title: Anniston, Alabama

text: At the southernmost length of the Blue Ridge, part of the Appalachian Mountains, Anniston's environment is home to diverse species of birds, reptiles and mammals. Part of the former Fort McClellan is now operating as Mountain Longleaf National Wildlife Refuge to protect endangered Southern Longleaf Pine species.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 0.15%, is water.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: In 2003, part of the town of Blue Mountain was annexed into the city of Anniston, while the remaining portion of the town reverted to unincorporated Calhoun County.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: Part of the city limits extend down to Interstate 20, with access from exit 188. Via I-20, Birmingham is 65 mi (105 km) west, and Atlanta is 91 mi (146 km) east.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: The climate in this area is characterized by hot, humid summers and generally mild to cool winters. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Anniston has a humid subtropical climate, abbreviated "Cfa" on climate maps.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: As of the 2020 United States census, there were 21,564 people, 9,277 households, and 5,455 families residing in the city.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: As of the census of 2010, there were 23,106 people living in the city. The population density was . There were 11,599 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 51.5% Black or African American, 43.6% Non-Hispanic White, 0.3% Native American, 0.8% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, and 1.7% from two or more races. 2.7% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: There were 9,603 households, out of which 20.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.0% were married couples living together, 21.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 38.6% were non-families. 34.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.26 and the average family size was 2.91.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: In the city, the age distribution of the population shows 21.7% under the age of 18, 8.7% from 18 to 24, 25.7% from 25 to 44, 23.3% from 45 to 64, and 17.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 83.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 78.5 males.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: The median income for a household in the city was $30,400, and the median income for a family was $37,067. Males had a median income of $31,429 versus $21,614 for females. The per capita income for the city was $19,689. About 25.1% of families and 29.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 35.2% of those under age 18 and 16.2% of those age 65 or over.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: Anniston Beat (Precinct) (Calhoun County 15th Beat) first appeared on the 1880 U.S. Census. In 1890, "beat" was changed to "precinct." In 1960, the precinct was changed to "census division" as part of a general reorganization of counties. In 1980, three additional census divisions were consolidated into Anniston, including Oxford, Weaver and West End.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: In 1899, the county seat of Calhoun County moved from Jacksonville to Anniston. More than 100 years later, the community is a bustling center of industry and commerce with more than 22,000 residents. Over the years, city officials and local citizens have worked to retain the environmental beauty of the area while allowing it to thrive economically and to preserve its history. The Spirit of Anniston Main Street Program, Inc., a nonprofit organization started in 1993, spearheaded the restoration and revitalization of historic downtown Anniston, with a focus on the city's main thoroughfare, Noble Street.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: The Noble Streetscape Project encouraged local business owners to refurbish storefront façades, while historic homes throughout the downtown area have been repaired and returned to their former condition. The preservation effort included the historic Calhoun County Courthouse, located on the corner of 11th Street and Gurnee Avenue since 1900. The original building burned down in 1931, but the courthouse was rebuilt a year later. Thanks to a complete restoration in 1990, the stately structure is still in use today.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: Anniston has long been a cultural center for northeastern Alabama. The Alabama Shakespeare Festival was founded in the city in 1972 and remained there until moving to Montgomery in 1985 seeking more robust financial support. The Knox Concert Series produces an annual season of world-renowned musical and dance productions, and the Community Actors' Studio Theatre community theatre organization performs plays, musicals, and revues featuring local performers, actors, and musicians. CAST also features specially funded programs to educate area children in the arts for free. The city is home to the Anniston Museum of Natural History and the Berman Museum of World History. These institutions house mummies, dioramas of wildlife, and artifacts from a bygone age in contemporary, professional displays and exhibits. The Alabama Symphony Orchestra since 2004 has performed a summer series of outdoor concerts, Music at McClellan, at the former Fort McClellan.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: The city has many examples of Victorian-style homes, some of which have been restored or preserved. Several of the city's churches are architecturally significant or historic, including the Church of St. Michael and All Angels, Grace Episcopal Church, Parker Memorial Baptist Church, and the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, a predominantly African-American church in what is known as the Zion Hill community. Temple Beth El, dedicated in 1893, is the oldest building in the state continuously used for Jewish worship.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: The original main street, Noble Street, is seeing a rebirth as a shopping and dining district in the heart of downtown.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: The Chief Ladiga Trail, part of a paved rail trail with the Silver Comet Trail of Georgia, has its western terminus in Anniston.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: Anniston was featured in the fifteenth episode of the Small Town News Podcast, an improv comedy podcast that takes listeners on a fun and silly virtual trip to a small town in America each week, in which the hosts improvise scenes inspired by local newspaper stories.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: Fort McClellan—former site of the U.S. Army Military Police Training Academy, a Vietnam era Infantry Training Center, Chemical Corps Regimental Headquarters, Chemical Warfare training center, and Women's Army Corps Headquarters—was decommissioned in the 1990s. A portion of the former fort is now home to the Alabama National Guard Training Center. Another of the fort were set aside for the Mountain Longleaf National Wildlife Refuge in 2003. The Department of Homeland Security also uses a portion of the decommissioned fort for the Center for Domestic Preparedness, the nation's only civilian "live agent" training center; emergency response providers from all over the world come to Fort McClellan to be trained in dealing with live agents and weapons in a real-time, monitored setting.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: Anniston is governed by Alabama's "weak mayor" form of city government. Four city council members are elected to represent the city's four wards, and the mayor is elected at-large. Day-to-day functions of city government are carried out by the city manager, who is appointed by the mayor and city council.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: The current five-member city council are Jack Draper (mayor), Jay Jenkins (Ward 1), D.D. Roberts (Ward 2), Ciara Smith (Ward 3 and vice-mayor), and Millie Harris (Ward 4).


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: Anniston is the county seat of Calhoun County, Alabama. Circuit and district courts for the county and the district attorney's office are located in the Calhoun County Courthouse at the corner of 11th Street and Gurnee Avenue. Other county administrative offices are in the Calhoun County Administrative Building at the corner of 17th and Noble streets, and a United States Courthouse, part of the U.S. Alabama Northern District Court, is located at the corner of 12th and Noble streets.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: Statewide testing ranks the schools in Alabama. Those in the bottom six percent are listed as "failing". As of early 2018, Anniston High School was included in this category.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: The school system boasts one of the most high-tech computing capabilities in the state, according to representatives from Huntsville as well as various news agencies . Every school is equipped with labs featuring Macintosh computers, plasma displays, and interactive whiteboards. Some schools have more computer labs, and Anniston High School also has an ACCESS Lab that allows for videoconferencing based classes involving other schools, supported by a high speed fiber network.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: A public four-year institution of higher learning, Jacksonville State University, is located to the north in Jacksonville. Anniston is home to some satellite campuses of Gadsden State Community College, both at the former Fort McClellan and at the Ayers campus in southern Anniston.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: An obelisk installed in 1905 commemorates "Dr. Clarence J. Owens, president of the Anniston College for Young Ladies".


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: Anniston is served by two daily newspapers: "The Birmingham News" statewide edition, and the local 25,000 circulation daily paper, "The Anniston Star". Anniston-based Consolidated Publishing Co., publisher of "The Anniston Star", also owns and operates advertising-supported newspapers in nearby Jacksonville, Piedmont and Cleburne County. Local radio stations include WHMA AM and FM and WHOG 1120 AM.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: WEAC-CD is the only television station that directly broadcasts from the Anniston area, but many Birmingham stations have towers and news bureaus here, such as WJSU-TV (WJSU is a local broadcast station for Birmingham-based ABC 33/40), WBRC-TV (Fox), and WVTM-TV (NBC). Alabama Public Television erected its tallest tower atop Cheaha Mountain south of Anniston. WJSU-TV 40 was historically a local CBS affiliate, broadcasting local newscasts daily.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: Formerly its own Arbitron-defined broadcast market, today Anniston is a part of the Birmingham-Anniston-Tuscaloosa television designated market area. Radio stations are divided into three sub markets within that market; Anniston is in the Anniston-Gadsden–Talladega radio sub market.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: The Anniston Western Bypass runs from Interstate 20 in Oxford (the Coldwater exit) and runs north into the present State Route 202. It is five lanes wide, handling Anniston Army Depot traffic. Future plans will extend it on the present County Road 109 by widening it to connect with US 431. State Route 202 follows this route from CR 109 (Bynum-Leatherwood Road) southward.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: The Anniston Eastern Bypass was a stalled project of the Alabama Department of Transportation to build a four-lane highway in Calhoun County until revived by the 2009 federal stimulus package. It was the largest influx of federal money into the local economy since Fort McClellan closed. More than $21 million was earmarked for this project in 2005. This funding was spent acquiring rights of way and grading a section of the proposed bypass from Oxford to the community of Golden Springs. As of April 2009, the section was a graded, but undriveable, clay dirt road bed. The Eastern Bypass was revived by the 2009 Federal Stimulus Package and was opened to traffic into McClellan on the northwest end in January 2011. As of December 2015, the route is now open to traffic and carries US-431 from the Saks community southward.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: Amtrak serves Anniston with its Crescent service, operating to and from New Orleans and New York. Southbound trains depart at 10:00am, and northbound trains depart at 3:59pm (central time). Daily service has been suspended, and currently southbound trains destined for New Orleans arrive on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. Northbound trains, destined for New York arrive on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.


title: Anniston, Alabama

text: Anniston is home to the Anniston Army Depot which is used for the maintenance of most Army tracked vehicles. The depot also housed a major chemical weapons storage facility, the Anniston Chemical Activity, and a program to destroy those weapons, the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility. In 2003, the Anniston Army Depot began the process of destroying the chemical weapons it had stored at the depot and at Fort McClellan. An incinerator was built to destroy the stockpile of Sarin, VX nerve agent, and mustard blister agent stored at the depot. Destruction of the weapons was completed in 2011. The incinerator and related operations were officially closed in May 2013, and the incinerator was disassembled and removed from the depot at the end of 2013.


