Heliocentrism.

The original text has been lost, but a reference in Archimedes' book "The Sand Reckoner" ("Archimedis Syracusani Arenarius & Dimensio Circuli") describes a work in which he advanced the heliocentric model as an alternative hypothesis to geocentrism:  Aristarchus suspected the stars were other suns that are very far away, and that in consequence there was no observable parallax, that is, a movement of the stars relative to each other as the Earth moves around the Sun. Since stellar parallax is only detectable with telescopes, his accurate speculation was unprovable at the time.  It is a common misconception that the heliocentric view was held as sacrilegious by the contemporaries of Aristarchus. Lucio Russo traces this to Gilles Ménage's printing of a passage from Plutarch's "On the Apparent Face in the Orb of the Moon", in which Aristarchus jokes with Cleanthes, who is head of the Stoics, a sun worshipper, and opposed to heliocentrism. In the manuscript of Plutarch's text, Aristarchus says Cleanthes should be charged with impiety. Ménage's version, published shortly after the trials of Galileo and Giordano Bruno, transposes an accusative and nominative so that it is Aristarchus who is purported to be impious. The resulting misconception of an isolated and persecuted Aristarchus is still transmitted today.  According to Plutarch, while Aristarchus postulated heliocentrism only as a hypothesis, Seleucus of Seleucia, a Hellenistic astronomer who lived a century after Aristarchus, maintained it as a definite opinion and gave a demonstration of it but no full record has been found. In his "Naturalis Historia", Pliny the Elder later wondered whether errors in the predictions about the heavens could be attributed to a displacement of the Earth from its central position. Pliny and Seneca referred to the retrograde motion of some planets as an apparent (and not real) phenomenon, which is an implication of heliocentrism rather than geocentrism. Still, no stellar parallax was observed, and Plato, Aristotle, and Ptolemy preferred the geocentric model, which was held as true throughout the Middle Ages.  The heliocentric theory was revived by Copernicus, after which Johannes Kepler described planetary motions with greater accuracy with his three laws. Isaac Newton later gave a theoretical explanation based on laws of gravitational attraction and dynamics.  After realizing that the sun was much larger than the earth and the other planets, Aristarchus concluded that planets revolved around the sun. But this brilliant insight, it turned out, "was too much for the philosophers of the time to swallow and astronomy had to wait 2000 years more to find the right path."

Distance to the Sun (lunar dichotomy).

The only known surviving work usually attributed to Aristarchus, "On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon", is based on a geocentric world view. It has historically been read as stating that the angle subtended by the Sun's diameter is two degrees, but Archimedes states in "The Sand Reckoner" that Aristarchus had a value of 1⁄2 degree, which is much closer to the actual average value of 32' or 0.53 degrees. The discrepancy may come from a misinterpretation of what unit of measure was meant by a certain Greek term in the text of Aristarchus.  Aristarchus claimed that at half moon (first or last quarter moon), the angle between the Sun and Moon was 87°. He might have proposed 87° as a lower bound, since gauging the lunar terminator's deviation from linearity to one degree of accuracy is beyond the unaided human ocular limit (with that limit being about three degrees of accuracy). Aristarchus is known to have also studied light and vision.  Using correct geometry, but the insufficiently accurate 87° datum, Aristarchus concluded that the Sun was between 18 and 20 times farther away than the Moon. (The true value of this angle is close to 89° 50', and the Sun's distance is actually about 400 times that of the Moon.) The implicit false solar parallax of slightly under three degrees was used by astronomers up to and including Tycho Brahe, c. AD 1600. Aristarchus pointed out that the Moon and Sun have nearly equal apparent angular sizes, and therefore their diameters must be in proportion to their distances from Earth; thus, the diameter of the Sun was calculated to be between 18 and 20 times the diameter of the Moon.

Aristarchus of Samos (;, "Aristarkhos ho Samios"; c. 310 – c. 230 BC) was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known heliocentric model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe with the Earth revolving around it. He was influenced by Philolaus of Croton, but Aristarchus identified the "central fire" with the Sun, and he put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun. Like Anaxagoras before him, he suspected that the stars were just other bodies like the Sun, albeit further away from Earth. His astronomical ideas were often rejected in favor of the geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy. Nicolaus Copernicus attributed the heliocentric theory to Aristarchus.


Description.

A "naginata" consists of a wooden or metal pole with a curved single-edged blade on the end; it is similar to the Chinese guan dao or the European glaive. Similar to the katana, naginata often have a round handguard ("tsuba") between the blade and shaft, when mounted in a koshirae. The 30 cm to 60 cm long "naginata" blade is forged in the same manner as traditional Japanese swords. The blade has a long tang which is inserted in the.  The blade is removable and is secured by means of a wooden peg called that passes through a hole in both the tang and the shaft. The shaft ranges from 120 cm to 240 cm in length and is oval shaped. The area of the shaft where the tang sits is the. The tachiuchi/tachiuke would be reinforced with metal rings, and/or metal sleeves and wrapped with cord. The end of the shaft has a heavy metal end cap. When not in use the blade would be covered with a.

History.

The "naginata" was developed from an earlier weapon type of the later 1st millennium AD, the "hoko yari". It's difficult to tell when the "naginata" itself first appeared. Though often claimed as being invented by the "sōhei" during the Nara period, physical evidence of their existence dates only from the mid-Kamakura period, and earlier literary sources are ambiguous. The earliest clear references to "naginata" date from 1146 in the late Heian period, with one suggesting that the weapon may have been recent. Earlier 10th through 12th century sources refer to "long swords" that while a common medieval term or orthography for "naginata", could also simply be referring to conventional swords; one source describes a "naginata" being drawn with the verb "nuku", commonly associated with swords, rather than "hazusu", the verb otherwise used in medieval texts for unsheathing "naginata".  Some 11th and 12th century mentions of "hoko" may actually have been referring to "naginata". The commonly assumed association of the "naginata" and the "sōhei" is also unclear. Artwork from the late-13th and 14th centuries depict the "sōhei" with "naginata" but don't appear to place any special significance to it: the weapons appear as just one of a number of others carried by the monks, and are used by "samurai" and commoners as well. Depictions of "naginata"-armed "sōhei" in earlier periods were created centuries after the fact, and are likely using the "naginata" as a symbol to distinguish the "sōhei" from other warriors, rather than giving an accurate portrayal of the events.  During the Genpei War (1180–1185), in which the Taira clan was pitted against the Minamoto clan, the "naginata" rose to a position of particularly high esteem, being regarded as an extremely effective weapon by warriors. Cavalry battles had become more important by this time, and the "naginata" proved excellent at dismounting cavalry and disabling riders. The widespread adoption of the "naginata" as a battlefield weapon forced the introduction of greaves as a part of Japanese armor. The rise of importance for the "naginata" can be seen as being mirrored by the European pike, another long pole weapon employed against cavalry. The introduction in 1543 of firearms in the form of the matchlock ("tanegashima") caused a great decrease in the appearance of the "naginata" on the battlefield. As battlefield tactics changed, the "yari" (spear) took the place of the "naginata" as the pole weapon of choice.  In the peaceful Edo Period, weapons' value as battlefield weapons became diminished and their value for martial arts and self-defense rose. The "naginata" was accepted as a status symbol and self-defense weapon for women of nobility, resulting in the image that "the Naginata is the main weapon used by women". A "naginata" was commonly a dowry of women of the nobility. But historical recordings describing the practice of martial arts by women are rare and uncertain.  In the Meiji era, it gained popularity along sword martial arts. From the Taisho era to the post-War era, the "naginata" became popular as a martial art for women, mainly due to the influence of government policies. Due to this influence, the image that “spears are women's weapons” was formed.  Although associated with considerably smaller numbers of practitioners, a number of "koryu bujutsu" systems (traditional martial arts) which include older and more combative forms of "naginatajutsu" remain existent, including Suio Ryu, Araki Ryu, Tendo Ryu, Jikishinkage ryu, Higo Koryu, Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu,Toda-ha Buko Ryu and Yoshin ryu, some of which have authorized representatives outside Japan.  In the USA, there are an estimated 200 practitioners.

Contemporary construction.

In contemporary "naginatajutsu", two types of practice "naginata" are in common use.  The "naginata" used in "atarashii naginata", the "shiai-yo", has an oak shaft and a bamboo "blade" ("habu"). It is used for practice, forms competitions, and sparring. It is between 210 cm and 225 cm in length and must weigh over 650 grams. The "blade" is replaceable. They are often broken or damaged during sparring and can be quickly replaced, being attached to the shaft with tape.  The naginata used by "koryū" practitioners has an oak shaft and blade, carved from a single piece of wood, and may incorporate a disc-shaped guard ("Tsuba"). It is called a "kihon-yo".  Many of the "realistic "naginata"" for sale to the public are not "naginata" at all. These imitations have shorter, rounded shafts, very short blades, and screw-together sections.

Contemporary usage.

"Naginata" can be used to batter, stab, or hook an opponent, but due to their relatively balanced center of mass, are often spun and turned to proscribe a large radius of reach. The curved blade provides a long cutting surface without increasing the overall length of the weapon.  Historically, the "naginata" was often used by foot soldiers to create space on the battlefield. They have several situational advantages over a sword. Their reach is longer, allowing the wielder to keep out of the reach of opponents. The weight of the weapon gave power to strikes and cuts, even though the weight of the weapon is usually thought of as a disadvantage. The weight at the end of the shaft ("ishizuki"), and the shaft itself ("ebu") can be used offensively and defensively.  The martial art of wielding the "naginata" is known as "naginatajutsu". Most "naginata" practice today is in a modernised form, a "gendai budō" called "atarashii Naginata" ("new Naginata"), which is organized into regional, national, and international federations, who hold competitions and award ranks. Use of the "naginata" is also taught within the "Bujinkan" and in some "koryū" schools such as Suio Ryu and Tendō-ryū.  "Naginata" practitioners wear an "uwagi", "obi", and "hakama", similar to that worn by "kendo" practitioners, although the "uwagi" is generally white. For sparring, armor known as "bōgu" is worn. "Bōgu" for "naginatajutsu" adds shin guards ("sune-ate") and the gloves ("kōte") have a singulated index finger, unlike the mitten-style gloves used for "kendo".

