1.
Effects unit
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An effects unit or pedal is an electronic or digital device that alters how a musical instrument or other audio source sounds. In the 2010s, most effects use solid state electronics and/or computer chips, some vintage effects units from the 1930s to the 1970s and modern reissues of these effects use mechanical components as well or vacuum tubes. Musicians, audio engineers and record producers use effects units during live performances or in the studio, typically with electric guitar, electronic keyboard, while guitar effects are most frequently used with electric or electronic instruments, effects can also be used with acoustic instruments, drums and vocals. Rackmounted or audio console-integrated reverb effects are used with vocals in live sound and sound recording. Examples of common units include wah-wah pedals, fuzzboxes and reverb units. A stompbox or pedal is a metal or plastic box placed on the floor in front of the musician and connected to the instrument. Pedals are usually the least expensive format, a rackmount device mounts on a standard 19-inch equipment rack and usually contains several types of effects. Rackmount effects typically have buttons and/or knobs on the face of the chassis for controlling the effects, an effects unit is also called an effect box, effects device, effects processor or simply effects. In audio engineer parlance, a signal without effects is dry, the abbreviation F/X or FX is sometimes used. A pedal-style unit may be called a box, stompbox. When a musician has multiple effects in a rack mounted road case, Effects units are available in a variety of formats or form factors. Stompboxes are usually the smallest, least expensive, and most rugged effects units, rackmount devices are generally more expensive and offer a wider range of functions. An effects unit can consist of analog or digital circuitry or a combination of the two, during a live performance, the effect is plugged into the electrical signal path of the instrument. In the studio, the instrument or other sound-sources auxiliary output is patched into the effect, form factors are part of a studio or musicians outboard gear. Stompboxes are small plastic or metal chassis which usually lie on the floor or in a pedalboard to be operated by the users feet, pedals are often rectangle-shaped, but there are a range of other shapes. Typical simple stompboxes have a single footswitch, one to three potentiometers for controlling the effect, and a single LED that indicates if the effect is on, depending on the type of pedal, the potentiometers may control different parameters of the effect. For a chorus effect, for example, the knobs may control the depth, some pedals have two knobs stacked on top of each other, enabling the unit to provide two knobs per single knob space. An effects chain or signal chain is formed by connecting two or more stompboxes, effect chains are typically created between the guitar and the amp or between the preamplifier and the power amp
2.
Microprocessor
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A microprocessor is a computer processor which incorporates the functions of a computers central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. Microprocessors contain both combinational logic and sequential digital logic, Microprocessors operate on numbers and symbols represented in the binary numeral system. The integration of a whole CPU onto a chip or on a few chips greatly reduced the cost of processing power. Integrated circuit processors are produced in numbers by highly automated processes resulting in a low per unit cost. Single-chip processors increase reliability as there are many electrical connections to fail. As microprocessor designs get better, the cost of manufacturing a chip generally stays the same, before microprocessors, small computers had been built using racks of circuit boards with many medium- and small-scale integrated circuits. Microprocessors combined this into one or a few large-scale ICs, the internal arrangement of a microprocessor varies depending on the age of the design and the intended purposes of the microprocessor. Advancing technology makes more complex and powerful chips feasible to manufacture, a minimal hypothetical microprocessor might only include an arithmetic logic unit and a control logic section. The ALU performs operations such as addition, subtraction, and operations such as AND or OR, each operation of the ALU sets one or more flags in a status register, which indicate the results of the last operation. The control logic retrieves instruction codes from memory and initiates the sequence of operations required for the ALU to carry out the instruction, a single operation code might affect many individual data paths, registers, and other elements of the processor. As integrated circuit technology advanced, it was feasible to manufacture more and more complex processors on a single chip, the size of data objects became larger, allowing more transistors on a chip allowed word sizes to increase from 4- and 8-bit words up to todays 64-bit words. Additional features were added to the architecture, more on-chip registers sped up programs. Floating-point arithmetic, for example, was not available on 8-bit microprocessors. Integration of the point unit first as a separate integrated circuit and then as part of the same microprocessor chip. Occasionally, physical limitations of integrated circuits made such practices as a bit slice approach necessary, instead of processing all of a long word on one integrated circuit, multiple circuits in parallel processed subsets of each data word. With the ability to put large numbers of transistors on one chip and this CPU cache has the advantage of faster access than off-chip memory, and increases the processing speed of the system for many applications. Processor clock frequency has increased more rapidly than external memory speed, except in the recent past, a microprocessor is a general purpose system. Several specialized processing devices have followed from the technology, A digital signal processor is specialized for signal processing, graphics processing units are processors designed primarily for realtime rendering of 3D images
3.
