly experienced men and much-needed materiel away from the continuing fighting at the Western front that could have been used, instead, to bolster the Italian front or to hasten the advance towards the Rhine by the Overlord forces. The resulting loss of momentum gave Stalin on the Eastern Front a free hand to pursue his offensive efforts with more determination, allowing him to win the race towards Berlin and occupy the Balkans. Dragoon, therefore, had consequences reaching into the Cold War.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The Palais Garnier (, Garnier Palace), also known as Opéra Garnier (, Garnier Opera), is a 1,979-seat opera house at the Place de l'Opéra in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, France. It was built for the Paris Opera from 1861 to 1875 at the behest of Emperor Napoleon III. Initially referred to as "le nouvel Opéra de Paris" (the new Paris Opera), it soon became known as the Palais Garnier, "in acknowledgment of its extraordinary opulence" and the architect Charles Garnier's plans and designs, which are representative of the Napoleon III style. It was the primary theatre of the Paris Opera and its associated Paris Opera Ballet until 1989, when a new opera house, the Opéra Bastille, opened at the Place de la Bastille. The company now uses the Palais Garnier mainly for ballet. The theatre has been a "monument historique" of France since 1923.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The Palais Garnier has been called "probably the most famous opera house in the world, a symbol of Paris like Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louvre, or the Sacré Coeur Basilica". This is at least partly due to its use as the setting for Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel "The Phantom of the Opera" and, especially, the novel's subsequent adaptations in films and the popular 1986 musical. Another contributing factor is that among the buildings constructed in Paris during the Second Empire, besides being the most expensive, it has been described as the only one that is "unquestionably a masterpiece of the first rank".


title: Palais Garnier

text: This opinion is far from unanimous however: the 20th-century French architect Le Corbusier once described it as "a lying art" and contended that the "Garnier movement is a décor of the grave".


title: Palais Garnier

text: The Palais Garnier also houses the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra de Paris (Paris Opera Library-Museum), which is managed by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and is included in unaccompanied tours of the Palais Garnier.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The building is long; wide at the lateral galleries; wide at the east and west pavilions; from ground level to bottom of the cistern under the stage.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The opera was constructed in what Charles Garnier (1825–1898) is said to have told the Empress Eugenie was "Napoleon III" style The Napoleon III style was highly eclectic, and borrowed from many historical sources; the opera house included elements from the Baroque, the classicism of Palladio, and Renaissance architecture blended together. These were combined with axial symmetry and modern techniques and materials, including the use of an iron framework, which had been pioneered in other Napoleon III buildings, including the Bibliothèque Nationale and the markets of Les Halles.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The façade and the interior followed the Napoleon III style principle of leaving no space without decoration. Garnier used polychromy, or a variety of colors, for theatrical effect, achieved different varieties of marble and stone, porphyry, and gilded bronze. The façade of the Opera used seventeen different kinds of material, arranged in very elaborate multicolored marble friezes, columns, and lavish statuary, many of which portray deities of Greek mythology.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The principal façade is on the south side of the building, overlooking the Place de l'Opéra and terminates the perspective along the Avenue de l'Opéra. Fourteen painters, mosaicists and seventy-three sculptors participated in the creation of its ornamentation.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The two gilded figural groups, Charles Gumery's "L'Harmonie" (Harmony) and "La Poésie" (Poetry), crown the apexes of the principal façade's left and right avant-corps. They are both made of gilt copper electrotype.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The bases of the two avant-corps are decorated (from left to right) with four major multi-figure groups sculpted by François Jouffroy ("Poetry", also known as "Harmony"), Jean-Baptiste Claude Eugène Guillaume ("Instrumental Music"), Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux ("The Dance", criticised for indecency), and Jean-Joseph Perraud ("Lyrical Drama"). The façade also incorporates other work by Gumery, Alexandre Falguière, and others.


title: Palais Garnier

text: Gilded galvanoplastic bronze busts of many of the great composers are located between the columns of the theatre's front façade and depict, from left to right, Rossini, Auber, Beethoven, Mozart, Spontini, Meyerbeer, and Halévy. On the left and right lateral returns of the front façade are busts of the librettists Eugène Scribe and Philippe Quinault, respectively.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The sculptural group "Apollo, Poetry, and Music", located at the apex of the south gable of the stage flytower, is the work of Aimé Millet, and the two smaller bronze Pegasus figures at either end of the south gable are by Eugène-Louis Lequesne.


title: Palais Garnier

text: Also known as the Rotonde de l'Empereur, this group of rooms is located on the left (west) side of the building and was designed to allow secure and direct access by the Emperor via a double ramp to the building. When the Empire fell, work stopped, leaving unfinished dressed stonework. It now houses the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra de Paris (Paris Opera Library-Museum) which is home to nearly 600,000 documents including 100,000 books, 1,680 periodicals, 10,000 programs, letters, 100,000 photographs, sketches of costumes and sets, posters and historical administrative records.


title: Palais Garnier

text: Located on the right (east) side of the building as a counterpart to the Pavillon de l'Empereur, this pavilion was designed to allow subscribers ("abonnés") direct access from their carriages to the interior of the building. It is covered by a 13.5-metre (44-ft) diameter dome. Paired obelisks mark the entrances to the rotunda on the north and the south.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The interior consists of interweaving corridors, stairwells, alcoves and landings, allowing the movement of large numbers of people and space for socialising during intermission. Rich with velvet, gold leaf, and cherubim and nymphs, the interior is characteristic of Baroque sumptuousness.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The building features a large ceremonial staircase of white marble with a balustrade of red and green marble, which divides into two divergent flights of stairs that lead to the Grand Foyer. Its design was inspired by Victor Louis's grand staircase for the Théâtre de Bordeaux. The pedestals of the staircase are decorated with female torchères, created by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse. The ceiling above the staircase was painted by Isidore Pils to depict "The Triumph of Apollo", "The Enchantment of Music Deploying its Charms", "Minerva Fighting Brutality Watched by the Gods of Olympus", and "The City of Paris Receiving the Plan of the New Opéra". When the paintings were first fixed in place two months before the opening of the building, it was obvious to Garnier that they were too dark for the space. With the help of two of his students, Pils had to rework the canvases while they were in place overhead on the ceiling and, at the age of 61, he fell ill. His students had to finish the work, which was completed the day before the opening and the scaffolding was removed.


title: Palais Garnier

text: At the foot of the Grand staircase, Garnier wanted to place a white marble statue of Orpheus, but there weren't enough funds for this. Then there were talks about moving the La Danse (Carpeaux) from the main facade, but instead Garnier chose the "Pythia" by Adèle d'Affry (the artist also known by the pseudonym Marcello). There are two bronze lamps on each side of Pythia, made by Jules Corboz. The intrados of the staircase have plant motifs and musical instruments, masks and shells, the artist imagine it as a Nymphaeum.


title: Palais Garnier

text: According to the Greek mythology, Pythia was the priestess of Apollo, the god of arts, and she delivered the oracles of the god. Marcello wanted her Pythia to look different from Pythias of other artists. She wrote: "will be an Indian Pythia, the one whose tongue Alexander set wagging. A kind of gypsy." "A poor woman of a rather strange and bestial type, illuminated by the spirit." She would be like the fortune tellers of India "with tamed snakes curled around their forehand."


title: Palais Garnier

text: The Avant foyer is twenty meters long with doors leading to an open salon at each end, in the east to the "Sun" and at the west side to the "Moon" salons. At its north it open to the Grand Escalier, while at its south is connected by three monumental doors to the Grand Foyer.


title: Palais Garnier

text: There are two Greek mosaic inscription, written in the 8th century Byzantine style letters (Greek uncial), which read:


title: Palais Garnier

text: "Decorative mosaic was applied for the first time in France to the ornamentation of this vault and the popularisation of this art." (see Greek inscription 1)


title: Palais Garnier

text: "The figures painted by Curzon, were executed by Salviati, the ornaments by Facchina. The architecture is by Charles Garnier." (see Greek inscription 2)


title: Palais Garnier

text: The mosaic represent four couples from the Greek mythology (Hermes and Psyche, Artemis and Endymion, Orpheus and Eurydice, Eos and Cephalus). In two of the panels the scenes are more erotic (Artemis - Endymion, Eos - Cephalus), while the other two depict the couples leaving the underworld and are more about death than love (Hermes - Psyche, Orpheus - Eurydice). The theme of death and love alternate.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The decoration framing the mosaic panels with the mythological couples include theatre masks, musical instruments, birds, all surrounded by flowers, fruits and gold.


title: Palais Garnier

text: There are four bronze gilt medallions representing musical instruments (sistrum for Egypt, lyre for Greece, tambourine and pan flute for Italy, ivory horn for France), encircled by leaf-work characteristic of each country and have the name of the countries in Greek (Egypt=ΑΙΓΥΠΤΟΣ, Greece=ΕΛΛΑΣ, Italy=ΙΤΑΛΙΑ and France=ΓΑΛΛΙΑ).


title: Palais Garnier

text: At the east and west end of the Avant foyer there are the "Salon du Soleil" (Salon of the Sun) and the "Salon de la Lune" (Salon of the Moon). They were designed as the entrance vestibules for the smoking room and the Galerie du Glacier. Their themes were heat for the smoking room and cold for the Glacier, but because they completed in haste in order to be ready for the inauguration of 1875, in the rush there was a mistake and the themes were reversed.


title: Palais Garnier

text: This hall, high, long and wide, was designed to act as a drawing room for Paris society. It was restored in 2004. Its ceiling was painted by Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry and represents various moments in the history of music. The foyer opens onto an outside loggia and is flanked by two octagonal salons with ceilings painted by Jules-Élie Delaunay in the eastern salon and Félix-Joseph Barrias in the western salon. The octagonal salons open to the north into the Salon de la Lune at the western end of the Avant-Foyer and the Salon du Soleil at its eastern end.


