title: Ricky Jay

text: Jay also lectured at Harvard University, USC, the Grolier Club, the Hammer Museum, Getty Center, and Town Hall Theatre in New York City. In 1999 he guest-curated an exhibit at the Harvard Theater Collection entitled "The Imagery of Illusion: Nineteenth Century Magic and Deception."


title: Ricky Jay

text: Exhibitions of material from his collections have been mounted at the Hammer Museum, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, University of California, Davis, the Christine Burgin Gallery, the Museum of Jurassic Technology, and UCLA's Clark Library. He loaned material to the Getty Center for their exhibit "Devices of Wonder" the Skirball Museum, the Huntington Library, the Whitney Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for an exhibit entitled "Wordplay: Matthias Buchinger's Drawings From the Collection of Ricky Jay" in 2016.


title: Ricky Jay

text: Jay died on November 24, 2018 at age 72. His attorney Stan Coleman confirmed his death; further details were not immediately released. Later press coverage reported that Jay died of natural causes.


title: Ricky Jay

text: Charles McGrath called Jay "perhaps the last of the great 19th-century authors." Jay's last book, "Matthias Buchinger: "The Greatest German Living"", was well-received, called "awe-inspiring" by the "Los Angeles Times" and "beguiling" by the "New York Review of Books".


title: Ricky Jay

text: Ricky Jay contributed to several projects in the music world, most notably the 2007 Sony release "Ricky Jay Plays Poker", a box set containing a CD of poker-related songs (by Bob Dylan, Robert Johnson, Townes Van Zandt, Patsy Cline, Lorne Greene, Howard Da Silva, O.V. Wright, and several others), a DVD featuring Ricky Jay discussing and performing notable feats of card table deception, and a box of Ricky Jay playing cards.


title: Ricky Jay

text: He performed "The Fiddler" with Richard Greene on Hal Willner's sea shanty-compilation "" (2006), as well as "The Chantey of Noah and his Ark (Old School Song)" on its follow-up "" (2013).


title: Ricky Jay

text: He appeared in the music video for Bob Dylan's song "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum," from the album "Love and Theft". During the production of the video, a screwdriver reportedly fell from the rafters and lodged in Jay's hand.


title: Ricky Jay

text: He also appeared in the video for the Jerry Garcia and David Grisman single "The Thrill Is Gone," which is available on the DVD of the "Grateful Dawg" documentary.


title: Fair Warning (Van Halen album)

text: Fair Warning is the fourth studio album by American rock band Van Halen. Released on April 29, 1981, it sold more than two million copies, but was still the band's slowest-selling album of the David Lee Roth era. Despite the album's commercially disappointing sales, "Fair Warning" was met with mostly positive reviews from critics.


title: Fair Warning (Van Halen album)

text: The album's cover artwork features a detail from "The Maze", a painting by Canadian artist William Kurelek, which depicts his tortured youth.


title: Fair Warning (Van Halen album)

text: The album's cover artwork is accompanied by an insert of a black-and-white portrait of the members of the band, in addition to another black-and-white photo of an exterior wall featuring cracked windows and a lyric from the album's opening song "Mean Street" in handwritten graffiti. This second photo was taken by famed rock photographer Neil Zlozower.


title: Fair Warning (Van Halen album)

text: "The Village Voice"'s Robert Christgau rated "Fair Warning" a B−, signifying "a competent or mildly interesting record usually featuring at least three worthwhile cuts." It featured "not just Eddie's latest sound effects, but a few good jokes along with the mean ones and a rhythm section that can handle punk speed emotionally and technically." He also explained "at times Eddie could even be said to play an expressive – lyrical? – role. Of course, what he's expressing is hard to say. Technocracy putting a patina on cynicism".


title: Fair Warning (Van Halen album)

text: A retrospective review by AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine found the album fairly positive. In the review, he initially stated "it's a dark, strange beast, partially because it lacks any song as purely fun as the hits from the first three records" and "whatever the reason, "Fair Warning" winds up as a dark, dirty, nasty piece of work.


title: Fair Warning (Van Halen album)

text: "Dull it is not and "Fair Warning" contains some of the fiercest, hardest music Van Halen ever made. There's little question Eddie Van Halen won whatever internal skirmishes they had, [...] even with the lack of a single dedicated instrumental showcase


title: Fair Warning (Van Halen album)

text: "Nastiness is the defining characteristic of "Fair Warning", which certainly doesn't make it bunches of fun, but it showcases the coiled power of Van Halen better than any other album, which makes it worth visiting on occasion."


title: Fair Warning (Van Halen album)

text: "The Rolling Stone Album Guide", however, gave the album two-and-a-half stars out of five, stating that "the most significant musical development is the synthesizer introduced at the end of "Fair Warning", which would be exploited to greater effect on later albums."


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is a discontinued Android-based phablet designed, developed, produced and marketed by Samsung Electronics. Unveiled on 2 August 2016, it was officially released on 19 August 2016 as a successor to the Galaxy Note 5. It is Samsung's first phone with a USB-C connector, and the last phone in the Galaxy Note series to have a physical home button. Although it is the sixth main device in the Galaxy Note series, Samsung branded its series number as "7" instead of "6" so consumers would not perceive it as being inferior to the flagship Samsung Galaxy S7, and to prevent confusion about the order of release due to the same release year (2016).


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: The Galaxy Note 7 is an evolution of the Galaxy Note 5 that inherited hardware components and improvements from the Galaxy S7, including the restoration of expandable storage and IP68 water resistance, and new features such as a dual-sided curved display, support for high-dynamic-range (HDR) color, improvements to the bundled stylus and new software features which utilize it, an iris recognition system, and a USB-C port. Demand for the Galaxy Note 7 upon launch was high, breaking pre-order records in South Korea and causing international releases to be delayed in some markets due to supply shortages. The Galaxy Note 7 received positive reviews from critics, who praised the quality of its construction, its HDR support, as well as its streamlined user interface, although it was criticized for its high price and increasing similarities in overall specifications to the main Galaxy S series of phones.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: Samsung suspended sales of the Galaxy Note 7 and announced an informal recall on 2 September 2016 after it was found that a manufacturing defect in the phones' batteries caused some of them to generate excessive heat, resulting in fires. After a formal U.S. recall was announced on 15 September 2016, Samsung exchanged the affected phones for a new revision which utilized batteries sourced from a different supplier. However, after reports emerged of incidents where the replacement phones also caught fire, Samsung recalled the Galaxy Note 7 worldwide on 10 October 2016, and permanently ceased production of the device a day later. As a safety precaution, they distributed multi-layer fireproof boxes with packing instructions. Due to the recalls, Samsung issued software updates in some markets that were intended to "eliminate their ability to work as mobile devices", including restricting battery capacity and blocking their ability to connect to wireless networks. Samsung stated that it intends to recycle reusable silicon and components from the recalled models, and release refurbished models "where applicable".


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: The recall had a major impact on Samsung's business in the third quarter of 2016, with the company projecting that its operating profits would be down by 33% in comparison to the previous quarter. Credit Suisse analysts estimated that Samsung would lose at least US$17 billion in revenue from the production and recall of the Galaxy Note 7. In July 2017, nine months after the Note 7 recall, Samsung released a refurbished version of the Galaxy Note 7, known as Galaxy Note Fan Edition (marketed as Samsung Galaxy Note FE). It has a smaller battery of 3200 mAh and is supplied with Android Nougat with Samsung Experience UI, the operating system of the Galaxy S8. The successor to the Galaxy Note 7, the Galaxy Note 8, was announced on 23 August 2017 and released almost a month later.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: The Galaxy Note 7's hardware is similar in overall specifications and design to the Galaxy S7, with a metal and glass chassis, IP68 water resistance, and a microSD card slot.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: The Note 7 is equipped with an octa-core Exynos 8890 system-on-chip in most markets, and 4 GB of RAM. In China, Japan, and the United States, the Note 7 uses the quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 instead (which supports older CDMA networks that are extensively used by wireless carriers in these markets), Unlike the S7, which uses Exynos chips in this market, Canadian models of the Note 7 also use the Snapdragon 820. The Note 7 uses a USB Type-C port, marking Samsung's first mobile phone with the symmetrical connector.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: The Galaxy Note 7 features a 5.7 inches (140 mm) 1440p Super AMOLED display. Similarly to the "Edge" models of the S6 and S7, the display curves over the side bezels of the device; the curvature allows the Note 7 to be 2.2 millimetres (0.087 in) narrower than the Galaxy Note 5. The display supports high-dynamic-range video, and is the first Samsung flagship phone to be coated in Gorilla Glass 5.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: As with all Galaxy Note models, the device is supplied with an active stylus branded as "S Pen". The Note 7 stylus supports 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity and is water resistant.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: The Note 7 features the same 12-megapixel rear-facing camera as the S7, with a "Dual Pixel" image sensor and f/1.7 aperture lens.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: The Galaxy Note 7 also offers an iris recognition system, using a front-facing camera and infrared illumination. The iris scanner can be used for unlocking, and as authentication for other features of the device (such as Samsung Pay and Secure Folder). A fingerprint reader is also embedded in the home button.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: Optional accessories for the device are the "S-View Standing Cover" with a preview window through which basic device functionality is accessible while closed, and a water-resistant battery case which delivers power wirelessly through its Qi interface.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: The Galaxy Note 7 is supplied with Android 6.0.1 "Marshmallow" and an updated version of Samsung's proprietary TouchWiz user interface and software suite codenamed "Project Grace". It features an "always-on display" mode, which can display a clock and notifications on-screen when the device is not in use; different clock styles and support for notifications from third-party apps were added for the "Grace" version. The Screen off memo feature also leverages this mode, allowing users to write notes on the always-on display. The OS also features several new tools supporting the S Pen stylus, including translation, a screen magnifier, and a GIF recording tool. The previous suite of note-taking apps were also consolidated into a single Samsung Notes app.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: The Galaxy Note 7 introduces a security feature known as "Secure Folder"; it allows users to create a private workspace, protected by an authentication method, with separate user data and apps that are sandboxed from the main system. Installed apps can be cloned into Secure Folder, and users can designate whether notifications generated by apps in the Secure Folder are displayed from outside it. Secure Folder is based on the Samsung Knox 2.7 technology, which also added the ability for enterprises to control the distribution of system updates, and improvements to mobile device management and Microsoft Exchange Server integration.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: The device also introduces Samsung Pass, a platform allowing apps to provide biometric authentication using its iris scanner. Samsung reached partnerships with several major U.S. banks to explore the integration of Samsung Pass into their mobile apps.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: Pre-orders for the Galaxy Note 7 opened the day after its unveiling, with a release in the United States on 19 August 2016. Samsung skipped the numbering of the Galaxy Note series directly from "5" to "7" to synchronize it with its flagship Galaxy S series and the Galaxy S7 line. The company stated that consumers may have perceived the Galaxy Note models to be inferior in technology to Galaxy S models because the numbering in their names were one digit lower.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: Pre-orders in South Korea already broke records, with over 200,000 units pre-ordered within two days. Samsung Canada stated that pre-orders in Canada were "outstanding". The demand also forced countries such as Malaysia, the Netherlands, Russia, and Ukraine to delay their releases to September due to supply shortages.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: "TechRadar" said that the Galaxy Note 7's "rich-looking, glass-and-metal-fused design" would "really wow people who are upgrading from those old, plastic-clad Note 4 and Note 3 handsets", but noted that the curved edges of the screen infrequently caused minor issues when using the stylus. The display was considered to be vibrant and well-suited for multimedia, especially due to its HDR support. Aspects of the software were also praised, including the continued trimming of Samsung's TouchWiz suite and its streamlined settings interface, and that it already included features introduced to the stock operating system as of Android 7.0 "Nougat" (although still being initially supplied with Android <nowiki>"</nowiki>Marshmallow<nowiki>"</nowiki>). Of the device's new stylus-oriented features, the consolidated S Notes app, GIF recorder, and always-on display functionality were commended, but the translation tool was considered inferior to Google Translate. The Galaxy Note 7's battery was judged as being capable of one-and-a-half days of normal use, and it was noted that the software also featured numerous estimation and power-saving features. "Techradar" concluded that "if you're going to get out of the stylus, the Note 7 is an obvious choice. The iris scanner doesn't make it a convincing enough buy on its own. Otherwise, save your money and stick with the S7 Edge."