Computer
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A computer is a device that can be instructed to carry out an arbitrary set of arithmetic or logical operations automatically. The ability of computers to follow a sequence of operations, called a program, such computers are used as control systems for a very wide variety of industrial and consumer devices. The Internet is run on computers and it millions of other computers. Since ancient times, simple manual devices like the abacus aided people in doing calculations, early in the Industrial Revolution, some mechanical devices were built to automate long tedious tasks, such as guiding patterns for looms. More sophisticated electrical machines did specialized analog calculations in the early 20th century, the first digital electronic calculating machines were developed during World War II. The speed, power, and versatility of computers has increased continuously and dramatically since then, conventionally, a modern computer consists of at least one processing element, typically a central processing unit, and some form of memory. The processing element carries out arithmetic and logical operations, and a sequencing, peripheral devices include input devices, output devices, and input/output devices that perform both functions. Peripheral devices allow information to be retrieved from an external source and this usage of the term referred to a person who carried out calculations or computations. The word continued with the same meaning until the middle of the 20th century, from the end of the 19th century the word began to take on its more familiar meaning, a machine that carries out computations. The Online Etymology Dictionary gives the first attested use of computer in the 1640s, one who calculates, the Online Etymology Dictionary states that the use of the term to mean calculating machine is from 1897. The Online Etymology Dictionary indicates that the use of the term. 1945 under this name, theoretical from 1937, as Turing machine, devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, mostly using one-to-one correspondence with fingers. The earliest counting device was probably a form of tally stick, later record keeping aids throughout the Fertile Crescent included calculi which represented counts of items, probably livestock or grains, sealed in hollow unbaked clay containers. The use of counting rods is one example, the abacus was initially used for arithmetic tasks. The Roman abacus was developed from used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BC. Since then, many forms of reckoning boards or tables have been invented. In a medieval European counting house, a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, the Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest mechanical analog computer, according to Derek J. de Solla Price. It was designed to calculate astronomical positions and it was discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to circa 100 BC
4.
Sound recording and reproduction
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Sound recording and reproduction is an electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording, prior to the development of analog recording, there were mechanical systems for reproducing instrumental music, such as wind-up music boxes and later, in the late 19th century, player pianos. Analog sound reproduction is the process, with a bigger loudspeaker diaphragm causing changes to atmospheric pressure to form acoustic sound waves. Digital recording and reproduction converts the sound signal picked up by the microphone to a digital form by the process of digitization. This lets the audio data be stored and transmitted by a variety of media. Whereas successive copies of an analog recording tend to degrade in quality, as noise is added. A digital audio signal must be reconverted to analog form during playback before it is amplified and connected to a loudspeaker to produce sound, long before sound was first recorded on cylinders or records, music was recorded—first by written music notation, then also by mechanical devices. Fowler, this. cylinder with raised pins on the surface remained the device to produce and reproduce music mechanically until the second half of the nineteenth century. The Banu Musa brothers also invented an automatic flute player, which appears to have been the first programmable machine, according to Fowler, the automata were a robot band that performed. more than fifty facial and body actions during each musical selection. In the 14th century, Flanders introduced a mechanical bell-ringer controlled by a rotating cylinder, similar designs appeared in barrel organs, musical clocks, barrel pianos, and musical boxes. A music box is a musical instrument that produces sounds by the use of a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc so as to pluck the tuned teeth of a steel comb. They were developed from musical snuff boxes of the 18th century, some of the more complex boxes also have a tiny drum and/or bells, in addition to the metal comb. The fairground organ, developed in 1892, used a system of accordion-folded punched cardboard books, the player piano, first demonstrated in 1876, used a punched paper scroll that could store an long piece of music. The most sophisticated of the rolls were hand-played, meaning that the roll represented the actual performance of an individual. This technology to record a live performance onto a piano roll was not developed until 1904, piano rolls were in continuous mass production from 1896 to 2008. A1908 U. S. Supreme Court copyright case noted that, in 1902 alone, the use of piano rolls began to decline in the 1920s although one type is still being made today. The first device that could record actual sounds as they passed through the air was the phonautograph, the earliest known recordings of the human voice are phonautograph recordings, called phonautograms, made in 1857. They consist of sheets of paper with sound-wave-modulated white lines created by a stylus that cut through a coating of soot as the paper was passed under it
5.