title: Palais Garnier

text: There are eight canvases representing the Muses from the Greek mythology. In mythology, the Muses were nine, but because of lack of room, Polyhymnia was "sacrificed". Victorin de Joncières protested against this and wrote that it would be better if Urania was "sacrificed", since she was the Muse of Astronomy. Nuitter responded that Polyhymnia has a statue in the Grand Foyer among the Qualities (Polyhymnia is also depicted in the big Parnassus panel on the far right corner).


title: Palais Garnier

text: Thalia (top, Muse of comedy), Epithumia (bottom left, meaning desire) and Pistis (bottom right, meaning good faith, trust and reliability), their names are in Greek.


title: Palais Garnier

text: Melpomene (top, Muse of tragedy), Sophrosyne (bottom left, meaning excellence of character and soundness of mind) and Elpis (bottom right, meaning hope), their names are in Greek.


title: Palais Garnier

text: Terpsichore (top, Muse of dance), Autonomia (bottom left, meaning autonomy) and Phantasia (bottom right, meaning imagination), their names are in Greek.


title: Palais Garnier

text: Erato (top, the Muse of lyric poetry), Rhome (bottom left, meaning strength) and Sophia (bottom right, meaning wisdom), their names are in Greek.


title: Palais Garnier

text: Calliope (top, Muse of eloquence and epic poetry), Dianoia (bottom left, meaning thinking) and Euprepia (bottom right, meaning preeminent beauty), their names are in Greek.


title: Palais Garnier

text: Urania (top, Muse of astronomy), Diadochi (bottom left, meaning succession) and Episteme (bottom right, meaning to know, to understand, to be acquainted with), their names are in Greek.


title: Palais Garnier

text: Euterpe (top, Muse of music), Kalossyni (bottom left, meaning kindness, charity) and Charis (bottom right, meaning grace), their names are in Greek.


title: Palais Garnier

text: Clio (top, Muse of history), Boulesis (bottom left, meaning will) and Phronesis (bottom right, meaning prudence, practical virtue and practical wisdom), their names are in Greek.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The auditorium has a traditional Italian horseshoe shape and can seat 1,979. The stage is the largest in Europe and can accommodate as many as 450 artists. The canvas house curtain was painted to represent a draped curtain, complete with tassels and braid.


title: Palais Garnier

text: In 1964 a new ceiling painted by Marc Chagall was installed on a removable frame over the original. It depicts scenes from operas by 14 composers – Mussorgsky, Mozart, Wagner, Berlioz, Rameau, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Adam, Bizet, Verdi, Beethoven, and Gluck. Although praised by some, others feel Chagall's work creates "a false note in Garnier's carefully orchestrated interior".


title: Palais Garnier

text: The seven-ton bronze and crystal chandelier was designed by Garnier. Jules Corboz prepared the model, and it was cast and chased by Lacarière, Delatour & Cie. The total cost came to 30,000 gold francs. The use of a central chandelier aroused controversy, and it was criticised for obstructing views of the stage by patrons in the fourth level boxes and views of the ceiling painted by Lenepveu. Garnier had anticipated these disadvantages but provided a lively defence in his 1871 book "Le Théâtre": "What else could fill the theatre with such joyous life? What else could offer the variety of forms that we have in the pattern of the flames, in these groups and tiers of points of light, these wild hues of gold flecked with bright spots, and these crystalline highlights?"


title: Palais Garnier

text: On 20 May 1896, one of the chandelier's counterweights broke free and burst through the ceiling into the auditorium, killing a concierge. This incident inspired one of the more famous scenes in Gaston Leroux's classic 1910 gothic novel "The Phantom of the Opera".


title: Palais Garnier

text: Originally the chandelier was raised up through the ceiling into the cupola over the auditorium for cleaning, but now it is lowered. The space in the cupola was used in the 1960s for opera rehearsals, and in the 1980s was remodelled into two floors of dance rehearsal space. The lower floor consists of the Salle Nureïev (Nureyev) and the Salle Balanchine, and the upper floor, the Salle Petipa.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The grand organ was built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll for use during lyrical works. It has been out of service for several decades.


title: Palais Garnier

text: Garnier had originally planned to install a restaurant in the opera house; however, for budgetary reasons, it was not completed in the original design.


title: Palais Garnier

text: On the third attempt to introduce it since 1875, a restaurant was opened on the eastern side of the building in 2011. L'Opéra Restaurant was designed by French architect Odile Decq. The chef was Christophe Aribert; in October 2015, Guillame Tison-Malthé became the new head chef. The restaurant, which has three different spaces and a large outside terrace, is accessible to the general public.


title: Palais Garnier

text: In 1821 the Opéra de Paris had moved into the temporary building known as the Salle Le Peletier on the . Since then a new permanent building had been desired. Charles Rohault de Fleury, who was appointed the opera's official architect in 1846, undertook various studies in suitable sites and designs. By 1847, the Prefect of the Seine, Claude-Philibert de Rambuteau, had selected a site on the east side of the Place du Palais-Royal as part of an extension of the Rue de Rivoli. However, with the Revolution of 1848, Rambuteau was dismissed, and interest in the construction of a new opera house waned. The site was later used for the Grand Hôtel du Louvre (designed in part by Charles Rohault de Fleury).


title: Palais Garnier

text: With the establishment of the Second Empire in 1852 and Georges-Eugène Haussmann's appointment as Prefect of the Seine in June 1853, interest in a new opera house revived. There was an attempted assassination of Emperor Napoleon III at the entrance to the Salle Le Peletier on 14 January 1858. The Salle Le Peletier's constricted street access highlighted the need for a separate, more secure entrance for the head of state. This concern and the inadequate facilities and temporary nature of the theatre gave added urgency to the building of a new state-funded opera house. By March, Haussmann settled on Rohault de Fleury's proposed site off the Boulevard des Capucines, although this decision was not announced publicly until 1860. A new building would help resolve the awkward convergence of streets at this location, and the site was economical in terms of the cost of land.


title: Palais Garnier

text: On 29 September 1860 an Imperial Decree officially designated the site for the new Opéra, which would eventually occupy . By November 1860 Rohault de Fleury had completed the design for what he thought would be the crowning work of his career and was also working on a commission from the city to design the façades of the other buildings lining the new square to ensure they were in harmony. However, that same month Achille Fould was replaced as Minister of State by Count Alexandre Colonna-Walewski. His wife Marie Anne de Ricci Poniatowska had used her position as mistress of Napoleon III to obtain her husband's appointment. Aware of competing designs and under pressure to give the commission to Viollet-le-Duc, who had the support of Empress Eugénie, Walewski escaped the need to make a decision by proposing to mount an architectural design competition to select the architect.


title: Palais Garnier

text: On 30 December 1860 the Second Empire of Emperor Napoleon III officially announced an architectural design competition for the design of the new opera house.


title: Palais Garnier

text: Applicants were given a month to submit entries. There were two phases to the competition. Charles Garnier's project was one of about 170 submitted in the first phase. Each of the entrants was required to submit a motto that summarised their design. Garnier's was the quote "Bramo assai, poco spero" ("Hope for much, expect little") from the Italian poet Torquato Tasso.


title: Palais Garnier

text: Garnier's project was awarded the fifth-place prize, and he became one of seven finalists selected for the second phase. In addition to Garnier, among the others were his friend Leon Ginain, and Joseph-Louis Duc (who subsequently withdrew due to other commitments). To the surprise of many, both Viollet-le-Duc and Charles Rohault de Fleury missed out.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The second phase required the contestants to revise their original projects and was more rigorous, with a 58-page program, written by the director of the Opéra, Alphonse Royer, which the contestants received on 18 April. The new submissions were sent to the jury in the middle of May, and on 29 May 1861 Garnier's project was selected for its "rare and superior qualities in the beautiful distribution of the plans, the monumental and characteristic aspect of the facades and sections".


title: Palais Garnier

text: Garnier's wife Louise later wrote that the French architect Alphonse de Gisors, who was on the jury, had commented to them that Garnier's project was "remarkable in its simplicity, clarity, logic, grandeur, and because of the exterior dispositions which distinguish the plan in three distinct parts—the public spaces, auditorium, and stage ... 'you have greatly improved your project since the first competition; whereas Ginain [the first-place winner in the first phase] has ruined his.'"


title: Palais Garnier

text: Legend has it that the Emperor's wife, the Empress Eugénie, who was likely irritated that her own favoured candidate, Viollet-le-Duc, had not been selected, asked the relatively unknown Garnier: "What is this? It's not a style; it's neither Louis Quatorze, nor Louis Quinze, nor Louis Seize!" "Why Ma'am, it's Napoléon Trois" replied Garnier "and you're complaining!" Andrew Ayers has written that Garnier's definition "remains undisputed, so much does the Palais Garnier seem emblematic of its time and of the Second Empire that created it. A giddy mixture of up-to-the-minute technology, rather prescriptive rationalism, exuberant eclecticism and astonishing opulence, Garnier's opera encapsulated the divergent tendencies and political and social ambitions of its era." Ayers goes on to say that the judges of the competition in particular admired Garnier's design for "the clarity of his plan, which was a brilliant example of the "beaux-arts" design methods in which both he and they were thoroughly versed".


