Encyclopedia Americana
Encyclopedia Americana is one of the largest general encyclopedias in the English language. Following the acquisition of Grolier in 2000, the encyclopedia has been produced by Scholastic, the encyclopedia has more than 45,000 articles, most of them more than 500 words and many running to considerable length. The works coverage of American and Canadian geography and history has been a traditional strength, most articles are signed by their contributors. Long available as a 30-volume print set, the Encyclopedia Americana is now marketed as an online encyclopedia requiring a subscription, in March 2008, Scholastic said that print sales remained good but that the company was still deciding on the future of the print edition. The company did not produce an edition in 2007, a change from its previous approach of releasing a revised print edition each year, the most recent print edition of the Encyclopedia Americana was published in 2006. The online version of the Encyclopedia Americana, first introduced in 1997, continues to be updated and this work, like the print set from which it is derived, is designed for high school and first-year college students along with public library users.
Grolier Online is not available to individual subscribers, francis Lieber, a German political exile, who came to Boston, Massachusetts in 1827, began publication of Encyclopedia Americana in 1829. The 13 volumes of the first edition were completed in 1833, just before the beginning of the 20th century Richard S. Some of the old material was carried over into the new encyclopedia, the short article method of Brockhaus was continued. Thus in 1902 a new version in 16 volumes that carried some of the old material was published. The magazines editor, Frederick Converse Beach, was editor-in-chief, and was said to be assisted by hundreds of eminent scholars, the relationship with Scientific American was terminated in 1911. From 1907 to 1912, the work was published as The Americana, a major new edition appeared in 1918–20 in 30 volumes, with George Edwin Rines as editor-in-chief. An Annual or Yearbook was published each year beginning in 1923, the encyclopedia was purchased by Grolier in 1945. Sales during this period were accomplished primarily through mail-order and door-to-door operations and third-party distribution through their Lexicon division added to sales volumes in the 1970s.
By the late 1970s, Grolier had moved its operations to Danbury, in 1988 Grolier was purchased by the French media company Hachette, which owned a well-known French-language encyclopedia, the Hachette Encyclopedia. Hachette was absorbed by the French conglomerate the Lagardère Group, a CD-ROM version of the encyclopedia was published in 1995. Although the text and images were stored on separate disks, it was in keeping with current at the time. More importantly, the work had been digitized, allowing for release of a version in 1997
Fuller Brooch
The Fuller Brooch is an Anglo-Saxon silver and niello brooch dated to the late 9th century, which is now in the British Museum, where it is normally on display in Room 41. The elegance of the engraved decoration depicting the Five Senses, highlighted by being filled with niello, the brooch is a large disc made of hammered sheet silver inlaid with black niello and with a diameter of 114 mm. Its centre roundel is decorated with personifications of the five senses, in the centre is Sight with large staring oval eyes, surrounded by the other four senses, each in his own compartment. Taste has a hand in his mouth, smells hands are behind his back, and he stands between two tall plants. Hearing holds his hand to his ear and this is the earliest known representation of the five senses. The outer border consists of 16 small medallions decorated with human, animal and it was thought to be a fake by Sir Charles Hercules Read, Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities of the British Museum, because of its excellent condition.
He advised the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford which had lent the brooch. It was bought by Captain A. W. F. Fuller for the price of the silver, in 1952 Capt. Fuller donated the brooch to the British Museum on the condition that it henceforth be called the Fuller Brooch. Stylistically it is in a late version of the Trewhiddle style. The Fuller Brooch - The British Museum
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems.
The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC.
Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it
Silver
Silver is a metallic element with symbol Ag and atomic number 47. The symbol Ag stems from Latin argentum, derived from the Greek ὰργὀς, a soft, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. The metal is found in the Earths crust in the pure, free form, as an alloy with gold and other metals. Most silver is produced as a byproduct of copper, lead, Silver is more abundant than gold, but it is much less abundant as a native metal. Its purity is measured on a per mille basis, a 94%-pure alloy is described as 0.940 fine. As one of the seven metals of antiquity, silver has had a role in most human cultures. Silver has long valued as a precious metal. Silver metal is used in many premodern monetary systems in bullion coins, Silver is used in numerous applications other than currency, such as solar panels, water filtration, ornaments, high-value tableware and utensils, and as an investment medium. Silver is used industrially in electrical contacts and conductors, in specialized mirrors, window coatings, Silver compounds are used in photographic film and X-rays.