The naginata (, ) is a pole weapon and one of several varieties of traditionally made Japanese blades ("nihonto"). "Naginata" were originally used by the samurai class of feudal Japan, as well as by ashigaru (foot soldiers) and sōhei (warrior monks). The naginata is the iconic weapon of the onna-bugeisha, a type of female warrior belonging to the Japanese nobility.


Life.

After taking part in the 1920 campaign against Soviet Russia, he took up legal studies in Lwów, then studied economics in Poznań. Bocheński earned a doctorate in philosophy (he studied in Fribourg in Switzerland, 1928–31). He was also an alumnus of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, "Angelicum" in Rome where he studied Sacred Theology from 1931 to 1934 earning a doctorate in Sacred Theology. Bocheński was a professor of logic at the "Angelicum" until 1940.  During World War II he served as chaplain to Polish forces during the 1939 invasion of Poland, was taken prisoner of war, escaped the Germans and reached Rome. He joined the Polish Army and served as chaplain first in France, then in England. He fought as a soldier in 1944 in the Italian campaign of the Polish II Corps at Monte Cassino.  In 1945 he received the chair in the history of twentieth-century philosophy at the University of Fribourg (of which he was rector in 1964-66); he founded and ran the Institute of Eastern Europe there, and published the journal "Studies in Soviet Thought" and a book series concerned with the foundations of Marxist philosophy ("Sovietica").  Bocheński served as consultant to several governments: West Germany (under Konrad Adenauer), South Africa, the United States, Argentina, and Switzerland.  Before 1989 none of his works were published officially in Poland.

Cracow Circle.

Bocheński is perhaps the most famous exponent of the Cracow Circle Thomism, which has been called "the most significant expression of Catholic thought between the two World Wars." The Circle was founded by a group of philosophers and theologians that, in distinction from traditional neo-Thomism, embraced modern formal logic and applied it to traditional Thomist philosophy and theology. Inspired by the logical clarity of Aquinas, members of the Circle held both philosophy and theology to contain "propositions with truth-values...a structured body of propositions connected in meaning and subject matter, and linked by logical relations of compatibility and incompatibility, entailment etc." "The Cracow Circle set about investigating and where possible improving this logical structure with the most advanced logical tools available at the time, namely those of modern mathematical logic, then called ‘logistic’." Other members of the Circle included and Jan F. Drewnowski.

"Précis de logique mathématique".

Bochenski said "that once when he went to visit Lukasiewicz before the war [World War II], Lukasiewicz conveyed him inside excitedly, indicated a complex formula, beginning something like 'CCC...', and said, 'Look at this beautiful and "self-evidently true" formula.' Clearly the formula's truth was not immediately evident to the bemused Bochenski."  In Bocheński's "Précis de logique mathématique", he uses this notation, in the style of Łukasiewicz:

The logical hexagon for the square of opposition.

Robert Blanché quoted a passage of Bochenski’s "Formale Logik" in "Structure intellectuelles" (1966, 39): "Hindu logic knows of three logical propositions and not the four of western logic. For it "Some S are P" does not signify "Some S at least are P" but "Some S are P but not all"." This passage shows that Indian tradition explicitly speaks of the existence of partial quantity, the third quantity to be considered along with totality apprehended by A the universal affirmative of the square, and zero quantity apprehended by E the universal negative of the square. To the two universals A and E entertaining a relationship of contrariety, one should add the third contrary constituted by the double negation of the first two. As the subcontrary I contradicts E and the subcontrary O contradicts A, the logical proposition apprehending partial quantity can be represented by the conjunction of I and O : I & O. In Blanché’s logical hexagon this conjunction is symbolized by the letter Y. Many scholars think that the logical square of opposition, representing four values, should be replaced by the logical hexagon, which has the power to express more relations of opposition.

Józef Maria Bocheński (Czuszów, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, 30 August 1902 – 8 February 1995, Fribourg, Switzerland) was a Polish Dominican, logician and philosopher.


History.

The company was founded in 1986 by Thampy Thomas, being funded by Compaq, ASCII and Kleiner Perkins. Its first design was targeted at the 80386 generation of processors. But the design was so large and complicated it could only be implemented using eight chips instead of one and by the time it was ready, the industry had moved onto the 80486 generation.  Its second design, the Nx586 CPU, was introduced in 1994, was the first CPU to attempt to compete directly against Intel's Pentium, with its Nx586-P80 and Nx586-P90 CPUs. Unlike competing chips from AMD and Cyrix, the Nx586 was not pin-compatible with the Pentium or any other Intel chip and required its own custom NxVL-based motherboard and chipset. NexGen offered both a VLB and a PCI motherboard for the Nx586 chips.  Like the later Pentium-class CPUs from AMD and Cyrix, clock for clock it was more efficient than the Pentium, so the P80 ran at 75 MHz and the P90 ran at 83.3 MHz. Unfortunately for NexGen, it measured its performance relative to a Pentium using an early chipset; improvements included in Intel's first Triton chipset increased the Pentium's performance relative to the Nx586 and NexGen had difficulty keeping up. Furthermore, PCs identified the Nx586 as an 80386 processor, as a result many applications that require a processor faster than a 386 will not work unless CPU identification software is active. Unlike the Pentium, the Nx586 had no built-in math coprocessor; an optional Nx587 provided this functionality.  In later Nx586's, a x87 math coprocessor was included on-chip. Using IBM's multichip module (MCM) technology, NexGen combined the 586 and 587 die in a single package. The new device, which used the same pinout as its predecessor, was marketed as the Nx586-PF100 to distinguish it from the FPU-less Nx586-P100. Compaq, which had backed the company financially, announced its intention to use the Nx586 and even struck the name "Pentium" from its product literature, demos, and boxes, substituting the "586" moniker, but never used NexGen's chip widely.  AMD purchased NexGen when AMD's K5 chip failed to meet performance and sales expectations. Some NexGen customers were even given free AMD K5 CPU's with motherboards in exchange for sending in their NexGen hardware.

NexGen (Milpitas, California) was a private semiconductor company that designed x86 microprocessors until it was purchased by AMD in 1996. NexGen was a fabless design house that designed its chips but relied on other companies for production. NexGen's chips were produced by IBM's Microelectronics division.


Early life.

Midgley was born in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, to a father who was also an inventor. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and graduated from Cornell University in 1911 with a degree in mechanical engineering.

Career.

Leaded gasoline.

Midgley began working at General Motors in 1916. In December 1921, while working under the direction of Charles Kettering at Dayton Research Laboratories, a subsidiary of General Motors, Midgley discovered that the addition of tetraethyllead to gasoline prevented "knocking" in internal combustion engines. The company named the substance "Ethyl", avoiding all mention of lead in reports and advertising. Oil companies and automobile manufacturers, especially General Motors which owned the patent jointly filed by Kettering and Midgley, promoted the TEL additive as an inexpensive alternative superior to ethanol or ethanol-blended fuels, on which they could make very little profit. In December 1922, the American Chemical Society awarded Midgley the 1923 Nichols Medal for the "Use of Anti-Knock Compounds in Motor Fuels". This was the first of several major awards he earned during his career.  In 1923, Midgley took a long vacation in Miami, Florida, to cure himself of lead poisoning. He "[found] that my lungs have been affected and that it is necessary to drop all work and get a large supply of fresh air".  In April 1923, General Motors created the General Motors Chemical Company (GMCC) to supervise the production of TEL by the DuPont company. Kettering was elected as president, and Midgley was vice president. However, after two deaths and several cases of lead poisoning at the TEL prototype plant in Dayton, Ohio, the staff at Dayton was said in 1924 to be "depressed to the point of considering giving up the whole tetraethyl lead program". Over the course of the next year, eight more people died at DuPont's plant in Deepwater, New Jersey.  In 1924, unsatisfied with the speed of DuPont's TEL production using the "bromide process", General Motors and the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (now known as ExxonMobil) created the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation to produce and market TEL. Ethyl Corporation built a new chemical plant using a high-temperature ethyl chloride process at the Bayway Refinery in New Jersey. However, within the first two months of its operation, the new plant was plagued by more cases of lead poisoning, hallucinations, insanity, and five deaths.  On October 30, 1924, Midgley participated in a press conference to demonstrate the apparent safety of TEL, in which he poured TEL over his hands, placed a bottle of the chemical under his nose, and inhaled its vapor for 60 seconds, declaring that he could do this every day without succumbing to any problems. However, the State of New Jersey ordered the Bayway plant to be closed a few days later, and Jersey Standard was forbidden to manufacture TEL again without state permission. Midgley would later have to take leave of absence from work after being diagnosed with lead poisoning. He was relieved of his position as vice president of GMCC in April 1925, reportedly due to his inexperience in organizational matters, but he remained an employee of General Motors.

Freon.