title: Palais Garnier

text: After the initial funds to begin construction were voted on 2 July 1861, Garnier established the Opéra "Agence", his office on the construction site, and hired a team of architects and draftsmen. He selected as his second-in-command, Louis-Victor Louvet, followed by Jean Jourdain and Edmond Le Deschault.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The site was excavated between 27 August and 31 December. On 13 January 1862 the first concrete foundations were poured, starting at the front and progressing sequentially toward the back, with the laying of the substructure masonry beginning as soon as each section of concrete was cast. The opera house needed a much deeper basement in the substage area than other building types, but the level of the groundwater was unexpectedly high. Wells were sunk in February 1862 and eight steam pumps installed in March, but despite operating continuously 24 hours a day, the site would not dry up. To deal with this problem Garnier designed a double foundation to protect the superstructure from moisture. It incorporated a water course and an enormous concrete cistern ("cuve") which would both relieve the pressure of the external groundwater on the basement walls and serve as a reservoir in case of fire. A contract for its construction was signed on 20 June. Soon a persistent legend arose that the opera house was built over a subterranean lake, inspiring Gaston Leroux to incorporate the idea into his novel "The Phantom of the Opera". On 21 July the cornerstone was laid at the southeast angle of the building's facade. In October the pumps were removed, the brick vault of the "cuve" was finished by 8 November, and the substructure was essentially complete by the end of the year.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The emperor expressed an interest in seeing a model of the building, and a plaster scale model (2 cm per meter) was constructed by Louis Villeminot between April 1862 and April 1863 at a cost of more than 8,000 francs. After previewing it, the emperor requested several changes to the design of the building, the most important of which was the suppression of a balustraded terrace with corner groups at the top of the facade and its replacement with a massive attic story fronted by a continuous frieze surmounted by imperial "quadrigae" over the end bays.


title: Palais Garnier

text: With the incorporated changes, the model was transported over specially installed rails to the Palais de l'Industrie for public display at the 1863 exhibition. Théophile Gautier wrote of the model ("Le Moniteur Universel", 13 May 1863) that "the general arrangement becomes intelligible to all eyes and already acquires a sort of reality that better permits one to prejudge the final effect ... it attracts the crowd's curiosity; it is, in effect, the new Opéra seen through reversed opera glasses." The model is now lost, but it was photographed by J. B. Donas in 1863.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The emperor's quadrigae were never added, although they can be seen in the model. Instead Charles-Alphonse Guméry's gilded bronze sculptural groups "Harmony" and "Poetry" were installed in 1869. The linear frieze seen in the model was also redesigned with alternating low- and high-relief decorative medallions bearing the gilded letters from the imperial monogram ("N" for Napoléon, "E" for Empereur). The custom-designed letters were not ready in time for the unveiling and were replaced with commercially available substitutes. After the fall of the empire in 1870, Garnier was relieved to be able to remove them from the medallions. Letters in Garnier's original design were finally installed during the restoration of the building in 2000.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The scaffolding concealing the facade was removed on 15 August 1867 in time for the Paris Exposition of 1867. The official title of the Paris Opera was prominently displayed on the entablature of the giant Corinthian order of coupled columns fronting the main-floor loggia: "ACADEMIE IMPERIALE DE MUSIQUE". When the emperor was deposed on 4 September 1870 as a result of the disastrous Franco-Prussian War, the government was replaced by the Third Republic, and almost immediately, on 17 September 1870, the Opera was renamed Théâtre National de l'Opéra, a name it kept until 1939. In spite of this, when it came time to change the name on the new opera house, only the first six letters of the word IMPERIALE were replaced, giving the now famous "ACADEMIE NATIONALE DE MUSIQUE", an official title which had actually only been used during the approximately two-year period of the Second Republic which had preceded the Second Empire.


title: Palais Garnier

text: All work on the building came to a halt during the Franco-Prussian War due to the siege of Paris (September 1870 – January 1871). Construction had so advanced that parts of the building could be used as a food warehouse and a hospital. After France's defeat Garnier became seriously ill from the deprivations of the siege and left Paris from March to June to recover on the Ligurian coast of Italy, while his assistant Louis Louvet remained behind during the turmoil of the Paris Commune which followed. Louvet wrote several letters to Garnier, which document events relating to the building. Because of the theatre's proximity to the fighting at the Place Vendôme, troops of the National Guard bivouacked there and were in charge of its defence and distributing food to soldiers and civilians. The Commune authorities planned to replace Garnier with another architect, but this unnamed man had not yet appeared when Republican troops ousted the National Guard and gained control over the building on 23 May. By the end of the month the Commune had been severely defeated. The Third Republic had become sufficiently well established by the fall, that on 30 September construction work recommenced, and by late October a small amount of funds were voted by the new legislature for further construction.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The political leaders of the new government maintained an intense dislike of all things associated with the Second Empire, and many of them regarded the essentially apolitical Garnier as a holdover from that regime. This was especially true during the presidency of Adolphe Thiers who remained in office until May 1873, but also persisted under his successor Marshal MacMahon. Economies were demanded, and Garnier was forced to suppress the completion of sections of the building, in particular the Pavillon de l'Empereur (which later became the home of the Opera Library Museum). However, on 28–29 October an overwhelming incentive to complete the new theatre came when the Salle Le Peletier was destroyed by a fire which raged the entire night. Garnier was immediately instructed to complete the building as soon as possible.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The cost of completion of the new house during 1874 was more than 7.5 million francs, a sum that greatly exceeded the amounts spent in any of the previous thirteen years. The cash-strapped government of the Third Republic resorted to borrowing 4.9 million gold francs at an interest rate of six percent from François Blanc, the wealthy financier who managed the Monte Carlo Casino. Subsequently (from 1876 to 1879) Garnier would oversee the design and construction of the Monte Carlo Casino concert hall, the Salle Garnier, which later became the home of the Opéra de Monte Carlo.


title: Palais Garnier

text: During 1874 Garnier and his construction team worked feverishly to complete the new Paris opera house, and by 17 October the orchestra was able to conduct an acoustical test of the new auditorium, followed by another on 2 December which was attended by officials, guests, and members of the press. The Paris Opera Ballet danced on the stage on 12 December, and six days later the famous chandelier was lit for the first time.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The theatre was formally inaugurated on 5 January 1875 with a lavish gala performance attended by Marshal MacMahon, the Lord Mayor of London and King Alfonso XII of Spain. The program included the overtures to Auber's "La muette de Portici" and Rossini's "William Tell", the first two acts of Halévy's 1835 opera "La Juive" (with Gabrielle Krauss in the title role), along with "The Consecration of the Swords" from Meyerbeer's 1836 opera "Les Huguenots" and the 1866 ballet "La source" with music by Delibes and Minkus. As a soprano had fallen ill one act from Charles Gounod's "Faust" and one from Ambroise Thomas's "Hamlet" had to be omitted. During the intermission Garnier stepped out onto the landing of the grand staircase to receive the approving applause of the audience.


title: Palais Garnier

text: In 1881 electric lighting was installed. In the 1950s new personnel and freight elevators were installed at the rear of stage, to facilitate the movement of employees in the administration building and the moving of stage scenery.


title: Palais Garnier

text: In 1969, the theatre was given new electrical facilities and, during 1978, part of the original Foyer de la Danse was converted into new rehearsal space for the Ballet company by the architect Jean-Loup Roubert. During 1994, restoration work began on the theatre. This consisted of modernizing the stage machinery and electrical facilities, while restoring and preserving the opulent décor, as well as strengthening the structure and foundation of the building. This restoration was completed in 2007.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The first was issued in September 1998, for the centenary of the death of Charles Garnier. It was designed by Claude Andréotto grouping elements which recall the artistic activities of the Opera Garnier: the profile of a dancer, a violin and a red curtain.


title: Palais Garnier

text: The second, drawn and engraved by Martin Mörck, is issued in June 2006 and represents, in intaglio, the main facade.


title: Mode (statistics)

text: The mode is the value that appears most often in a set of data values. If is a discrete random variable, the mode is the value (i.e, ) at which the probability mass function takes its maximum value. In other words, it is the value that is most likely to be sampled.


title: Mode (statistics)

text: Like the statistical mean and median, the mode is a way of expressing, in a (usually) single number, important information about a random variable or a population. The numerical value of the mode is the same as that of the mean and median in a normal distribution, and it may be very different in highly skewed distributions.


title: Mode (statistics)

text: The mode is not necessarily unique to a given discrete distribution, since the probability mass function may take the same maximum value at several points , , etc. The most extreme case occurs in uniform distributions, where all values occur equally frequently.


title: Mode (statistics)

text: When the probability density function of a continuous distribution has multiple local maxima it is common to refer to all of the local maxima as modes of the distribution. Such a continuous distribution is called multimodal (as opposed to unimodal). A mode of a continuous probability distribution is often considered to be any value at which its probability density function has a locally maximum value, so any peak is a mode.


title: Mode (statistics)

text: In symmetric unimodal distributions, such as the normal distribution, the mean (if defined), median and mode all coincide. For samples, if it is known that they are drawn from a symmetric unimodal distribution, the sample mean can be used as an estimate of the population mode.


title: Mode (statistics)

text: The mode of a sample is the element that occurs most often in the collection. For example, the mode of the sample [1, 3, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 12, 12, 17] is 6. Given the list of data [1, 1, 2, 4, 4] its mode is not unique. A dataset, in such a case, is said to be bimodal, while a set with more than two modes may be described as multimodal.


title: Mode (statistics)

text: For a sample from a continuous distribution, such as [0.935..., 1.211..., 2.430..., 3.668..., 3.874...], the concept is unusable in its raw form, since no two values will be exactly the same, so each value will occur precisely once. In order to estimate the mode of the underlying distribution, the usual practice is to discretize the data by assigning frequency values to intervals of equal distance, as for making a histogram, effectively replacing the values by the midpoints of the


title: Mode (statistics)

text: intervals they are assigned to. The mode is then the value where the histogram reaches its peak. For small or middle-sized samples the outcome of this procedure is sensitive to the choice of interval width if chosen too narrow or too wide; typically one should have a sizable fraction of the data concentrated in a relatively small number of intervals (5 to 10), while the fraction of the data falling outside these intervals is also sizable. An alternate approach is kernel density estimation, which essentially blurs point samples to produce a continuous estimate of the probability density function which can provide an estimate of the mode.