Dilute silver nitrate solutions and other compounds are used as disinfectants and microbiocides, added to bandages and wound-dressings, catheters. Silver is similar in its physical and chemical properties to its two neighbours in group 11 of the periodic table and gold. This distinctive electron configuration, with an electron in the highest occupied s subshell over a filled d subshell. Silver is a soft and malleable transition metal. Silver crystallizes in a cubic lattice with bulk coordination number 12. Unlike metals with incomplete d-shells, metallic bonds in silver are lacking a covalent character and are relatively weak and this observation explains the low hardness and high ductility of single crystals of silver. Silver has a brilliant white metallic luster that can take a polish. Protected silver has greater optical reflectivity than aluminium at all wavelengths longer than ~450 nm, at wavelengths shorter than 450 nm, silvers reflectivity is inferior to that of aluminium and drops to zero near 310 nm.
The electrical conductivity of silver is the greatest of all metals, greater even than copper, during World War II in the US,13540 tons of silver were used in electromagnets for enriching uranium, mainly because of the wartime shortage of copper
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with symbol Au and atomic number 79. In its purest form, it is a bright, slightly yellow, soft, malleable. Chemically, gold is a metal and a group 11 element. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements and is solid under standard conditions, Gold often occurs in free elemental form, as nuggets or grains, in rocks, in veins, and in alluvial deposits. It occurs in a solid solution series with the element silver and naturally alloyed with copper. Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, often with tellurium, golds atomic number of 79 makes it one of the higher numbered, naturally occurring elements. It is thought to have produced in supernova nucleosynthesis, from the collision of neutron stars. Because the Earth was molten when it was formed, almost all of the present in the early Earth probably sank into the planetary core. Gold is resistant to most acids, though it does dissolve in aqua regia, a mixture of acid and hydrochloric acid. Gold dissolves in solutions of cyanide, which are used in mining and electroplating.
Gold dissolves in mercury, forming amalgam alloys, but this is not a chemical reaction, as a precious metal, gold has been used for coinage and other arts throughout recorded history. A total of 186,700 tonnes of gold is in existence above ground, the world consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry. Gold is used in infrared shielding, colored-glass production, gold leafing, certain gold salts are still used as anti-inflammatories in medicine. As of 2014, the worlds largest gold producer by far was China with 450 tonnes, Gold is cognate with similar words in many Germanic languages, deriving via Proto-Germanic *gulþą from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰelh₃-. The symbol Au is from the Latin, the Latin word for gold, the Proto-Indo-European ancestor of aurum was *h₂é-h₂us-o-, meaning glow. This word is derived from the root as *h₂éu̯sōs, the ancestor of the Latin word Aurora. This etymological relationship is presumably behind the frequent claim in scientific publications that aurum meant shining dawn, Gold is the most malleable of all metals, a single gram can be beaten into a sheet of 1 square meter, and an avoirdupois ounce into 300 square feet.
Gold leaf can be thin enough to become semi-transparent
Vitreous enamel
Vitreous enamel, called porcelain enamel, is a material made by fusing powdered glass to a substrate by firing, usually between 750 and 850 °C. The powder melts and hardens to a smooth, durable vitreous coating on metal, so in technical terms fired enamelware is an integrated layered composite of glass and metal. Enamelling is an old and widely adopted technology, for most of its history mainly used in jewelry and enamelling are the preferred spellings in British English, while enameled and enameling are preferred in American English. The term enamel is most often restricted to work on metal, enamelled glass is called painted, and overglaze decoration to pottery is often called enamelling. The word enamel comes from the Old High German word smelzan via the Old French esmail, or from a Latin word smaltum, used as a noun, an enamel is usually a small decorative object coated with enamel. Since the 19th century the term to industrial materials and many metal consumer objects, such as some cooking vessels, laundry machines, sinks.