In the late 1920s, air conditioning and refrigeration systems employed compounds such as ammonia (NH), chloromethane (CHCl), propane, and sulfur dioxide (SO) as refrigerants. Though effective, these were toxic, flammable or explosive. The Frigidaire division of General Motors, at that time a leading manufacturer of such systems, sought a non-toxic, non-flammable alternative to these refrigerants. Kettering, the vice president of General Motors Research Corporation at that time, assembled a team that included Midgley and Albert Leon Henne to develop such a compound.  The team soon narrowed their focus to alkyl halides (the combination of carbon chains and halogens), which were known to be highly volatile (a requirement for a refrigerant) and also chemically inert. They eventually settled on the concept of incorporating fluorine into a hydrocarbon. They rejected the assumption that such compounds would be toxic, believing that the stability of the carbon–fluorine bond would be sufficient to prevent the release of hydrogen fluoride or other potential breakdown products. The team eventually synthesized dichlorodifluoromethane, the first chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), which they named "Freon". This compound is more commonly referred to today as "Freon 12", or "R12".  Freon and other CFCs soon largely replaced other refrigerants, and later appeared in other applications, such as propellants in aerosol spray cans and asthma inhalers. The Society of Chemical Industry awarded Midgley the Perkin Medal in 1937 for this work.

Later life and death.

In 1941, the American Chemical Society gave Midgley its highest award, the Priestley Medal. This was followed by the Willard Gibbs Award in 1942. He also held two honorary degrees and was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences. In 1944, he was elected president and chairman of the American Chemical Society.  In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted poliomyelitis, which left him severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to lift himself out of bed. In 1944, he became entangled in the device and died of strangulation.

Legacy.

Midgley's legacy has been scarred by the negative environmental impact of leaded gasoline and Freon. Environmental historian J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history", and Bill Bryson remarked that Midgley possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny". Use of leaded gasoline, which he invented, released large quantities of lead into the atmosphere all over the world. High atmospheric lead levels have been linked with serious long-term health problems from childhood, including neurological impairment, and with increased levels of violence and criminality in cities. "Time" magazine included both leaded gasoline and CFCs on its list of "The 50 Worst Inventions".  Midgley died three decades before the ozone-depleting and greenhouse gas effects of CFCs in the atmosphere became widely known. In 1987, the Montreal Protocol phased out the use of CFCs like Freon.

Thomas Midgley Jr. (May 18, 1889 – November 2, 1944) was an American mechanical and chemical engineer. He played a major role in developing leaded gasoline (Tetraethyllead) and some of the first chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), better known by its brand name Freon; both products were later banned due to concerns about their impact on human health and the environment. He was granted more than 100 patents over the course of his career.


Life.

Laërtius must have lived after Sextus Empiricus (c. 200), whom he mentions, and before Stephanus of Byzantium and Sopater of Apamea (c. 500), who quote him. His work makes no mention of Neoplatonism, even though it is addressed to a woman who was "an enthusiastic Platonist". Hence he is assumed to have flourished in the first half of the 3rd century, during the reign of Alexander Severus (222–235) and his successors.  The precise form of his name is uncertain. The ancient manuscripts invariably refer to a "Laertius Diogenes", and this form of the name is repeated by Sopater and the Suda. The modern form "Diogenes Laertius" is much rarer, used by Stephanus of Byzantium, and in a lemma to the Greek Anthology. He is also referred to as "Laertes" or simply "Diogenes".  The origin of the name "Laertius" is also uncertain. Stephanus of Byzantium refers to him as "Διογένης ὁ Λαερτιεύς" ("Diogenes ho Laertieus"), implying that he was the native of some town, perhaps the Laerte in Caria (or another Laerte in Cilicia). Another suggestion is that one of his ancestors had for a patron a member of the Roman family of the Laërtii. The prevailing modern theory is that "Laertius" is a nickname (derived from the Homeric epithet "Diogenes Laertiade", used in addressing Odysseus) used to distinguish him from the many other people called Diogenes in the ancient world.  His home town is unknown (at best uncertain, even according to a hypothesis that "Laertius" refers to his origin). A disputed passage in his writings has been used to suggest that it was Nicaea in Bithynia.  It has been suggested that Diogenes was an Epicurean or a Pyrrhonist. He passionately defends Epicurus in Book 10, which is of high quality and contains three long letters attributed to Epicurus explaining Epicurean doctrines. He is impartial to all schools, in the manner of the Pyrrhonists, and he carries the succession of Pyrrhonism further than that of the other schools. At one point, he even seems to refer to the Pyrrhonists as "our school." On the other hand, most of these points can be explained by the way he uncritically copies from his sources. It is by no means certain that he adhered to any school, and he is usually more attentive to biographical details.  In addition to the "Lives," Diogenes was the author of a work in verse on famous men, in various metres, which he called Epigrammata or Pammetros (Πάμμετρος).

Writings.

The work by which he is known, "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers", was written in Greek and professes to give an account of the lives and sayings of the Greek philosophers.  Diogenes divides his subjects into two "schools" which he describes as the Ionian/Ionic and the Italian/Italic; the division is somewhat dubious and appears to be drawn from the lost doxography of Sotion. The biographies of the "Ionian school" begin with Anaximander and end with Clitomachus, Theophrastus and Chrysippus; the "Italian" begins with Pythagoras and ends with Epicurus. The Socratic school, with its various branches, is classed with the Ionic, while the Eleatics and Pyrrhonists are treated under the Italic.

Legacy and assessment.

Henricus Aristippus, the archdeacon of Catania, produced a Latin translation of Diogenes Laertius's book in southern Italy in the late 1150s, which has since been lost or destroyed. Geremia da Montagnone used this translation as a source for his "Compedium moralium notabilium" (1285) and an anonymous Italian author used it as a source for work entitled "Liber de vita et moribus philosophorum" (written 1317–1320), which reached international popularity in the Late Middle Ages. The monk Ambrogio Traversari (1386–1439) produced another Latin translation in Florence between 1424 and 1433, for which far better records have survived. The Italian Renaissance scholar, painter, philosopher, and architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) borrowed from Traversari's translation of the "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers" in Book 2 of his "Libri della famiglia" and modeled his own autobiography on Diogenes Laërtius's "Life of Thales".  Diogenes Laërtius's work has had a complicated reception in modern times. The value of his "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers" as an insight into the private lives of the Greek sages led the French Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) to exclaim that he wished that, instead of one Laërtius, there had been a dozen. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) criticized Diogenes Laërtius for his lack of philosophical talent and categorized his work as nothing more than a compilation of previous writers' opinions. Nonetheless, he admitted that Diogenes Laërtius's compilation was an important one given the information that it contained. Hermann Usener (1834–1905) deplored Diogenes Laërtius as a "complete ass" ("asinus germanus") in his "Epicurea" (1887). Werner Jaeger (1888–1961) damned him as "that great ignoramus". In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, however, scholars have managed to partially redeem Diogenes Laertius's reputation as a writer by reading his book in a Hellenistic literary context.  Nonetheless, modern scholars treat Diogenes's testimonia with caution, especially when he fails to cite his sources. Herbert S. Long warns: "Diogenes has acquired an importance out of all proportion to his merits because the loss of many primary sources and of the earlier secondary compilations has accidentally left him the chief continuous source for the history of Greek philosophy." Robert M. Strozier offers a somewhat more positive assessment of Diogenes Laertius's reliability, noting that many other ancient writers attempt to reinterpret and expand on the philosophical teachings they describe, something which Diogenes Laërtius rarely does. Strozier concludes, "Diogenes Laertius is, when he does not conflate hundreds of years of distinctions, reliable simply because he is a less competent thinker than those on whom he writes, is less liable to re-formulate statements and arguments, and especially in the case of Epicurus, less liable to interfere with the texts he quotes. He does, however, simplify."  Despite his importance to the history of western philosophy and the controversy surrounding him, according to Gian Mario Cao, Diogenes Laërtius has still not received adequate scholarly attention. Both modern critical editions of his book, by H. S. Long (1964) and by M. Marcovich (1999) have received extensive criticism from scholars.  He is criticized primarily for being overly concerned with superficial details of the philosophers' lives and lacking the intellectual capacity to explore their actual philosophical works with any penetration. However, according to statements of the 14th-century monk Walter Burley in his "De vita et moribus philosophorum", the text of Diogenes seems to have been much fuller than that which we now possess.

References.

Attribution:

Diogenes Laërtius ( ; ; ) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is definitively known about his life, but his surviving "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers" is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek philosophy. His reputation is controversial among scholars because he often repeats information from his sources without critically evaluating it. He also frequently focuses on trivial or insignificant details of his subjects' lives while ignoring important details of their philosophical teachings and he sometimes fails to distinguish between earlier and later teachings of specific philosophical schools. However, unlike many other ancient secondary sources, Diogenes Laërtius generally reports philosophical teachings without attempting to reinterpret or expand on them, which means his accounts are often closer to the primary sources. Due to the loss of so many of the primary sources on which Diogenes relied, his work has become the foremost surviving source on the history of Greek philosophy.


Identity.

The name Simon occurs in all of the Synoptic Gospels and the Book of Acts each time there is a list of apostles, without further details:

The Zealot.

To distinguish him from Simon Peter he is called "Kananaios" or "Kananites", depending on the manuscript ( ), and in the list of apostles in Luke 6:15, repeated in Acts 1:13, "Zelotes," the "Zealot". Both titles derive from the Hebrew word קנאי "qanai", meaning "zealous", although Jerome and others mistook the word to signify the apostle was from the town of קנה Cana, in which case his epithet would have been "Kanaios", or even from the region of כנען Canaan. As such, the translation of the word as "the Cananite" or "the Canaanite" is traditional and without contemporary extra-canonic parallel. Robert Eisenman has pointed out contemporary talmudic references to Zealots as "kanna'im" "but not really as a group — rather as avenging priests in the Temple". Eisenman's broader conclusions, that the zealot element in the original apostle group was disguised and overwritten to make it support the assimilative Pauline Christianity of the Gentiles, are more controversial. John P. Meier points out that the term "Zealot" is a mistranslation and in the context of the Gospels means "zealous" or "jealous" (in this case, for keeping the Law of Moses), as the Zealot movement did not exist until 30 to 40 years after the events of the Gospels. However, neither Brandon, nor Hengel support this view, both independently concluding that the revolt by Judas of Galilee, arising from the census of Quirinius in 6 AD, was the ultimate origin of the Jewish freedom movement, which developed via the "Fourth Philosophy" group into the Zealots, even by the time of Jesus. Both of these researchers suggest that "Simon Zelotes" was indeed a Zealot belonging to this movement, and perhaps that other disciples were also. However, Hengel (in particular) concluded that Jesus himself was not a zealot, as much of his teaching was actually contrary to Fourth Philosophy views.