title: Ignition (The Offspring album)

text: Ignition is the second studio album by American rock band the Offspring, released on October 16, 1992, by Epitaph Records. Issued during the alternative rock and grunge era, the album brought the band small success in Southern California as they started to gather a following. This success would continue to grow with their next album, "Smash" (1994). It is the first and only album to include photos of each band member in the liner notes.


title: Ignition (The Offspring album)

text: "Ignition" was certified gold on January 22, 1996, nearly two years after the release of "Smash", and has sold over one million copies worldwide. For the album's 20th anniversary in 2012, The Offspring played "Ignition" in its entirety for some selected concerts. They also performed the album in 2017 at a benefit concert for 924 Gilman Street.


title: Ignition (The Offspring album)

text: The band re-recorded "Ignition"'s sixth track "Dirty Magic" for their ninth studio album "Days Go By", released twenty years later.


title: Ignition (The Offspring album)

text: In 1991, The Offspring teamed up with producer Thom Wilson to record the "Baghdad" 7" EP. This EP was instrumental to the band's signing with Epitaph Records. Wilson had been trying to get The Offspring to switch to Epitaph, a label run by Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz. Gurewitz felt that "The Offspring" was just not quite pronounced enough for his label, but "Baghdad" convinced him to give the band a shot. Thanks to the success of "Baghdad", The Offspring managed to record their second full-length album. The band entered two recording studios, Westbeach Recorders and Track Record, in June 1992 to record "Ignition", in a similar fashion to the production schedule for "The Offspring" and "Baghdad", which were both recorded in just one month (March 1989 and February 1991 respectively).


title: Ignition (The Offspring album)

text: Some of the material (including "Take It Like a Man", which was originally recorded in 1991 for a Flipside magazine compilation, "The Big One", and "Get It Right", which appeared on "Baghdad") are updated versions of songs that were recorded around "The Offspring"/"Baghdad"-era. The album also had one outtake, "Mission from God", which was later slightly remixed and then released on the compilation album "Punk-O-Rama Vol. 10" in 2005. "Mission from God" was then released as a bonus download when "Ignition" was reissued on vinyl, albeit in its original 1992 mix.


title: Ignition (The Offspring album)

text: "Ignition" was released through Epitaph Records on October 16, 1992. Like their self-titled debut album, "Ignition" did not chart on the "Billboard" 200; however, The Offspring began to gather small success in the Southern region of California, mainly the areas of San Diego, Orange County and Los Angeles, and spent a-year-and-a-half touring relentlessly behind the album. Although no videos were released for "Ignition", "Kick Him When He's Down" was released as an airplay-only single in 1995. "Ignition" was certified Gold on January 22, 1996, nearly two years after the release of "Smash".


title: Ignition (The Offspring album)

text: The album has received generally favorable reviews in the years since its initial release, with several reviewers having deemed "Ignition" one of The Offspring's best albums. In October 2011, the album was ranked number two (between Alice in Chains' "Dirt" and Bad Religion's "Generator") on "Guitar World" magazine's top ten list of guitar albums of 1992.


title: Ignition (The Offspring album)

text: On June 17, 2008, Epitaph re-released "Ignition" (along with "Smash") in remastered form. This reissue was released on the same day as then-current album "Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace".


title: Ignition (The Offspring album)

text: The Offspring toured for a-year-and-a-half to promote "Ignition". Their audience continued to hone, supporting such bands as Youth Brigade, The Vandals, Bad Religion, D.I., Guttermouth, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Glue Gun, Momentum, Final Conflict, Face to Face, Pennywise, Rancid, Unwritten Law, RKL, Untrust, Cadillac Tramps and Korn. The Offspring then managed to secure a slot in three major tours in 1993. They opened for NOFX on their "White Trash, Two Heebs and a Bean" tour, and in that summer, the band supported Lunachicks and Iceburn. After the tour ended, The Offspring took a break and went back into the studio to record their third album "Smash". In early 1994, The Offspring landed the opening slot for Pennywise on their "Unknown Road" tour. The "Ignition" tour ended on April 1, 1994, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, just one week before the release of "Smash".


title: Fifth Dynasty of Egypt

text: The Fifth Dynasty of ancient Egypt (notated Dynasty V) is often combined with Dynasties III, IV and VI under the group title the Old Kingdom. The Fifth Dynasty pharaohs reigned for approximately 150 years, from the early 25th century BC until the mid 24th century BC.


title: Fifth Dynasty of Egypt

text: The Fifth Dynasty of Egypt is a group of nine kings ruling Egypt for approximately 150 years in the 25th and 24th centuries BC. The relative succession of kings is not entirely secured as there are contradictions between historical sources and archaeological evidence regarding the reign of the shadowy Shepseskare.


title: Fifth Dynasty of Egypt

text: Known rulers in the Fifth Dynasty are listed below. Manetho assigns 248 years of rule to the Fifth Dynasty; however, the pharaohs of this dynasty more probably ruled for approximately 150 years. This estimate varies by both scholar and source. The Horus names and most names of the queens are taken from Dodson and Hilton.


title: Fifth Dynasty of Egypt

text: Manetho writes that the Dynasty V kings ruled from Elephantine, but archeologists have found evidence clearly showing that their palaces were still located at Ineb-hedj ("White Walls").


title: Fifth Dynasty of Egypt

text: As before, expeditions were sent to Wadi Maghareh and Wadi Kharit in the Sinai to mine for turquoise and copper, and to quarries northwest of Abu Simbel for gneiss. Trade expeditions were sent south to Punt to obtain malachite, myrrh, and electrum, and archeological finds at Byblos attest to diplomatic expeditions sent to that Phoenician city. Finds bearing the names of several Dynasty V kings at the site of Dorak, near the Sea of Marmara, may be evidence of trade but remain a mystery.


title: Fifth Dynasty of Egypt

text: How Pharaoh Userkaf founded this dynasty is not known for certain. The Westcar Papyrus, which was written during the Middle Kingdom, tells a story of how king Khufu of Dynasty IV was given a prophecy that triplets born to the wife of the priest of Ra in Sakhbu would overthrow him and his heirs, and how he attempted to put these children – named Userkaf, Sahure, and Neferirkare – to death; however in recent years, scholars have recognized this story to be at best a legend and admit their ignorance over how the transition from one dynasty to another transpired.


title: Fifth Dynasty of Egypt

text: During this dynasty, Egyptian religion made several important changes. The earliest known copies of funerary prayers inscribed on royal tombs (known as the Pyramid Texts) appear. The cult of the god Ra gains added importance, and kings from Userkaf through Menkauhor Kaiu built temples dedicated to Ra at or near Abusir. Then late in this dynasty, the cult of the deity Osiris assumes importance, most notably in the inscriptions found in the tomb of Unas.


title: Fifth Dynasty of Egypt

text: Amongst non-royal Egyptians of this time, Ptahhotep, vizier to Djedkare Isesi, won fame for his wisdom; "The Maxims of Ptahhotep" was ascribed to him by its later copyists. Non-royal tombs were also decorated with inscriptions, like the royal ones, but instead of prayers or incantations, biographies of the deceased were written on the walls.


title: Liriodendron

text: Liriodendron () is a genus of two species of characteristically large trees, deciduous over most of their populations, in the magnolia family (Magnoliaceae).


title: Liriodendron

text: These trees are widely known by the common name tulip tree or tuliptree for their large flowers superficially resembling tulips. It is sometimes referred to as tulip poplar or yellow poplar, and the wood simply as "poplar", although not closely related to the true poplars. Other common names include canoewood, saddle-leaf tree, and white wood.


title: Liriodendron

text: The two extant species are "Liriodendron tulipifera", native to eastern North America and "Liriodendron chinense", native to China and Vietnam. Both species often grow to great size, the North American species may reach as much as in height. The North American species is commonly used horticulturally, the Chinese species is increasing in cultivation, and hybrids have been produced between these two allopatrically distributed species.


title: Liriodendron

text: "Liriodendron" trees are easily recognized by their leaves, which are distinctive, having four lobes in most cases and a cross-cut notched or straight apex. Leaf size varies from 8–22 cm long and 6–25 cm wide. They are deciduous in the vast majority of cases for both species; however, each species has a semi-evergreen variety at the southern limit of its range in Florida and Yunnan respectively. The tulip tree is often a large tree, 18–60 m high and 60–120 cm in diameter. The tree is known to reach the height of 191.8 feet (58.49 meters), in groves where they compete for sunlight, somewhat less if growing in an open field. Its trunk is usually columnar, with a long, branch-free bole forming a compact, rather than open, conical crown of slender branches. It has deep roots that spread widely.


title: Liriodendron

text: Leaves are slightly larger in "L. chinense," compared to "L. tulipifera", but with considerable overlap between the species; the petiole is 4–18 cm long. Leaves on young trees tend to be more deeply lobed and larger in size than those on mature trees. In autumn, the leaves turn yellow, or brown and yellow. Both species grow rapidly in rich, moist soils of temperate climates. They hybridize easily.


title: Liriodendron

text: Flowers are 3–10 cm in diameter and have nine tepals — three green outer sepals and six inner petals which are yellow-green with an orange flare at the base. They start forming after around 15 years and are superficially similar to a tulip in shape, hence the tree's name. Flowers of "L. tulipifera" have a faint cucumber odor. The stamens and pistils are arranged spirally around a central spike or gynaecium; the stamens fall off, and the pistils become the samaras. The fruit is a cone-like aggregate of samaras 4–9 cm long, each of which has a roughly tetrahedral seed with one edge attached to the central conical spike and the other edge attached to the wing.