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: "Ars Technica" was critical of the Note 7 due to its similarities to the Galaxy S7. The Note 7's refreshed design was commended for being smoother and more ergonomic than previous Samsung devices with curved screens, although the company was panned for using glass on the rear panel rather than metal. The S Pen was also criticized for feeling "cheap", and was described as a "hollow plastic tube that would feel more at home in a 100-pack of disposable Bic pens than in an ultra-premium $850 smartphone". The iris scanner's implementation was panned for adding additional steps to the process of unlocking the phone in comparison to the fingerprint reader, and that it does not integrate into Android's integrated authentication platforms (making it proprietary to Samsung components). Warnings regarding looking at the sensor for too long were also considered "just a little scary". TouchWiz on the Note 7 was panned for consisting mainly of "'different for the sake of being different' changes that don't add much to the software experience" and make the interface less consistent with third-party software by removing elements of the Material design language. In conclusion, "Ars Technica" doubted whether the Galaxy Note series was still necessary due to its increasing similarities to the main Galaxy S line, and felt that the device was priced too high, citing Chinese vendors capable of undercutting the prices of major brands while still producing phones of similar specifications.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: Upon release, technology journalist David Ruddock of "Android Police" criticized the Samsung Galaxy Note series for no longer being targeted towards power users like it was years prior.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: Ruddock stated that since 2015's Samsung Galaxy Note 5, not much except for the "S Pen" stylus sets the Galaxy Note devices of the year apart from the respective Galaxy S series devices released earlier that year.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: Battery defects caused many Note 7 units to overheat and combust or explode. On 10 October 2016, Samsung permanently discontinued the Galaxy Note 7 due to these repeated incidents.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: In the original run of devices, the battery produced by Samsung SDI contained a design flaw that made electrodes on the top-right of the battery susceptible to bending. This weakened separation between positive and negative tabs of the battery, resulting in thermal runaway and short circuits.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: Following an official recall on 12 September 2016, the Galaxy Note 7 was re-versioned using batteries from China-based Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL or ATL), which also supplies batteries to the iPhone smartphones. On 23 January 2017, Samsung stated that these batteries had suffered from a manufacturing defect in the welding process, which pushed electrodes up and caused damage to the separation between the positive and negative tabs. Some batteries were also missing insulation tape entirely. Samsung reported that these oversights resulted from the vendor's push to ramp up production of batteries for the replacement phones in order to meet demand.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: Due to the battery defects, the device was considered a hazmat product, and was prohibited from being taken onboard at many airlines and bus stations.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: Eventually, Samsung released two updates for the Note 7, one that activated a 60% charge limit and then a 0% charge limit that made the phone unusable even though the charge limit can be removed by erasing the phone and downgrading it to Version 1, the stock release.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: On 31 August 2016, it was reported that Samsung was delaying shipments of the Galaxy Note 7 in some regions in order to perform "additional tests being conducted for product quality"; this came alongside user reports of batteries exploding while charging. On 1 September, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported that Samsung was preparing to recall the device worldwide due to these battery issues. On 2 September, Samsung suspended sales of the Galaxy Note 7 and announced an informal recall after it was found that a manufacturing defect in the phones' batteries had caused some of them to generate excessive heat, resulting in fires and explosions. A formal U.S. recall was announced on 15 September 2016. Samsung exchanged the affected phones for a new revision which utilized batteries sourced from a different supplier. However, after reports emerged of incidents where these replacement phones also caught fire, Samsung recalled the Galaxy Note 7 worldwide on 10 October 2016, and permanently ceased production of the device a day later. Due to the recalls, Samsung has issued software updates in some markets that are intended to "eliminate their ability to work as mobile devices", including restricting battery capacity, and blocking their ability to connect to wireless networks.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: A Samsung spokesperson stated that the company had received 35 reports of battery failure, which "account for less than 0.1 percent of the entire volume sold". Samsung stated that the hazard was limited to a small fraction of phones manufactured, and released a tool on its website on 19 September to identify affected units by their unique IMEI numbers.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: On 8 September 2016, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an advisory warning passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft. The European Aviation Safety Agency made a similar statement on 9 September, stating that "passengers are reminded of the need to inform the cabin crew when a device is damaged, hot, produces smoke, is lost, or falls into the seat structure."


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: On 15 September 2016, the Galaxy Note 7 was officially recalled in the United States by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, who advised all owners to shut down and cease all usage of the device and return them in exchange for a replacement. On 13 September, Samsung announced in newspaper advertisements that it would release a software patch to the affected Galaxy Note 7 devices in South Korea, which prevents the device from being charged beyond 60% capacity to reduce the risk of combustion.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: The Galaxy Note 7 was subsequently reissued with batteries supplied by Chinese company Amperex Technology Limited (which also serves as the main battery supplier for the iPhone line). These replacement models, which Samsung purportedly classified as being safe, had a prominent marking on their packaging to distinguish them from the first wave of recalled units and render all software battery indicators with green icons. Samsung was granted special permission by Google to allow this change, as it would normally violate the requirements of the Android Compatibility Definition Document (which must be met to license Google Mobile Services software and Android trademarks) for all status bar icons to only be rendered in white. Following the announcement of the recall, Verizon Wireless released a software update to Galaxy Note 7 units purchased from the carrier, which displays the aforementioned green icons on safe devices and an embedded recall notice on affected devices when the device is plugged in. Unlike the South Korean update, it does not include a charging cut-off.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: Samsung reported that 80% of devices had been replaced in South Korea, and roughly 50% in Europe and North America. Only 10% of devices in the U.S. were returned, with about 50,000 units traded for a different model. However, Samsung stated that 95% of users chose to maintain their loyalty to the company.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: In October 2016, several incidents occurred in which replacement Galaxy Note 7 phones still suffered from battery failure and combustion. A Galaxy Note 7 owner in Kentucky was hospitalized with acute bronchitis due to smoke inhalation after his replacement device caught fire in the early morning of 4 October 2016. The owner told a local television station that he had received a text message not meant for him from a Samsung customer service representative, which read, "Just now got this. I can try and slow him down if we think it will matter, or we just let him do what he keeps threatening to do and see if he does it".