Other identifications.

In the Gospels, Simon the Zealot is never identified with Simon the brother of Jesus mentioned in Mark 6:3:  The Catholic Encyclopedia suggests that Simon the Zealot may be the same person as Simeon of Jerusalem or Simon the brother of Jesus. He could perhaps be the cousin of Jesus or a son of Joseph from a previous marriage.  Another tradition holds that this is the Simeon of Jerusalem who became the second bishop of Jerusalem, although he was born in Galilee.

Later tradition.

St. Isidore of Seville drew together the accumulated anecdotes of St. Simon in "De Vita et Morte".  According to the Golden Legend, which is a collection of hagiographies, compiled by Jacobus de Varagine in the thirteenth century "Simon the Cananaean and Judas Thaddeus were brethren of James the Less and sons of Mary Cleophas, which was married to Alpheus."  In the apocryphal Arabic Infancy Gospel a fact related to this apostle is mentioned. A boy named Simon is bitten by a snake in his hand; he is healed by Jesus, who told the child "you shall be my disciple". The mention ends with the phrase "this is Simon the Cananite, of whom mention is made in the Gospel."  In later tradition, Simon is often associated with Saint Jude as an evangelizing team; in Western Christianity, they share their feast day on 28 October. The most widespread tradition is that after evangelizing in Egypt, Simon joined Jude in Persia and Armenia or Beirut, Lebanon, where both were martyred in 65 AD. This version is the one found in the Golden Legend. He may have suffered crucifixion as the Bishop of Jerusalem.  One tradition states that he traveled in the Middle East and Africa. Christian Ethiopians claim that he was crucified in Samaria, while Justus Lipsius writes that he was sawn in half at Suanir, Persia. However, Moses of Chorene writes that he was martyred at Weriosphora in Caucasian Iberia. Tradition also claims he died peacefully at Edessa.  Another tradition says he visited Roman Britain. In this account, in his second mission to Britain, he arrived during the first year of Boadicea's rebellion (60 AD). He was crucified 10 May 61 AD by the Roman Catus Decianus, at Caistor, modern-day Lincolnshire, Britain.  According to Cardinal Baronius and Hippolytus, Simon's first arrival in Britain was in the year A.D.44, during the Claudian war. Evidently his stay was short, as he returned to the continent. Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople, and Byzantine historian, A.D.758-829, writes:  "Simon born in Cana of Galilee who for his fervent affection for his Master and great zeal that he showed by all means to the Gospel, was surnamed Zelotes, having received the Holy Ghost from above, travelled through Egypt, and Africa, then through Mauretania and all Lybia, preaching the Gospel. And the same doctrine he taught to the Occidental Sea, and the Isles called Britanniae."  Another tradition, doubtless inspired by his title "the Zealot", states that he involved in the First Jewish–Roman War (66-73 AD).  The second century "Epistle of the Apostles" ("Epistula Apostolorum"), a polemic against gnostics, lists him among the apostles purported to be writing the letter (who include Thomas) as Judas Zelotes. Certain Old Latin translations of the Gospel of Matthew substitute "Judas the Zealot" for Thaddeus/Lebbaeus in Matthew 10:3. To some readers, this suggests that he may be identical with the "Judas not Iscariot" mentioned in John 14:22: "Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Our Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?" As it has been suggested that Jude is identical with the Apostle Thomas (see Jude Thomas), an identification of "Simon Zelotes" with Thomas is also possible. Barbara Thiering identified Simon Zelotes with Simon Magus; however, this view has received no serious acceptance. The New Testament records nothing more of Simon, aside from this multitude of possible but unlikely pseudonyms. He is buried in the same tomb as St. Jude Thaddeus, in the left transept of the St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, under the altar of St. Joseph.  In art, Simon has the identifying attribute of a saw because he was traditionally martyred by being sawn in half.

Sainthood.

Simon, like the other Apostles, is regarded as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Eastern Catholic Churches, the Anglican Church and the Lutheran Church.

Islam.

Muslims accept Jesus as a prophet of Islam. The Qur'an also speaks of Jesus' disciples but does not mention their names, instead referring to them as "helpers to the work of God". Muslim exegesis and Qur'an commentary, however, names them and includes Simon amongst the disciples. Muslim tradition says that Simon was sent to preach the faith of God to the Berbers, outside North Africa.  In the Gospel of Barnabas, a book dated to the late 16th century that recounts a life story of Jesus from an Islamic perspective, a list of the twelve apostles is registered. In this list the only apostle that does not match with one of the traditional apostles of Christianity is Simon the Zealot, naming in his place a person who identifies himself as Barnabas, who appears as author of the book.

Simon the Zealot (, ) or Simon the Canaanite or Simon the Cananaean (, ; ; ; ) was one of the most obscure among the apostles of Jesus. A few pseudepigraphical writings were connected to him, but Saint Jerome does not include him in "De viris illustribus" written between 392–393 AD.


Biography.

Porpora was born in Naples. He graduated from the music conservatory Poveri di Gesù Cristo of his native city, where the civic opera scene was dominated by Alessandro Scarlatti. Porpora's first opera, "Agrippina," was successfully performed at the Neapolitan court in 1708. His second, "Berenice", was performed at Rome. In a long career, he followed these up by many further operas, supported as "maestro di cappella" in the households of aristocratic patrons, such as the commander of military forces at Naples, prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, or of the Portuguese ambassador at Rome, for composing operas alone did not yet make a viable career. However, his enduring fame rests chiefly upon his unequalled power of teaching singing. At the Neapolitan Conservatorio di Sant'Onofrio and with the Poveri di Gesù Cristo he trained Farinelli, Caffarelli, Salimbeni, and other celebrated vocalists, during the period 1715 to 1721. In 1720 and 1721 he wrote two serenades to libretti by a gifted young poet, Metastasio, the beginning of a long, though interrupted, collaboration. In 1722 his operatic successes encouraged him to lay down his conservatory commitments.  After a rebuff from the court of Charles VI at Vienna in 1725, Porpora settled mostly in Venice, composing and teaching regularly in the schools of La Pietà and the Incurabili. In 1729 the anti-Handel clique invited him to London to set up an opera company as a rival to Handel's, without success, and in the 1733–1734 season, even the presence of his pupil, the great Farinelli, failed to save the dramatic company in Lincoln's Inn Fields (the "Opera of the Nobility") from bankruptcy.  An interval as "Kapellmeister" at the Dresden court of the Elector of Saxony and Polish King Augustus from 1748 ended in strained relations with his rival in Venice and Rome, the hugely successful opera composer Johann Adolph Hasse and his wife, the prima donna Faustina, and resulted in Porpora's departure in 1752.  From Dresden he went to Vienna, where among other pupils he trained the young Marianne von Martinez, a future composer. As his accompanist and valet he hired the youthful Joseph Haydn, who was making his way in Vienna as a struggling freelancer. Haydn later remembered Porpora thus: "There was no lack of "Asino", "Coglione", "Birbante" [ass, cullion, rascal], and pokes in the ribs, but I put up with it all, for I profited greatly from Porpora in singing, in composition, and in the Italian language." He also said that he had learned from the maestro "the true fundamentals of composition".  In 1753 Porpora spent three summer months, with Haydn in tow, at the spa town Mannersdorf am Leithagebirge. His function there was to continue the singing lessons of the mistress of the ambassador of Venice to the Austrian Empire, Pietro Correr.  Porpora returned in 1759 to Naples.  From this time Porpora's career was a series of misfortunes: his florid style was becoming old-fashioned, his last opera, "Camilla", failed, his pension from Dresden stopped, and he became so poor that the expenses of his funeral were paid by a subscription concert. Yet at the moment of his death, Farinelli and Caffarelli were living in splendid retirement on fortunes largely based on the excellence of the old maestro's teaching.  A good linguist, who was admired for the idiomatic fluency of his recitatives, and a man of considerable literary culture, Porpora was also celebrated for his conversational wit. He was well-read in Latin and Italian literature, wrote poetry and spoke French, German and English.  Besides some four dozen operas, there are oratorios, solo cantatas with keyboard accompaniment, motets and vocal serenades. Among his larger works, his 1720 opera "Orlando", one mass, his Venetian Vespers, and the opera "Arianna in Nasso" (1733 according to HOASM) have been recorded.

Nicola (Antonio) Porpora (or Niccolò Porpora) (17 August 16863 March 1768) was an Italian composer and teacher of singing of the Baroque era, whose most famous singing students were the castratos Farinelli and Caffarelli. Other students included composers Matteo Capranica and Joseph Haydn.


Characteristics.