The ancient Egyptians applied enamels to stone objects and sometimes jewellery, the ancient Greeks, Celts and Chinese used enamel on metal objects. Enamel powder could be produced in two ways, either by powdering coloured glass, or by mixing colourless glass powder with pigments such as a metallic oxide, designs were either painted freehand or over the top of outline incisions, and the technique probably originated in metalworking. Once painted, enamelled glass vessels needed to be fired at a high enough to melt the applied powder. Ancient Persians used this method for colouring and ornamenting the surface of metals by fusing over it brilliant colours that are decorated in an intricate design and called it Meenakari. Gold has been used traditionally for Meenakari Jewellery as it holds the enamel better, lasts longer, the work of Meenakari often went unnoticed as this art was traditionally used as a backing for the famous kundan or stone-studded jewellery. This allowed the wearer to reverse the jewellery as promised a special joy in the secret of the hidden design, the Byzantine enamel style was widely adopted by the barbarian peoples of Migration Period northern Europe.
The Byzantines began to use cloisonné more freely to create images, the champlevé technique was considerably easier and very widely practiced in the Romanesque period. In Gothic art the finest work is in basse-taille and ronde-bosse techniques, from either Byzantium or the Islamic world, the cloisonné technique reached China in the 13-14th centuries. The first written reference to cloisonné is in a book from 1388, cloisonné remained very popular in China until the 19th century and is still produced today. Starting from the century, the Japanese produced large quantities of very high technical quality. A resurgence in enamel-based art took place near the end of the 20th century in the Soviet Union, led by artists like Alexei Maximov, in Australia, abstract artist Bernard Hesling brought the style into prominence with his variously sized steel plates. Enamel was first applied commercially to sheet iron and steel in Austria, industrialization increased as the purity of raw materials increased and costs decreased
Celts
The history of pre-Celtic Europe remains very uncertain. According to one theory, the root of the Celtic languages, the Proto-Celtic language, arose in the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of Central Europe. Thus this area is called the Celtic homeland. The earliest undisputed examples of a Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions beginning in the 6th century BC. Continental Celtic languages are attested almost exclusively through inscriptions and place-names, Insular Celtic languages are attested beginning around the 4th century in Ogham inscriptions, although it was clearly being spoken much earlier. Celtic literary tradition begins with Old Irish texts around the 8th century, coherent texts of Early Irish literature, such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge, survive in 12th century recensions. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, the Celtic-speaking communities in these Atlantic regions emerged as a cohesive cultural entity. They had a linguistic and artistic heritage that distinguished them from the culture of the surrounding polities.
By the 6th century, the Continental Celtic languages were no longer in wide use, Insular Celtic culture diversified into that of the Gaels and the Celtic Britons of the medieval and modern periods. A modern Celtic identity was constructed as part of the Romanticist Celtic Revival in Great Britain, today, Scottish Gaelic and Breton are still spoken in parts of their historical territories, and Cornish and Manx are undergoing a revival. The first recorded use of the name of Celts – as Κελτοί – to refer to a group was by Hecataeus of Miletus, the Greek geographer, in 517 BC. In the fifth century BC Herodotus referred to Keltoi living around the head of the Danube, the etymology of the term Keltoi is unclear. Possible roots include Indo-European *kʲel ‘to hide’, IE *kʲel ‘to heat’ or *kel ‘to impel’, several authors have supposed it to be Celtic in origin, while others view it as a name coined by Greeks. Linguist Patrizia De Bernardo Stempel falls in the group. Yet he reports Celtic peoples in Iberia, and uses the ethnic names Celtiberi and Celtici for peoples there, as distinct from Lusitani, pliny the Elder cited the use of Celtici in Lusitania as a tribal surname, which epigraphic findings have confirmed.
Latin Gallus might stem from a Celtic ethnic or tribal name originally and its root may be the Proto-Celtic *galno, meaning “power, strength”, hence Old Irish gal “boldness, ferocity” and Welsh gallu “to be able, power”. The tribal names of Gallaeci and the Greek Γαλάται most probably have the same origin, the suffix -atai might be an Ancient Greek inflection. Proto-Germanic *walha is derived ultimately from the name of the Volcae and this means that English Gaul, despite its superficial similarity, is not actually derived from Latin Gallia, though it does refer to the same ancient region
Celtic brooch
The Celtic brooch, more properly called the penannular brooch, and its closely related type, the pseudo-penannular brooch, are types of brooch clothes fasteners, often rather large. They are the most significant objects in high-quality secular metalwork from Early Medieval Celtic art, or Insular art, the type continued in simpler forms such as the thistle brooch into the 11th century, during what is often known as the Viking Age in Ireland and Scotland. Both penannular and pseudo-penannular brooches feature a long pin attached by its head to a ring, the pin can move freely around the ring as far as the terminals, which are close together. In the true penannular type, the ring is not closed, in the pseudo-penannular type, the ring is closed, but there are still two separately defined terminals, which are joined by a further element. The penannular type is a simple and efficient way of fastening loosely woven cloth, annular means formed as a ring and penannular formed as an incomplete ring, both terms have a range of uses.