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: On 5 October 2016, a Southwest Airlines flight preparing to depart from Louisville was evacuated before takeoff when a passenger's replacement Galaxy Note 7, obtained from an AT&T retail outlet, began smoking and popping as they were turning it off. Samsung stated that they were working with the airline to investigate the incident, but said they would be unable to confirm whether the device was a replacement until it was recovered.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: On 7 October 2016, a third replacement phone in Minnesota reportedly caught fire in a similar manner.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: In response to incidents involving replacement phones, the United States' five major wireless carriers (AT&T Mobility and T-Mobile US on 9 October, along with Sprint Corporation, Verizon Wireless, and U.S. Cellular on 10 October) subsequently announced that they would suspend sales of the Galaxy Note 7 until further notice, pending an investigation.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: On 10 October 2016, Samsung officially announced that it had "[asked] all carrier and retail partners globally to stop sales and exchanges" of the Galaxy Note 7, and urged all owners to power them off and "take advantage of the remedies available, including a refund at their place of purchase". A day later, Samsung announced it would permanently cease production of the Galaxy Note 7 in the interest of customer safety. Samsung began issuing special kits to package the devices for returns, which consist of an antistatic bag that the phone is to be inserted into, and three layers of boxes—the last of which is lined with ceramic fibre paper for fire protection. The shipping box also contains instructions explicitly stating that they are not to be shipped by air. Samsung told Vice's "Motherboard" that it would not repair or refurbish any of the returned phones but would "safely dispose" of them.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: Following Samsung's actions, the Rwanda Utilities and Regulatory Authority and the United States' Consumer Product Safety Commission issued official recalls of all Galaxy Note 7 units, banning the sale and distribution of any Note 7 phone within both countries. The Royal Mail and the British courier company Parcelforce announced they would not accept or deliver any parcels containing a Galaxy Note 7. Online marketplaces eBay and Gumtree also began to pull listings selling Galaxy Note 7 devices. After the suspension of sales, Oculus VR issued an update to its software for the Samsung Gear VR virtual reality headset, which blocks its use with the Galaxy Note 7 for safety reasons. The headset had been included with some units of the phone as a promotional offer.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: On 14 October 2016, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration banned the Note 7 from being taken aboard any airline flight, even if powered off. Qantas, Virgin Australia and Garuda Indonesia issued similar bans, while Transport Canada issued a notice stating that the Note 7 was banned from flights under Special Provision 137 prohibitions, banning the carriage of damaged or defective lithium-ion batteries onto flights. In response to these air travel bans, Samsung announced it would set up dedicated kiosks at selected airports in order to allow travelers to exchange or receive a refund for their Galaxy Note 7 on-site before departing, rather than having it confiscated by security or airport staff.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: On 20 December 2016, a Virgin America flight from San Francisco to Boston was nearly diverted mid-flight after it was discovered that a passenger on the plane had been operating a Wi-Fi hotspot with the SSID "Samsung Galaxy Note7_1097". However, it was later discovered that the hotspot was a hoax and that no passenger had actually brought a Galaxy Note 7 onboard.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: On 4 November 2016, the New Zealand Telecommunications Forum announced it would ban all Galaxy Note 7 phones from use on local mobile networks beginning on 18 November, enforced via IMEI blacklist. On 30 November, Samsung announced that Galaxy Note 7 devices would be banned from Australian wireless networks effective 15 December 2016.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: In December 2016, Samsung announced its intent to cripple the functionality of unreturned Galaxy Note 7 phones in Canada and the United States via software updates. In Canada, an update restricted charge capacity and blocked the phone from connecting to any wireless networks or using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. In the United States, the update blocked the devices from being recharged in order to "eliminate their ability to work as mobile devices".


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: Verizon announced that it would refuse to distribute this update due to the "added risk this could pose to Galaxy Note 7 users that do not have another device to switch to" because it would "make it impossible to contact family, first responders or medical professionals in an emergency situation", especially during the holiday season. On 18 December 2016, Verizon announced they would be distributing the update on 5 January 2017. Sprint also said it would not distribute this update until January 2017. Verizon later announced it would redirect all outgoing calls (excluding emergency calls) made on unreturned Galaxy Note 7 devices to a service hotline demanding that they be returned, and threatened to charge customers a fee equaling the total retail cost of the phone if they refused to comply.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: On 9 January 2017, Samsung released another update in South Korea which blocked the device from being charged beyond 15%.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: On 24 March 2017, Samsung released another update for South Korean users, barring charging of the Galaxy Note 7.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: "The Verge" panned Samsung's overall handling of the battery faults and recall, arguing that the company had initially delivered unclear messaging over whether or not the devices were still safe to use, as well as its slow communication with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which had the capacity to issue an official recall in the United States. The arguments were based on data released on 13 September 2016 by the research firm Apteligent, which stated that Galaxy Note 7 usage had been "almost exactly the same" since the announcement of the exchange program. "The Verge" also noted that the U.S. government's ban on taking Galaxy Note 7 phones aboard airline flights was "perhaps unprecedented", acknowledging that only the ban of hoverboards by individual airlines for similar reasons—an entire class of products (albeit one that was "admittedly fire-prone because of cheap materials")—came close to a legal ban for a single consumer product in terms of overall magnitude. Kyle Weins of "Wired" felt that Samsung switched to non-removable batteries in order to imitate the industrial design of Apple after having used removable batteries on many of its past models, such as the Galaxy Note 4. He argued that this design decision exacerbated the battery faults of the Note 7 by requiring users to replace the entire phone instead of only the battery. He suggested that Samsung could "lead the pack" in the future by switching back to removable batteries, as with other "responsible" OEMs such as HP and LG Electronics.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: Analysts argued that the recall had hurt Samsung's brand, and would likely result in the company losing its market share to competitors, including Apple and Google (which had recently unveiled their respective iPhone 7 and Pixel models) and other Android vendors. Credit Suisse analysts predicted that the recall and discontinuation would result in Samsung losing nearly US$17 billion in revenue. On 12 October 2016, Samsung revised its earnings forecast for the third quarter of 2016, estimating a 33% drop in operating profits in comparison to the second quarter of 2016, and revenue expectations cut by ₩2 trillion to ₩47 trillion (US$41.8 billion).


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: On 18 October 2016, McCuneWright LLP sued Samsung and filed a proposed class-action lawsuit over its handling of the recall, stating that the company had "failed to reimburse consumers for monthly costs associated with owning an unusable Note 7". Samsung was also panned by customers affected by the exploding phones, who alleged that the company refused to compensate them for property damage caused by the explosions.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: In the wake of the recall, Samsung, along with UL LLC, Exponent, and TÜV Rheinland, performed internal testing and analysis to determine the exact causes of the defects. Samsung released its official findings on 23 January 2017. The investigation found that the battery failures were caused by short-circuiting of the battery electrodes as a result of manufacturing defects. For the original batteries this was due to the electrodes touching at a fold of the battery layers, whereas for the batteries after the first recall, the separator sheet could be punctured by welding defects. Concurrently, the company announced that all of its future battery-operated products would be subject to an "enhanced" eight-point inspection and testing protocol, including stricter visual inspections, as well as charge and discharge tests, Total Volatile Organic Compound tests, and accelerated usage tests. An advisory board of academics was also formed.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: Concerns were also raised over the creation of electronic waste resulting from Samsung's announced plan to destroy all returned phones rather than recycling and refurbishing them into new products. In February 2017, "Korea Economic Daily" reported that Samsung had been considering refurbishing the Galaxy Note 7 into a modified version with lower battery capacity to be targeted at markets such as Vietnam. A representative of Samsung India denied these reports. Greenpeace disrupted a press conference by Samsung at Mobile World Congress to protest the company's unclear plans for the recalled devices. On 27 March 2017, Samsung announced that it intended to extract reusable parts such as metal, semiconductors, and cameras from the recalled devices, and market refurbished devices "where applicable".


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: After the discontinuation of the Note 7, some features in the device (such as Samsung Pass, Secure Folder, S Pen related features, and Grace UX) were eventually made available in Android Marshmallow (e.g. Galaxy A8 (2016), Galaxy A (2017) series and Galaxy Tab A 10.1 (2016)) and Nougat (e.g. Galaxy Note 5 (via software update), Galaxy S8/S8+ and Galaxy C Pro series).


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: In June 2017, the "Wall Street Journal" reported on Samsung's plan to refurbish its inventory of recalled phones and release them with a new model designation of Galaxy Note FE, the "FE" being an abbreviation of "Fan Edition". The phone was also rumored to be named the Note 7R, with the "R" standing for "refurbished". This phone was released in South Korea on 7 July 2017, with limited availability in other countries to follow, and a price of $610; being a $255 discount from the price of the Note 7.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: The Fan Edition has a smaller battery of 3200 mAh and multiple safety features. The software is identical to that of the S8, featuring a similar UI, and includes Bixby home and reminders but not the entire Bixby assistant. Samsung introduced an eight-point battery check after the Note 7 to make sure all of their batteries were safe for new and current devices in production. There have been no reported incidents of an S8 or S8+ catching fire after their release as the first new flagship device to go through the eight-point battery check, nor have there been reports of the Note 8 catching fire.


title: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

text: After the Fan Edition was released in South Korea, the Galaxy Note FE was also released in select countries in Asia and Saudi Arabia starting in October 2017.


title: Searching for Sugar Man

text: Searching for Sugar Man is a 2012 documentary film about a South African cultural phenomenon, written and directed by Malik Bendjelloul, which details the efforts in the late 1990s of two Cape Town fans, Stephen "Sugar" Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom, to find out whether the rumoured death of American musician Sixto Rodriguez was true and, if not, to discover what had become of him. Rodriguez's music, which had never achieved success in the United States, had become very popular in South Africa, although little was known about him in that country.


title: Searching for Sugar Man

text: On 10 February 2013, the film won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary at the 66th British Academy Film Awards in London and two weeks later, it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 85th Academy Awards in Hollywood.


title: Searching for Sugar Man

text: Initially using Super 8 film to record stylised shots for the film, director Malik Bendjelloul ran out of money for more film to record the final few shots. After three years of cutting-room work the main financial backers of the film threatened to withdraw funding to finish it. He resorted to filming the remaining stylised shots on his smartphone using an iPhone app called 8mm Vintage Camera.


title: Searching for Sugar Man

text: "Searching for Sugar Man" was the opening film at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2012, where it won the Special Jury Prize and the Audience Award for best international documentary. It was released in the United Kingdom on 26 July 2012, and had a limited release (New York and Los Angeles) in the United States the following day.


title: Searching for Sugar Man

text: "Searching for Sugar Man" performed well during its theatrical release, earning $3,696,196 at the US box office (47th of all US docs on Box Office Mojo).