Atelid monkeys are small to moderate in size, ranging from 34 to 72 cm in head-body length, with the howler monkeys being the largest members of the group, and the spider monkeys being the smallest. They have long prehensile tails with a sensitive, almost hairless, tactile pad on the underside of the distal part. The tail is frequently used as 'fifth limb' while moving through the trees where they make their homes. They also have nails on their fingers and toes, enabling them to climb. Most species have predominantly dark brown, grey, or black fur, often with paler markings.  These are arboreal and diurnal animals, with most species restricted to dense rain forest, although some howler monkey species are found in drier forests, or wooded savannah. They mainly eat fruit and leaves, although the smaller species, in particular, may also eat some small insects. They have the dental formula:  Females give birth to a single infant (or, rarely, twins) after a gestation period of 180 to 225 days. In most species, individuals give birth every one to three years, and there is little, if any, seasonal peak in the number of births.  Atelid monkeys are typically polygamous, and live in social groups with anything up to twenty five adults, depending on species. Where groups are relatively small, as is common amongst the howler monkeys, a single male monopolises a 'harem' of females, but larger groups will contain several males, with a clear hierarchy of dominance.

Classification.

Currently, 29 species of atelid monkey are recognized, grouped into five genera, and two subfamilies.  FAMILY ATELIDAE

The Atelidae are one of the five families of New World monkeys now recognised. It was formerly included in the family Cebidae. Atelids are generally larger monkeys; the family includes the howler, spider, woolly, and woolly spider monkeys (the latter being the largest of the New World monkeys). They are found throughout the forested regions of Central and South America, from Mexico to northern Argentina.


Language.

The Mursi speak the Mursi language as a mother tongue. It is classified as Surmic, which is a branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Mursi is closely related (over 80% cognate) to Me'en and Suri, as well as Kwegu. According to the 1994 national census, there were 3,163 people who were identified as Mursi in the SNNPR; 3,158 spoke Mursi as their first language, while 31 spoke it as their second language. According to the analytical volume of the 1994 national census, where Mursi was grouped under Me'en, 89.7% were monolingual, and the second languages spoken were Bench (4.2%), Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia (3.5%), and Kafa (1.1%).  Two orthographies for the Mursi language exist. One is the Amharic-based, although the Mursi language is one the Surmic languages with incompatible vowel structures and stressed and unstressed consonants compared to Amharic. The second is the more suitable Latin-based alphabet. The Latin-based orthography was developed by David Turton and Moges Yigezu of Addis Ababa University.

Religion and culture.

Like many agro-pastoralists in East Africa, the Mursi experience a force greater than themselves, which they call "Tumwi". This is usually located in the Sky, although sometimes "Tumwi" manifests itself as a thing of the sky ("ahi a tumwin"), such as a rainbow or a bird. The principal religious and ritual office in the society is that of the Kômoru, the Priest or Shaman. This is an inherited office, unlike the more informal political role of the Jalaba. The Kômoru embodies in his person the well-being of the group as a whole and acts as a means of communication between the community and the god ("Tumwi"), especially when it is threatened by such events as drought, crop pests and disease. His role is characterized by the performance of public rituals to bring rain, to protect men, cattle and crops from disease, and to ward off threatened attacks from other tribes. Ideally, in order to preserve this link between the people and the Tumwi, the Kômoru should not leave Mursiland or even his local group ("bhuran"). One clan in particular, Komortê, is considered to be, par excellence, the priestly clan, but there are priestly families in two other clans, namely Garikuli and Bumai.  The religion of the Mursi people is classified as Animism, although some Mursi have adopted Christianity. There is a Serving in Mission Station in the northeastern corner of Mursiland, which provides education, basic medical care and instruction in Christianity.

Life cycles.

The Mursi undergo various rites of passage, educational or disciplinary processes. Lip plates are a well known aspect of the Mursi and Surma, who are probably the last groups in Africa amongst whom it is still the norm for women to wear large pottery, wooden discs, or ‘plates,’ in their lower lips. Girls' lips are pierced at the age of 15 or 16. Occasionally lip plates are worn to a dance by unmarried women, and increasingly they are worn to attract tourists in order to earn some extra money. Ceremonial duelling ("thagine"), a form of ritualised male violence, is a highly valued and popular activity of Mursi men, especially unmarried men, and a key marker of Mursi identity. Age sets are an important political feature, where men are formed into named "age sets" and pass through a number of "age grades" during the course of their lives; married women have the same age grade status as their husbands.

Omo National Park.

The African Parks Foundation and government park officials are accused of coercing Mursi into giving up their land within the boundaries of the Omo National Park without compensation. The documents are being used to legalize the boundaries of the park, which African Parks has taken over.  A group called "Native Solutions to Conservation Refugees" says that the documents will make the Mursi 'illegal squatters' on their own land and that a similar fate is befalling the Suri, Dizi, Me'en, and Nyangatom, who also live within the park. After the African Parks Foundation took over Omo National Park, the Mursi feared that they would eventually be evicted from their land like the Guji-Oromo in Nechasar National Park. Due to mounting pressures from human rights activists, African Parks Foundation announced its plans to leave Omo National Park in 2007. The Mursi have declared their territory a community conservation area as of July, 2008 and have begun a community tourism project.

The Gibe III Dam and the Large-Scale Commercial Irrigation Scheme.

The Gibe III hydroelectric dam, in the middle Basin of the Omo and completed in October 2015, will greatly modify the flood regime upon which thousands of people in the lower basin depend for their livelihoods. By regulating the river flows, and ‘uplifting’ the low flows during the dry season, it will also make possible the development of large-scale commercial irrigation schemes, although the latest report commissioned suggests that there is not enough water in the Omo River to irrigate the proposed area of plantations. The most ambitious of these is already being implemented by the state-run Ethiopian Sugar Corporation on land either taken from the Omo National Park or currently occupied by the Bodi, Mursi, Nyangatom and Kara. If current plans are realised the lower Omo will become by far the largest irrigation complex in Ethiopia, at least doubling the total irrigated area in the country.

The Mursi (or Mun as they refer to themselves) are a Surmic pastoralist ethnic group in Ethiopia. They principally reside in the Debub Omo Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region, close to the border with South Sudan. According to the 2007 national census, there are 11,500 Mursi, 848 of whom live in urban areas; of the total number, 92.25% live in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region (SNNPR).


Operation.

Drivers and passengers offer and search for journeys through one of the several mediums available. After finding a match they contact each other to arrange any details for the journey(s). Costs, meeting points and other details like space for luggage are agreed on. They then meet and carry out their shared car journey(s) as planned.  Carpooling is commonly implemented for commuting but is increasingly popular for longer one-off journeys, with the formality and regularity of arrangements varying between schemes and journeys.  Carpooling is not always arranged for the whole length of a journey. Especially on long journeys, it is common for passengers to only join for parts of the journey, and give a contribution based on the distance that they travel. This gives carpooling extra flexibility and enables more people to share journeys and save money.  Some carpooling is now organized in online marketplaces or ride-matching websites that allow drivers and passengers to find a travel match and/or make a secured transaction to share the planned travel cost. Like other online marketplaces, they use community-based trust mechanisms, such as user-ratings, to create an optimal experience for users.  Arrangements for carpooling can be made through many different mediums including public websites, social media, acting as marketplaces, employer websites, smartphone applications, carpooling agencies and pick-up points.

Initiatives.

Many companies and local authorities have introduced programs to promote carpooling.  In an effort to reduce traffic and encourage carpooling, some governments have introduced high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes in which only vehicles with two or more passengers are allowed to drive. HOV lanes can create strong practical incentives for carpooling by reducing travel time and expense. In some countries, it is common to find parking spaces reserved for carpoolers.  In 2011, an organization called Greenxc created a campaign to encourage others to use this form of transportation in order to reduce their own carbon footprint.  Carpooling, or car sharing as it is called in British English, is promoted by a national UK charity, Carplus, whose mission is to promote responsible car use in order to alleviate financial, environmental and social costs of motoring today, and encourage new approaches to car dependency in the UK. Carplus is supported by Transport for London, the British government initiative to reduce congestion and parking pressure and contribute to relieving the burden on the environment and to the reduction of traffic-related air-pollution, in London.  However, not all countries are helping carpooling to spread: in Hungary it is a tax crime to carry someone in a car for a cost share (or any payment) unless the driver has a taxi license and there is an invoice issued and taxes are paid. Several people were fined by undercover tax officers during a 2011 crackdown, posing as passengers looking for a ride on carpooling websites. On 19 March 2012 Endre Spaller, a member of the Hungarian Parliament interpellated Zoltán Cséfalvay, State Secretary for National Economy, about this practice who replied that carpooling should be endorsed instead of punished, however care must be taken for some people trying to turn it into a way to gain untaxed profit.

Cost sharing.

Carpooling usually means to divide the travel expenses equally between all the occupants of the vehicle (driver or passenger). The driver doesn’t try to earn money, but to share with several people the cost of a trip he/she would do anyway. The expenses to be divided basically include the fuel and possible tolls. But if we include in the calculation the depreciation of the vehicle purchase and maintenance, insurance and taxes paid by the driver, we get a cost around $1/mile. There are platforms that facilitate carpooling by connecting people seeking respectively passengers and drivers. Usually there is a fare set up by the car driver and accepted by passengers because they get an agreement before trip start.  The second generation of these platforms is designed to manage urban trips in real time, using the travellers’ smartphones. They make possible to occupy the vehicle’s empty seats on the fly, collecting and delivering passengers along its entire route (and not only at common points of origin and destination). This system automatically performs an equitable sharing of travel costs, allowing each passenger to reimburse the driver a fair share according to the benefit actually gained by the vehicle usage, proportional to the distance traveled by the passenger and the number of people that shared the car.

History.