title: Mode (statistics)

text: The algorithm requires as a first step to sort the sample in ascending order. It then computes the discrete derivative of the sorted list, and finds the indices where this derivative is positive. Next it computes the discrete derivative of this set of indices, locating the maximum of this derivative of indices, and finally evaluates the sorted sample at the point where that maximum occurs, which corresponds to the last member of the stretch of repeated values.


title: Mode (statistics)

text: Unlike mean and median, the concept of mode also makes sense for "nominal data" (i.e., not consisting of numerical values in the case of mean, or even of ordered values in the case of median). For example, taking a sample of Korean family names, one might find that "Kim" occurs more often than any other name. Then "Kim" would be the mode of the sample. In any voting system where a plurality determines victory, a single modal value determines the victor, while a multi-modal outcome would require some tie-breaking procedure to take place.


title: Mode (statistics)

text: Unlike median, the concept of mode makes sense for any random variable assuming values from a vector space, including the real numbers (a one-dimensional vector space) and the integers (which can be considered embedded in the reals). For example, a distribution of points in the plane will typically have a mean and a mode, but the concept of median does not apply. The median makes sense when there is a linear order on the possible values. Generalizations of the concept of median to higher-dimensional spaces are the geometric median and the centerpoint.


title: Mode (statistics)

text: For some probability distributions, the expected value may be infinite or undefined, but if defined, it is unique. The mean of a (finite) sample is always defined. The median is the value such that the fractions not exceeding it and not falling below it are each at least 1/2. It is not necessarily unique, but never infinite or totally undefined. For a data sample it is the "halfway" value when the list of values is ordered in increasing value, where usually for a list of even length the numerical average is taken of the two values closest to "halfway". Finally, as said before, the mode is not necessarily unique. Certain pathological distributions (for example, the Cantor distribution) have no defined mode at all. For a finite data sample, the mode is one (or more) of the values in the sample.


title: Mode (statistics)

text: Assuming definedness, and for simplicity uniqueness, the following are some of the most interesting properties.


title: Mode (statistics)

text: An example of a skewed distribution is personal wealth: Few people are very rich, but among those some are extremely rich. However, many are rather poor.


title: Mode (statistics)

text: A well-known class of distributions that can be arbitrarily skewed is given by the log-normal distribution. It is obtained by transforming a random variable having a normal distribution into random variable . Then the logarithm of random variable is normally distributed, hence the name.


title: Mode (statistics)

text: Taking the mean μ of to be 0, the median of will be 1, independent of the standard deviation σ of . This is so because has a symmetric distribution, so its median is also 0. The transformation from to is monotonic, and so we find the median for .


title: Mode (statistics)

text: When has standard deviation σ = 0.25, the distribution of is weakly skewed. Using formulas for the log-normal distribution, we find:


title: Mode (statistics)

text: Van Zwet derived an inequality which provides sufficient conditions for this inequality to hold. The inequality


title: Mode (statistics)

text: It can be shown for a unimodal distribution that the median formula_3 and the mean formula_4 lie within (3/5) ≈ 0.7746 standard deviations of each other. In symbols,


title: Mode (statistics)

text: A similar relation holds between the median and the mode: they lie within 3 ≈ 1.732 standard deviations of each other:


title: Mode (statistics)

text: Pearson uses the term "mode" interchangeably with "maximum-ordinate". In a footnote he says, "I have found it convenient to use the term "mode" for the abscissa corresponding to the ordinate of maximum frequency."


title: Michael Parkinson

text: Sir Michael Parkinson (born 28 March 1935) is an English broadcaster, journalist and author. He presented his television talk show "Parkinson" from 1971 to 1982 and from 1998 to 2007, as well as other talk shows and programmes both in the UK and internationally. He has also worked in radio. He has been described by "The Guardian" as "the great British talkshow host".


title: Michael Parkinson

text: Parkinson was born on 28 March 1935 in the village of Cudworth, near Barnsley, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire (since 1974 included in the new metropolitan county of South Yorkshire). The son of a miner, he was educated at Barnsley Grammar School after passing the eleven-plus and in 1951 passed two O-Levels: in art and English language. He was a club cricketer, and both he and his opening partner at Barnsley Cricket Club, Dickie Bird, had trials for Yorkshire together with Geoffrey Boycott. He once kept Boycott out of the Barnsley Cricket Club team by scoring a century and 50 in two successive matches. A Michael Parkinson World XI played at the Scarborough Festival between 1988 and 1990.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: Parkinson began as a journalist on local newspapers straight after leaving school. He worked as a features writer for the "Manchester Guardian", working alongside Michael Frayn, and later on the "Daily Express" in London. In the course of his two years' National Service, which began in July 1955, he received a commission as an officer in the Royal Army Pay Corps, becoming the youngest captain in the British Army at the time. He saw active service in Egypt in the Suez Crisis as a British Army press liaison officer.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: During the 1960s, Parkinson moved into television, working on current affairs programmes for the BBC and Manchester-based Granada Television. He was one of the reporters and presenters on the five-times-a-week daily news magazine show "Twenty-Four Hours" on BBC1 from March 1966 until January 1968. From 1969 he presented Granada's "Cinema", a late-night film review programme, (which included his first star interview with Laurence Olivier), before in July 1971 presenting his eponymous BBC series "Parkinson", which ran until April 1982 and from January 1998 until December 2007, leaving the BBC for ITV1 midway through the second run. By his own reckoning, he has interviewed 2,000 of the world's celebrities. Parkinson was one of the original line-up of TV-am in 1983, with Angela Rippon, Anna Ford, David Frost and Robert Kee. Parkinson presented the weekend edition of the programme until February 1984 before leaving.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: He also became host of Thames Television's "Give Us a Clue" from Michael Aspel from 1984, while in 1985, he stood in for Barry Norman as presenter of "Film 85".


title: Michael Parkinson

text: In 1987 and 1988, Parkinson hosted 15 episodes of "Parkinson One to One" for Yorkshire Television, a series of interview programmes which continued in the style of his BBC talk show but with each episode dedicated to a single celebrity guest.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: On Halloween 1992, Parkinson appeared as himself in the television drama "Ghostwatch" as the studio link during a fictional, apparently live, paranormal investigation. However, the "cinéma vérité" style in which it was shot led to complaints from viewers who believed it depicted real events. From 1995 to 1999, he hosted the BBC One daytime programme "Going for a Song". He again played himself in Richard Curtis's 2003 romantic comedy, "Love Actually", interviewing the character Billy Mack, played by Bill Nighy. From 31 January to 3 February 2007, Parkinson presented "Symphony at the Movies" at Sydney Opera House, where he shared stories about his interviews with movie stars and introduced music from films. In October 2003, Parkinson had a controversial interview with Meg Ryan while she was in the UK to promote "In the Cut", calling it his most difficult television moment.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: In 2007, Parkinson appeared in the Australian soap "Neighbours" as himself. On 24 November 2007, during recording of the final regular edition of his ITV chat show, broadcast on 16 December, Parkinson fought back tears as he was given an ovation. The last artist to perform on his show was regular guest Jamie Cullum. As of December 2008, Parkinson holds 458 credits as a presenter on his own and with others.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: "Parkinson" was a flagship of the BBC's prime time schedule, attracting top names before the chat show circuit was part of the promotional mill. Parkinson even interviewed Marlon Brando. He was able to interview wartime variety stars while attracting up-and-coming comedians such as Billy Connolly. He was not afraid to allow an interviewee time to be themself, sometimes, as with Fred Astaire, Orson Welles, Sir Alec Guinness, Sir Paul McCartney, Muhammad Ali, George Michael, Madonna, John Cleese and Mel Gibson, devoting an entire programme to a guest who was considered especially noteworthy. Parkinson stated that 'If I could save one interview from the thousands I have done, it would be the one-man show with Professor Jacob Bronowski.'