title: Liriodendron

text: "Liriodendron" trees are also easily recognized by their general shape, with the higher branches sweeping together in one direction, and they are also recognizable by their height, as the taller ones usually protrude above the canopy of oaks, maples, and other trees—more markedly with the American species. Appalachian cove forests often contain several tulip trees of height and girth not seen in other species of eastern hardwoods.


title: Liriodendron

text: In the Appalachian cove forests, trees 150 to 165 ft in height are common, and trees from 166 to nearly 180 ft are also found. More "Liriodendron" over 170 ft in height have been measured by the Eastern Native Tree Society than for any other eastern species. The current tallest tulip tree on record has reached 191.9 ft, the tallest native angiosperm tree known in North America. The tulip tree is rivaled in eastern forests only by white pine, loblolly pine, and eastern hemlock. Reports of tulip trees over 200 ft have been made, but none of the measurements has been confirmed by the Eastern Native Tree Society. Most reflect measurement errors attributable to not accurately locating the highest crown point relative to the base of the tree—a common error made by the users employing only clinometers/hypsometers when measuring height.


title: Liriodendron

text: Maximum circumferences for the species are between 24 and 30 ft at breast height, although a few historical specimens may have been slightly larger. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park has the greatest population of tulip trees 20 ft and over in circumference. The largest-volume tulip tree known anywhere is the Sag Branch Giant, which has a trunk and limb volume approaching .


title: Liriodendron

text: Liriodendrons have been reported as fossils from the late Cretaceous and early Tertiary of North America and central Asia. They are known widely as Tertiary-age fossils in Europe and well outside their present range in Asia and North America, showing a once-circumpolar northern distribution. Like many "Arcto-Tertiary" genera, "Liriodendron" apparently became extinct in Europe due to large-scale glaciation and aridity of climate during glacial phases. (The name should not be confused with "Lepidodendron," an important group of long-extinct pteridophytes in the phylum Lycopodiophyta common as Paleozoic coal-age fossils).


title: Liriodendron

text: "Liriodendron" trees prefer a temperate climate, sun or part shade, and deep, fertile, well-drained and slightly acidic soil. Propagation is by seed or grafting. Plants grown from seed may take more than eight years to flower. Grafted plants flower depending on the age of the scion plant.


title: Liriodendron

text: The wood of the North American species (called poplar or tulipwood) is fine grained and stable. It is easy to work and commonly used for cabinet and furniture framing, i.e. internal structural members and subsurfaces for veneering. Additionally, much inexpensive furniture, described for sales purposes simply as "hardwood", is in fact primarily stained poplar. In the literature of American furniture manufacturers from the first half of the 20th century, it is often referred to as "gum wood". The wood is only moderately rot-resistant and is not commonly used in shipbuilding, but has found some recent use in light-craft construction. The wood is readily available, and when air dried, has a density around .


title: Liriodendron

text: The name canoewood probably refers to the tree's use for construction of dugout canoes by eastern Native Americans, for which its fine grain and large trunk size is eminently suited.


title: Liriodendron

text: Tulip tree leaves are eaten by the caterpillars of some Lepidoptera, for example the eastern tiger swallowtail ("Papilio glaucus").


title: The Woodbridge Company

text: The Woodbridge Company Limited is a Canadian private holding company based in Toronto, Ontario. It is the primary investment vehicle for members of the family of the late Roy Thomson, the first Baron Thomson of Fleet. David Binet has been the president and chief executive officer of the company since 2012.


title: The Woodbridge Company

text: Woodbridge is the principal and controlling shareholder (62.35%) of Thomson Reuters, a multinational media conglomerate. Thomson Reuters was formed in 2008, when the Thomson Corporation acquired Reuters.


title: The Woodbridge Company

text: In late 2010, Woodbridge sold its 40% interest in CTVglobemedia, a Canadian media company with ownership of the CTV Television Network, to BCE Inc. Woodbridge held the 85% interest in "The Globe and Mail" newspaper before acquiring the remaining 15% owned by BCE in August 2015.


title: The Woodbridge Company

text: Woodbridge is the primary investment vehicle for members of the family of the late Roy Thomson, the first Baron Thomson of Fleet. David Thomson and his brother, Peter Thomson, became chairmen of Woodbridge in 2006 upon the death of their father, Kenneth Thomson.


title: The Woodbridge Company

text: In 2015, "Canadian Business" magazine reported that Sherry Brydsonchild of Irma Thomson, one of Roy Thomson's two daughtersholds the largest stake in the family company. It is estimated that she holds 23.47% of the company's shares.


title: Fox on the Run (Sweet song)

text: "Fox on the Run" is a song by the British band Sweet, first recorded in 1974. It was the first Sweet single written by the band, rather than producers Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, and was their 14th single overall. The song became the best charting single in Australia in 1975, with six weeks at number one.


title: Fox on the Run (Sweet song)

text: Two versions were recorded by Sweet. The original version was produced by Mike Chapman in association with Nicky Chinn on the European version of the 1974 album "Desolation Boulevard". Sweet also recorded and produced a more pop-oriented version as a 7" single in 1975, which is the more familiar version of the song. The 1975 single version was included on the Capitol Records version of "Desolation Boulevard".


title: Fox on the Run (Sweet song)

text: The song's inclusion in the trailer for "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" led to the song reaching number one on the iTunes Rock Chart in late 2016.


title: Fox on the Run (Sweet song)

text: "Fox" being slang for an attractive woman, the lyrics are apparently about one of the band's groupies; "Bomp!" called the song "a definitive hard-rock bubblegum record" and "one of the last glitter classics".


title: Fox on the Run (Sweet song)

text: "Fuchs geh' voran" is a German cover version of the song with lyrics about a fox being chased by hunters to sell its fur. It was released as a single in 1975 by the German rock band Scorpions as The Hunters. The B-side also features a German cover version of another Sweet song, "Action", as "Wenn es richtig losgeht".


title: Fox on the Run (Sweet song)

text: The song was used in the opening credits of the Australian film "Kath & Kimderella" starring Gina Riley and Jane Turner. It was also used in the series "Kath and Kim" in the season 3, episode 7 titled "Foxy on the Run".


title: History of the metre

text: The history of the metre starts with the Scientific Revolution that is considered to have begun with Nicolaus Copernicus's publication of "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" in 1543. Increasingly accurate measurements were required, and scientists looked for measures that were universal and could be based on natural phenomena rather than royal decree or physical prototypes. Rather than the various complex systems of subdivision then in use, they also preferred a decimal system to ease their calculations.


title: History of the metre

text: With the French Revolution (1789) came a desire to replace many features of the Ancien Régime, including the traditional units of measure. As a base unit of length, many scientists had favoured the seconds pendulum (a pendulum with a half-period of one second) one century earlier, but this was rejected as it had been discovered that this length varied from place to place with local gravity. A new unit of length, the "metre" was introduced – defined as one ten-millionth of the shortest distance from the North Pole to the equator passing through Paris, assuming an Earth flattening of 1/334.


title: History of the metre

text: For practical purposes however, the standard metre was made available in the form of a platinum bar held in Paris. This in turn was replaced in 1889 at the initiative of the International Geodetic Association by thirty platinum-iridium bars kept across the globe. The comparison of the new prototypes of the metre with each other and with the Committee metre (French: "Mètre des Archives") involved the development of specialized measuring equipment and the definition of a reproducible temperature scale. Progress in science finally allowed the definition of the metre to be dematerialized; thus in 1960 a new definition based on a specific number of wavelengths of light from a specific transition in krypton-86 allowed the standard to be universally available by measurement. In 1983 this was updated to a length defined in terms of the speed of light; this definition was reworded in 2019:


title: History of the metre

text: During the mid nineteenth century the metre gained adoption worldwide, particularly in scientific usage, and it was officially established as an international measurement unit by the Metre Convention of 1875. Where older traditional length measures are still used, they are now defined in terms of the metre – for example the yard has since 1959 officially been defined as exactly 0.9144 metre.


title: History of the metre

text: The standard measures of length in Europe diverged from one another after the fall of the Carolingian Empire (around 888): while measures could be standardised within a given jurisdiction (which was often little more than a single market town), there were numerous variations of measure between regions. Indeed, as the measures were often used as the basis for taxation (of cloth, for example), the use of a particular measure was associated with the sovereignty of a given ruler and often dictated by law.


title: History of the metre

text: Nevertheless, with the increasing scientific activity of the 17th century came calls for the institution of a standard measure or """" (as Italian Tito Livio Burattini said ), which would be based on natural phenomena rather than royal decree, and would also be decimal rather than using the various systems of subdivision, often duodecimal, which coexisted at the time.


title: History of the metre

text: In 1645 Giovanni Battista Riccioli had been the first to determine the length of a "seconds pendulum" (a pendulum with a half-period of one second). In 1671 Jean Picard measured the length of a "seconds pendulum" at the Paris Observatory. He found the value of 440.5 lines of the Toise of Châtelet (one such toise was equal to 864 lines) which had been recently renewed. He proposed a universal toise (French: "Toise universelle") which was twice the length of the seconds pendulum. However, it was soon discovered that the length of a seconds pendulum varies from place to place: French astronomer Jean Richer had measured the 0.3% difference in length between Cayenne (in French Guiana) and Paris.