title: Searching for Sugar Man

text: "Searching for Sugar Man" has received widespread critical acclaim. The film holds a 95% rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 8/10, based on reviews from 133 critics. The site's critical consensus reads, "A fascinating portrait of a forgotten musical pioneer, "Searching for Sugar Man" is by turns informative and mysterious." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 79 out of 100 based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Searching for Sugar Man

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film a glowing four-star review, writing "I hope you're able to see this film...and yes, it exists because we need for it to." "The New York Times" critic Manohla Dargis also wrote a positive review, calling the film "a hugely appealing documentary about fans, faith and an enigmatic Age of Aquarius musician who burned bright and hopeful before disappearing." Dargis subsequently named "Searching for Sugar Man" one of the 10 best films of 2012.


title: Searching for Sugar Man

text: The film's narrative of a South African story about an American musician omits that Rodriguez was successful in Australia in the 1970s and toured there in 1979 and 1981. Because of this omission some critics have called the documentary "myth-making". However, the film focuses on his mysterious reputation in South Africa and the attempts of music historians there to track him down in the mid-1990s. South Africans were unaware of his Australian success due to the harsh censorship enacted by the apartheid regime coupled with international sanctions that made any communication with the outside world on the subject of banned artists virtually impossible.


title: Searching for Sugar Man

text: The film was also the recipient of the Australian Film Critics Association award for Best Documentary of 2012, beating locally produced musical documentary "All the Way Through Evening".


title: Searching for Sugar Man

text: "Searching for Sugar Man" is a 2012 soundtrack album from the documentary containing a compilation of songs by Rodriguez from his two studio albums. It reached No. 3 in Sweden in early 2013 when the Academy Award nomination was announced, and had been in the charts for 26 weeks by the time it received the award in February 2013. In Denmark it reached No. 18 and in New Zealand it reached No. 24.


title: Fárbauti

text: Fárbauti (Old Norse: ) is a jötunn in Norse mythology. In all sources, he is portrayed as the father of Loki. Fárbauti is attested in the "Prose Edda", written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, and in kennings of Viking Age skalds.


title: Fárbauti

text: The Old Norse name has been translated as 'dangerous striker', 'anger striker', or 'sudden-striker'. It is a compound formed with the noun ('hostility, danger, unfortunateness, falseness') attached to the verb ('to strike').


title: Fárbauti

text: Two 10th-century skalds call Loki "son of Fárbauti", using, however, the poetic word "mögr" for 'son' rather than the usual "sonr".


title: Fárbauti

text: The skald Úlfr Uggason is quoted referring to Loki as "Fárbauti's terribly sly son", and the skald Þjóðólfr of Hvinir mentions Loki as "Fárbauti's son".


title: Fárbauti

text: In "Gylfaginning" ('The Beguiling of Gylfi'), the enthroned figure of High states that Loki is the son of the jötunn Fárbauti, and that "Laufey or Nál is his mother".


title: Fárbauti

text: In "Skáldskaparmál" ('The Language of Poetry'), Fárbauti is mentioned among kennings referring to his son Loki.


title: Fárbauti

text: Axel Kock has proposed Fárbauti's name and character may have been inspired by the observation of the natural phenomena surrounding the appearance of wildfire. If "Fárbauti" as "dangerous striker" refers to "lightning", the figure would appear to be part of an early nature myth alluding to wildfire (Loki) being produced by lightning (Fárbauti) striking dry tinder such as leaves (Laufey) or pine needles (Nál).


title: Fárbauti

text: Although only indirectly attested in a kenning of "Völuspá" ('Prophecy of the Völva') mentioning Loki as "Byleist’s brother", some scholars have considered Loki's brothers Helblindi and Býleistr to also be sons of Fárbauti. However, their exact role in the presumably ancient mythic complex surrounding Loki's family remains largely unclear.


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Rāšid ibn Ḥammād, (; ) commonly known as Ahmad ibn Fadlan, was a 10th-century Muslim traveler, famous for his account of his travels as a member of an embassy of the Abbasid caliph, al-Muqtadir of Baghdad, to the king of the Volga Bulgars, known as his ("account" or "journal").


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: His account is most notable for providing a detailed description of the Volga Vikings, including eyewitness accounts of life as part of a trade caravan and witnessing a ship burial. He also notably described the lifestyle of the Oghuz turks while the Khazaria, Cumans, and Pechnegs were still around.


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: Ibn Fadlan's detailed writings have been cited by numerous historians. They have also inspired entertainment works, including Michael Crichton's novel "Eaters of the Dead" and its film adaptation "The 13th Warrior".


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: Ahmad ibn Fadlan was described as an Arab in contemporaneous sources. However, the "Encyclopedia of Islam" and Richard N. Frye add that nothing can be said with certainty about his origin, his ethnicity, his education, or even the dates of his birth and death.


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: Primary source documents and historical texts show that Ahmad Ibn Fadlan was a "faqih", an expert in Islamic jurisprudence and faith, in the court of the Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir. It appears certain from his writing that prior to his departure on his historic mission, he had already been serving for some time in the court of al-Muqtadir. Other than the fact that he was both a traveler and a theologian in service of the Abbasid Caliphate, little is known about Ahmad Ibn Fadlan prior to 921 and his self-reported travels.


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: Ibn Fadlan was sent from Baghdad in 921 to serve as the secretary to an ambassador from the Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir to the iltäbär (vassal-king under the Khazars) of the Volga Bulgaria, Almış.


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: On 21 June 921 (11 "safar" AH 309), a diplomatic party led by Susan al-Rassi, a eunuch in the caliph's court, left Baghdad. Primarily, the purpose of their mission was to explain Islamic law to the recently converted Bulgar peoples living on the eastern bank of the Volga River in what is now Russia. Additionally, the embassy was sent in response to a request by the king of the Volga Bulgars to help them against their enemies, the Khazars. Ibn Fadlan served as the group's religious advisor and lead counselor for Islamic religious doctrine and law.


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: Ahmad Ibn Fadlan and the diplomatic party utilized established caravan routes toward Bukhara, now part of Uzbekistan, but instead of following that route all the way to the east, they turned northward in what is now northeastern Iran. Leaving the city of Gurgan near the Caspian Sea, they crossed lands belonging to a variety of Turkic peoples, notably the Khazar Khaganate, Oghuz Turks on the east coast of the Caspian, the Pechenegs on the Ural River and the Bashkirs in what is now central Russia, but the largest portion of his account is dedicated to the Rus, i.e. the Varangians (Vikings) on the Volga trade route. All told, the delegation covered some 4000 kilometers (2500 mi).


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: When they arrived, Ibn Fadlan read aloud a letter from the caliph to the Bulgar Khan and presented him with gifts from the caliphate. At the meeting with the Bulgar ruler, Ibn Fadlan delivered the caliph's letter, but was criticized for not bringing with him the promised money from the caliph to build a fortress as defense against enemies of the Bulgars.


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: For a long time, only an incomplete version of the account was known, transmitted as quotations in the geographical dictionary of Yāqūt (under the headings Atil, Bashgird, Bulghār, Khazar, Khwārizm, Rūs), published in 1823 by Christian Martin Frähn.


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: Only in 1923 was a manuscript discovered by Zeki Velidi Togan in the Astane Quds Museum, Mashhad, Iran. The manuscript, Razawi Library MS 5229, dates from the 13th century (7th century Hijra) and consists of 420 pages (210 folia). Besides other geographical treatises, it contains a fuller version of Ibn Fadlan's text (pp. 390–420). Additional passages not preserved in MS 5229 are quoted in the work of the 16th century Persian geographer Amīn Rāzī called "Haft Iqlīm" ("Seven Climes").


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: Neither source seems to record Ibn Fadlān's complete report. Yāqūt offers excerpts, and several times claims that Ibn Fadlān also recounted his return to Bagdad, but does not quote such material. Meanwhile, the text in Razawi Library MS 5229 breaks off part way through describing the Khazars.


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: One noteworthy aspect of the Volga Bulgars that Ibn Fadlan focused on was their religion and the institution of Islam in these territories. The Bulgar king had invited religious instruction as a gesture of homage to the Abbasids in exchange for financial and military support, and Ibn Fadlan's mission as a "faqih" was one of proselytization as well as diplomacy.


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: For example, Ibn Fadlan details in his encounter that the Volga Bulgar Khan commits an error in his prayer exhortations by repeating the prayer twice. One scholar calls it an "illuminating episode" in the text where Ibn Fadlan expresses his great anger and disgust over the fact that the Khan and the Volga Bulgars in general are practicing some form of imperfect and doctrinally unsound Islam. In general, Ibn Fadlan recognized and judged the peoples of central Eurasia he encountered by the possession and practice of Islam, along with their efforts put forth to utilize, implement, and foster Islamic faith and social practice in their respective society. Consequently, many of the peoples and societies to Ibn Fadlan were "like asses gone astray. They have no religious bonds with God, nor do they have recourse to reason".


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: A substantial portion of Ibn Fadlan's account is dedicated to the description of a people he called the "Rūs" (روس) or "Rūsiyyah". Though the identification of the people Ibn Fadlān describes is uncertain, they are generally assumed to be Volga Vikings; the traders were likely of Scandinavian origin while their crews also included Finns, Slavs, and others. The Rūs appear as traders who set up shop on the river banks nearby the Bolğar camp. They are described as having bodies tall as (date) palm-trees, with blond hair and ruddy skin. Each is tattooed from "the tips of his toes to his neck" with dark blue or dark green "designs" and all men are armed with an axe, sword and long knife.


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: Ibn Fadlan describes the Rus as "perfect" physical specimens and the hygiene of the "Rūsiyyah" as disgusting and shameless, especially regarding to sex (which they perform openly even in groups), and considers them vulgar and unsophisticated. In that, his account contrasts with that of the Persian traveler Ibn Rustah, whose impressions of the Rus were more favourable, although it has been attributed to a possibly intentional mistranslation with the original texts being more in line with Ibn Fadlan's narrative. He also describes in great detail the funeral of one of their chieftains (a ship burial involving human sacrifice). Some scholars believe that it took place in the modern Balymer complex.