title: Michael Parkinson

text: He stated that the most remarkable man he ever interviewed was Muhammad Ali, and regrets never having interviewed Frank Sinatra or Sir Don Bradman.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: Parkinson returned to hosting television in November 2012 with his new show "Parkinson: Masterclass" on Sky Arts.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: Parkinson took over BBC Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs" for the 1986 series after the 1985 death of its creator, Roy Plomley, whose widow was unhappy with Parkinson replacing him. After six shows, he was criticised by the BBC Board of Management for "a Yorkshire bias in the choice of castaways" despite the fact that only one of his guests was born in the county. Parkinson claimed that the criticism was "a rearguard action by the establishment against the perceived desecration of an institution by an outsider". Parkinson stayed for three years until handing duties over to Sue Lawley.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: Between 1994 and 1996 he hosted "Parkinson on Sport" on BBC Radio Five Live. Between 1996 and 2007, he presented a morning show on BBC Radio 2 called "Parkinson's Sunday Supplement"; it featured newspaper and entertainment summaries with the help of journalists and a lengthy interview with a media personality. These were interspersed with music that demonstrated his penchant for jazz and big-band. In October 2007, a few months after announcing his retirement from his television series, Parkinson said his radio show would also end. The last programme was broadcast on Sunday 2 December 2007. As an interim Clive Anderson presented the programme during December/January and Eamonn Holmes during February and Fiona Bruce during March. Michael Ball replaced him until Terry Wogan moved to Sunday mornings to present Weekend Wogan. Parkinson presented a mid-morning programme on London's LBC Newstalk 97.3FM. He was considered responsible for promotion of jazz singers to a more mainstream audience during the run of his BBC radio show.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: Parkinson's first article for the "Sunday Times" Colour Section, 'Living in a Museum' (about the Suffolk village of Lavenham) appeared on 8 July 1962. In 1965 "The Sunday Times" invited Parkinson to write a regular sports column, drawing on characters in his days in cricket and football. These "Sunday Times" and, his articles for "Punch" magazine later formed the basis for two books, "Cricket Mad" and "Football Daft". In the 1980s, Parkinson wrote a series of children's books called "The Woofits" about a family of anthropomorphic dog-like creatures in the fictional Yorkshire coal-mining village of Grimeworth. The books led to a TV series, which he narrated. He wrote a sports column for the "Daily Telegraph" and is president of the Sports Journalists' Association.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: His book "Parky: My Autobiography" was published on 2 October 2008. In April 2009, Parkinson wrote about the recently deceased Jade Goody in the "Radio Times". He described Goody as "barely educated, ignorant and puerile," adding, "When we clear the media smokescreen from around her death, what we're left with is a woman who came to represent all that's paltry and wretched about Britain today." Bishop Jonathan Blake, who had presided over Goody's wedding, took exception to Parkinson's comments.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: In 1971, Parkinson was nominated as a candidate for the position of Rector of the University of Dundee. In one of the closest-ever contests for that position, he was very narrowly defeated by incumbent Peter Ustinov after two recounts. The result was controversial, as it was alleged earlier results indicated Parkinson had won, and a further recount should have taken place to confirm the result. As a result, pressure grew for the poll to be rerun. While the university decreed that the original result was to stand, a new poll was organised by the Students' Association, which also featured the candidature of a goat. However, this time Ustinov won a decisive victory over Parkinson, the goat, and Paul Foot.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: On 29 September 2008, Parkinson launched his website, which included online interviews with Nelson Mandela and British comedian Rory Bremner. The site also includes a blog, giving Parkinson's views on news events as well as information about his compilation album, "Michael Parkinson: My Life In Music", featuring favourite songs performed by Frank Sinatra, Michael Bublé, Dionne Warwick and others.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: Parkinson gave the keynote address in Sydney on Australia Day 2011, the first non-Australian to do so. Parkinson used the publicity surrounding his Australia Day appearance to promote the abolition of the Australian monarchy.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: Since finishing his talk show, Parkinson has appeared in commercials for SunLife Guaranteed Over 50 Plan life insurance, stating that he likes "its no-nonsense approach to business". His role in advertising the scheme was criticised by financial journalist Martin Lewis, who argued in 2012 that the plan was poor value for customers.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: In August 2014, Parkinson was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to "The Guardian" expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: In May 2009, Parkinson bemoaned the state of TV generally, saying he was "fed up with the rise of celebrities hosting shows, ridiculously titled documentaries and property shows", saying "In my television paradise there would be no more property programmes, no more police-chasing-yobbos-in-cars programmes and, most of all and please God, no more so-called documentary shows with titles like "My 20-Ton Tumour", "My Big Fat Head", "Wolf Girl", "Embarrassing Illnesses" and "The Fastest Man on No Legs"." On 11 October 2010, Parkinson appeared on Richard Bacon's Radio 5 Live show where he was particularly critical of comedian and actor Russell Brand, saying: "I don't see the point of him."


title: Michael Parkinson

text: In 2013, Parkinson again criticised the course British television had taken, comparing series such as "The One Show" unfavourably with the broadcasting of the recently deceased Alan Whicker and David Frost, as well as stating the "cult of youth" had "distorted the standards". Parkinson spoke fondly of the time when "producers were unencumbered by such irksome obstacles as compliance, health and safety and frustrating commissioning procedures". Alex Jones, presenter of "The One Show", rejected Parkinson's criticism.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: Parkinson has declined to apologise to Helen Mirren over an interview he conducted in 1975, where he implied that serious actors could not have large breasts. Mirren later described him as a "sexist old fart". On "Piers Morgan's Life Stories", Morgan suggested the comments were sexist. Parkinson replied: "Well, maybe. But nobody got hurt, nobody died."


title: Michael Parkinson

text: On 22 August 1959, he married Mary Agnes Heneghan, who was from Doncaster. Under her new name, Mary Parkinson was one of the presenters of the Thames TV daytime show "Good Afternoon" and briefly presented "Parkinson" in the 1970s. They have three children. In the 1970s, Parkinson campaigned in support of birth control, having had a vasectomy in 1972 to allow his wife to stop taking the Pill.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: He is a cricket fan, and in 1990 hosted a World XI team against Yorkshire. Parkinson and his wife live in Bray, Berkshire. He met his friend Michel Roux when rowing down the River Thames on a Sunday to his then pub, the Waterside Inn. Parkinson formerly owned a Michelin Star restaurant near his home in Berkshire. In an interview with Irish broadcaster Gay Byrne on the RTÉ religious programme "The Meaning of Life", he stated that he was an agnostic atheist.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: In 1999, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lincoln and he also received an honour from the University of Huddersfield in 2008. He was invested as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Prince Charles in November 2000 for services to broadcasting, having been honoured in the 2000 Birthday Honours. Parkinson was made a Knight Bachelor in the 2008 New Year's Honours List; he remarked that he was "not the type to get a knighthood" coming as he did "from Barnsley. They give it to anyone nowadays."


title: Michael Parkinson

text: "Parkinson" was ranked eighth in a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted for by industry professionals. In April 2006, Parkinson was awarded honorary patronage of the University Philosophical Society of Trinity College Dublin. He was voted number 20 in ITV's "TV's 50 Greatest Stars". On 4 June 2008 he was knighted by the Queen at Buckingham Palace.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: On 11 November 2008, he became the first Chancellor of Nottingham Trent University; the role includes representing the university and conferring degrees at graduation ceremonies. Upon receiving the honour he said, "I am honoured to be offered the chancellorship at Nottingham Trent University. In television I have always worked with young, ambitious people and I am keen to be involved in this university which helps to realise the aspirations of the young. It will also give me an opportunity to see what I missed!". Parkinson has served as president of the Sports Journalists' Association of Great Britain since 2005, the largest national organisation of sports journalists in the world.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: Parkinson is on the cover of the 1973 Paul McCartney and Wings album "Band on the Run". Paul McCartney told Parkinson that he would appear on his show if Parkinson appeared on the album cover, although it was not until 1999 that McCartney fulfilled his promise.


title: Michael Parkinson

text: In 2005, Parkinson appeared with comedian Peter Kay on the music video of the re-released "Is This the Way to Amarillo" for "Comic Relief", which became a number one single.


title: BMD-4

text: The BMD-4 (, ) is an amphibious infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) originating from post-Cold War Russia. Originally designated as the BMD-3M, the chassis of the BMD-4 is the same as that of the BMD-3 because it was developed on the same basis. This armored fighting vehicle is one of the lightest in its class, possessing a substantial amount of firepower. The vehicle was designed to transport Russian Airborne Troops (VDV), increasing its mobility, armament, and protection on the battlefield.


title: BMD-4

text: Many components of the vehicle, such as the ergonomics and positioning of the passengers, remain relatively unchanged. Primary differences between the BMD-4 and its predecessors lie in its armament. The vehicle is fitted with the Bakhcha-U turret, which consists of a 100 mm 2A70 low-pressure rifled gun, a 30 mm 2A72 coaxial autocannon, and a 7.62 mm PKT coaxial machine gun. The 2A70 rifled cannon is capable of firing high explosive fragmentation rounds and laser-guided anti-tank missiles. It also features secondary weapons designed to engage and destroy enemy infantry and armored fighting vehicles. The automated fire control system of the vehicle is advanced with new features that simplify the use of the vehicle's armament by the gunner and commander.


title: BMD-4

text: The vehicle is designed by the Volgograd tractor factory and the armament was developed by the KBP Instrument Design Bureau unitary enterprise located in Tula. Kurganmashzavod is the official manufacturer of the vehicle. The BMD-4 entered service in late 2004 and has been produced ever since then. In 2008, a modernized version, designated as the BMD-4M, was introduced with significant contributions from Kurganmashzavod, the designer of the BMP.


title: BMD-4

text: The BMD-4 was adopted by the Russian Armed Forces on December 31, 2004. In August 2005, the 106th Guards Airborne Division received the first batch of these vehicles, with 60 vehicles being produced. In 2010, all further purchases of the BMD-4 with the "Bakhcha-U" turret were cancelled along with the 2S25. It was later noted by Colonel Gennady Anashkin that the BMD-4 will still enter service due to the vehicle being a completely new generation essential for the VDV. VDV commander Vladimir Shamanov told in an interview that the original BMD-4 possessed an unreliable base while the modernized BMD-4M is more than satisfying for the Russian airborne troops.


title: BMD-4

text: On March 21, 2008, Kurganmashzavod unveiled a modernized variant of the vehicle that was designated as the BMD-4M. The primary cause of the alterations was due to the bankruptcy of the original manufacturer, the Volgograd tractor factory. In 2008, it was planned to carry out comprehensive testing of a modernized BMD-4 program agreed with the Chief Armor Management (Bolshoi) of the Ministry of Defense and the VDV. According to test results and Mikhail Bolotin, the president of Concern Tractor Plants (KTZ), mass production was initially planned for the following year. The mass production of the modernized BMD-4 was later postponed along with the 2S25 Sprut-SD. Nikolay Makarov, the Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces, dismissed the BMD-4 as "a version of the BMP-3" with no protection and costs more than an expensive tank.