title: History of the metre

text: Jean Richer and Giovanni Domenico Cassini measured the parallax of Mars between Paris and Cayenne in French Guiana when Mars was at its closest to Earth in 1672. They arrived at a figure for the solar parallax of 9.5 arcseconds, equivalent to an Earth–Sun distance of about 22,000 Earth radii. They were also the first astronomers to have access to an accurate and reliable value for the radius of Earth, which had been measured by their colleague Jean Picard in 1669 as 3,269,000 "toises". Isaac Newton used this measurement for establishing his law of universal gravitation. Picard's geodetic observations had been confined to the determination of the magnitude of the earth considered as a sphere, but the discovery made by Jean Richer turned the attention of mathematicians to its deviation from a spherical form. The determination of the figure of the earth became a problem of the highest importance in astronomy, inasmuch as the diameter of the earth was the unit to which all celestial distances had to be referred.


title: History of the metre

text: The French main unit of length was the Toise of Paris whose standard was the Toise of Châtelet which was fixed outside the Grand Châtelet in Paris from 1668 to 1776. In 1735 two geodetic standards were calibrated against the Toise of Châtelet. One of them, the Toise of Peru was used for the French Geodesic Mission to the Equator. In 1766 the Toise of Peru became the official standard of the Toise in France and was renamed as the Toise of the Academy (French: "Toise de l'Académie").


title: History of the metre

text: In his famous work "Théorie de la figure de la terre, tirée des principes de l'hydrostatique" ('Theory of the Figure of the Earth, drawn from the Principles of Hydrostatics') published in 1743, Alexis Claude Clairaut synthesized the relationships existing between gravity and the shape of the Earth. Clairaut exposed there his theorem which established a relationship between gravity measured at different latitudes and the flattening of the Earth considered as a spheroid composed of concentric layers of variable densities. Towards the end of the 18th century, the geodesists sought to reconcile the values of flattening drawn from the measurements of meridian arcs with that given by Clairaut's spheroid drawn from the measurement of gravity. In 1789, Pierre-Simon de Laplace obtained by a calculation taking into account the measures of meridian arcs known at the time a flattening of 1/279. Gravimetry gave him a flattening of 1/359. Adrien-Marie Legendre meanwhile found at the same time a flattening of 1/305. The Weights and Measures Commission would adopt in 1799 a flattening of 1/334 by combining the arc of Peru and the data of the meridian of Delambre and Méchain.


title: History of the metre

text: Geodetic surveys found practical applications in French cartography and in the Anglo-French Survey, which aimed to connect Paris and Greenwich Observatories and led to the Principal Triangulation of Great Britain. The unit of length used by the French was the "Toise de Paris", which was divided in six feet. The English unit of length was the yard, which became the geodetic unit used in the British Empire.


title: History of the metre

text: Despite scientific progresses in the field of geodesy, little practical advance was made towards the establishment of the "universal measure" until the French Revolution of 1789. France was particularly affected by the proliferation of length measures, and the need for reform was widely accepted across all political viewpoints, even if it needed the push of revolution to bring it about. Talleyrand resurrected the idea of the seconds pendulum before the Constituent Assembly in 1790, suggesting that the new measure be defined at 45°N (a latitude that, in France, runs just north of Bordeaux and just south of Grenoble): despite the support of the Assembly, nothing came of Talleyrand's proposal.


title: History of the metre

text: The question of measurement reform was placed in the hands of the Academy of Sciences, who appointed a commission chaired by Jean-Charles de Borda. Borda was an avid supporter of decimalisation: he had invented the "repeating circle", a surveying instrument which allowed a much-improved precision in the measurement of angles between landmarks, but insisted that it be calibrated in ""grades"" ( of a quarter-circle) rather than degrees, with 100 minutes to a "grade" and 100 seconds to a minute. Borda considered that the seconds pendulum was a poor choice for a standard because the existing second (as a unit of time) was not part of the proposed decimal system of time measurement – a system of 10 hours to the day, 100 minutes to the hour and 100 seconds to the minute – introduced in 1793.


title: History of the metre

text: Instead of the seconds pendulum method, the commission – whose members included Lagrange, Laplace, Monge and Condorcet – decided that the new measure should be equal to one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator (the quadrant of the Earth's circumference), measured along the meridian passing through Paris. Apart from the obvious consideration of safe access for French surveyors, the Paris meridian was also a sound choice for scientific reasons: a portion of the quadrant from Dunkirk to Barcelona (about 1000 km, or one-tenth of the total) could be surveyed with start- and end-points at sea level, and that portion was roughly in the middle of the quadrant, where the effects of the Earth's oblateness were expected to be the largest. The Spanish-French geodetic mission had confirmed that the acceleration of a body near the surface of the Earth is due to the combined effects of gravity and centrifugal acceleration. Indeed, we know now that the resulting acceleration towards the ground is about 0.5% greater at the poles than at the Equator. It follows that the polar diameter of the Earth is smaller than its equatorial diameter. The Academy of Sciences planned to infer the flattening of the Earth from both the length's differences between meridional portions corresponding to one degree of latitude and the variations of gravitational acceleration (see Clairaut's theorem). Jean-Baptiste Biot and François Arago published in 1821 their observations completing those of Delambre and Mechain. It was an account of the length's variation of the degrees of latitude along the Paris meridian as well as the account of the variation of the seconds pendulum's length along the same meridian. The seconds pendulum's length was a means to measure "g", the local acceleration resulting from combination of local gravity and centrifugal acceleration, which varies with latitude (see Earth's gravity).


title: History of the metre

text: The task of surveying the meridian arc fell to Pierre Méchain and Jean-Baptiste Delambre, and took more than six years (1792–1798). The technical difficulties were not the only problems the surveyors had to face in the convulsed period of the aftermath of the Revolution: Méchain and Delambre, and later Arago, were imprisoned several times during their surveys, and Méchain died in 1804 of yellow fever, which he contracted while trying to improve his original results in northern Spain. In the meantime, the commission calculated a provisional value from older surveys of 443.44 "lignes". This value was set by legislation on 7 April 1795.


title: History of the metre

text: The project was split into two parts – the northern section of 742.7 km from the belfry, Dunkirk to Rodez Cathedral which was surveyed by Delambre and the southern section of 333.0 km from Rodez to the Montjuïc Fortress, Barcelona which was surveyed by Méchain.


title: History of the metre

text: Delambre used a baseline of about 10 km (6,075.90 "toises") in length along a straight road between and . In an operation taking six weeks, the baseline was accurately measured using four platinum rods, each of length two "toises" (a "toise" being about 1.949 m). Thereafter he used, where possible, the triangulation points used by Cassini in his 1744 survey of France. Méchain's baseline, of a similar length (6,006.25 "toises"), and also on a straight section of road between Vernet (in the Perpignan area) and Salces (now Salses-le-Chateau). Although Méchain's sector was half the length of Delambre, it included the Pyrenees and hitherto unsurveyed parts of Spain. An international commission composed of Gabriel Císcar, Jean-Baptiste Delambre, Pierre- Simon Laplace, Adrien-Marie Legendre, Pierre Méchain, Jean Henri van Swinden and Johann Georg Tralles combined the results of the survey with those of the Geodetic Mission to Peru and found a value of 1/334 for the Earth's flattening. They then extrapolated from the measurement of the Paris meridian arc between Dunkirk and Barcelona the distance from the North Pole to the Equator which was 5,130,740 "toises". As the metre had to be equal to one ten-millionth of this distance, it was defined as 0.513074 "toise" or 3 feet and 11.296 lines of the Toise of Peru. Their result came out at 0.144 " shorter than the provisional value, a difference of about 0.03%.


title: History of the metre

text: While Méchain and Delambre were completing their survey, the commission had ordered a series of platinum bars to be made based on the provisional metre. When the final result was known, the bar whose length was closest to the meridional definition of the metre was selected and placed in the National Archives on 22 June 1799 (4 messidor An VII in the Republican calendar) as a permanent record of the result. This standard metre bar became known as the ".


title: History of the metre

text: The metric system, that is the system of units based on the metre, was officially adopted in France on 10 December 1799 (19 frimaire An VIII) and became the sole legal system of weights and measures from 1801. After the restoration of the Empire, in 1812, the old names for units of length were revived but the units redefined in terms of the metre: this system was known as "", and lasted until 1840, when the decimal metric system was again made the sole legal measure. In the meantime, the Netherlands had adopted the metric system from 1816. The first of several countries to follow the French lead, the Helvetic Republic had adopted the metre shortly before its collapse in 1803.


title: History of the metre

text: With the extension of the survey it became apparent that Méchain and Delambre's result (443.296 ') was slightly too short for the meridional definition of the metre. While the Ordnance Survey extended the British survey northward to the Shetland Islands, Arago and Biot extended the survey southward in Spain to the island of Formentera in the western Mediterranean Sea (1806–1809), and found that one ten-millionth of the Earth's quadrant should be 443.31 ': later work increased the value to 443.39 "".


title: History of the metre

text: Some thought that the base of the metric system could be attacked by pointing out some errors that crept into the measurement of the two French scientists. Méchain had even noticed an inaccuracy he did not dare to admit. Louis Puissant declared in 1836 in front of the French Academy of Sciences that Delambre and Méchain had made an error in the measurement of the French meridian arc. As this survey was also part of the groundwork for the map of France, Antoine Yvon Villarceau checked, from 1861 to 1866, the geodesic opérations in eight points of the meridian arc. Some of the errors in the operations of Delambre and Méchain were then corrected.