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: Ibn Fadlān is a major character in Michael Crichton's 1976 novel "Eaters of the Dead", which draws heavily on Ibn Fadlān's writings in its opening passages. In the 1999 film adaptation of the novel, "The 13th Warrior", Ibn Fadlān is played by Antonio Banderas.


title: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

text: Samirah "Sam" al-Abbas, a main character from "Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard", as well as her betrothed, Amir Fadlan, are said to be descendants of Ahmad ibn Fadlan.


title: Spacewar!

text: Spacewar! is a space combat video game developed in 1962 by Steve Russell in collaboration with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders, Steve Piner, and others. It was written for the newly installed DEC PDP-1 minicomputer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After its initial creation, "Spacewar!" was expanded further by other students and employees of universities in the area, including Dan Edwards and Peter Samson. It was also spread to many of the few dozen installations of the PDP-1 computer, making "Spacewar!" the first known video game to be played at multiple computer installations.


title: Spacewar!

text: The game features two spaceships, "the needle" and "the wedge", engaged in a dogfight while maneuvering in the gravity well of a star. Both ships are controlled by human players. Each ship has limited weaponry and fuel for maneuvering, and the ships remain in motion even when the player is not accelerating. Flying near the star to provide a gravity assist was a common tactic. Ships are destroyed when they collide with a torpedo, the star, or each other. At any time, the player can engage a hyperspace feature to move to a new and random location on the screen, though in some versions each use has an increasing chance of destroying the ship instead. The game was initially controlled with switches on the PDP-1, though Bob Saunders built an early gamepad to reduce the difficulty and awkwardness of controlling the game.


title: Spacewar!

text: "Spacewar!" is one of the most important and influential games in the early history of video games. It was extremely popular in the small programming community in the 1960s and the public domain code was widely ported to and recreated on other computer systems at the time, especially after computer systems with monitors became more widespread towards the end of the decade. It has also been recreated in more modern programming languages for PDP-1 emulators. It directly inspired many other electronic games, such as the first commercial arcade video games, "Galaxy Game" and "Computer Space" (1971), and later games such as "Asteroids" (1979). In 2007, "Spacewar!" was named to a list of the ten most important video games of all time, which formed the start of the game canon at the Library of Congress, and in 2018 it was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame by The Strong and the International Center for the History of Electronic Games.


title: Spacewar!

text: During the 1950s, various computer games were created in the context of academic computer and programming research and for demonstrations of computing power, especially after the introduction later in the decade of smaller and faster computers on which programs could be created and run in real time as opposed to being executed on a schedule. A few programs, however, were intended both to showcase the power of the computer they ran on and as entertainment products; these were generally created by undergraduate and graduate students and university employees, such as at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where staff and students were allowed on occasion to develop programs for the TX-0 experimental computer. These interactive graphical games were created by a community of programmers, many of them students and university employees affiliated with the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC), led by Alan Kotok, Peter Samson, and Bob Saunders. The games included "Tic-Tac-Toe", which used a light pen to play a simple game of noughts and crosses against the computer, and "Mouse in the Maze", which used a light pen to set up a maze of walls for a virtual mouse to traverse.


title: Spacewar!

text: In September 1961, a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-1 minicomputer was installed in the "kludge room" on the 2nd floor of Building 26, the location of the MIT Electrical Engineering Department. The PDP-1 was to complement the older TX-0, and like it had a punched tape reader and writer, and additionally accepted input from a panel of switches and could output to a cathode-ray tube display. Over the summer before its arrival a group of students and university employees had been pondering ideas for programs that would demonstrate the new computer's capabilities in a compelling way. Three of them—Steve Russell, then an employee at Harvard University and a former research assistant at MIT; Martin Graetz, a research assistant and former student at MIT; and Wayne Wiitanen, a research assistant at Harvard and former employee and student at MIT—came up with the idea for "Spacewar!". They referred to their collaboration as the "Hingham Institute" as Graetz and Wiitanen were living in a tenement building on Hingham Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "We had this brand new PDP-1", Steve Russell told "Rolling Stone" in a 1972 interview. "Somebody [Marvin Minsky] had built some little pattern-generating programs which made interesting patterns like a kaleidoscope. Not a very good demonstration. Here was this display that could do all sorts of good things! So we started talking about it, figuring what would be interesting displays. We decided that probably you could make a two-dimensional maneuvering sort of thing, and decided that naturally the obvious thing to do was spaceships."


title: Spacewar!

text: The gameplay of "Spacewar!" involves two monochrome spaceships called "the needle" and "the wedge", each controlled by a player, attempting to shoot one another while maneuvering on a two-dimensional plane in the gravity well of a star, set against the backdrop of a starfield. The ships fire torpedoes, which are not affected by the gravitational pull of the star. The ships have a limited number of torpedoes and supply of fuel, which is used when the player fires the ship's thrusters. Torpedoes are fired one at a time by flipping a toggle switch on the computer or pressing a button on the control pad, and there is a cooldown period between launches. The ships remain in motion even when the player is not accelerating, and rotating the ships does not change the direction of their motion, though the ships can rotate at a constant rate without inertia.


title: Spacewar!

text: Each player controls one of the ships and must attempt to shoot down the other ship while avoiding a collision with the star or the opposing ship. Flying near the star can provide a gravity assist to the player at the risk of misjudging the trajectory and falling into the star. If a ship moves past one edge of the screen, it reappears on the other side in a wraparound effect. A hyperspace feature, or "panic button", can be used as a last-ditch means to evade enemy torpedoes by moving the player's ship to another location on the screen after it disappears for a few seconds, but the reentry from hyperspace occurs at a random location, and in some versions there is an increasing probability of the ship exploding with each use.


title: Spacewar!

text: Player controls include clockwise and counterclockwise rotation, forward thrust, firing torpedoes, and hyperspace. Initially, these were controlled using the front-panel test switches on the PDP-1 minicomputer, with four switches for each player, but these proved to be awkward to use and wore out quickly under normal gameplay, as well as causing players to accidentally flip the computer's control and power switches. The location of the switches also left one player off to one side of the CRT display due to the limited space in front of the computer, which left them at a disadvantage. To alleviate these problems, Saunders created a detached control device, essentially an early gamepad. The gamepad had a switch for turning left or right, another for forward thrust or hyperspace, and a torpedo launch button. The button was silent so that the opposing player would not have a warning that the player was attempting to fire a torpedo during a cooldown period.


title: Spacewar!

text: Russell, Graetz and Wiitanen developed the basic "Spacewar!" concept in the summer of 1961, in anticipation of the PDP-1 being installed. Russell had recently finished reading the "Lensman" series by E. E. "Doc" Smith and thought the stories would make a good basis for the program. "His heroes had a strong tendency to get pursued by the villain across the galaxy and have to invent their way out of their problem while they were being pursued. That sort of action was the thing that suggested "Spacewar!". He had some very glowing descriptions of spaceship encounters and space fleet maneuvers." Other influences cited by fellow programmer Martin Graetz include E. E. Smith's "Skylark" novels and Japanese pulp fiction "tokusatsu" movies.


title: Spacewar!

text: For the first few months after its installation, the PDP-1 programming community at MIT focused on simpler programs to work out how to create software for the computer. During this period, Russell visited his old friends in the community frequently and described the "Spacewar!" concept to them. Russell hoped someone would implement the game, but had no plans to do so himself. Other members of the community felt he was the logical choice to create the game, however, and began pressuring him to program it. In response, Russell began providing various excuses as to why he could not do so. One of these was the lack of a trigonometric function routine needed to calculate the trajectories of the spacecraft. This prompted Alan Kotok of the TMRC to call DEC, who informed him that they had such a routine already written. Kotok drove to DEC to pick up a tape containing the code, slammed it down in front of Russell, and asked what other excuses he had. Russell, later explaining that "I looked around and I didn't find an excuse, so I had to settle down and do some figuring", started writing the code around the time that the PDP-1's display was installed at the end of December 1961. The game was developed to meet three precepts Russell, Graetz, and Wiitanen had developed for creating a program that functioned equally well as an entertainment experience for the players and as a demonstration for spectators: to use as much of the computer's resources as possible, to be consistently interesting and therefore have every run be different, and to be entertaining and therefore a game. It took Russell, with assistance from the other programmers—including Bob Saunders and Steve Piner (but not Wiitanen, who had been called up by the United States Army Reserve)—about 200 total hours to write the first version of "Spacewar!", or around six weeks to develop the basic game. It was written in the PDP-1's assembly language.


title: Spacewar!

text: Russell had a program with a movable dot before the end of January 1962, and an early operational game with rotatable spaceships by February. The two spaceships were designed to evoke the curvy spaceship from Buck Rogers stories and the PGM-11 Redstone rocket. That early version also contained a randomly generated background star field, initially added by Russell because a blank background made it difficult to tell the relative motion of the two spaceships at slow speeds. The programming community in the area, including the Hingham Institute and the TMRC, had developed what was later termed the "hacker ethic", whereby all programs were freely shared and modified by other programmers in a collaborative environment without concern for ownership or copyright, which led to a group effort to elaborate on Russell's initial "Spacewar!" game. Consequently, since the inaccuracy and lack of realism in the starfield annoyed TMRC member Peter Samson, he wrote a program based on real star charts that scrolled slowly through the night sky, including every star in a band between 22.5° N and 22.5° S down to the fifth magnitude, displayed at their relative brightness. The program was called "Expensive Planetarium"—referring to the high price of the PDP-1 computer compared to an analog planetarium, as part of the series of "expensive" programs like Piner's Expensive Typewriter—and was quickly incorporated into the game in March by Russell, who served as the collator of the primary version of the game.