title: BMD-4

text: In August 2012, Alexander Sukhorukov, who was then deputy Defense Minister, said that the BMD-4M armored vehicle does not meet the requirements put forward by the Russian military, and will not be purchased. At the same time, a week before, Vladimir Shamanov said the BMD-4M is fully compliant with the VDV, which was more important in this regard than the requirements of the Ministry of Defence. He stressed that the fate of the BMD-4M is decided by the Supreme Commander, Vladimir Putin. The Russian Army received another prototype batch of the modernised BMD-4M airborne assault vehicle during mid-2014. Eight modernized BMD-4M vehicles were delivered to the 106th Guards Airborne Assault Division by Kurganmashzavod, where the vehicles continued to undergo testing.


title: BMD-4

text: "The vehicles proved themselves as technology of the future: they roved in differing climatic conditions, airdropped, tested in water, including being redeployed at sea. All of this was noted by the commission, which recommended to supply the VDV [with the vehicles] this year as a result of testing", Maj. Gen. Andrei Kholzakov, deputy commander of VDV, said on January 15, 2015. Kholzakov added that the decision of the state commission came as field tests of BMD-4M airborne fighting vehicles and BTR-MD Rakushka armored personnel carriers concluded successfully in 2014. The BMD-4M, as well as the BTR-MDM, were officially brought into service in April 2016.


title: BMD-4

text: Russia has employed the BMD-4 in the Russo-Ukrainian War. A number of them were captured on 13 March 2022 by the Ukrainian armed forces. As of 14 November 2022, according to Oryx, Russia has lost 56 BMD-4M (46 destroyed, 10 captured).


title: BMD-4

text: The hull of the BMD-4 bears a strong resemblance to the hull of the BMD-3 but with a number of innovations. The BMD-4 has a crew of three consisting of: a vehicle commander, a gunner, and a driver. It can carry up to five passengers and is more spacious than the original BMD-1 and BMD-2. The suspension is composed of five small road wheels and four track rollers on each side. The vehicle has an automatic transmission with five gears for forward and five gears for backwards.


title: BMD-4

text: Both primary armaments of the BMD-4 are fitted into one turret known as the Bakhcha-U (Russian: Бахча-У; "Melon field") consisting of: a 100 mm 2A70 rifled gun, a coaxial 30 mm 2A72 autocannon, and a coaxial 7.62 mm PKT machine gun. This module is designed by the KBP Instrument Design Bureau for motorized infantry units without the support of tanks and artillery. The Bakhcha-U turret is installable on the chassis of other military vehicles, such as the BMP-2, BMP-3, and BTR-90. This turret has a full 360° traverse and a maximum elevation of 60°; the maximum depression is −6°. The majority of armored and unarmored targets can be engaged by at least two types of armament provided by the Bakhcha-U turret.


title: BMD-4

text: The 2A70 rifled gun is capable of firing guided and unguided shells. 34 ready-to-use unguided HE-Frag shells are carried in the turret of the vehicle. The 100 mm gun is fitted with an autoloader that fires at a rate of 10-12 rounds per minute, with the time of each shell loading being 5–6 seconds. The two variants of HE-Frag shells available for the Bakhcha-U are the 3UOF17 and 3UOF19; the former having a muzzle velocity of 250 m/s with the latter achieving 355 m/s. The 3UOF19 also provides a substantially larger proximity detonation which increases the lethal radius of the explosion. When implemented in the Bakhcha-U turret, the range of the 2A70 is increased to 7 km with its unguided rounds.


title: BMD-4

text: A 30 mm 2A72 autocannon is mounted coaxially with the 2A70 rifled gun. The turret of the BMD-4 contains a total of 500 rounds ready to be used by its autocannon with 245 of them being high explosive and the remaining being armor-piercing discarding sabot. This autocannon fires projectiles with a muzzle velocity of 1120 m/s and a cyclic rate of fire of 350–400 rds/min. The rounds fired can penetrate 22 mm of Rolled homogeneous armor (RHA) from a range of 2000 m while impacting at an angle of 60°. Minimum gas contamination of the turret is achieved by a delayed unlocking due to single-barrel long recoil action and forward case ejection. The 7.62 mm PKT machine gun is mounted coaxially with 100 mm and 30 mm weapons. 2000 rounds are carried in the turret for the PKT machine gun; all combined into one belt to eliminate reloading.


title: BMD-4

text: The 100 mm tank gun is also capable of firing the 9M117M1 "Arkan" anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) which is a further development of the 9M117 Bastion (NATO reporting name: AT-10 Stabber). With a weight of 21.5 kg, this ATGM has a penetration value of 750–800 mm of RHA behind explosive reactive armor (ERA). The turret holds four 9M117M1 missiles and is launched through the 100 mm gun ensuring a crucial advantage due to the loading being completely internal rather than external unlike other infantry fighting vehicles. While traveling at an average speed of 300 m/s, the Arkan is guided via laser beam riding and is capable of destroying targets up to 5.5 km away.


title: BMD-4

text: As one of the most heavily armed IFVs, the BMD-4 possesses multiple secondary armaments. These secondary weapons include a 7.62 mm PKT machine gun, and a 9P135M launcher post capable of firing additional anti tank missiles. The PKT is operated by passenger seated towards the front and bow mounted towards the left. This bow mounted weapon is dismountable and man portable for increased versatility. The 9P135M missile launcher is mounted towards the roof and is also dismountable.


title: BMD-4

text: The RPK-74 is bow mounted towards the right side of the vehicle. It has a maximum range of 800 m and fires 5.45×39mm rounds which are also used by the standard AK-74 Kalashnikov in service with the Russian armed forces.


title: BMD-4

text: Additional ATGMs can be operated by the BMD-4. This is made possible by the 9P135M launcher post that fires the wire guided Fagot (NATO reporting name: AT-4 Spigot) and Konkurs (NATO reporting name: AT-5 Spandrel) missiles. The Fagot missile is a short range ATGM with an effective range of 2 km. While flying at an average speed of 186 m/s, it penetrates 480 mm of RHA. The Fagot-M is an improved variant that has an increased effective range of 2.5 km and a penetration of 550 mm of RHA. The Konkurs missile has an effective range of 4000 m and flies at an average speed of 206 m/s. The original Konkurs missile penetrates 750–800 mm of RHA while the improved Konkurs-M penetrates 750–800 mm of RHA after ERA due to an additional tandem warhead. The firing range is reduced to 2500 m during night time.


title: BMD-4

text: The weight of the BMD-4 is achieved by using aluminum alloy for the hull instead of steel as armor. This armor protects the BMD-4 from 30 mm weapons like its own 2A72 autocannon towards the front, and small arms fire and shell splinters towards the side. To counter infrared guidance and weapons, six 81 mm ZD6 smoke grenade dischargers in two banks of three are mounted towards the sides of the turret. An NBC protection system and automatic fire suppression systems are provided to the entire crew and passengers to ensure survivability in an environment with nuclear fallout.


title: BMD-4

text: A Ukrainian military intelligence report has found that the BMD-4M is “weakly protected even against small arms and mine fragments and artillery shells”.


title: BMD-4

text: The BMD-4 features an advanced fire control system (FCS). The unique armament system provided by the Bakhcha-U and the reliable ride performance provided by the chassis gives the BMD-4 qualitatively new capabilities to units of land forces. The BMD-4 is able to fire all its primary armaments effectively regardless of whether the vehicle is stationary or mobile, whether the time is day or night, or whether it is afloat or land based. The FCS implements a significant increase of the armament effectiveness by engaging a wide scope of targets in complicated weather and landscape conditions. Advanced ballistic calculations allow the BMD-4 to fire from an enclosed position and the capability of effectively firing at low and slow aerial targets is provided.


title: BMD-4

text: The computerized FCS of the BMD-4 is automated by day and night and features two advanced optical sights for both the commander and gunner. The IFV commander's panoramic sight has an azimuth coverage of 360° to search for targets. This panoramic sight features thermal imaging and range finding channels with a range of up to 10 km. The gunner's sight provides for firing all types of armament by day and night with a range finding sight of 10 km. This sight is combined with visual imaging, thermal imaging, range-finding channels, and a missile guidance channel. With two dedicated sights for both operators of the Bakhcha-U, the BMD-4 has hunter-killer capabilities and the gunner is able to use the commander's sight to engage targets if his own sight is disabled or destroyed. The commander of the vehicle also has the ability to override the command and to take control of the turret and gun from the gunner with both turret operators having complete control of the armaments.


title: BMD-4

text: Like its predecessor, the BMD-4 is capable of parachuting from aircraft with the entire crew and passengers inside the vehicle which allows target engagement after landing to be instant. An Il-76 is able to transport two of these vehicles at a time in comparison to three BMD-1s and BMD-2s. Its engine is the 2V-06-2; the same as the BMD-3. This engine develops a total power of 450 horsepower (hp). The BMD-4 is also fully amphibious with two water jets mounted on each side of the back of the hull and can swim at speeds of up to 10 km/h in a Beaufort scale of 2. With a high power-to-weight ratio, the BMD-4 features superior acceleration in comparison to other infantry fighting vehicles. The maximum speed on a highway is 70 km/h and the BMD-4 can maneuver on a 60° gradient and a 35° side slope. The BMD-4 can cross 1.8 m trenches and climb 0.8 m tall obstacles. This vehicle's suspension is hydropneumatic and giving an adjustable ground clearing of 130–530 mm with the normal road clearance being 450 mm. The clearance is changed by the driver and can be changed within 10 seconds.