title: History of the metre

text: In 1866, at the conference of the International Association of Geodesy in Neuchâtel Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero announced Spain's contribution to the measurement of the French meridian arc. In 1870, François Perrier was in charge of resuming the triangulation between Dunkirk and Barcelona. This new survey of the Paris meridian arc, named West Europe-Africa Meridian-arc by Alexander Ross Clarke, was undertaken in France and in Algeria under the direction of François Perrier from 1870 to his death in 1888. Jean-Antonin-Léon Bassot completed the task in 1896. According to the calculations made at the central bureau of the international association on the great meridian arc extending from the Shetland Islands, through Great Britain, France and Spain to El Aghuat in Algeria, the Earth equatorial radius was 6377935 metres, the ellipticity being assumed as 1/299.15. The modern value, for the WGS 84 reference spheroid with an Earth's flattening of 1/, is  × 10 m for the distance from the North pole to the Equator.


title: History of the metre

text: A more accurate determination of the Figure of the Earth resulted also from the measurement of the Struve Geodetic Arc (1816–1855) and would have given another value for the definition of this standard of length. This did not invalidate the metre but highlighted that progresses in science would allow better measurement of Earth's size and shape. The ' remained the legal and practical standard for the metre in France, even once it was known that it did not exactly correspond to the meridional definition. When it was decided (in 1867) to create a new "international standard metre", the length was taken to be that of the ' "in the state in which it shall be found".


title: History of the metre

text: One of the significant international use of the meridional definition of the metre was the initial work conducted by the British Association for the Advancement of Science (B.A.) on electrical units which was to lead to the International System of Electrical and Magnetic Units. It was often claimed that the international electrical units formed a coherent set of absolute units in the quadrant-eleventh-gram-second system (aka the "QES system" or "Q.E.S. system"), where the unit length was the quadrant of the Earth's polar circumference, the unit mass was the "eleventh-gram" or 10 grams and the unit time was the second. Nevertheless, the precision of absolute electrical measurements in the late nineteenth century was not such that the 0.02% difference in the definitions of the metre had any practical significance.


title: History of the metre

text: In 1832, Carl Friedrich Gauss studied the Earth's magnetic field and proposed adding the second to the basic units of the metre and the kilogram in the form of the CGS system (centimetre, gram, second). In 1836, he founded the "Magnetischer Verein", the first international scientific association, in collaboration with Alexander von Humboldt and Wilhelm Edouard Weber. Geophysics or the study of the Earth by the means of physics preceded physics and contributed to the development of its methods. It was primarily a natural philosophy whose object was the study of natural phenomena such as the Earth's magnetic field, lightning and gravity. The coordination of the observation of geophysical phenomena in different points of the globe was of paramount importance and was at the origin of the creation of the first international scientific associations. The foundation of the "Magnetischer Verein" would be followed by that of the International Geodetic Association in Central Europe on the initiative of Johann Jacob Baeyer in 1863, and by that of the International Meteorological Organisation in 1879.


title: History of the metre

text: The original predecessor agency of the National Geodetic Survey was the United States Survey of the Coast, created within the United States Department of the Treasury by an Act of Congress on 10 February 1807, to conduct a "Survey of the Coast." The Survey of the Coast, the United States government's first scientific agency, represented the interest of the administration of President Thomas Jefferson in science and the stimulation of international trade by using scientific surveying methods to chart the waters of the United States and make them safe for navigation. A Swiss immigrant with expertise in both surveying and the standardisation of weights and measures, Ferdinand R. Hassler, was selected to lead the Survey.


title: History of the metre

text: Hassler submitted a plan for the survey work involving the use of triangulation to ensure scientific accuracy of surveys, but international relations prevented the new Survey of the Coast from beginning its work; the Embargo Act of 1807 brought American overseas trade virtually to a halt only a month after Hassler's appointment and remained in effect until Jefferson left office in March 1809. It was not until 1811 that Jefferson's successor, President James Madison, sent Hassler to Europe to purchase the instruments necessary to conduct the planned survey, as well as standardised weights and measures. Hassler departed on 29 August 1811, but eight months later, while he was in England, the War of 1812 broke out, forcing him to remain in Europe until its conclusion in 1815. Hassler did not return to the United States until 16 August 1815.


title: History of the metre

text: The Survey finally began surveying operations in 1816, when Hassler started work in the vicinity of New York City. The first baseline was measured and verified in 1817. The unit of length to which all distances measured in the U. S. coast survey would be referred was the Committee metre (French : "Mètre des Archives")"," of which Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler had brought a copy in the United States in 1805"."


title: History of the metre

text: In 1835, the invention of the telegraph by Samuel Morse allowed new progresses in the field of geodesy as longitudes were determined with greater accuracy. Moreover, the publication in 1838 of Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel’s "Gradmessung in Ostpreussen" marked a new era in the science of geodesy. Here was found the method of least squares applied to the calculation of a network of triangles and the reduction of the observations generally. The systematic manner in which all the observations were taken with the view of securing final results of extreme accuracy was admirable. For his survey Bessel used a copy of the Toise of Peru constructed in 1823 by Fortin in Paris.


title: History of the metre

text: In 1860, the Russian Government at the instance of Otto Wilhelm von Struve invited the Governments of Belgium, France, Prussia and England to connect their triangulations in order to measure the length of an arc of parallel in latitude 52° and to test the accuracy of the figure and dimensions of the Earth, as derived from the measurements of arc of meridian. In order to combine the measurements it was necessary to compare the geodetic standards of length used in the different countries. The British Government invited those of France, Belgium, Prussia, Russia, India, Australia, Austria, Spain, United States and Cape of Good Hope to send their standards to the Ordnance Survey office in Southampton. Notably the geodetic standards of France, Spain and United States were based on the metric system, whereas those of Prussia, Belgium and Russia where calibrated against the toise, of which the oldest physical representative was the Toise of Peru. The Toise of Peru had been constructed in 1735 as the standard of reference in the Spanish-French Geodesic Mission, conducted in actual Ecuador from 1735 to 1744.


title: History of the metre

text: In 1861 Johann Jacob Baeyer published a report suggesting that European countries should cooperate in the determination of the figure of the Earth. In 1862, when Denmark, Saxe-Gotha, the Netherlands, Russia (for Poland), Switzerland, Baden, Saxony, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Bavaria, Mecklenburg, Hanover and Belgium decided to participate, Bessel's Toise was adopted as international geodetic standard.


title: History of the metre

text: As a forerunner in Europe, Spain adopted the metre as geodetic standard. In 1866 Spain joined the geodetic association and was represented by Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero. He had devised a geodetic standard calibrated against the metre which had been compared to the Toise of Borda (a copy of the Toise of Peru constructed for the measurement of the Paris meridian arc by Delambre and Mechain), which served as a comparison module for the measurement of all geodesic bases in France. A copy of the Spanish metric geodetic standard was made for Egypt. In 1863, Ibáñez and Ismail Effendi Mustafa compared the Spanish Standard with the Egyptian Standard in Madrid. These comparisons were essential, because of the expansibility of solid materials with raise in temperature which had been demonstrated during the 18th century. The famous French physicist and geodesist Pierre Bouguer had exhibited its effect to a large assembly at the Hotel des Invalides. Indeed, one fact had constantly dominated all the fluctuations of ideas on the measurement of geodesic bases: it was the constant concern to accurately assess the temperature of standards in the field; and the determination of this variable, on which depended the length of the instrument of measurement, had always been considered by geodesists as so difficult and so important that one could almost say that the history of measuring instruments is almost identical with that of the precautions taken to avoid temperature errors. Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler's use of the metre in coastal survey, which had been an argument for the introduction of the Metric Act of 1866 allowing the use of the metre in the United States, probably also played a role in the choice of the metre as international scientific unit of length and the proposal, in 1867, by the European Arc Measurement (German: "Europäische Gradmessung") to “establish a European international bureau for weights and measures”.


title: History of the metre

text: The European Arc Measurement decided the creation of an international geodetic standard for measuring baselines at the General Conference held in Paris in 1875.


title: History of the metre

text: The Paris Conference of the European Arc Measurement also dealt with the best instrument to be used for the determination of gravity. After an in-depth discussion in which an American scholar, Charles Sanders Peirce, took part, the association decided in favor of the reversion pendulum, which was used in Switzerland, and it was resolved to redo in Berlin, in the station where Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel made his famous measurements, the determination of gravity by means of apparatus of various kinds employed in different countries, in order to compare them and thus to have the equation of their scales.


title: History of the metre

text: The progresses of metrology combined with those of gravimetry through improvement of Kater's pendulum led to a new era of geodesy. If precision metrology had needed the help of geodesy, it could not continue to prosper without the help of metrology. Indeed, how to express all the measurements of terrestrial arcs as a function of a single unit, and all the determinations of the force of gravity with the pendulum, if metrology had not created a common unit, adopted and respected by all civilized nations, and if in addition one had not compared, with great precision, to the same unit all the rulers for measuring geodesic bases, and all the pendulum rods that had hitherto been used or would be used in the future? Only when this series of metrological comparisons would be finished with a probable error of a thousandth of a millimetre would geodesy be able to link the works of the different nations with one another, and then proclaim the result of the measurement of the Globe.


title: History of the metre

text: The reversible pendulum built by the Repsold brothers was used in Switzerland in 1865 by Émile Plantamour for the measurement of gravity in six stations of the Swiss geodetic network. Following the example set by this country and under the patronage of the International Geodetic Association, Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, Russia and Saxony undertook gravity determinations on their respective territories. As the figure of the Earth could be inferred from variations of the seconds pendulum length with latitudes, the United States Coast Survey's direction instructed Charles Sanders Peirce in the spring of 1875 to proceed to Europe for the purpose of making pendulum experiments to chief initial stations for operations of this sort, in order to bring the determinations of the forces of gravity in America into communication with those of other parts of the world; and also for the purpose of making a careful study of the methods of pursuing these researches in the different countries of Europe.