Some pseudo-penannular brooches are very similar in design to other penannular brooches, others have fully joined terminals, and emphasize in their design the central area where the gap would be—for example the Tara Brooch. Pseudo-penannular brooches may be described as annular, or as ring brooches, the terms open brooch or open ring brooch are sometimes used for penannular brooches. There is a scheme of classification set out, in relation to earlier types, by Elizabeth Fowler in the 1960s. In these, the design of the pin head typically shows that the pin is intended to sit underneath the ring, rather than on top of it as in the larger brooches. Celtic is a term avoided by specialists in describing objects, and especially artistic styles, of the Early Middle Ages from the British Isles, but is firmly fixed in the popular mind. The term Insular art is used to describe the style of art originating in the British Isles and combining Germanic, Pictish. However, there are elements in the style of Irish and Scottish brooches deriving from Anglo-Saxon art, and related to Insular work in other media, especially illuminated manuscripts.
Fibula is Latin for brooch and is used in languages to describe the many types of Roman and post-Roman Early Medieval brooches with pins. The brooches discussed here are called fibulae, but rarely by English-speaking specialists. With a penannular brooch, the pin is pushed through folds of the cloth, which are pulled back inside the ring. The pin is rotated around the ring by 90 degrees or so, so that as long as the pin is held down by slight pressure it cannot escape over the terminals. With pseudo-penannular brooches, things are not so simple and the manner in which they were used is still debated, the method was probably not the same for all brooches. One method may have been to pull folds of the cloth through the ring until they could be pierced by the pin and this would work best with brooches with a pin not much longer than the diameter of the ring, which some have, but others do not
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an ethno-linguistic Indo-European group of Northern European origin. They are identified by their use of Germanic languages, which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age, the term Germanic originated in classical times when groups of tribes living in Lower and Greater Germania were referred to using this label by Roman scribes. Tribes referred to as Germanic by Roman authors generally lived to the north, in about 222 BCE, the first use of the Latin term Germani appears in the Fasti Capitolini inscription de Galleis Insvbribvs et Germ. This may simply be referring to Gaul or related people, the term Germani shows up again, allegedly written by Poseidonios, but is merely a quotation inserted by the author Athenaios who wrote much later. Somewhat later, the first surviving detailed discussions of Germani and Germania are those of Julius Caesar, from Caesars perspective, Germania was a geographical area of land on the east bank of the Rhine opposite Gaul, which Caesar left outside direct Roman control.
This usage of the word is the origin of the concept of Germanic languages. In other classical authors the concept sometimes included regions of Sarmatia, also, at least in the south there were Celtic peoples still living east of the Rhine and north of the Alps. Caesar and others noted differences of culture which could be found on the east of the Rhine, but the theme of all these cultural references was that this was a wild and dangerous region, less civilised than Gaul, a place that required additional military vigilance. Caesar used the term Germani for a specific tribal grouping in northeastern Belgic Gaul, west of the Rhine. He made clear that he was using the name in the local sense and these are the so-called Germani Cisrhenani, whom Caesar believed to be closely related to the peoples east of the Rhine, and descended from immigrants into Gaul. Caesar described this group of both as Belgic Gauls and as Germani. Gauls are associated with Celtic languages, and the term Germani is associated with Germanic languages, but Caesar did not discuss languages in detail.