title: BMD-4

text: The BMD-4M was unveiled by Kurganmashzavod in 2008. This vehicle retains the Bakhcha-U turret with a number of other innovations. Overall bulletproof crew protection is ensured. Special lightweight and durable alloys make this possible without the vehicle losing its ability to swim or be airdropped. The more powerful and compact engine of the BMP-3 is integrated into the BMD-4M; providing 500 hp. In general, the unification of units, plants, and systems of the modernized BMD-4 chassis with the same units, plants and systems of BMP-3 is 80%. This decreases the expenses of the airborne assault vehicle servicing in the army allowing a significant reduction of service maintenance of airborne combat vehicles in the army.


title: BMD-4

text: The BMD-4M Sinitsa was unveiled in 2017. This vehicle has the Sinitsa turret combat module fitted with a top-mounted panoramic sight with a thermal imaging channel and housing a 100 mm 2A70 tank gun/ATGM launcher, 30 mm 2A72 autocannon and a 7.62mm PKMS medium machine gun. The original power unit and transmission system are changed to the parts used in the BMP-3 to standardise production and spare parts supply.


title: BMD-4

text: In January 2019, the Russian MoD announced it would begin state trials of the 9P163 Kornet-D1 anti-tank missile system, a version of the BMD-4M chassis modified to fire Kornet ATGMs.


title: BMD-4

text: The first production batch of the new BMD-4M and BTR-MDM "Rakushka" armoured vehicles, comprising 24 units (12 each) was transferred to the Russian Airborne Troops on March 3, 2015. The Russian Defense Ministry is to receive more than 250 airborne troops’ BMD-4M combat vehicles and BTR-MDM Rakushka armored personnel carriers over three years under a contract. 33 BMD-4Ms were delivered in the first half of 2016. 31 BMD-4Ms and 12 BTR-MDMs were delivered in the second half of 2016. In total, 60 BMD-4Ms and BTR-MDMs were delivered in 2016. 10 BMD-4M and 15 BTR-MDM delivered in early 2017. About 50 BMD-4Ms and BTR-MDMs were delivered in April 2017, with about another 50 BMD-4Ms and BTR-MDMs in August 2017. There was a new delivery in early 2018. The Russian Defense Ministry and the Shipunov Design Bureau have signed a contract for delivering 190 BMD-4M airborne infantry fighting vehicles and BTR-MDM Rakushka APCs to the Russian Airborne Troops in 2018–2020. A total of 132 airborne infantry fighting vehicles BMD-4M and 58 BTR-MDM Rakushka armored personnel carriers will be delivered before 2020. 31 BMD-4Ms and 8 BTR-MDMs were delivered in March 2019. Russian MoD received 42 BMD-4M AIFVs from Kurganmashzavod plant in July 2019. The seventh battalion set of military hardware for the Pskov paratroopers was transferred with 31 BMD-4M and eight BTR-MDM ‘Rakushka’ in January 2020 and another four each including about 40 BMD-4M and BTR-MDM were delivered in June and November 2020 and June and July 2021.


title: BMD-4

text: At least 17 machines had been captured during the Russo-Ukrainian war as of November 2022, including 10 BMD-4Ms and seven BTR-MDM Rakushkas.


title: Injection moulding

text: Injection moulding (U.S. spelling: injection molding) is a manufacturing process for producing parts by injecting molten material into a mould, or mold. Injection moulding can be performed with a host of materials mainly including metals (for which the process is called die-casting), glasses, elastomers, confections, and most commonly thermoplastic and thermosetting polymers. Material for the part is fed into a heated barrel, mixed (using a helical screw), and injected into a mould cavity, where it cools and hardens to the configuration of the cavity. After a product is designed, usually by an industrial designer or an engineer, moulds are made by a mould-maker (or toolmaker) from metal, usually either steel or aluminium, and precision-machined to form the features of the desired part. Injection moulding is widely used for manufacturing a variety of parts, from the smallest components to entire body panels of cars. Advances in 3D printing technology, using photopolymers that do not melt during the injection moulding of some lower-temperature thermoplastics, can be used for some simple injection moulds.


title: Injection moulding

text: Injection moulding uses a special-purpose machine that has three parts: the injection unit, the mould and the clamp. Parts to be injection-moulded must be very carefully designed to facilitate the moulding process; the material used for the part, the desired shape and features of the part, the material of the mould, and the properties of the moulding machine must all be taken into account. The versatility of injection moulding is facilitated by this breadth of design considerations and possibilities.


title: Injection moulding

text: Injection moulding is used to create many things such as wire spools, packaging, bottle caps, automotive parts and components, toys, pocket combs, some musical instruments (and parts of them), one-piece chairs and small tables, storage containers, mechanical parts (including gears), and most other plastic products available today. Injection moulding is the most common modern method of manufacturing plastic parts; it is ideal for producing high volumes of the same object.


title: Injection moulding

text: Injection moulding uses a ram or screw-type plunger to force molten plastic or rubber material into a mould cavity; this solidifies into a shape that has conformed to the contour of the mould. It is most commonly used to process both thermoplastic and thermosetting polymers, with the volume used of the former being considerably higher. Thermoplastics are prevalent due to characteristics that make them highly suitable for injection moulding, such as ease of recycling, versatility for a wide variety of applications, and ability to soften and flow on heating. Thermoplastics also have an element of safety over thermosets; if a thermosetting polymer is not ejected from the injection barrel in a timely manner, chemical crosslinking may occur causing the screw and check valves to seize and potentially damaging the injection moulding machine.


title: Injection moulding

text: Injection moulding consists of the high pressure injection of the raw material into a mould, which shapes the polymer into the desired form. Moulds can be of a single cavity or multiple cavities. In multiple cavity moulds, each cavity can be identical and form the same parts or can be unique and form multiple different geometries during a single cycle. Moulds are generally made from tool steels, but stainless steels and aluminium moulds are suitable for certain applications. Aluminium moulds are typically ill-suited for high volume production or parts with narrow dimensional tolerances, as they have inferior mechanical properties and are more prone to wear, damage, and deformation during the injection and clamping cycles; however, aluminium moulds are cost-effective in low-volume applications, as mould fabrication costs and time are considerably reduced. Many steel moulds are designed to process well over a million parts during their lifetime and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to fabricate.


title: Injection moulding

text: When thermoplastics are moulded, typically pelletised raw material is fed through a hopper into a heated barrel with a reciprocating screw. Upon entrance to the barrel, the temperature increases and the Van der Waals forces that resist relative flow of individual chains are weakened as a result of increased space between molecules at higher thermal energy states. This process reduces its viscosity, which enables the polymer to flow with the driving force of the injection unit. The screw delivers the raw material forward, mixes and homogenises the thermal and viscous distributions of the polymer, and reduces the required heating time by mechanically shearing the material and adding a significant amount of frictional heating to the polymer. The material feeds forward through a check valve and collects at the front of the screw into a volume known as a shot. A shot is the volume of material that is used to fill the mould cavity, compensate for shrinkage, and provide a cushion (approximately 10% of the total shot volume, which remains in the barrel and prevents the screw from bottoming out) to transfer pressure from the screw to the mould cavity. When enough material has gathered, the material is forced at high pressure and velocity into the part forming cavity. The exact amount of shrinkage is a function of the resin being used, and can be relatively predictable. To prevent spikes in pressure, the process normally uses a transfer position corresponding to a 95–98% full cavity where the screw shifts from a constant velocity to a constant pressure control. Often injection times are well under 1 second. Once the screw reaches the transfer position the packing pressure is applied, which completes mould filling and compensates for thermal shrinkage, which is quite high for thermoplastics relative to many other materials. The packing pressure is applied until the gate (cavity entrance) solidifies. Due to its small size, the gate is normally the first place to solidify through its entire thickness. Once the gate solidifies, no more material can enter the cavity; accordingly, the screw reciprocates and acquires material for the next cycle while the material within the mould cools so that it can be ejected and be dimensionally stable. This cooling duration is dramatically reduced by the use of cooling lines circulating water or oil from an external temperature controller. Once the required temperature has been achieved, the mould opens and an array of pins, sleeves, strippers, etc. are driven forward to demould the article. Then, the mould closes and the process is repeated.


title: Injection moulding

text: For a two-shot mould, two separate materials are incorporated into one part. This type of injection moulding is used to add a soft touch to knobs, to give a product multiple colours, or to produce a part with multiple performance characteristics.


title: Injection moulding

text: For thermosets, typically two different chemical components are injected into the barrel. These components immediately begin irreversible chemical reactions that eventually crosslinks the material into a single connected network of molecules. As the chemical reaction occurs, the two fluid components permanently transform into a viscoelastic solid. Solidification in the injection barrel and screw can be problematic and have financial repercussions; therefore, minimising the thermoset curing within the barrel is vital. This typically means that the residence time and temperature of the chemical precursors are minimised in the injection unit. The residence time can be reduced by minimising the barrel's volume capacity and by maximising the cycle times. These factors have led to the use of a thermally isolated, cold injection unit that injects the reacting chemicals into a thermally isolated hot mould, which increases the rate of chemical reactions and results in shorter time required to achieve a solidified thermoset component. After the part has solidified, valves close to isolate the injection system and chemical precursors, and the mould opens to eject the moulded parts. Then, the mould closes and the process repeats.


title: Injection moulding

text: Pre-moulded or machined components can be inserted into the cavity while the mould is open, allowing the material injected in the next cycle to form and solidify around them. This process is known as Insert moulding and allows single parts to contain multiple materials. This process is often used to create plastic parts with protruding metal screws so they can be fastened and unfastened repeatedly. This technique can also be used for In-mould labelling and film lids may also be attached to moulded plastic containers.