title: History of the metre

text: In 1886 the association changed name for the International Geodetic Association (German: "Internationale Erdmessung"). After the death of Johann Jacob Baeyer, Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero became the first president of the International Geodetic Association from 1887 to his death in 1891. During this period the International Geodetic Association gained worldwide importance with the joining of United States, Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Japan.


title: History of the metre

text: Efforts to supplement the various national surveying systems, which began in the 19th century with the foundation of the "Mitteleuropäische Gradmessung", resulted in a series of global ellipsoids of the Earth (e.g., Helmert 1906, Hayford 1910/1924) which would later lead to develop the World Geodetic System. Nowadays the practical realisation of the metre is possible everywhere thanks to the atomic clocks embedded in GPS satellites.


title: History of the metre

text: The intimate relationships that necessarily existed between metrology and geodesy explain that the International Association of Geodesy, founded to combine and use the geodetic works of different countries, in order to reach a new and more exact determination of the shape and dimensions of the Globe, gave birth to the idea of reforming the foundations of the metric system, while expanding it and making it international. Not, as it was mistakenly assumed for a certain time, that the Association had the unscientific thought of modifying the length of the metre, in order to conform exactly to its historical definition according to the new values that would be found for the terrestrial meridian. But, busy combining the arcs measured in the different countries and connecting the neighbouring triangulations, geodesists encountered, as one of the main difficulties, the unfortunate uncertainty which reigned over the equations of the units of length used. Adolphe Hirsch, General Baeyer and Colonel Ibáñez decided, in order to make all the standards comparable, to propose to the Association to choose the metre for geodetic unit, and to create an international prototype metre differing as little as possible from the "mètre des Archives."


title: History of the metre

text: In 1867, the European Arc Measurement (German: "Europäische Gradmessung") called for the creation of a new, "international prototype metre" (IPM) and the arrangement of a system where national standards could be compared with it. The French government gave practical support to the creation of an International Metre Commission, which met in Paris in 1870 and again in 1872 with the participation of about thirty countries. At the session on 12 October, Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero was elected president of the Permanent Committee of the International Metre Commission, which was to become the International Committee for Weights and Measures (ICWM).


title: History of the metre

text: The Metre Convention was signed on 20 May 1875 in Paris and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures was created under the supervision of the International Committee for Weights and Measures. Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero's presidency was confirmed at the first meeting of the International Committee for Weights and Measures, on 19 April 1875. Three other members of the committee, the German astronomer, Wilhelm Foerster, the Swiss meteorologist and physicist, Heinrich von Wild representing Russia, and the Swiss geodesist of German origin, Adolphe Hirsch were also among the main architects of the Metre Convention.


title: History of the metre

text: In recognition of France's role in designing the metric system, the BIPM is based in Sèvres, just outside Paris. However, as an international organisation, the BIPM is under the ultimate control of a diplomatic conference, the "" (CGPM) rather than the French government.


title: History of the metre

text: In 1889 the General Conference on Weights and Measures met at Sèvres, the seat of the International Bureau. It performed the first great deed dictated by the motto inscribed in the pediment of the splendid edifice that is the metric system: ""A tous les temps, a tous les peuples"" (For all times, to all peoples); and this deed consisted in the approval and distribution, among the governments of the states supporting the Metre Convention, of prototype standards of hitherto unknown precision intended to propagate the metric unit throughout the whole world.


title: History of the metre

text: For metrology the matter of expansibility was fundamental; as a matter of fact the temperature measuring error related to the length measurement in proportion to the expansibility of the standard and the constantly renewed efforts of metrologists to protect their measuring instruments against the interfering influence of temperature revealed clearly the importance they attached to the expansion-induced errors. It was common knowledge, for instance, that effective measurements were possible only inside a building, the rooms of which were well protected against the changes in outside temperature, and the very presence of the observer created an interference against which it was often necessary to take strict precautions. Thus, the Contracting States also received a collection of thermometers whose accuracy made it possible to ensure that of length measurements. The international prototype would also be a "line standard"; that is, the metre was defined as the distance between two lines marked on the bar, so avoiding the wear problems of end standards.


title: History of the metre

text: The construction of the international prototype metre and the copies which were the national standards was at the limits of the technology of the time. The bars were made of a special alloy, 90% platinum and 10% iridium, which was significantly harder than pure platinum, and have a special X-shaped cross section (a "Tresca section", named after French engineer Henri Tresca) to minimise the effects of torsional strain during length comparisons. The first castings proved unsatisfactory, and the job was given to the London firm of Johnson Matthey who succeeded in producing thirty bars to the required specification. One of these, No. 6, was determined to be identical in length to the "", and was consecrated as the international prototype metre at the first meeting of the CGPM in 1889. The other bars, duly calibrated against the international prototype, were distributed to the signatory nations of the Metre Convention for use as national standards. For example, the United States received No. 27 with a calibrated length of (1.6 μm short of the international prototype).


title: History of the metre

text: The comparison of the new prototypes of the metre with each other and with the Committee metre (French: "Mètre des Archives") involved the development of a special measuring equipment and the definition of a reproducible temperature scale. The first (and only) follow-up comparison of the national standards with the international prototype was carried out between 1921 and 1936, and indicated that the definition of the metre was preserved to within 0.2 μm. At this time, it was decided that a more formal definition of the metre was required (the 1889 decision had said merely that the "prototype, at the temperature of melting ice, shall henceforth represent the metric unit of length"), and this was agreed at the 7th CGPM in 1927.


title: History of the metre

text: The support requirements represent the Airy points of the prototype—the points, separated by of the total length of the bar, at which the bending or droop of the bar is minimised.


title: History of the metre

text: The BIPM's thermometry work led to the discovery of special alloys of iron-nickel, in particular invar, for which its director, the Swiss physicist Charles-Édouard Guillaume, was granted the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1920. In 1900, the International Committee for Weights and Measures responded to a request from the International Association of geodesy and included in the work program of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures the study of measurements by invar's wires. Edvard Jäderin, a Swedish geodesist, had invented a method of measuring geodetic bases, based on the use of taut wires under a constant effort. However, before the discovery of invar, this process was much less precise than the classic method. Charles-Édouard Guillaume demonstrated the effectiveness of Jäderin's method, improved by the use of invar's threads. He measured a base in the Simplon Tunnel in 1905. The accuracy of the measurements was equal to that of the old methods, while the speed and ease of the measurements were incomparably higher.


title: History of the metre

text: The first interferometric measurements carried out using the international prototype metre were those of Albert A. Michelson and Jean-René Benoît (1892–1893) and of Benoît, Fabry and Perot (1906), both using the red line of cadmium. These results, which gave the wavelength of the cadmium line ("λ" ≈ 644 nm), led to the definition of the ångström as a secondary unit of length for spectroscopic measurements, first by the International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research (1907) and later by the CIPM (1927). Michelson's work in "measuring" the prototype metre to within of a wavelength ( μm) was one of the reasons for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1907.


title: History of the metre

text: By the 1950s, interferometry had become the method of choice for precise measurements of length, but there remained a practical problem imposed by the system of units used. The natural unit for expressing a length measured by interferometry was the ångström, but this result then had to be converted into metres using an experimental conversion factor – the wavelength of light used, but measured in metres rather than in ångströms. This added an additional measurement uncertainty to any length result in metres, over and above the uncertainty of the actual interferometric measurement.


title: History of the metre

text: The solution was to define the metre in the same manner as the angstrom had been defined in 1907, that is in terms of the best interferometric wavelength available. Advances in both experimental technique and theory showed that the cadmium line was actually a cluster of closely separated lines, and that this was due to the presence of different isotopes in natural cadmium (eight in total). To get the most precisely defined line, it was necessary to use a monoisotopic source and this source should contain an isotope with even numbers of protons and neutrons (so as to have zero nuclear spin).


title: History of the metre

text: Several isotopes of cadmium, krypton and mercury both fulfil the condition of zero nuclear spin and have bright lines in the visible region of the spectrum.


title: History of the metre

text: Krypton is a gas at room temperature, allowing for easier isotopic enrichment and lower operating temperatures for the lamp (which reduces broadening of the line due to the Doppler effect), and so it was decided to select the orange line of krypton-86 ("λ" ≈ 606 nm) as the new wavelength standard.


title: History of the metre

text: The measurement of the wavelength of the krypton line was "not" made directly against the international prototype metre; instead, the ratio of the wavelength of the krypton line to that of the cadmium line was determined in vacuum. This was then compared to the 1906 Fabry–Perot determination of the wavelength of the cadmium line in air (with a correction for the refractive index of air). In this way, the new definition of the metre was traceable to both the old prototype metre and the old definition of the angstrom.


title: History of the metre

text: The krypton-86 discharge lamp operating at the triple point of nitrogen (63.14 K, −210.01 °C) was the state-of-the-art light source for interferometry in 1960, but it was soon to be superseded by a new invention: the laser, of which the first working version was constructed in the same year as the redefinition of the metre. Laser light is usually highly monochromatic, and is also coherent (all the light has the same phase, unlike the light from a discharge lamp), both of which are advantageous for interferometry.


title: History of the metre

text: The shortcomings of the krypton standard were demonstrated by the measurement of the wavelength of the light from a methane-stabilised helium–neon laser ("λ" ≈ 3.39 μm). The krypton line was found to be asymmetrical, so different wavelengths could be found for the laser light depending on which point on the krypton line was taken for reference. The asymmetry also affected the precision to which the wavelengths could be measured.


title: History of the metre

text: Developments in electronics also made it possible for the first time to measure the frequency of light in or near the visible region of the spectrum, instead of inferring the frequency from the wavelength and the speed of light. Although visible and infrared frequencies were still too high to be directly measured, it was possible to construct a "chain" of laser frequencies that, by suitable multiplication, differ from each other by only a directly measurable frequency in the microwave region. The frequency of the light from the methane-stabilised laser was found to be  THz.