title: Spacewar!

text: The initial version of the game also did not include the central star gravity well or the hyperspace feature; they were written by MIT graduate student and TMRC member Dan Edwards and Graetz respectively to add elements of a strategy to what initially was a shooter game of pure reflexes. Russell had previously wanted to add gravity, but was unable to get the program to perform the calculations fast enough; Edwards optimized the drawing functions to free up processing time to calculate the effects of gravity. The initial version of the hyperspace function was limited to three jumps, but carried no risk save possibly re-entering the game in a dangerous position; later versions removed the limit but added the increasing risk of destroying the ship instead of moving it. Additionally, in March 1962, Saunders created gamepads for the game, to counter "Space War Elbow" from sitting hunched over the mainframe toggles. The game was a multiplayer-only game because the computer had no resources left over to handle controlling the other ship. Similarly, other proposed additions to the game such as a more refined explosion display upon the destruction of a spaceship and having the torpedoes also be affected by gravity had to be abandoned as there were not enough computer resources to handle them while smoothly running the game. One feature, having the speed and direction of torpedoes differ slightly with each shot, was added and then removed by Russell after player complaints. With the added features and changes in place, Russell and the other programmers shifted focus from developing the game to preparing to show it off to others such as at the MIT Science Open House at the end of April 1962. The group added a time limit, the hyperspace function, and a larger, second screen for viewers at the demonstration, and in May Graetz presented a paper about the game, "SPACEWAR! Real-Time Capability of the PDP-1", at the first meeting of the Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society. The demonstration was a success, and the game proved very popular at MIT; the laboratory that hosted the PDP-1 soon banned play except during lunch and after working hours. Visitors such as Frederik Pohl, the editor of "Galaxy Science Fiction", enjoyed playing the "lovely game" and wrote that MIT was "borrowing from the science-fiction magazines", with players able to pretend to be "Skylark" characters.


title: Spacewar!

text: Beginning in mid-1962 and continuing over the next few years, members of the PDP-1 programming community at MIT, including Russell and the other Hingham Institute members, began to spread out to other schools and employers such as Stanford University and DEC, and as they did they spread the game to other universities and institutions with a PDP-1 computer. As a result, "Spacewar!" was perhaps the first video game to be available outside a single research institute. Over the next decade, programmers at these other institutions began coding their own variants, including features such as allowing more ships and players at once, replacing the hyperspace feature with a cloaking device, space mines, and even a first-person perspective version played on two screens that simulates each pilot's view out of the cockpit. Some of these "Spacewar!" installations also replicated Saunders' gamepad. DEC learned about the game soon after its creation, and gave demonstrations of it running on their PDP-1, as well as publishing a brochure about the game and the computer in 1963. According to a second-hand account heard by Russell while working at DEC, "Spacewar!" was reportedly used as a smoke test by DEC technicians on new PDP-1 systems before shipping because it was the only available program that exercised every aspect of the hardware. Although the game was widespread for the era, it was still very limited in its direct reach: while less expensive than most mainframe computers, the PDP-1 was priced at and only 53 were ever sold, most without a monitor and many of the remainder to secure military locations or research labs with no free computer time, which prevented the original "Spacewar!" from reaching beyond a narrow, academic audience. Though some later DEC models, such as the PDP-6, came with "Spacewar!" pre-loaded, the audience for the game remained very limited; the PDP-6, for example, sold only 23 units.


title: Spacewar!

text: "Spacewar!" was extremely popular in the small programming community in the 1960s and was widely recreated on other minicomputer and mainframe computers of the time before migrating to early microcomputer systems in the 1970s. Just as it was during development, the game was public domain and the code was available to anyone with access to it or who contacted Russell; no attempt was made to sell it commercially, as the programming community was too small to support any commercial industry. It spread initially both by people bringing copies of the code to other installations as well as by programmers recreating the game with their own code. Early installations included the PDP-1 at Bolt, Beranek, & Newman, which also recreated the gamepads; an installation by Russell on a PDP-1 at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of Stanford University in 1963; and the University of Minnesota, where MIT graduate Albert Kuhfield in 1967–68 recreated the game for the CDC 3100, and submitted a description to "Analog Science Fiction and Fact", published in 1971. The Stanford installation was so popular that in 1966 the researchers created a special "Spacewar mode" for time-sharing computer resources on their PDP-6 so that games could be played on it while research programs were also being run. Early computer scientist Alan Kay noted in 1972 that "the game of "Spacewar!" blossoms spontaneously wherever there is a graphics display connected to a computer", and Graetz recalled in 1981 that as the game initially spread it could be found on "just about any research computer that had a programmable CRT".


title: Spacewar!

text: The majority of this spread took place several years after the initial development of the game; while there are early anecdotes of players and game variants at a handful of locations, primarily near MIT and Stanford, it was only after 1967 that computers hooked up to monitors or terminals capable of playing "Spacewar!" began to proliferate, allowing the game to reach a wider audience and influence later video game designers—by 1971, it is estimated that there were over 1000 computers with monitors, rather than a few dozen. It is around this time that the majority of the game variants were created for various computer systems, such as later PDP systems, and in 1972 the game was well known enough in the programming community that "Rolling Stone" sponsored the "Intergalactic "Spacewar!" Olympics". The event was held on October 19, 1972, at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory using a variant of "Spacewar!" on a combined PDP-6/PDP-10 that supported five players, and was the first ever video game tournament, with an account published in the December 7, 1972 issue of "Rolling Stone".


title: Spacewar!

text: In the early 1970s, "Spacewar!" migrated from large computer systems to a commercial setting as it formed the basis for the first two coin-operated video games. While playing "Spacewar!" at Stanford sometime between 1966 and 1969, college student Hugh Tuck remarked that a coin-operated version of the game would be very successful. While the high price of a minicomputer prevented such a game from being feasible then, in 1971 Tuck and Bill Pitts created a prototype coin-operated computer game, "Galaxy Game", with a PDP-11, though they never produced more than two prototypes exhibited at Stanford. Around the same time, a second prototype coin-operated game based on "Spacewar!", "Computer Space", was developed by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, which would become the first commercially sold arcade video game and the first widely available video game of any kind. Though Tuck felt that "Computer Space" was a poor imitation of "Spacewar!" and his "Galaxy Game" a superior adaptation, many players believed both arcade games to be upgraded variants of "Spacewar!".


title: Spacewar!

text: "Byte" magazine published an assembly language version of "Spacewar!" in 1977 that ran on the Altair 8800 and other Intel 8080-based microcomputers using an oscilloscope as the graphical display and a lookup table to approximate the calculations for orbits, as well as a three-dimensional variant in 1979 written in Tiny BASIC. More modern recreations of the game for computers have been made as well. An emulated version of the original game, made publicly available by Martin Graetz and running in a JavaScript PDP-1 emulator, was made available to play on the internet in 2012. The Analogue Pocket handheld console added support for running "Spacewar!" on an emulated PDP-1 in 2022. The only working PDP-1s that are known to exist are kept in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, where demonstrations of the machine are held, which include playing "Spacewar!".


title: Spacewar!

text: In addition to "Galaxy Game" and "Computer Space", "Spacewar!" had long-lasting effects, inspiring numerous other games. These include "Orbitwar" (1974, PLATO network computers), "Space Wars" (1977, arcade), and "Space War" (1978, Atari 2600). Additionally, in the arcade game "Asteroids" (1979), designer Ed Logg used elements from "Spacewar!", namely the hyperspace button and the shape of the player's ship. Products as late as the 1990 computer game "Star Control" drew direct inspiration from "Spacewar!". Russell has been quoted as saying that the aspect of the game that he was most pleased with was the number of other programmers it inspired to write their own games without feeling restricted to using Russell's own code or design.


title: Spacewar!