It has been claimed, for example by Maurits Gysseling, that the names of this region show evidence of an early presence of Germanic languages. The etymology of the word Germani is uncertain, the likeliest theory so far proposed is that it comes from a Gaulish compound of *ger near + *mani men, comparable to Welsh ger near, Old Irish gair neighbor, Irish gar- near, garach neighborly. Another Celtic possibility is that the name meant noisy, cf. Breton/Cornish garm shout, here the vowel does not match, nor does the vowel length ). Others have proposed a Germanic etymology *gēr-manni, spear men, cf. Middle Dutch ghere, Old High German Ger, Old Norse geirr. However, the form gēr seems far too advanced phonetically for the 1st century, has a vowel where a short one is expected. The term Germani, probably applied to a group of tribes in northeastern Gaul who may or may not have spoken a Germanic language
Fibula (brooch)
A fibula is a brooch or pin for fastening garments. The fibula developed in a variety of shapes, but all were based on the safety-pin principle. Technically, the Latin term, refers to Roman brooches, unlike most modern brooches, fibulae were not only decorative, they originally served a practical function, to fasten clothing, such as cloaks. Fibulae replaced straight pins that were used to fasten clothing in the Neolithic period, in turn, fibulae were replaced as clothing fasteners by buttons in the Middle Ages. Their descendant, the safety pin, remains in use today. There are hundreds of different types of fibulae and they are usually divided into families that are based upon historical periods, and/or cultures. Fibulae are divided into classes that are based upon their general forms, lost fibulae, usually fragments, are frequently dug up by amateur coin and relic hunters using metal detectors. Most fibulae are made of bronze or iron, or both, some fibulae are made of precious metals such as silver or gold.
Most fibulae are made of one or two pieces. Many fibulae are decorated with enamel, semi-precious stones, Fibulae were composed of four components, The body, pin and hinge. The body of a fibula is known as either the bow or the plate, a bow is generally long and narrow, and often arched. A plate is flat and wide, plates could be solid or openwork. The head is the end of the fibula with the spring or hinge, the foot is the end of the fibula where the pin closes. Depending on the type of fibula, and the culture in question, the pin that is used to fasten the clothing is either a continuation of the fibulas body or a separate piece attached to the body. The fibula is closed by connecting the end of the pin to a catch plate, the body and pin meet at either a spring or hinge. The earliest design is the spring which provides tension to the pin, the spring could be unilateral or bilateral. A unilateral spring winds around in one direction only, unilateral springs are the earliest type, first appearing around the 14th century BC.
Bilateral springs that wind around to both sides of the body, appeared around the 6th century BC
Bronze
These additions produce a range of alloys that may be harder than copper alone, or have other useful properties, such as stiffness, ductility, or machinability. The archeological period where bronze was the hardest metal in use is known as the Bronze Age. In the ancient Near East this began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC, with India and China starting to use bronze around the same time, everywhere it gradually spread across regions. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age starting from about 1300 BC and reaching most of Eurasia by about 500 BC, the discovery of bronze enabled people to create metal objects which were harder and more durable than previously possible. Bronze tools, weapons and building such as decorative tiles were harder and more durable than their stone. It was only that tin was used, becoming the major ingredient of bronze in the late 3rd millennium BC. Tin bronze was superior to arsenic bronze in that the process could be more easily controlled. Also, unlike arsenic, metallic tin and fumes from tin refining are not toxic, the earliest tin-alloy bronze dates to 4500 BCE in a Vinča culture site in Pločnik.
Other early examples date to the late 4th millennium BC in Africa and some ancient sites in China, ores of copper and the far rarer tin are not often found together, so serious bronze work has always involved trade. Tin sources and trade in ancient times had a influence on the development of cultures. In Europe, a source of tin was the British deposits of ore in Cornwall. In many parts of the world, large hoards of bronze artefacts are found, suggesting that bronze represented a store of value, in Europe, large hoards of bronze tools, typically socketed axes, are found, which mostly show no signs of wear. With Chinese ritual bronzes, which are documented in the inscriptions they carry and from other sources and these were made in enormous quantities for elite burials, and used by the living for ritual offerings. Pure iron is soft, and the process of beating and folding sponge iron to wrought iron removes from the metal carbon. Careful control of the alloying and tempering eventually allowed for wrought iron with properties comparable to modern steel, Bronze was still used during the Iron Age, and has continued in use for many purposes to the modern day.
Among other advantages, it does not rust, the weaker wrought iron was found to be sufficiently strong for many uses. Archaeologists suspect that a disruption of the tin trade precipitated the transition. The population migrations around 1200–1100 BC reduced the shipping of tin around the Mediterranean, limiting supplies, there are many different bronze alloys, but typically modern bronze is 88% copper and 12% tin
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
. Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.