Carpooling first became prominent in the United States as a rationing tactic during World War II. Ridesharing began during World War II through “car clubs” or “car-sharing clubs”. The US Office of Civilian Defense asked neighborhood councils to encourage four workers to share a ride in one car to conserve rubber for the war effort. It also created a ride sharing program called the Car Sharing Club Exchange and Self-Dispatching System. Carpooling returned in the mid-1970s due to the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis. At that time the first employee vanpools were organized at Chrysler and 3M.  Carpooling declined precipitously between the 1970s and the 2000s, peaking in the US in 1970 with a commute mode share of 20.4%. By 2011 it was down to 9.7%. In large part this has been attributed to the dramatic fall in gas prices (45%) during the 1980s. In the 1990s it was popular among college students, where campuses have limited parking space. Together with Prof. James Davidson from Harvard, Dace Campbell, a Washington computer scientist, and several others, began to investigate the feasibility of further development although the comprehensive technologies were not commercially available yet at the time. Their work is considered by many to be a forerunner of carpooling & ridesharing systems using technology developed by Garrett Camp, Travis Kalanick, Oscar Salazar and Conrad Whelan at Uber.  The character of carpool travel has been shifting from "Dagwood Bumstead" variety, in which each rider is picked up in sequence, to a "park and ride" variety, where all the travelers meet at a common location. Recently, however, the Internet has facilitated growth for carpooling and the commute share mode has grown to 10.7% in 2005. In 2007 with the advent of smart phones and GPS, which became commercially available, John Zimmer and Logan Green, from Cornell University and University of California, Santa Barbara respectively, rediscovered and created carpooling system called Zimride, a precursor to Lyft. The popularity of the Internet and smart phones has greatly helped carpooling to expand, enabling people to offer and find rides thanks to easy-to-use and reliable online transport marketplaces. These websites are commonly used for one-off long-distance journeys with high fuel costs. Carpooling is also becoming popular in Canada, with two companies sharing the market, Kangaride in Eastern Canada and Poparide in Western Canada.  In Europe, long-distance car-pooling has become increasingly popular over the past years, thanks to BlaBlaCar. According to its website,, Blablacar counted more than 80 million users, across Europe and beyond. , Uber and Lyft have suspended carpooling services in the U.S. and Canada in efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic via social distancing.

Other forms.

Carpooling exists in other forms:

Carpooling (also car-sharing, ride-sharing and lift-sharing) is the sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car, and prevents the need for others to have to drive to a location themselves.


History and timeline.

First ten years.

The Environmental Transport Association set the initial annual Car-Free Day on the first Tuesday in their Green Transport Week (around 17 June). In 2000 it was agreed to make it a self-standing day held on September 22, originally as a pan-European day organised under the auspices of the European Commission and later with international extensions—during which a large number of cities around the world are invited to close their centers to cars. Pedestrians, bicycles, public transit and other forms of sustainable transportation are encouraged on these days. People can reflect on what their city would look like with a lot fewer cars, and what might be needed to make this happen. Advocates claim that over 100 million people in 1,500 cities celebrate International Car-Free Day, though on days and in ways of their choice. This claim, however, is not confirmed. Over the first decade of the car-free day movement (1994–2005), the world has seen hundreds of cities giving the approach a try in very different circumstances, some good, some undeniably bad, some of them on several occasions. Activists in this field wondered what were the actual accomplishments. They suggested that it was agreeable to have a pleasant day with fewer cars and probably fewer accidents at least in some parts of the city, but considered that this was not the bottom line. For them the goal of a car-free day had from the beginning been to serve as a small step, as a catalyst in a much larger and more ambitious process of citywide systemic transformation toward a more truly sustainable mobility system. They suggested that with rare exceptions they were not seeing anything like that. The persons involved in the movement thought that after ten years it was time to stand back and see what, if any, difference this approach had made. They asked themselves if CFDs made here or there had produced any significant permanent impacts on cities and the ways human beings get around in them. They wondered if they could be content with what the great bulk of these projects and programs had achieved and just keep going on as-is, or if it were not time to stand back and look again. They decided to fight complacency with a new international collaborative program starting in 2004.

Timeline: Some major events.

The following chronology assembles some of the main events of the last decades, which together have gradually built on each other's accomplishments to leave us today with a movement that is only now beginning to get under way. There are a very large number of cities and events that are not covered here.

Car Free Day Call.

The 1994 Car Free Day Call set out a challenge for a city, neighborhood or group:  The exercise considered car users to be "addicts" who need to be "treated" in some way. The organisers considered this to mean that motorists should have no choice but to be without cars, at least for a time. In this particular instance the proposed "treatment" was to find an answer to the following question in three main parts:

World Car Free Day, which is celebrated on September 22, encourages motorists to give up their cars for a day. Organized events are held in some cities and countries.


Early years.

Cziffra was born to a poor family in Budapest in 1921. In his memoirs Cziffra describes his father as "a cabaret artist". His parents had lived in Paris before World War I, when they were expelled as enemy aliens.  His earliest training in piano came from watching his sister practice. She had decided she was going to learn the piano after finding a job which allowed her to save the required amount of money for buying an upright piano. Cziffra, who was weak as a child, often watched his sister practice, and mimicked her. He learned without sheet music, instead repeating and improvising over tunes sung by his parents. Later he earned money as a child improvising on popular music at a local circus.  In 1930 Cziffra began to study at the Franz Liszt Academy under the tuition of Ernő Dohnányi until 1941, when he was conscripted into the Hungarian Army. He gave numerous concerts in Hungary, Scandinavia and the Netherlands.

Later years.

Hungary was allied with the Axis during the Second World War. Cziffra had just married his wife Soleilka, who was pregnant when he entered military training. His unit was sent to the Russian front. He was captured by Russian partisans and held as a prisoner of war. After the war he earned a living playing in Budapest bars and clubs, touring with a European jazz band from 1947–1950 and earning recognition as a superb jazz pianist and virtuoso.  After attempting to escape communist Hungary in 1950 he was again imprisoned and subject to hard labour in the period 1950–1953. In 1956 Cziffra escaped with his wife and son to Vienna, where his recital was warmly received. His successful Paris debut the following year preceded his London debut at the Royal Festival Hall playing Liszt's first piano concerto and "Hungarian Fantasy" which was also well received. His career continued with concerts throughout Europe and debuts at the Ravinia Festival (Grieg and Liszt concertos with Carl Schuricht) and Carnegie Hall, New York with Thomas Schippers.  Cziffra always performed with a large leather wristband to support the ligaments of his wrist, which were damaged after he was forced to carry 130 pounds of concrete up six flights of stairs during his two years in a labor camp.  In "Cannons and Flowers", his autobiography, which has been described as "a hallucinatory journey through privation, acclaim, hostility and personal tragedy", Cziffra recounts his life story up until 1977. In 1966, he founded the Festival de musique de La Chaise-Dieu in the Auvergne, and three years later he inaugurated the piano competition named after him at Versailles. In 1968 he took French citizenship and adopted the first name 'Georges'. In 1977 he founded the Cziffra Foundation, sited in the Saint Frambourg chapel in Senlis, Oise, which he bought and restored, with the aim of helping young musicians at the outset of their careers.  Cziffra's son, György Cziffra Jr., was a professional conductor and participated in several concerts and recordings with his father. However, his promising career was cut short by his death in an apartment fire in 1981. Cziffra never again performed or recorded with an orchestra, and some critics have commented that the severe emotional blow affected his playing quality.  Cziffra died in Longpont-sur-Orge, Essonne, France, aged 72, from a heart attack resulting from a series of complications from lung cancer.

Recordings.

Audio.

In addition to the above discography of commercially-released recordings, there exist audio recordings of complete live concerts, a few of which have been commercially released on disc, several can be obtained non-commercially, some however have been lost.

Video.

[This list is incomplete. Please help to complete it.]

György Cziffra (in Hungarian form Cziffra György ; 5 November 192115 January 1994), also known as Georges Cziffra and George Cziffra, was a Hungarian-French virtuoso pianist and composer. He is considered to be one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century. Among his teachers was István Thomán, who was a favourite pupil of Franz Liszt.


Life.

Vojtěch Preissig was born on 31 July 1873 in Světec, northern Bohemia. His father was a mining engineer. In 1884 he moved to Prague where he studied at the School of Applied Industrial Art from 1892 to 1896, then at the School of Decorative Architecture from 1897 to 1898. In 1897 he moved to Paris and worked for two years with the Czech Art Nouveau artist, Alphonse Mucha. His early, Secessionist, work was influenced by Japanese art and Symbolism. He returned to Prague in 1903 where he founded the periodical "Česká grafika" ("Czech Graphics"), published the book "Barevný lept a barevná rytina" ("Color Etchings and Color Engravings") in 1909 and opened his own graphics studio in 1905. Unfortunately, the graphics studio was not a financial success so he moved to the United States in 1910 and worked as an art instructor. Preissig remained in the United States until 1930. He taught at Columbia University and the Art Students League of New York starting in 1912, then moved to Boston by 1916 and taught a course in graphic arts for the Wentworth Institute. He became the director of the School of Printing and Graphic Arts, until 1926. During his time with the Wentworth Institute he designed recruitment posters for the United States armed forces of World War I, which were principally aimed at Czech immigrants.

Membership in Czech resistance.

Preissig, along with his daughter Irena Bernášková, supported the Czech resistance during both World Wars and was arrested in 1940 for doing graphic design work for one of the most important magazines of the resistance, called "V boj" ("Into the Fight"), that had been outlawed by German authorities. He died on 11 June 1944 in Dachau concentration camp.

Work.

During World War I he designed recruitment posters for the United States armed forces, which were mainly directed at Czech immigrants. Preissig's work with book design and font design originated from a need for better printing type in the Czech language. Czech printers had traditionally used German typefaces and added additional diacritical marks as needed.

Preissig Antiqua.

Preissig's work with typefaces began by creating the Preissig Antiqua typeface. Preissig created 'Preissig Antiqua' roughly around the early 20th Century that would influence the style of print and type designs not only in Czechoslovakia, but also all over Europe in general.