text: On March 12, 2007, "The New York Times" reported that "Spacewar!" was named to a list of the ten most important video games of all time, the so-called game canon, which were proposed to be archived in the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress took up this video game preservation proposal and began with the games from this list. In 2018, it was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame by The Strong and the International Center for the History of Electronic Games. Also in 2018, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awarded the Pioneer Award, given "for individuals whose career spanning work has helped shape and define the interactive entertainment industry", to the surviving contributors to "Spacewar!": Dan Edwards, Martin Graetz, Steven Piner, Steve Russell, Peter Samson, Robert Sanders, and Wayne Wiitanen.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: The F-1, commonly known as Rocketdyne F1, was a rocket engine developed by Rocketdyne. This engine uses a gas-generator cycle developed in the United States in the late 1950s and was used in the Saturn V rocket in the 1960s and early 1970s. Five F-1 engines were used in the S-IC first stage of each Saturn V, which served as the main launch vehicle of the Apollo program. The F-1 remains the most powerful single combustion chamber liquid-propellant rocket engine ever developed.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: Rocketdyne developed the F-1 and the E-1 to meet a 1955 U.S. Air Force requirement for a very large rocket engine. The E-1, although successfully tested in static firing, was quickly seen as a technological dead-end, and was abandoned for the larger, more powerful F-1. The Air Force eventually halted development of the F-1 because of a lack of requirement for such a large engine. However, the recently created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) appreciated the usefulness of an engine with so much power and contracted Rocketdyne to complete its development. Test firings of F-1 components had been performed as early as 1957. The first static firing of a full-stage developmental F-1 was performed in March 1959. The first F-1 was delivered to NASA MSFC in October 1963. In December 1964, the F-1 completed flight rating tests. Testing continued at least through 1965.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: Early development tests revealed serious combustion instability problems which sometimes caused catastrophic failure. Initially, progress on this problem was slow, as it was intermittent and unpredictable. Oscillations of 4 kHz with harmonics to 24 kHz were observed. Eventually, engineers developed a diagnostic technique of detonating small explosive charges (which they called "bombs") outside the combustion chamber, through a tangential tube (RDX, C-4 or black powder were used) while the engine was firing. This allowed them to determine exactly how the running chamber responded to variations in pressure, and to determine how to nullify these oscillations. The designers could then quickly experiment with different co-axial fuel-injector designs to obtain the one most resistant to instability. These problems were addressed from 1959 through 1961. Eventually, engine combustion was so stable, it would self-damp artificially induced instability within one-tenth of a second.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: The F-1 engine is the most powerful single-nozzle liquid-fueled rocket engine ever flown. The M-1 rocket engine was designed to have more thrust, but it was only tested at the component level. Also, the RD-170 produces more thrust but has four nozzles. The F-1 burned RP-1 (rocket grade kerosene) as the fuel and used liquid oxygen (LOX) as the oxidizer. A turbopump was used to inject fuel and oxygen into the combustion chamber.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: One notable challenge in the construction of the F-1 was regenerative cooling of the thrust chamber. Chemical engineer Dennis “Dan” Brevik was faced with the task of ensuring the preliminary combustion chamber tube bundle and manifold design produced by Al Bokstellar would run cool. In essence, Brevik’s job was to “make sure it doesn’t melt.” Through Brevik’s calculations of the hydrodynamic and thermodynamic characteristics of the F-1, he and his team were able to fix an issue known as ‘starvation’. This is when an imbalance of static pressure leads to 'hot spots' in the manifolds. The material used for the F-1 thrust chamber tube bundle, reinforcing bands and manifold was Inconel-X750, a refractory nickel based alloy capable of withstanding high temperatures.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: The heart of the engine was the thrust chamber, which mixed and burned the fuel and oxidizer to produce thrust. A domed chamber at the top of the engine served as a manifold supplying liquid oxygen to the injectors, and also served as a mount for the gimbal bearing which transmitted the thrust to the body of the rocket. Below this dome were the injectors, which directed fuel and oxidizer into the thrust chamber in a way designed to promote mixing and combustion. Fuel was supplied to the injectors from a separate manifold; some of the fuel first traveled in 178 tubes down the length of the thrust chamber — which formed approximately the upper half of the exhaust nozzle — and back in order to cool the nozzle.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: A gas generator was used to drive a turbine which drove separate fuel and oxygen pumps, each feeding the thrust chamber assembly. The turbine was driven at 5,500 RPM, producing . The fuel pump delivered of RP-1 per minute while the oxidizer pump delivered of liquid oxygen per minute. Environmentally, the turbopump was required to withstand temperatures ranging from input gas at to liquid oxygen at . Structurally, fuel was used to lubricate and cool the turbine bearings.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: Below the thrust chamber was the nozzle extension, roughly half the length of the engine. This extension increased the expansion ratio of the engine from 10:1 to 16:1. The exhaust from the turbine was fed into the nozzle extension by a large, tapered manifold; this relatively cool gas formed a film which protected the nozzle extension from the hot () exhaust gas.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: Each second, a single F-1 burned of oxidizer and fuel: of liquid oxygen and of RP-1, generating of thrust. This equated to a flow rate of per second; of LOX and of RP-1. During their two and a half minutes of operation, the five F-1s propelled the Saturn V vehicle to a height of and a speed of . The combined flow rate of the five F-1s in the Saturn V was or per second. Each F-1 engine had more thrust than three Space Shuttle Main Engines combined.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: During static test firing, the kerosene-based RP-1 fuel left hydrocarbon deposits and vapors in the engine post test firing. These had to be removed from the engine to avoid problems during engine handling and future firing, and the solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) was used to clean the engine's fuel system immediately before and after each test firing. The cleaning procedure involved pumping TCE through the engine's fuel system and letting the solvent overflow for a period ranging from several seconds to 30–35 minutes, depending upon the engine and the severity of the deposits. For some engines, the engine's gas generator and LOX dome were also flushed with TCE prior to test firing. The F-1 rocket engine had its LOX dome, gas generator, and thrust chamber fuel jacket flushed with TCE during launch preparations.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: F-1 thrust and efficiency were improved between Apollo 8 (SA-503) and Apollo 17 (SA-512), which was necessary to meet the increasing payload capacity demands of later Apollo missions. There were small performance variations between engines on a given mission, and variations in average thrust between missions. For Apollo 15, F-1 performance was:


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: Measuring and making comparisons of rocket engine thrust is more complicated than it may first appear. Based on actual measurement the liftoff thrust of Apollo 15 was , which equates to an average F-1 thrust of – slightly more than the specified value.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: During the 1960s, Rocketdyne undertook uprating development of the F-1 resulting in the new engine specification F-1A. While outwardly very similar to the F-1, the F-1A produced about 20% greater thrust, in tests, and would have been used on future Saturn V vehicles in the post-Apollo era. However, the Saturn V production line was closed prior to the end of Project Apollo and no F-1A engines ever flew.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: There were proposals to use eight F-1 engines on the first stage of the Saturn C-8 and Nova rockets. Numerous proposals have been made from the 1970s and on to develop new expendable boosters based around the F-1 engine design. These include the Saturn-Shuttle, and the Pyrios booster (see below) in 2013. , none have proceeded beyond the initial study phase. The Comet HLLV would have used five F-1A engines on the main core and two on each of the boosters.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: The F-1 is the largest, highest-thrust single-chamber, single-nozzle liquid-fuel engine flown. Larger solid-fuel engines exist, such as the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster with a sea-level liftoff thrust of apiece. The Soviet (now Russian) RD-170 can develop more thrust than the F-1, at per engine at sea level, however, each engine uses four combustion chambers instead of one, to solve the combustion instability problem.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: As part of the Space Launch System (SLS) program, NASA had been running the Advanced Booster Competition, which was scheduled to end with the selection of a winning booster configuration in 2015. In 2013, engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center began tests with an original F-1, serial number F-6049, which was removed from Apollo 11 due to a glitch. The engine was never used, and for many years it was at the Smithsonian Institution. The tests are designed to refamiliarize NASA with the design and propellants of the F-1 in anticipation of using an evolved version of the engine in future deep-space flight applications.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: In 2012, Pratt & Whitney, Rocketdyne, and Dynetics, Inc. presented a competitor known as Pyrios, a liquid rocket booster, in NASA's Advanced Booster Program, which aims to find a more powerful successor to the five-segment Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters intended for early versions of the Space Launch System. Pyrios uses two increased-thrust and heavily modified F-1B engines per booster. Due to the engine's potential advantage in specific impulse, if this F-1B configuration (using four F-1Bs in total) were integrated with the SLS Block 2, the vehicle could deliver to low Earth orbit, while is what is regarded as achievable with the planned solid boosters combined with a four-engine RS-25 core stage.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: The F-1B engine has a design goal to be at least as powerful as the unflown F-1A, while also being more cost effective. The design incorporates a greatly simplified combustion chamber, a reduced number of engine parts, and the removal of the F-1 exhaust recycling system, including the turbine exhaust mid-nozzle and the "curtain" cooling manifold, with the turbine exhaust having a separate outlet passage beside the shortened main nozzle on the F-1B. The reduction in parts costs is aided by using selective laser melting in the production of some metallic parts. The resulting F-1B engine is intended to produce of thrust at sea level, a 15% increase over the approximate of thrust that the mature Apollo 15 F-1 engines produced.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: Sixty-five F-1 engines were launched aboard thirteen Saturn Vs, and each first stage landed in the Atlantic Ocean. Ten of these followed approximately the same flight azimuth of 72 degrees, but Apollo 15 and Apollo 17 followed significantly more southerly azimuths (80.088 degrees and 91.503 degrees, respectively). The Skylab launch vehicle flew at a more northerly azimuth to reach a higher inclination orbit (50 degrees versus the usual 32.5 degrees).


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: Ten F-1 engines were installed on two production Saturn Vs that never flew. The first stage from SA-514 is on display at the Johnson Space Center in Houston (although owned by the Smithsonian) and the first stage from SA-515 is on display at the INFINITY Science Center at John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: Another ten engines were installed on two ground test Saturn Vs never intended to fly. The S-IC-T "All Systems Test Stage," a ground-test replica, is on display as the first stage of a complete Saturn V at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SA-500D, the Dynamic Test Vehicle, is on display at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: A test engine is on display at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia. It was the 25th out of 114 research and development engines built by Rocketdyne and it was fired 35 times. The engine is on loan to the museum from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. It is the only F-1 on display outside the United States.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: An F-1 engine, on loan from the National Air and Space Museum, is on display at the Air Zoo in Portage, Michigan.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: F-1 engine F-6049 is displayed vertically at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, WA as part of the Apollo exhibit.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: An F-1 engine is installed vertically as a memorial to the Rocketdyne builders on De Soto across the street from the old Rocketdyne plant in Canoga Park, California. It was installed in 1979, and moved from the parking lot across the street some time after 1980.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: On March 28, 2012, a team funded by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, reported that they had located the F-1 rocket engines from an Apollo mission using sonar equipment. Bezos stated he planned to raise at least one of the engines, which rest at a depth of , about east of Cape Canaveral, Florida. However, the condition of the engines, which have been submerged for more than 40 years, was unknown. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden released a statement congratulating Bezos and his team for their find and wished them success. He also affirmed NASA's position that any recovered artifacts would remain property of the agency, but that they would likely be offered to the Smithsonian Institution and other museums, depending on the number recovered.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: On March 20, 2013, Bezos announced he had succeeded in bringing parts of an F-1 engine to the surface, and released photographs. Bezos noted, "Many of the original serial numbers are missing or partially missing, which is going to make mission identification difficult. We might see more during restoration." The recovery ship was "Seabed Worker", and had on board a team of specialists organized by Bezos for the recovery effort. On July 19, 2013, Bezos revealed that the serial number of one of the recovered engines is Rocketdyne serial number 2044 (equating to NASA number 6044), the #5 (center) engine that helped Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to reach the Moon with the Apollo 11 mission. The recovered parts were brought to the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson for the process of conservation.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: In August 2014, it was revealed that parts of two different F-1 engines were recovered, one from Apollo 11 and one from another Apollo flight, while a photograph of a cleaned-up engine was released. Bezos plans to put the engines on display at various places, including the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.