title: Injection moulding

text: A parting line, sprue, gate marks, and ejector pin marks are usually present on the final part. None of these features are typically desired, but are unavoidable due to the nature of the process. Gate marks occur at the gate that joins the melt-delivery channels (sprue and runner) to the part forming cavity. Parting line and ejector pin marks result from minute misalignments, wear, gaseous vents, clearances for adjacent parts in relative motion, and/or dimensional differences of the melting surfaces contacting the injected polymer. Dimensional differences can be attributed to non-uniform, pressure-induced deformation during injection, machining tolerances, and non-uniform thermal expansion and contraction of mould components, which experience rapid cycling during the injection, packing, cooling, and ejection phases of the process. Mould components are often designed with materials of various coefficients of thermal expansion. These factors cannot be simultaneously accounted for without astronomical increases in the cost of design, fabrication, processing, and quality monitoring. The skillful mould and part designer positions these aesthetic detriments in hidden areas if feasible.


title: Injection moulding

text: American inventor John Wesley Hyatt, together with his brother Isaiah, patented the first injection moulding machine in 1872. This machine was relatively simple compared to machines in use today: it worked like a large hypodermic needle, using a plunger to inject plastic through a heated cylinder into a mould. The industry progressed slowly over the years, producing products such as collar stays, buttons, and hair combs(generally though, plastics, in it's modern definition, are a more recent development ).


title: Injection moulding

text: The German chemists Arthur Eichengrün and Theodore Becker invented the first soluble forms of cellulose acetate in 1903, which was much less flammable than cellulose nitrate. It was eventually made available in a powder form from which it was readily injection moulded. Arthur Eichengrün developed the first injection moulding press in 1919. In 1939, Arthur Eichengrün patented the injection moulding of plasticised cellulose acetate.


title: Injection moulding

text: The industry expanded rapidly in the 1940s because World War II created a huge demand for inexpensive, mass-produced products. In 1946, American inventor James Watson Hendry built the first screw injection machine, which allowed much more precise control over the speed of injection and the quality of articles produced. This machine also allowed material to be mixed before injection, so that coloured or recycled plastic could be added to virgin material and mixed thoroughly before being injected. In the 1970s, Hendry went on to develop the first gas-assisted injection moulding process, which permitted the production of complex, hollow articles that cooled quickly. This greatly improved design flexibility as well as the strength and finish of manufactured parts while reducing production time, cost, weight and waste. By 1979, plastic production overtook steel production, and by 1990, aluminium moulds were widely used in injection moulding. Today, screw injection machines account for the vast majority of all injection machines.


title: Injection moulding

text: The plastic injection moulding industry has evolved over the years from producing combs and buttons to producing a vast array of products for many industries including automotive, medical, aerospace, consumer products, toys, plumbing, packaging, and construction.


title: Injection moulding

text: Most polymers, sometimes referred to as resins, may be used, including all thermoplastics, some thermosets, and some elastomers. Since 1995, the total number of available materials for injection moulding has increased at a rate of 750 per year; there were approximately 18,000 materials available when that trend began. Available materials include alloys or blends of previously developed materials, so product designers can choose the material with the best set of properties from a vast selection. Major criteria for selection of a material are the strength and function required for the final part, as well as the cost, but also each material has different parameters for moulding that must be taken into account. Other considerations when choosing an injection moulding material include flexural modulus of elasticity, or the degree to which a material can be bent without damage, as well as heat deflection and water absorption. Common polymers like epoxy and phenolic are examples of thermosetting plastics while nylon, polyethylene, and polystyrene are thermoplastic. Until comparatively recently, plastic springs were not possible, but advances in polymer properties make them now quite practical. Applications include buckles for anchoring and disconnecting outdoor-equipment webbing.


title: Injection moulding

text: Injection moulding machines consist of a material hopper, an injection ram or screw-type plunger, and a heating unit. Also known as platens, they hold the moulds in which the components are shaped. Presses are rated by tonnage, which expresses the amount of clamping force that the machine can exert. This force keeps the mould closed during the injection process. Tonnage can vary from less than 5 tons to over 9,000 tons, with the higher figures used in comparatively few manufacturing operations. The total clamp force needed is determined by the projected area of the part being moulded. This projected area is multiplied by a clamp force of from 1.8 to 7.2 tons for each square centimetre of the projected areas. As a rule of thumb, 4 or 5 tons/in can be used for most products. If the plastic material is very stiff, it requires more injection pressure to fill the mould, and thus more clamp tonnage to hold the mould closed. The required force can also be determined by the material used and the size of the part. Larger parts require higher clamping force.


title: Injection moulding

text: Mould or die are the common terms used to describe the tool used to produce plastic parts in moulding.


title: Injection moulding

text: Since moulds have been expensive to manufacture, they were usually only used in mass production where thousands of parts were being produced. Typical moulds are constructed from hardened steel, pre-hardened steel, aluminium, and/or beryllium-copper alloy. The choice of material to build a mould from is primarily one of economics; in general, steel moulds cost more to construct, but their longer lifespan offsets the higher initial cost over a higher number of parts made before wearing out. Pre-hardened steel moulds are less wear-resistant and are used for lower volume requirements or larger components; their typical steel hardness is 38–45 on the Rockwell-C scale. Hardened steel moulds are heat treated after machining; these are by far superior in terms of wear resistance and lifespan. Typical hardness ranges between 50 and 60 Rockwell-C (HRC). Aluminium moulds can cost substantially less, and when designed and machined with modern computerised equipment can be economical for moulding tens or even hundreds of thousands of parts. Beryllium copper is used in areas of the mould that require fast heat removal or areas that see the most shear heat generated. The moulds can be manufactured either by CNC machining or by using electrical discharge machining processes.


title: Injection moulding

text: The mould consists of two primary components, the injection mould (A plate) and the ejector mould (B plate). These components are also referred to as "moulder" and "mouldmaker". Plastic resin enters the mould through a "sprue" or "gate" in the injection mould; the sprue bushing is to seal tightly against the nozzle of the injection barrel of the moulding machine and to allow molten plastic to flow from the barrel into the mould, also known as the cavity. The sprue bushing directs the molten plastic to the cavity images through channels that are machined into the faces of the A and B plates. These channels allow plastic to run along them, so they are referred to as runners. The molten plastic flows through the runner and enters one or more specialised gates and into the cavity geometry to form the desired part.


title: Injection moulding

text: The amount of resin required to fill the sprue, runner and cavities of a mould comprises a "shot". Trapped air in the mould can escape through air vents that are ground into the parting line of the mould, or around ejector pins and slides that are slightly smaller than the holes retaining them. If the trapped air is not allowed to escape, it is compressed by the pressure of the incoming material and squeezed into the corners of the cavity, where it prevents filling and can also cause other defects. The air can even become so compressed that it ignites and burns the surrounding plastic material.


title: Injection moulding

text: To allow for removal of the moulded part from the mould, the mould features must not overhang one another in the direction that the mould opens, unless parts of the mould are designed to move from between such overhangs when the mould opens using components called Lifters.


title: Injection moulding

text: Sides of the part that appear parallel with the direction of draw (the axis of the cored position (hole) or insert is parallel to the up and down movement of the mould as it opens and closes) are typically angled slightly, called draft, to ease release of the part from the mould. Insufficient draft can cause deformation or damage. The draft required for mould release is primarily dependent on the depth of the cavity; the deeper the cavity, the more draft necessary. Shrinkage must also be taken into account when determining the draft required. If the skin is too thin, then the moulded part tends to shrink onto the cores that form while cooling and cling to those cores, or the part may warp, twist, blister or crack when the cavity is pulled away.


title: Injection moulding

text: A mould is usually designed so that the moulded part reliably remains on the ejector (B) side of the mould when it opens, and draws the runner and the sprue out of the (A) side along with the parts. The part then falls freely when ejected from the (B) side. Tunnel gates, also known as submarine or mould gates, are located below the parting line or mould surface. An opening is machined into the surface of the mould on the parting line. The moulded part is cut (by the mould) from the runner system on ejection from the mould. Ejector pins, also known as knockout pins, are circular pins placed in either half of the mould (usually the ejector half), which push the finished moulded product, or runner system out of a mould.The ejection of the article using pins, sleeves, strippers, etc., may cause undesirable impressions or distortion, so care must be taken when designing the mould.


title: Injection moulding

text: The standard method of cooling is passing a coolant (usually water) through a series of holes drilled through the mould plates and connected by hoses to form a continuous pathway. The coolant absorbs heat from the mould (which has absorbed heat from the hot plastic) and keeps the mould at a proper temperature to solidify the plastic at the most efficient rate.


title: Injection moulding

text: To ease maintenance and venting, cavities and cores are divided into pieces, called "inserts", and sub-assemblies, also called "inserts", "blocks", or "chase blocks". By substituting interchangeable inserts, one mould may make several variations of the same part.


title: Injection moulding

text: More complex parts are formed using more complex moulds. These may have sections called slides, that move into a cavity perpendicular to the draw direction, to form overhanging part features. When the mould is opened, the slides are pulled away from the plastic part by using stationary “angle pins” on the stationary mould half. These pins enter a slot in the slides and cause the slides to move backward when the moving half of the mould opens. The part is then ejected and the mould closes. The closing action of the mould causes the slides to move forward along the angle pins.


title: Injection moulding

text: A mould can produce several copies of the same parts in a single "shot". The number of "impressions" in the mould of that part is often incorrectly referred to as cavitation. A tool with one impression is often called a single "impression" (cavity) mould. A mould with two or more cavities of the same parts is usually called a multiple "impression" (cavity) mould. (Not to be confused with "Multi-"shot" moulding" {which is dealt with in the next section.}) Some extremely high production volume moulds (like those for bottle caps) can have over 128 cavities.