Vojtěch Preissig (31 July 1873 – 11 June 1944) was a Czech typographer, printmaker, designer, illustrator, painter and teacher. He studied in Prague at the School of Applied Industrial Art (in Friedrich Ohmann's Decorative Architecture workshop) from 1892 to 1896 and at the School of Decorative Architecture from 1897 to 1898.


Reign.

Reccared was the younger son of King Leovigild by his first wife Theodosia. Like his father, Reccared had his capital at Toledo. The Visigothic kings and nobles were traditionally Arian Christians, while the Hispano-Roman population were Roman Catholics. The Catholic bishop Leander of Seville was instrumental in converting the elder son and heir of Leovigild, Hermenegild, to Catholicism. Leander supported his rebellion and was exiled for his role.  When King Leovigild died, within a few weeks of April 21, 586, bishop Leander was swift to return to Toledo. The new king had been associated with his father in ruling the kingdom and was acclaimed king by the Visigothic nobles without opposition.  In January 587, Reccared renounced Arianism for Catholicism, the single great event of his reign and the turning point for Visigothic Hispania. Most Arian nobles and ecclesiastics followed his example, certainly those around him at Toledo, but there were Arian uprisings, notably in Septimania, his northernmost province, beyond the Pyrenees, where the leader of opposition was the Arian bishop Athaloc, who had the reputation among his Catholic enemies of being virtually a second Arius. Among the secular leaders of the Septimanian insurrection, the counts Granista and Wildigern appealed to Guntram of Burgundy, who saw his opportunity and sent his "dux" Desiderius. Reccared's army defeated the Arian insurgents and their Catholic allies with great slaughter, Desiderius himself being slain.  The next conspiracy broke out in the west, Lusitania, headed by Sunna, the Arian bishop of Mérida, and count Seggo. Claudius, Reccared's "dux Lusitaniae", put down the rising, Sunna being banished to Mauritania and Seggo retiring to Gallaecia. In the later part of 588 a third conspiracy was headed by the Arian bishop Uldila and the queen dowager Goiswintha, but they were detected, and the bishop was banished. The Third Council of Toledo, organized by St. Leander but convened in the king's name in May 589, set the tone for the new Catholic kingdom. The public confession of the king, read aloud by a notary, reveals by the emphatic clarity of its theological points and its quotations of scripture that it was ghost-written for the king. Bishop Leander also delivered the triumphant closing sermon, which his brother Isidore entitled "Homilia de triumpho ecclesiae ob conversionem Gothorum" a homily upon the "triumph of the Church upon the conversion of the Goths". The text of the homily survives. Leander and the Catholic bishops immediately instituted the program of forced conversion of Jews and extirpation of the remains of Arianism as heresy. Catholic history traditionally imputes these persecutions to the Visigothic kings. When, after Reccared's reign, at a synod held at Toledo in 633, the bishops took upon themselves the nobles' right to select a king from among the royal family, the transfer of power was complete. By this time the remaining ethnic distinction between the increasingly Romanized Visigoths and their Hispano-Roman subjects had all but disappeared (the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining function as a church language with the extirpation of Arianism, and dress & funerary customs also cease to be distinguishing features in ca. 570/580)  Reportedly Reccared engaged in a vigorous policy against the Jews, pursuing zealous and fanatical policies limiting Jewish freedoms as promulgated in the canons of synods. Modern historians have revised this view and see a continuation of traditional Visigothic tolerance. Pope Gregory I was convinced that Reccared refused bribes from the Jewish community, which was large, well-connected throughout the Mediterranean and powerful, and Reccared's laws provided that the offspring of a Christian and a Jew be baptised, which was of little moment to the Jewish community, as whether it was not born of a Jewish mother or was born of a Jewish woman outside her community, the child was not considered a Jew anyway. Reccared eliminated the death penalty for Jews convicted of proselytising among Christians and ignored Gregory's request that the trade in Christian slaves at Narbonne be forbidden to Jews. Among the canons of five synods during Reccared's reign, E. A. Thompson could find none disadvantaging the Jewish community.  The information for the rest of Reccared's reign is scanty. John of Biclaro, Reccared's contemporary, ends his account with the Third Council of Toledo. Isidore of Seville, bishop Leander's brother, praises his peaceful government, clemency, and generosity: standard encomia. He returned various properties, even some private ones, that had been confiscated by his father, and founded many churches and monasteries. Pope Gregory, writing to Reccared in Aug. 599 ("Epp". ix. 61, 121), extols him for embracing the true faith and inducing his people to do so, and notably for refusing the bribes offered by Jews to procure the repeal of a law against them. He sent Reccared a piece of the True Cross, some fragments of the chains of St. Peter, and some hairs of St. John the Baptist.  Reccared died a natural death at Toledo and was succeeded by his youthful son Liuva II.

Reccared I (or Recared; ; ; 559 – December 601 AD; reigned 586–601) was Visigothic King of Hispania and Septimania. His reign marked a climactic shift in history, with the king's renunciation of Arianism in favour of Catholicism in 587.


Early life.

Zamyatin was born in Lebedyan, Tambov Governorate, south of Moscow. His father was a Russian Orthodox priest and schoolmaster, and his mother a musician. In a 1922 essay, Zamyatin recalled, "You will see a very lonely child, without companions of his own age, on his stomach, over a book, or under the piano, on which his mother is playing Chopin."  He may have had synesthesia since he gave letters and sounds qualities. For instance, he saw the letter Л as having pale, cold and light blue qualities.  He studied naval engineering in Saint Petersburg from 1902 until 1908, during which time he joined the Bolsheviks. He was arrested during the Russian Revolution of 1905 and sent into internal exile in Siberia. However, he escaped and returned to Saint Petersburg where he lived illegally before moving to the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1906 to finish his studies.  After returning to Russia, he began to write fiction as a hobby. He was arrested and exiled a second time in 1911, but amnestied in 1913. His "Uyezdnoye" ("A Provincial Tale") in 1913, which satirized life in a small Russian town, brought him a degree of fame. The next year he was tried for maligning the Imperial Russian Military in his story "Na Kulichkakh" ("At the world's end"). He continued to contribute articles to various Marxist newspapers.  After graduating as an engineer for the Imperial Russian Navy, Zamyatin worked professionally at home and abroad. In 1916 he was sent to the United Kingdom to supervise the construction of icebreakers at the shipyards in Walker and Wallsend while living in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Literary career.

Zamyatin later recalled, "In England, I built ships, looked at ruined castles, listened to the thud of bombs dropped by German zeppelins, and wrote "The Islanders". I regret that I did not see the February Revolution, and know only the October Revolution (I returned to Petersburg, past German submarines, in a ship with lights out, wearing a life belt the whole time, just in time for October). This is the same as never having been in love and waking up one morning already married for ten years or so.."  Zamyatin's "The Islanders", satirizing English life, and the similarly themed "A Fisher of Men", were both published after his return to Russia in late 1917. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 he edited several journals, lectured on writing, and edited Russian translations of works by Jack London, O. Henry, H. G. Wells, and others. Zamyatin originally supported the October Revolution, but opposed the increasing use of censorship which followed.  His works became increasingly satirical and critical toward the CPSU. Although he supported them before they came to power he slowly came to disagree more and more with their policies, particularly those regarding censorship of the arts. In his 1921 essay "I Am Afraid," Zamyatin wrote: "True literature can exist only when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics." This attitude made his position increasingly difficult as the 1920s wore on. In 1923, Zamyatin arranged for the manuscript of his novel "We" to be smuggled to E.P. Dutton and Company in New York City. After being translated into English by Gregory Zilboorg, the novel was published in 1924.  Then, in 1927, Zamyatin went much further. He smuggled the original Russian text to Marc Lvovich Slonim (1894–1976), then editor of a Russian émigré journal and publishing house based in Prague. To the fury of the State, copies of the Slonim edition began being smuggled back to the USSR and secretly passed from hand to hand. Zamyatin's dealing with Western publishers triggered a mass offensive by the Soviet State against him. As a result, he was blacklisted from publishing anything in his homeland.  "We" has often been discussed as a political satire aimed at the police state of the Soviet Union. There are many other dimensions, however. It may variously be examined as (1) a polemic against the optimistic scientific socialism of H. G. Wells, whose works Zamyatin had previously published, and with the heroic verses of the (Russian) Proletarian Poets, (2) as an example of Expressionist theory, and (3) as an illustration of the archetype theories of Carl Jung as applied to literature. George Orwell believed that Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" (1932) must be partly derived from "We". However, in a 1962 letter to Christopher Collins, Huxley says that he wrote "Brave New World" as a reaction to H.G. Wells' utopias long before he had heard of "We". Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing "Player Piano" (1952) he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of "Brave New World", whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We"." In 1994, "We" received a Prometheus Award in the Libertarian Futurist Society's "Hall of Fame" category.  In addition to "We", Zamyatin also wrote a number of short stories, in fairy tale form, that constituted satirical criticism of Communist ideology. In one story, the mayor of a city decides that to make everyone happy he must make everyone equal. The mayor then forces everyone, himself included, to live in a big barrack, then to shave their heads to be equal to the bald, and then to become mentally disabled to equate intelligence downward. This plot is very similar to that of "The New Utopia" (1891) by Jerome K. Jerome whose collected works were published three times in Russia before 1917. In its turn, Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron" (1961) bears distinct resemblances to Zamyatin's tale.  Max Eastman, an American communist who had similarly broken with his former beliefs, described the Politburo's campaign against Zamyatin in his book "Artists in Uniform".

Emigration and death.