Acoustic location
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Acoustic location is the science of using sound to determine the distance and direction of its source or reflector. Location can be actively or passively, and can take place in gases, liquids. Active acoustic location involves the creation of sound in order to produce an echo, passive acoustic location involves the detection of sound or vibration created by the object being detected, which is then analyzed to determine the location of the object in question. Both of these techniques, when used in water, are known as sonar, passive sonar, acoustic mirrors and dishes, when using microphones, are a means of passive acoustic localization, but when using speakers are a means of active localization. Typically, more than one device is used, and the location is then triangulated between the several devices. As a military air defense tool, passive acoustic location was used from mid-World War I to the years of World War II to detect enemy aircraft by picking up the noise of their engines. It was rendered obsolete before and during World War II by the introduction of radar, acoustic techniques had the advantage that they could see around corners and over hills, due to sound refraction. The civilian uses include locating wildlife and locating the position of a firearm. Military uses have included locating submarines and aircraft and he needed a means of locating Zeppelins during cloudy conditions and improvised an apparatus from a pair of gramaphone horns mounted on a rotating pole. Several of these equipments were able to give an accurate fix on the approaching airships. Although no hits were obtained by this method, Rawlinson claimed to have forced a Zeppelin to jettison its bombs on one occasion, the air-defense instruments usually consisted of large horns or microphones connected to the operators ears using tubing, much like a very large stethoscope. Most of the work on sound ranging was done by the British. They developed a network of sound mirrors that were used from World War I through World War II. Sound mirrors normally work by using microphones to find the angle that maximizes the amplitude of sound received. Two sound mirrors at different positions will generate two different bearings, which allows the use of triangulation to determine a sound sources position, as World War II neared, radar began to become a credible alternative to the sound location of aircraft. For typical aircraft speeds of that time, sound location only gave a few minutes of warning, the acoustic location stations were left in operation as a backup to radar, as exemplified during the Battle of Britain. Today, the sites are still in existence and are readily accessible. After World War II, sound ranging played no role in anti-aircraft operations
6.
Synthesizer
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A synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument that generates electric signals that are converted to sound through instrument amplifiers and loudspeakers or headphones. Synthesizers may either imitate instruments like piano, Hammond organ, flute, vocals, natural sounds like ocean waves, etc. or generate new electronic timbres. Synthesizers without built-in controllers are called sound modules, and are controlled via USB, MIDI or CV/gate using a controller device. Synthesizers use various methods to generate electronic signals, synthesizers were first used in pop music in the 1960s. In the 1970s, synths were used in disco, especially in the late 1970s, in the 1980s, the invention of the relatively inexpensive, mass market Yamaha DX7 synth made synthesizers widely available. 1980s pop and dance music often made use of synthesizers. In the 2010s, synthesizers are used in genres of pop, rock. Contemporary classical music composers from the 20th and 21st century write compositions for synthesizer, the beginnings of the synthesizer are difficult to trace, as it is difficult to draw a distinction between synthesizers and some early electric or electronic musical instruments. One of the earliest electric musical instruments, the telegraph, was invented in 1876 by American electrical engineer Elisha Gray. He accidentally discovered the sound generation from a self-vibrating electromechanical circuit and this musical telegraph used steel reeds with oscillations created by electromagnets transmitted over a telegraph line. Gray also built a simple loudspeaker device into later models, consisting of a diaphragm in a magnetic field. This instrument was a remote electromechanical musical instrument that used telegraphy, though it lacked an arbitrary sound-synthesis function, some have erroneously called it the first synthesizer. In 1897, Thaddeus Cahill invented the Teleharmonium, which used dynamos, and was capable of additive synthesis like the Hammond organ, however, Cahills business was unsuccessful for various reasons, and similar but more compact instruments were subsequently developed, such as electronic and tonewheel organs. In 1906, American engineer, Lee De Forest ushered in the electronics age and he invented the first amplifying vacuum tube, called the Audion tube. This led to new entertainment technologies, including radio and sound films, ondes Martenot and Trautonium were continuously developed for several decades, finally developing qualities similar to later synthesizers. In the 1920s, Arseny Avraamov developed various systems of graphic sonic art, in 1938, USSR engineer Yevgeny Murzin designed a compositional tool called ANS, one of the earliest real-time additive synthesizers using optoelectronics. The earliest polyphonic synthesizers were developed in Germany and the United States, during the three years that Hammond manufactured this model,1,069 units were shipped, but production was discontinued at the start of World War II. Both instruments were the forerunners of the electronic organs and polyphonic synthesizers
7.