title: Rocketdyne F-1

text: On May 20, 2017 the Apollo permanent exhibit opened at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, WA and displays engine artifacts recovered including the thrust chamber and thrust chamber injector of the number 3 engine from the Apollo 12 mission, as well as a gas generator from an engine that powered the Apollo 16 flight.


title: G-type main-sequence star

text: A G-type main-sequence star (Spectral type: G-V), also often, and imprecisely called a yellow dwarf, or G star, is a main-sequence star (luminosity class V) of spectral type G. Such a star has about 0.9 to 1.1 solar masses and an effective temperature between about 5,300 and 6,000 K. Like other main-sequence stars, a G-type main-sequence star is converting the element hydrogen to helium in its core by means of nuclear fusion, but can also fuse helium when hydrogen runs out. The Sun, the star in the center of the Solar System to which the Earth is gravitationally bound, is an example of a G-type main-sequence star (G2V type). Each second, the Sun fuses approximately 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium in a process known as the proton–proton chain (4 hydrogens form 1 helium), converting about 4 million tons of matter to energy. Besides the Sun, other well-known examples of G-type main-sequence stars include Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, Capella and 51 Pegasi.


title: G-type main-sequence star

text: The term "yellow dwarf" is a misnomer, because G-type stars actually range in color from white, for more luminous types like the Sun, to only very slightly yellowish for the less massive and luminous G-type main-sequence stars lower down. The Sun is in fact white, but it can often appear yellow, orange or red through Earth's atmosphere due to atmospheric Rayleigh scattering, especially at sunrise and sunset. In addition, although the term "dwarf" is used to contrast G-type main-sequence stars with giant stars or bigger, stars similar to the Sun still outshine 90% of the stars in the Milky Way (which are largely much dimmer orange dwarfs, red dwarfs, and white dwarfs which are much more common, the latter being stellar remnants).


title: G-type main-sequence star

text: A G-type main-sequence star will fuse hydrogen for approximately 10 billion years, until the hydrogen element is exhausted at the center of the star. When this happens, the star rapidly expands, cooling and darkening as it passes through the subgiant branch and ultimately expanding into many times its previous size at the tip of the red giant phase, about 1 billion years after leaving the main sequence. After this, the star's degenerate helium core abruptly ignites in a helium flash fusing helium, and the star passes on to the horizontal branch, and then to the asymptotic giant branch. Expanding even further as helium starts running out as it pulses violently, the star's gravity is not sufficient to hold its outer envelope, resulting in significant mass loss and shedding. The ejected material remains as a planetary nebula, radiating as it absorbs energetic photons from the photosphere. Eventually, the core begins to fade as nuclear reactions cease, and becomes a dense, compact white dwarf, which cools slowly from its high initial temperature as the nebula fades.


title: G-type main-sequence star

text: The revised Yerkes Atlas system (Johnson & Morgan 1953) listed 11 G-type dwarf spectral standard stars; however, not all of these still exactly conform to this designation.


title: G-type main-sequence star

text: The "anchor points" of the MK spectral classification system among the G-type main-sequence dwarf stars, i.e. those standard stars that have remained unchanged over years, are beta CVn (G0V), the Sun (G2V), Kappa1 Ceti (G5V), 61 Ursae Majoris (G8V). Other primary MK standard stars include HD 115043 (G1V) and 16 Cygni B (G3V). The choices of G4 and G6 dwarf standards have changed slightly over the years among expert classifiers, but often-used examples include 70 Virginis (G4V) and 82 Eridani (G6V). There are not yet any generally agreed upon G7V and G9V standards.


title: G-type main-sequence star

text: Besides the Sun and its planets, some of the nearest G-type stars known to have planets include 61 Virginis, HD 102365, HD 147513, 47 Ursae Majoris, Mu Arae, and Tau Ceti.


title: Akebono Tarō

text: One of the tallest and heaviest wrestlers ever, Akebono's rivalry with the young Japanese hopefuls, Takanohana and Wakanohana, was a big factor in the increased popularity of sumo at tournament venues and on TV in the early 1990s. During his eight years at the "yokozuna" rank, Akebono won a further eight tournament championships, for a career total of eleven, and was a runner-up on thirteen other occasions, despite suffering several serious injuries. Although his rival "yokozuna" Takanohana won more tournaments in this period, their individual head-to-heads remained very close.


title: Akebono Tarō

text: Akebono became a Japanese citizen in 1996, and after retiring in 2001 he worked as a coach at Azumazeki stable before leaving the Sumo Association in 2003. After an unsuccessful period as a K-1 fighter, he became a professional wrestler. In All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) he has been a two-time Triple Crown Heavyweight Champion, two-time World Tag Team Champion, and two-time All Asia Tag Team Champion, as well as winning the 2015 Champion Carnival. In 2017, as a result of health problems, he became inactive from professional wrestling.


title: Akebono Tarō

text: Chad Rowan was born on 8 May 1969 to Randolph and Janice Rowan, and is of Hawaiian descent. He grew up with two younger brothers, one of whom, Ola, also became a sumo wrestler for a brief period after Chad. He attended Kaiser High School, where he played basketball and became an All-Star center. He went to Hawaii Pacific University on a basketball scholarship, but sat out his freshman season.


title: Akebono Tarō

text: Rowan was planning to study for a career in hotel management, but he had always been interested in sumo from watching television broadcasts. A family friend introduced him to Azumazeki Oyakata, the former Takamiyama, who also originally hailed from Hawaii. Azumazeki overcame his initial concerns that Rowan might be too tall and his legs too long for sumo and agreed to let him join his Azumazeki stable, founded in 1986. Rowan flew to Japan in early 1988. Adopting the "shikona" of Akebono, meaning "new dawn" in Japanese, he made his professional debut in March 1988. This entry cohort was one of the most successful ever, producing two other "yokozuna", Takanohana and Wakanohana (sons of the popular champion from the 1970s, Takanohana Kenshi), as well as a great "ōzeki", Kaiō.


title: Akebono Tarō

text: Akebono rose rapidly through the ranks, equaling the record for the most consecutive "kachi-koshi" (majority of wins in a sumo tournament) from debut, reaching "sekiwake" before suffering his first "make-koshi" or losing record. He was promoted to "jūryō" in March 1990, the first "sekitori" from his stable, and to "makuuchi" in September of the same year. He made his top division debut in the same tournament as Wakanohana, as well as Takatōriki and Daishōyama. In the November 1990 tournament he was awarded his first special prize, for Fighting Spirit, and in January 1991 he earned his first gold star for defeating "yokozuna" Asahifuji. In March 1991 he defeated "ōzeki" Konishiki in the first ever match between two non-Japanese wrestlers in the top division.


title: Akebono Tarō

text: In 1992, after a year of 8–7 or 7–8 records near the top of the "makuuchi" division, Akebono suddenly came alive with a 13–2 record in January of that year, narrowly losing the top division championship to Takanohana. A second 13–2 record two tournaments later, in May, saw him win the top division championship for the first time, and with it promotion to "ōzeki". After an injury during the summer, he went on to win consecutive championships in November 1992 and January 1993 to win promotion to "yokozuna".


title: Akebono Tarō

text: At the time of his promotion, the rank of "yokozuna" had been vacant for eight months (an exceedingly rare occurrence) and his promotion, despite the fact that he was the first foreign "yokozuna", was welcomed by many. He had met the stipulation of winning two consecutive tournaments that had been mentioned by the Yokozuna Deliberation Council when turning down Konishiki the previous year, and was also seen as having conducted himself with the dignity and humility necessary for such an exalted rank. One commentator remarked, "He makes me forget he is a foreigner because of his earnest attitude towards sumo."


title: Akebono Tarō

text: Akebono was a long-standing and strong "yokozuna", lasting nearly eight years in the rank and winning the top division championship on a further eight occasions. His career highlights include the rare achievement of winning the top division championship in three consecutive tournaments, in 1993. In July 1993 he beat Takanohana and Wakanohana in consecutive matches to win the "honbasho" when all three ended up tied at the end of the 15-day tournament, and in May 1997 he defeated Takanohana twice on the final day, once in their regular match and once in a playoff, to win his first title in over two years. The competition between Akebono and Takanohana, who reached "yokozuna" himself in 1995, was said to be one of the great defining rivalries of postwar sumo. The two finished their careers with a 25–25 tie in bouts against one another. At the opening ceremony of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, a professional sumo wrestler was chosen to represent each of the competing countries and lead them into the stadium. After Takanohana fell ill, Akebono was given the honor of representing Japan in the opening ceremony. Akebono also led other sumo wrestlers in a ring cleansing ceremony at the Opening Ceremony (also meant to cleanse the stadium itself).


title: Akebono Tarō

text: Akebono was quite susceptible to injury because of his height and weight. He suffered his first serious knee injury in May 1994 when, after winning his first ten matches of the tournament, he lost a bout to Takatōriki and fell awkwardly. He flew to Los Angeles and underwent career-saving surgery. From November 1998 to March 1999 he missed three successive tournaments due to a herniated disc in his lower back and faced calls for his retirement. However, after receiving the personal backing of the Chairman of the Japan Sumo Association, he scored a respectable 11–4 record in his comeback tournament in May 1999. In 2000 he enjoyed his first completely injury-free year since 1993 and won two tournaments, finishing as runner-up in three others. He won 76 bouts out of a possible 90, the best record of any wrestler that year.