In 1931, Zamyatin appealed directly to Joseph Stalin, requesting permission to leave the Soviet Union. In this letter Zamyatin wrote, "I do not wish to conceal that the basic reason for my request for permission to go abroad with my wife is my hopeless position here as a writer, the death sentence that has been pronounced upon me as a writer here at home.". With the encouragement of Maxim Gorky, Stalin agreed to Zamyatin's request.  Zamyatin settled with his wife in Paris, where he collaborated with French film director Jean Renoir. Renoir's 1936 adaptation of Gorky's "The Lower Depths" was co-written by Zamyatin.  Yevgeny Zamyatin died in poverty of a heart attack in 1937. Only a small group of friends were present for his burial. However, one of the mourners was his Russian language publisher Marc Slonim, who had befriended the Zamyatins. Zamyatin's grave can be found in Cimetière de Thiais, south of Paris.

Legacy.

"We", the 1921 Russian novel, directly inspired:

Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin (; 20 January (Julian) / 1 February (Gregorian), 1884 – 10 March 1937), sometimes anglicized as Eugene Zamyatin, was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. He is most famous for his 1921 novel "We", a story set in a dystopian future police state.


Life and work.

Galland was born at Rollot in Picardy (now in the department of Somme). After completing school at Noyon, he studied Greek and Latin in Paris, where he also acquired some Arabic. In 1670 he was attached to the French embassy at Istanbul because of his excellent knowledge of Greek and, in 1673, he travelled in Syria and the Levant, where he copied a great number of inscriptions, and sketched and—in some cases—removed historical monuments.  After a brief visit to France, where his collection of ancient coins attracted some attention, Galland returned to the Levant in 1677. In 1679 he undertook a third voyage, being commissioned by the French East India Company to collect for the cabinet of Colbert. On the expiration of this commission, he was instructed by the government to continue his research, and had the title of antiquary to the king (Louis XIV) conferred upon him. During his prolonged residences abroad, he acquired a thorough knowledge of the Arabic, Turkish, and Persian languages and literatures, which, on his final return to France, enabled him to render valuable assistance to Melchisédech Thévenot, the keeper of the royal library, and to Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville. When d'Herbelot died in 1695, Galland continued his "Bibliothèque orientale" ("Oriental Library"), a huge compendium of information about Islamic culture, and principally a translation of the great Arabic encyclopedia "Kaşf az-Zunūn" by the celebrated Ottoman scholar Kâtip Çelebi. It was finally published in 1697 and was a major contribution to European knowledge about the Middle East, influencing writers such as William Beckford (in his oriental tale "Vathek").  After the deaths of Thévenot and d'Herbelot, Galland lived for some time at Caen under the roof of Nicolas Foucault, the intendant of Caen, himself no mean archaeologist. There he began, in 1704, the publication of "Les mille et Une Nuits", which excited immense interest during the time of its appearance and is still the standard French translation. In 1709 he was appointed to the chair of Arabic in the Collège de France. He continued to discharge the duties of this post until his death in 1715.  Besides a number of archaeological works, especially in the department of numismatics, Galland published in 1694 a compilation from the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, entitled "Paroles remarquables, bons mots et maximes des orientaux", and in 1699 a translation from an Arabic manuscript, "De l'origine et du progrès du café". The former of these works appeared in an English translation in 1795. His "Contes et fables indiennes de Bidpai et de Lokrnan" was published posthumously in 1724. Among his numerous manuscripts are a translation of the Qur'an and a "Histoire générale des empereurs Turcs". His journal was published by Charles Schefer in 1881.

Translation of "The Thousand and One Nights".

Galland had come across a manuscript of "The Tale of Sindbad the Sailor" in Constantinople during the 1690s and, in 1701, he published his translation of it into French. Its success encouraged him to embark on a translation of a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Syrian manuscript (now known as the Galland Manuscript) of "The Thousand and One Nights". The first two volumes of this work, under the title "Mille et Une Nuit", appeared in 1704. The twelfth and final volume was published posthumously in 1717. He translated the first part of his work solely from the Syrian manuscript, but in 1709 he was introduced to a Maronite Christian from Aleppo, Hanna Diab, who recounted fourteen more stories to Galland from memory. He chose to include seven of these tales in his version of the "Nights".  Mystery still surrounds the origins of some of the most famous tales. For instance, there are no Arabic manuscripts of "Aladdin" and "Ali Baba", the so-called "orphan tales", which pre-date Galland's translation. This has led some scholars to conclude that Galland invented them himself and the Arabic versions are merely later renderings of his original French.  Galland also adapted his translation to the taste of the time. The immediate success the tales enjoyed was partly due to the vogue for fairy stories (French: "contes de fees"), which had been started in France in the 1690s by his friend Charles Perrault. Galland was also eager to conform to the literary canons of the era. He cut many of the erotic passages as well as all of the poetry. This caused Sir Richard Burton to refer to "Galland's delightful abbreviation and adaptation" which "in no wise represent(s) the eastern original." His translation was greeted with immense enthusiasm and had soon been translated into many other European languages: English (a "Grub Street" version appeared in 1706), German (1712), Italian (1722), Dutch (1732), Russian (1763), and Polish (1768). They produced a wave of imitations and the widespread 18th century fashion for oriental tales. As Jorge Luis Borges wrote:Another fact is undeniable. The most famous and eloquent encomiums of "The Thousand and One Nights"—by Coleridge, Thomas de Quincey, Stendhal, Tennyson, Edgar Allan Poe, Newman—are from readers of Galland's translation. Two hundred years and ten better translations have passed, but the man in Europe or the Americas who thinks of the "Thousand and One Nights" thinks, invariably, of this first translation. The Spanish adjective "milyunanochesco" [thousand-and-one-nights-esque]... has nothing to do with the erudite obscenities of Burton or Mardrus and everything to do with Antoine Galland's bijoux and sorceries.

Dominique Vivant, Baron Denon (4 January 1747 – 27 April 1825) was a French artist, writer, diplomat, author, and archaeologist. He was appointed as the first Director of the Louvre museum by Napoleon after the Egyptian campaign of 1798–1801, and is commemorated in the Denon Wing of the modern museum and in the Dominique-Vivant Denon Research Center. His two-volume "Voyage dans la basse et la haute Egypte" ("Journey in Lower and Upper Egypt"), 1802, was the foundation of modern Egyptology.


Biography.

Early career.

Born in Herouël, a village in the "département" of the Aisne, he was the son of a seigneurial landowner. He studied law and in 1774 purchased a position as prosecutor "procureur" attached to the Châtelet in Paris. He sold his office in 1781 to pay off his debts and became a clerk under the lieutenant-general of police.  Little is known of the part he played at the outbreak of the Revolution. According to himself, he was part of the National Guard at its formation. He was active in the politics of his section in 1789, and in August 1792, supported the sans culotte movement. Backed by his cousin Camille Desmoulins, Fouquier de Tinville became the foreman of a jury established to pass verdict on crimes of Royalists arrested after the "[Insurrection of 10 August 1792|journée du 10 août]]" in 1792.

Public prosecutor.

When the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris was created by the National Convention on 10 March 1793, he was appointed its public prosecutor, an office that he filled until 1 August 1794. His zeal in prosecution earned him the nickname "Purveyor to the Guillotine." On 26 September 1793 Martial Herman was appointed as president of the tribunal and René-François Dumas as vice president; Coffinhal as one of the judges.  His activity during this time earned him the reputation of one of the most sinister figures of the Revolution. His office as public prosecutor arguably reflected a need to display the appearance of legality during what was essentially political command, more than a need to establish actual guilt. Fouquier de Tinville, like Maximilien Robespierre, was known for his ruthless radicalism.  One of the last groups he prosecuted included seven nuns, aged 32–66, of the former convent of Carmelites, living in Paris, plus an eighth nun, of the Convent of the Visitation,...who were charged with consorting together and scheming to trouble the State by provoking civil war with their fanaticism...Instead of living at peace within the bosom of the Republic, which had provided for their subsistence, and instead of obeying the laws, adopted the idea of residing together in this same house...and of making this house a refuge for refractory priests and counter-revolutionary fanatics, with whom they plotted against the Revolution and against the eternal principles of liberty and equality which are its basis. Apparently the nuns, whom he called criminal assassins, were corrupted by the ex-Jesuit Rousseau de Roseicquet, who led them in a conspiracy to poison minds and subvert the Republic. When the judge read this piece of Fouquier-Tinville's prose, he condemned them to be deported, as well as all those who had given them refuge.

Downfall.

His career ended with the fall of Robespierre at the start of the Thermidorian Reaction. Although he was briefly kept as the new government's prosecutor, even helping in the arrest of Robespierre, Louis de Saint-Just, and Georges Couthon, and being confirmed by Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac and the Convention on 28 July 1794, he was arrested after being denounced by Louis-Marie Stanislas Fréron.  Imprisoned on 1 August, he was brought to trial in front of the Convention. His defense was that he had only obeyed the decrees of the Committee of Public Safety and the Convention: It is not I who ought to be facing the tribunal, but the chiefs whose orders I have executed. I had only acted in the spirit of the laws passed by a Convention invested with all powers. Through the absence of its members [on trial], I find myself the head of a [political] conspiracy I have never been aware of. Here I am facing slander, [facing] a people always eager to find others responsible.  After a trial lasting forty-one days, he was sentenced to death and guillotined on 7 May 1795, together with 15 former functionaries of the Revolutionary Tribunal, who were sentenced as his accomplices.

Personal life.

Fouquier-Tinville married his first wife, Geneviève-Dorothée Saugnier, with whom he would have five children, in 1775. He was widowed seven years later. Four months after his wife's death, he married Henriette Jeanne Gérard d'Arcourt, with whom he would spend the rest of his life. They had three children together.

Antoine Quentin Fouquier de Tinville (10 June 17467 May 1795) was a French prosecutor during the Revolution and Reign of Terror periods.