Equalization (audio)
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Equalization is the process of adjusting the balance between frequency components within an electronic signal. The most well known use of equalization is in recording and reproduction but there are many other applications in electronics. The circuit or equipment used to achieve equalization is called an equalizer and these devices strengthen or weaken the energy of specific frequency bands or frequency ranges. In sound recording and reproduction, equalization is the commonly used to alter the frequency response of an audio system using linear filters. Most hi-fi equipment uses relatively simple filters to make bass and treble adjustments, graphic and parametric equalizers have much more flexibility in tailoring the frequency content of an audio signal. An equalizer is the circuit or equipment used to achieve equalization, since equalizers, adjust the amplitude of audio signals at particular frequencies, they are, in other words, frequency-specific volume knobs. The term EQ specifically refers to this variant of the term, stereos and basic guitar amplifiers typically have adjustable equalizers which boost or cut bass or treble frequencies. Mid- to high-priced guitar and bass amplifiers usually have more bands of frequency control, such as bass, mid-range and treble or bass, low-mid, high-mid, some amps have an additional knob for controlling very high frequencies. Broadcast and recording studios use sophisticated equalizers capable of more detailed adjustments. The most common equalizers in music production are parametric, semi-parametric, graphic, peak, graphic equalizers are often included in consumer audio equipment and software which plays music on home computers. Parametric equalizers require more expertise than graphic equalizers, and they can provide more specific compensation or alteration around a chosen frequency and this may be used in order to remove unwanted resonances or boost certain frequencies. An acoustic guitarist who finds that her instrument sounds too boomy may ask the engineer to reduce the low frequency range response. A guitarist who finds that the instrument sound in the PA has too much finger noise may ask the engineer to reduce the frequency range response. The concept of equalization was first applied in correcting the frequency response of telephone lines using passive networks, a plot of the systems net frequency response would be flat, as its response to all frequencies would literally be equal. Much later the concept was applied in engineering to adjust the frequency response in recording, reproduction. Audio amplifiers have long had filters or controls to modify their frequency response and these are most often in the form of variable bass and treble controls, and switches to apply low-cut or high-cut filters for elimination of low frequency rumble and high frequency hiss respectively. Graphic equalizers and other equipment developed for improving fidelity have since used by recording engineers to modify frequency responses for aesthetic reasons. Hence in the field of audio electronics the term equalization is now used to describe the application of such filters regardless of intent
8.
Medium wave
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Medium wave is the part of the medium frequency radio band used mainly for AM radio broadcasting. Practical groundwave reception typically extends to 200–300 miles, with distances over terrain with higher ground conductivity. Most broadcast stations use groundwave to cover their listening area, Medium waves can also reflect off charged particle layers in the ionosphere and return to Earth at much greater distances, this is called the skywave. At night, especially in winter months and at times of low solar activity, when this happens, MF radio waves can easily be received many hundreds or even thousands of miles away as the signal will be reflected by the higher F layer. This can allow very long-distance broadcasting, but can also interfere with distant local stations, due to the limited number of available channels in the MW broadcast band, the same frequencies are re-allocated to different broadcasting stations several hundred miles apart. On nights of good skywave propagation, the signals of distant station may interfere with the signals of local stations on the same frequency. These channels are called clear channels, and they are required to broadcast at higher powers of 10 to 50 kW and this arrangement had numerous practical difficulties. The Commerce Department rarely intervened in such cases but left it up to stations to enter into voluntary timesharing agreements amongst themselves, the addition of a third entertainment wavelength,400 meters, did little to solve this overcrowding. In 1923, the Commerce Department realized that as more and more stations were applying for commercial licenses, on 15 May 1923, Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover announced a new bandplan which set aside 81 frequencies, in 10 kHz steps, from 550 kHz to 1350 kHz. Each station would be assigned one frequency, no longer having to broadcast weather, class A and B stations were segregated into sub-bands. Today in most of the Americas, mediumwave broadcast stations are separated by 10 kHz and have two sidebands of up to ±5 kHz in theory, in the rest of the world, the separation is 9 kHz, with sidebands of ±4.5 kHz. Both provide adequate quality for voice, but are insufficient for high-fidelity broadcasting. In the US and Canada the maximum power is restricted to 50 kilowatts. Those stations which shut down completely at night are known as daytimers. In most cases there are two limits, a lower one for omnidirectional and a higher one for directional radiation with minima in certain directions. The power limit can also be depending on daytime and it is possible, other countries may only operate low-powered transmitters on the same frequency, again subject to agreement. For example, Russia operates a transmitter, located in its Kaliningrad exclave and used for external broadcasting. Due to the demand for frequencies in Europe, many countries operate single frequency networks, in Britain
9.