title: History of the metre

text: Independent measurements of frequency and wavelength are, in effect, a measurement of the speed of light ("c" = "fλ"), and the results from the methane-stabilised laser gave the value for the speed of light with an uncertainty almost 100 times lower than previous measurements in the microwave region. Or, somewhat inconveniently, the results gave "two" values for the speed of light, depending on which point on the krypton line was chosen to define the metre. This ambiguity was resolved in 1975, when the 15th CGPM approved a conventional value of the speed of light as exactly .


title: History of the metre

text: Nevertheless, the infrared light from a methane-stabilised laser was inconvenient for use in practical interferometry. It was not until 1983 that the chain of frequency measurements reached the 633 nm line of the helium–neon laser, stabilised using molecular iodine. That same year, the 17th CGPM adopted a definition of the metre, in terms of the 1975 conventional value for the speed of light:


title: History of the metre

text: The concept of defining a unit of length in terms of a time received some comment. In both cases, the practical issue is that time can be measured more accurately than length (one part in 10 for a second using a caesium clock as opposed to four parts in 10 for the metre in 1983). The definition in terms of the speed of light also means that the metre can be realised using any light source of known frequency, rather than defining a "preferred" source in advance. Given that there are more than 22,000 lines in the visible spectrum of iodine, any of which could be potentially used to stabilise a laser source, the advantages of flexibility are obvious.


title: The Serenity of Suffering

text: The Serenity of Suffering is the twelfth studio album by American nu metal band Korn. It was released on October 21, 2016. According to guitarist Brian Welch, it is "heavier than anyone's heard us in a long time" and it contains their most intense vocals and music in recent times.


title: The Serenity of Suffering

text: The band began working on their follow up to "The Paradigm Shift" in 2015, with Head claiming that it would be "heavier than anyone's heard [us] in a long time". It's the first album to feature significant songwriting contributions from Head since he rejoined the band in 2013. The song "Take Me" was originally written by Jonathan Davis for his debut solo album, but after hearing it, the rest of Korn re-wrote the track and decided to include it on "The Serenity of Suffering".


title: The Serenity of Suffering

text: The artwork includes the stuffed toy from Korn's fourth album, "Issues", and was created by Ron English.


title: The Serenity of Suffering

text: "The Serenity of Suffering" debuted at number 4 on the US "Billboard" 200 with 57,000 units, 55,000 of which were pure album sales. As of December 2017, the album has sold 133,000 copies in the US.


title: The Serenity of Suffering

text: "The Serenity of Suffering" received an approval rating of 67/100 on review aggregator website Metacritic based on nine reviews, indicating a "generally favorable" response from critics.


title: The Serenity of Suffering

text: AllMusic wrote: "Without pandering to career-peak nostalgia, Korn deftly execute all the hallmarks that have come to define their sound", calling it "one of their best albums". "Metal Hammer" wrote: ""The Serenity of Suffering" is like a selection box of Korn's defining moments."


title: The Serenity of Suffering

text: A less favorable review came from "Rolling Stone", writing: ""Suffering" is heavy enough to stand proudly in the Korn kanon, but not daring enough to be much else."


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: The San Antonio River Walk is a city park and special-case pedestrian street in San Antonio, Texas, one level down from the automobile street. The River Walk winds and loops under bridges as two parallel sidewalks lined with restaurants and shops, connecting the major tourist draws such as the Shops at Rivercenter, the Arneson River Theatre, Marriage Island, La Villita, HemisFair Park, the Tower Life Building, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Pearl, and the city's five Spanish colonial missions, which have been named a World Heritage Site, which includes the Alamo. During the annual springtime Fiesta San Antonio, the River Parade features flowery floats that float down the river.


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: The area within the circumference of the River Walk is the heart of the original 1700s Villa de Bejar outpost, which would eventually become the City of San Antonio.


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: In September 1921, a disastrous flood along the San Antonio River took 51 lives, with an additional 23 people reported missing. Plans were then developed for flood control of the river. Among the plans was to build an upstream dam (Olmos Dam) and bypass a prominent bend of the river in the Downtown area (between present day Houston Street and Villita Parkway), then to pave over the bend, and create a storm sewer.


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: Work began on the Olmos Dam and bypass channel in 1926; however, the San Antonio Conservation Society successfully protested the paved sewer option. No major plans came into play until 1929, when San Antonio native and architect Robert Hugman submitted his plans for what would become the River Walk. Although many have been involved in development of the site, the leadership of former mayor Jack White was instrumental in passage of a bond issue that raised funds to empower the 1938 "San Antonio River Beautification Project", which began the evolution of the site into the present 2.5-mile-long (4 km) River Walk.


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: Hugman endorsed the bypass channel idea (which would be completed later that year) but, instead of paving over the bend, Hugman suggested 1) a flood gate at the northern (upstream) end of the bend; 2) a small dam at the southern (downstream) end of the bend; and 3) a Tainter gate in the channel to regulate flow. The bend would then be surrounded by commercial development, which he titled "The Shops of Aragon and Romula". Hugman went as far as to maintain his architect's office along the bend.


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: Hugman's plan was initially not well-received – the area was noted for being dangerous. At one point, it was declared off-limits to military personnel. People were warned of the threat of being "drowned like a rat" should the river flood. However, over the next decade support for commercial development of the river bend grew, and crucial funding came in 1939 under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) which resulted in the initial construction of a network of some of walkways, about twenty bridges, and extensive plantings including some of the bald cypress (others are several hundred years old) whose branches stretch up to ten stories and are visible from street level.


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: Hugman's persistence paid off; he was named project architect. His plan would be put to the test in 1946, when another major flood threatened Downtown San Antonio, but the Olmos Dam and bypass channel minimized the area damage. Casa Rio, a landmark River Walk restaurant, became the first restaurant in the area in 1946, opening next door to Hugman's office.


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: Through the following decades the network has been improved and extended. The first major extension of the Riverwalk was constructed by the joint venture of two general contractors Darragh & Lyda Inc. and H. A. Lott Inc. to Tower of the Americas as part of HemisFair '68. The expansion extended the Riverwalk beyond its natural banks at the horseshoe bend to the new convention center and theater by excavating much of the block bordered by Commerce, Bowie, Market and Alamo Streets. That was also the year the Hilton Palacio del Rio was built, the first of many downtown hotels that leverage their slice of urban "riverfront." A subsequent major expansion opened in 1988 that extended a branch from the 1968 extension to create a lagoon at the new Rivercenter Mall and the Marriott Rivercenter Hotel.


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: In 1981 the Hyatt Regency San Antonio opened with a new pedestrian connector that linked Alamo Plaza to the River Walk with concrete waterfalls, waterways and indigenous landscaping. Known as the Paseo del Alamo, this river "extension" actually flows from Alamo Plaza into the San Antonio River through the atrium of the hotel. This connector not only allows the hotel to market itself as being on Alamo Plaza and on the River Walk, but it provides the city with an urban park that connects the city's two largest tourist attractions.


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: Many downtown buildings like the Casino Club Building have street entrances and separate river entrances one level below. This separates the automotive service grid (for delivery and emergency vehicles) from pedestrian traffic (below) through an intricate network of bridges, walkways, and old staircases. The San Antonio Spurs had their five NBA Championship victory parades/cruises along the river walk.


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: Expansion plans are planned for areas of the river north and south of Downtown. As chain restaurants and establishments have begun to flourish, now taking up about a third of commercial space, talk has begun at City Hall about limiting their existence on the River Walk and keeping a distinctively local flair. On May 30, 2009, the city opened the $72 million Museum Reach. The Museum Reach features local attractions such as the San Antonio Museum of Art and The Pearl Brewery, which has become one of the most popular areas for locals.


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: Two years later, in May 2011, the River Walk was extended by several miles to extend from Downtown to Mission Espada which is on the city's south side. This addition (named the "Mission Reach") is notable for its emphasis on ecological controls and improvements, as well as trail improvements to support both hiking and biking. The Mission Reach has paddling trails and biking trails which allow tourists to experience the UNESCO World Heritage Missions.


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: After years of murmuring from locals and tourists about the water's quality, talk has also begun about cleaning up the water, although the muddy bottom and silt deposits make this difficult. The muddy bottom does receive an annual cleaning during the Mud Festival.


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: In early 2016, for the first time in its history, the River Walk was connected with another linear urban walkway, the San Pedro Creek Greenway. The greenway joins with the River Walk at the confluence of the San Pedro Creek and the San Antonio River near Mission Concepción.


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: On May 25, 2017, Esperanza Andrade, a former Texas secretary of state, and Lisa Wong, her business partner in the company Go Rio San Antonio, prevailed in a 10-1 vote from the San Antonio City Council for the $100 million contract to operate the barges on the River Walk. The only dissenter on the council was the mayoral candidate Ron Nirenberg, who faced Mayor Ivy Taylor in a runoff election on June 10. In selecting Andrade and Wong, the council rejected City Manager Sheryl Sculley's recommendation to award the contract instead to the Chicago-based Entertainment Cruises, the choice also of former Mayor Phil Hardberger. On receiving the contract, Andrade told Taylor and the council: "We not only know but we understand why the River Walk is indeed our crown jewel of our beautiful city. And we understand that the barge operation is the thread that weaves it all together."