Shortwave radio
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Shortwave radio is radio transmission using shortwave frequencies, generally 1. 6–30 MHz, just above the medium wave AM broadcast band. Radio waves in this band can be reflected or refracted from a layer of charged atoms in the atmosphere called the ionosphere. Therefore, short waves directed at an angle into the sky can be reflected back to Earth at great distances and this is called skywave or skip propagation. Shortwave radio is used for broadcasting of voice and music to listeners over very large areas. It is also used for military radar, diplomatic communication. The widest popular definition of the frequency interval is the ITU Region 1 definition, and is the span 1. 6–30 MHz, just above the medium wave band. In reality, the definition of the frequency band is a mess. The broadcast medium wave band now extends above the 200 m/1500 kHz limit, early radio telegraphy had used long wave transmissions. The drawbacks to this included a very limited spectrum available for long distance communication. It was also difficult to beam the radio wave directionally with long wave, prior to the 1920s, the shortwave frequencies above 1.5 MHz were regarded as useless for long distance communication and were designated in many countries for amateur use. Franklin rigged up an antenna at Poldhu Wireless Station, Cornwall. In June and July 1923, wireless transmissions were completed during nights on 97 meters from Poldhu to Marconis yacht Elettra in the Cape Verde Islands, in September 1924, Marconi transmitted daytime and nighttime on 32 meters from Poldhu to his yacht in Beirut. Franklin went on to refine the directional transmission, by inventing the curtain array aerial system, the UK-to-Canada shortwave Beam Wireless Service went into commercial operation on 25 October 1926. Beam Wireless Services from the UK to Australia, South Africa, Shortwave communications began to grow rapidly in the 1920s, similar to the internet in the late 20th century. Shortwave also ended the need for investments in massive longwave wireless stations. The cable companies began to lose large sums of money in 1927, the British government convened the Imperial Wireless and Cable Conference in 1928 to examine the situation that had arisen as a result of the competition of Beam Wireless with the Cable Services. The name of the company was changed to Cable and Wireless Ltd. in 1934, long-distance cables had a resurgence beginning in 1956 with the laying of TAT-1 across the Atlantic Ocean, the first voice frequency cable on this route. This provided 36 high quality telephone channels and was followed by even higher capacity cables all around the world
10.
Interference (wave propagation)
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In physics, interference is a phenomenon in which two waves superpose to form a resultant wave of greater, lower, or the same amplitude. Interference effects can be observed with all types of waves, for example, light, radio, acoustic, surface water waves or matter waves. If a crest of a wave meets a crest of wave of the same frequency at the same point. If a crest of one wave meets a trough of another wave, constructive interference occurs when the phase difference between the waves is an even multiple of π, whereas destructive interference occurs when the difference is an odd multiple of π. If the difference between the phases is intermediate between two extremes, then the magnitude of the displacement of the summed waves lies between the minimum and maximum values. Consider, for example, what happens when two identical stones are dropped into a pool of water at different locations. Each stone generates a circular wave propagating outwards from the point where the stone was dropped, when the two waves overlap, the net displacement at a particular point is the sum of the displacements of the individual waves. At some points, these will be in phase, and will produce a maximum displacement, in other places, the waves will be in anti-phase, and there will be no net displacement at these points. Thus, parts of the surface will be stationary—these are seen in the figure above, prime examples of light interference are the famous Double-slit experiment, laser speckle, optical thin layers and films and interferometers. Dark areas in the slit are not available to the photons. Thin films also behave in a quantum manner, the above can be demonstrated in one dimension by deriving the formula for the sum of two waves. Suppose a second wave of the frequency and amplitude but with a different phase is also traveling to the right W2 = A cos where ϕ is the phase difference between the waves in radians. Constructive interference, If the phase difference is a multiple of pi. Interference is essentially a redistribution process. The energy which is lost at the interference is regained at the constructive interference. One wave is travelling horizontally, and the other is travelling downwards at an angle θ to the first wave, assuming that the two waves are in phase at the point B, then the relative phase changes along the x-axis. Constructive interference occurs when the waves are in phase, and destructive interference when they are half a cycle out of phase. Thus, a fringe pattern is produced, where the separation of the maxima is d f = λ sin θ
11.
Delay (audio effect)
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Delay is an audio effect and an effects unit which records an input signal to an audio storage medium, and then plays it back after a period of time. The delayed signal may either be played multiple times, or played back into the recording again. Delay effects range from an echo effect to a pronounced blending of previous sounds with new sounds. The first delay effects were achieved using tape loops improvised on reel-to-reel magnetic recording systems, by shortening or lengthening the loop of tape and adjusting the read and write heads, the nature of the delayed echo could be controlled. Audio engineers working in music quickly adapted similar techniques, to augment their use of plate reverb. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, several sound engineers began making devices for use in recording studios, guitarist and instrument designer Les Paul was an early pioneer in delay devices. A landmark device was the EchoSonic made by American Ray Butts and it is a portable guitar amplifier with a built-in tape echo, which became used widely in country music and especially in rock and roll. Tape echoes became commercially available in the 1950s, an echo machine is the early name for a sound processing device used with electronic instruments to repeat the sound and produce a simulated echo. The device was popular with guitarists and was used by Brian May, Jimmy Page, One example is the Echoplex which used a tape loop. The length of delay was adjusted by changing the distance between the record and playback heads. Another example is the Roland Space Echo with a record and multiple tape heads. The time between echo repeats was adjusted by varying the tape speed, the length or intensity of the echo effect was adjusted by changing the amount of echo signal was fed back into the pre-echo signal. Different effects could be created by combining the different playback heads, some models also included a spring reverb. Before the invention of audio technology, music employing a delayed echo had to be recorded in a naturally reverberant space, often an inconvenience for musicians. The presence of multiple taps made it possible to have delays at varying rhythmic intervals, many delay processors based on analog tape recording, such as Ray Butts EchoSonic, Mike Battles Echoplex, or the Roland Space Echo, used magnetic tape as their recording and playback medium. Electric motors guided a tape loop through a device with a variety of mechanisms allowing modification of the effects parameters, in the Space Echo, all of the heads are fixed, but the speed of the tape could be adjusted, changing the delay time. Thin magnetic tape was not entirely suited for operation, however. Several designs were made, the 1959 Ecco-Fonic had a spinning head, many were temperamental, such as the Vox Echomatic
12.
Star Wars
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Star Wars is an American epic space opera franchise, centered on a film series created by George Lucas. It depicts the adventures of characters a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The franchise began in 1977 with the release of the film Star Wars and it was followed by the successful sequels The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, these three films constitute the original Star Wars trilogy. A prequel trilogy was released between 1999 and 2005, which received mixed-to-negative reactions, a sequel trilogy began in 2015 with the release of Star Wars, The Force Awakens. All seven films were nominated for Academy Awards and have been successes, with a combined box office revenue of over $7.5 billion. Spin-off films include Star Wars, The Clone Wars and Rogue One, Star Wars also holds a Guinness World Records title for the Most successful film merchandising franchise. In 2015, the value of the Star Wars franchise was estimated at USD $42 billion. In 2012, The Walt Disney Company acquired Lucasfilm for $4.06 billion and earned the rights to all subsequent Star Wars films. Walt Disney Studios owns digital distribution rights to all the Star Wars films, the events depicted in the Star Wars franchise take place in an unnamed fictional galaxy at an undetermined point in the distant past. Many species of creatures are depicted. Robotic droids are also commonplace and are built to serve their owners. Space travel is common, and many planets in the galaxy are members of a single galactic government. In the prequel trilogy, this is depicted in the form of the Galactic Republic, at the end of the trilogy and throughout the original trilogy. Preceding and during the trilogy, this government is the New Republic. One of the prominent elements of Star Wars is the Force and it is described in the first produced film as an energy field created by all living things surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the galaxy together. While the Force can be used for good, known as the side, it also has a dark side that, when pursued, imbues users with hatred, aggression. The sequel trilogy introduces the Knights of Ren, an order of practitioners of the side of the Force aligned with the First Order. The first film in the series, Star Wars, was released on May 25,1977 and this was followed by two sequels, The Empire Strikes Back, released on May 21,1980, and Return of the Jedi, released on May 25,1983