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: In 2021 it was temporarily used as a source of water after a winter storm crippled infrastructure across Texas.


title: San Antonio River Walk

text: The River Walk has inspired similar projects in other cities, such as the Little Sugar Creek Greenway in Charlotte, North Carolina, the Cherry Creek Greenway in Denver, Colorado, the Bricktown Canal in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and the Santa Lucía Riverwalk in Monterrey, Mexico.


title: Taras Kulakov

text: Taras Vladimirovich Kulakov (; ; born March 11, 1987), better known as CrazyRussianHacker, is a Ukrainian-American YouTuber.


title: Taras Kulakov

text: He became known for his videos on "life hacks", technology and scientific demonstrations, with the catchphrase "Safety is number one priority".


title: Taras Kulakov

text: Kulakov's YouTube channel, "CrazyRussianHacker", created in 2012, has over 3 billion views and 11.6 million subscribers (as of December 2022) and is one of the platform's top 500 channels. He has a second YouTube channel, "Taras Kul", with over 3.66 million subscribers (as of December 2022). His third YouTube channel, "Kul Farm" has 361 thousand subscribers (as of December 2022).


title: Taras Kulakov

text: In 2006, Kulakov moved to Asheville, North Carolina with his family, where he worked at Walmart until 2012 while developing his early YouTube channels.


title: Taras Kulakov

text: In a Q&A video, he clarified that the last place he lived before moving to the United States was the city of Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine where Russian is the majority language. As he grew up speaking Russian and not knowing much Ukrainian, he considers himself Russian.


title: Taras Kulakov

text: He has two brothers and three sisters as stated in his September 2016 Q&A video. He also claims to have a half brother and a half sister as well.


title: Infrared search and track

text: An infrared search and track (IRST) system (sometimes known as infrared sighting and tracking) is a method for detecting and tracking objects which give off infrared radiation, such as the infrared signatures of jet aircraft and helicopters.


title: Infrared search and track

text: IRST is a generalized case of forward looking infrared (FLIR), i.e. from forward-looking to all-round situation awareness. Such systems are passive (thermographic camera), meaning they do not give out any radiation of their own, unlike radar. This gives them the advantage that they are difficult to detect.


title: Infrared search and track

text: However, because the atmosphere attenuates infrared to some extent (although not as much as visible light) and because adverse weather can attenuate it also (again, not as badly as visible systems), the range compared to a radar is limited. Within range, angular resolution is better than radar due to the shorter wavelength.


title: Infrared search and track

text: The first use of an IRST system appears to be the F-101 Voodoo, F-102 Delta Dagger and F-106 Delta Dart interceptors. The F-106 had an early IRST mounting replaced in 1963 with a production retractable mount. The IRST was also incorporated into the Vought F-8 Crusader (F-8E variant) which allowed passive tracking of heat emissions and was similar to the later Texas Instruments AAA-4 installed on early F-4 Phantoms.


title: Infrared search and track

text: The F-4 Phantom had a Texas Instruments AAA-4 infrared seeker under the nose of early production aircraft F-4B's and F-4C's and not installed on later F-4-D's due to limited capabilities, but retained the bulge and indeed some F-4D's had the IRST receiver retrofitted in a modified form.


title: Infrared search and track

text: The F-4E eliminated the AAA-4 IRST bulge and received an internal gun mount which took up the area under the nose. The F-4J which had a pulse-Doppler radar also eliminated the AAA-4 IRST receiver and bulge under the nose.


title: Infrared search and track

text: The first use of IRST in an Eastern European country was the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23 The MiG-23 used the (TP-23ML) IRST and later versions used the (26SH1) IRST. The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25PD was also equipped with a small IRST under the nose.


title: Infrared search and track

text: IRST systems re-appeared on more modern designs starting in the 1980s with the introduction of 2-D sensors, which cued both horizontal and vertical angle. Sensitivities were also greatly improved, leading to better resolution and range. In more recent years, new systems have entered the market. In 2015, Northrop Grumman introduced its OpenPod(TM) IRST pod, which uses a sensor by Leonardo.


title: Infrared search and track

text: While IRST systems are most common amongst aircraft, land-based, ship and submarine systems are available.


title: Infrared search and track

text: The F-35 equipped infrared search and track system AN/AAQ-37 Distributed Aperture System (DAS), which composes of six IR sensors around the aircraft for full spherical coverage, providing day/night imaging and acting as an IRST and missile approach warning system.


title: Infrared search and track

text: Chengdu J-20 and Shenyang FC-31 shares the similar design concept with their EORD-31 system that provides 360 degree IRST coverage. IRST systems can also be used to detect stealth aircraft, in some cases, outperforming traditional radar.


title: Infrared search and track

text: These were fairly simple systems consisting of an infra-red sensor with a horizontally rotating shutter in front of it. The shutter was slaved to a display under the main interception radar display in the cockpit. Any IR light falling on the sensor would generate a "pip" on the display, in a fashion similar to the B-scopes used on early radars.


title: Infrared search and track

text: The display was primarily intended to allow the radar operator to manually turn the radar to the approximate angle of the target, in an era when radar systems had to be "locked on" by hand. The system was considered to be of limited utility, and with the introduction of more automated radars they disappeared from fighter designs for some time.


title: Infrared search and track

text: The higher the altitude, the less dense the atmosphere and the less infrared radiation it absorbs - especially at longer wavelengths. The effect of reduction in friction between air and aircraft does not compensate the better transmission of infrared radiation. Therefore, infrared detection ranges are longer at high altitudes.


title: Infrared search and track

text: At high altitudes, temperatures range from −30 to −50 °C - which provide better contrast between aircraft temperature and background temperature.


title: Infrared search and track

text: The Eurofighter Typhoon's PIRATE IRST can detect subsonic fighters from 50 km from front and 90 km from rear - the larger value being the consequence of directly observing the engine exhaust, with an even greater increase being possible if the target uses afterburners.


title: Infrared search and track

text: The range at which a target can be sufficiently confidently identified to decide on weapon release is significantly inferior to the detection range - manufacturers have claimed it is about 65% of detection range.


title: Infrared search and track

text: With infrared homing or fire-and-forget missiles, the fighter may be able to fire upon the target without having to turn its radar sets on at all. Otherwise, the fighter can turn the radar on and achieve a lock immediately before firing if desired. The fighter could also close to within cannon range and engage that way.


title: Infrared search and track

text: Whether or not they use their radar, the IRST system can still allow them to launch a surprise attack.


title: Infrared search and track

text: An IRST system may also have a regular magnified optical sight slaved to it, to help the IRST-equipped aircraft identify the target at long range. As opposed to an ordinary forward looking infrared system, an IRST system will actually scan the space around the aircraft similarly to the way in which mechanically (or even electronically) steered radars work. The exception to the scanning technique is the F-35's DAS, which stares in all directions simultaneously, and automatically detects and declares aircraft and missiles in all directions, without a limit to the number of targets simultaneously tracked.


title: Infrared search and track

text: When they find one or more potential targets they will alert the pilot(s) and display the location of each target relative to the aircraft on a screen, much like a radar. Again similarly to the way a radar works, the operator can tell the IRST to track a particular target of interest, once it has been identified, or scan in a particular direction if a target is believed to be there (for example, because of an advisory from AWACS or another aircraft).


title: Infrared search and track

text: IRST systems can incorporate laser rangefinders in order to provide full fire-control solutions for cannon fire or launching missiles (Optronique secteur frontal). The combination of an atmospheric propagation model, the apparent surface of the target, and target motion analysis (TMA) IRST can calculate the range.


title: Infrared search and track

text: These fighter aircraft carry the IRST systems for use instead of radar when the situation warrants it, such as when shadowing other aircraft, under the control of airborne early warning and control (AWACS) aircraft, or executing a ground-controlled interception (GCI), where an external radar is used to help vector the fighter to a target and the IRST is used to pick up and track the target once the fighter is in range.


title: 1968 Formula One season

text: The 1968 Formula One season was the 22nd season of the FIA's Formula One motor racing. It featured the 19th FIA World Championship, which commenced on 1 January, and ended on 3 November after twelve races, and numerous non-championship races. Graham Hill won the second of his World Championship titles, with Lotus.


title: 1968 Formula One season

text: The Spanish Grand Prix returned after a fourteen-year absence, hosted at Jarama near Madrid on 12 May.


title: 1968 Formula One season

text: The French Grand Prix returned to Rouen-Les-Essarts after a four-year absence replacing the Bugatti version of the Circuit de la Sarthe for 1968.


title: 1968 Formula One season

text: The British Grand Prix was moved from Silverstone to Brands Hatch, in keeping with the event-sharing arrangement between the two circuits.


title: 1968 Formula One season

text: The Canadian Grand Prix was moved from Mosport Park near Toronto to a new venue called Circuit Mont-Tremblant in Quebec, the two tracks were alternating to have it keeping with the event-sharing arrangement between the two circuits. The date was moved from late August to mid September.


title: 1968 Formula One season

text: Although they had failed to win the title in 1967, by the end of the season the Lotus 49 and the DFV engine were mature enough to make the Lotus team dominant again. For 1968, Lotus lost its exclusive right to use the DFV. McLaren built a new DFV-powered car and a new force appeared on the scene when Ken Tyrrell entered his own team using a Cosworth-powered car built by French aeronautics company Matra and driven by ex-BRM driver Jackie Stewart.


title: 1968 Formula One season

text: Unsurprisingly, the season-opening 1968 South African Grand Prix confirmed Lotus' superiority, with Jim Clark and Graham Hill finishing 1–2. It would be Clark's last win. On 7 April 1968 Clark, one of the most successful and popular drivers of all time, was killed at Hockenheim in West Germany at a non-championship Formula Two event. The Scotsman had gone off the track caused by what was believed to be a deflating rear tire; 90% of the Hockenheim circuit was made up of two long, slightly curving straights running through thick forests. And because there was no protection from the solid trees lining the circuit on both sides, Clark's Lotus smashed into a wall of trees, breaking the Scotsman's neck and killing him instantly; the car was totally destroyed.