Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers Ltd is an international publishing company owned by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It operates in more than thirty others. Macmillan was founded in 1843 by Daniel and Alexander Macmillan, two brothers from the Isle of Arran, Scotland. Daniel was the business brain, while Alexander laid the literary foundations, publishing such notable authors as Charles Kingsley, Thomas Hughes, Francis Turner Palgrave, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Lewis Carroll. Alfred Tennyson joined the list in 1884, Thomas Hardy in 1886 and Rudyard Kipling in 1890. Other major writers published by Macmillan included W. B. Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Seán O'Casey, John Maynard Keynes, Charles Morgan, Hugh Walpole, Margaret Mitchell, C. P. Snow, Rumer Godden and Ram Sharan Sharma. Beyond literature, the company created such enduring titles as Nature, the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and Sir Robert Harry Inglis Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy. George Edward Brett opened the first Macmillan office in the United States in 1869 and Macmillan sold its U.
S. operations to the Brett family, George Platt Brett, Sr. and George Platt Brett, Jr. in 1896, resulting in the creation of an American company, Macmillan Publishing called the Macmillan Company. With the split of the American company from its parent company in England, George Brett, Jr. and Harold Macmillan remained close personal friends. Macmillan Publishers re-entered the American market in 1954 under the name St. Martin's Press. Macmillan of Canada was founded in 1905. After retiring from politics in 1964, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Harold Macmillan became chairman of the company, serving until his death in December 1986, he had been with the family firm as a junior partner from 1920 to 1940, from 1945 to 1951 while he was in the opposition in Parliament. Holtzbrinck Publishing Group purchased the company in 1999. Pearson acquired the Macmillan name in America in 1998, following its purchase of the Simon & Schuster educational and professional group. Holtzbrinck purchased it from them in 2001.
McGraw-Hill continues to market its pre-kindergarten through elementary school titles under its Macmillan/McGraw-Hill brand. The US operations of Holtzbrinck Publishing changed its name to Macmillan in October 2017, its audio publishing imprint changed its name from Audio Renaissance to Macmillan Audio, while its distribution arm was renamed from Von Holtzbrinck Publishers Services to Macmillan Publishers Services. With Pan Macmillan's purchase of Kingfisher, a British children's publisher, Roaring Brook Press publisher Simon Boughton would take oversee Kingfisher's US business in October 2007. By some estimates, as of 2009 e-books account for three to five per cent of total book sales, are the fastest growing segment of the market. According to The New York Times and other major publishers "fear that massive discounting by retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Sony could devalue what consumers are willing to pay for books." In response, the publisher introduced a new boilerplate contract for its authors that established a royalty of 20 per cent of net proceeds on e-book sales, a rate five per cent lower than most other major publishers.
Following the announcement of the Apple iPad on 27 January 2010—a product that comes with access to the iBookstore—Macmillan gave Amazon.com two options: continue to sell e-books based on a price of the retailer's choice, with the e-book edition released several months after the hardcover edition is released, or switch to the agency model introduced to the industry by Apple, in which both are released and the price is set by the publisher. In the latter case, Amazon.com would receive a 30 per cent commission. Amazon responded by pulling all Macmillan books, both physical, from their website. On 31 January 2010, Amazon chose the agency model preferred by Macmillan. In April 2012, the United States Department of Justice filed United States v. Apple Inc. naming Apple and four other major publishers as defendants. The suit alleged that they conspired to fix prices for e-books, weaken Amazon.com's position in the market, in violation of antitrust law. In December 2013, a federal judge approved a settlement of the antitrust claims, in which Macmillan and the other publishers paid into a fund that provided credits to customers who had overpaid for books due to the price-fixing.
In 2010, Macmillan Education submitted to an investigation on grounds of fraudulent practices. The Macmillan division admitted to bribery in an attempt to secure a contract for an education project in southern Sudan; as a direct result of the investigation, sanctions were applied by the World Bank Group, namely a 6-year debarment declaring the company ineligible to be awarded Bank-financed contracts. In December 2011, Bedford and Worth Publishing Group, Macmillan's higher education group, changed its name to Macmillan Higher Education while retaining the Bedford and Worth name for its k–12 educational unit; that month, Brian Napack resigned as Macmillan president while staying on for transitional purposes. In May 2015, London-based Macmillan Science and Education merged with Berlin-based Springer Science+Business Media to form Springer Nature, jointly controlled by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and BC Partners. US publishing divis
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was an American statesman, conservationist and writer who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. He served as the 25th vice president of the United States from March to September 1901 and as the 33rd governor of New York from 1899 to 1900; as a leader of the Republican Party during this time, he became a driving force for the Progressive Era in the United States in the early 20th century. His face is depicted on Mount Rushmore, alongside those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln. In polls of historians and political scientists, Roosevelt is ranked as one of the five best presidents. Roosevelt was born a sickly child with debilitating asthma, but he overcame his physical health problems by embracing a strenuous lifestyle, he integrated his exuberant personality, vast range of interests, world-famous achievements into a "cowboy" persona defined by robust masculinity. Home-schooled, he began a lifelong naturalist avocation before attending Harvard College.
His book, The Naval War of 1812, established his reputation as both a learned historian and as a popular writer. Upon entering politics, he became the leader of the reform faction of Republicans in New York's state legislature. Following the near-simultaneous deaths of his wife and mother, he escaped to a cattle ranch in the Dakotas. Roosevelt served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President William McKinley, but resigned from that post to lead the Rough Riders during the Spanish–American War. Returning a war hero, he was elected Governor of New York in 1898. After the death of Vice President Garret Hobart, the New York state party leadership convinced McKinley to accept Roosevelt as his running mate in the 1900 election. Roosevelt campaigned vigorously, the McKinley-Roosevelt ticket won a landslide victory based on a platform of peace and conservation. After taking office as Vice President in March 1901, he assumed the presidency at age 42 following McKinley's assassination that September, remains the youngest person to become President of the United States.
As a leader of the Progressive movement, he championed his "Square Deal" domestic policies, promising the average citizen fairness, breaking of trusts, regulation of railroads, pure food and drugs. Making conservation a top priority, he established many new national parks and monuments intended to preserve the nation's natural resources. In foreign policy, he focused on Central America, he expanded the Navy and sent the Great White Fleet on a world tour to project the United States' naval power around the globe. His successful efforts to broker the end of the Russo-Japanese War won him the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize, he avoided controversial money issues. Elected in 1904 to a full term, Roosevelt continued to promote progressive policies, many of which were passed in Congress. Roosevelt groomed his close friend, William Howard Taft, Taft won the 1908 presidential election to succeed him. Frustrated with Taft's conservatism, Roosevelt belatedly tried to win the 1912 Republican nomination, he failed, walked out and founded a third party, the Progressive, so-called "Bull Moose" Party, which called for wide-ranging progressive reforms.
He ran in the 1912 election and the split allowed the Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson to win the election. Following his defeat, Roosevelt led a two-year expedition to the Amazon basin, where he nearly died of tropical disease. During World War I, he criticized President Wilson for keeping the country out of the war with Germany, his offer to lead volunteers to France was rejected. Though he had considered running for president again in 1920, Roosevelt's health continued to deteriorate, he died in 1919. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was born on October 1858, at East 20th Street in New York City. He was the second of four children born to socialite Martha Stewart "Mittie" Bulloch and businessman and philanthropist Theodore Roosevelt Sr.. He had an older sister, Anna, a younger brother, a younger sister, Corinne. Elliott was the father of First Lady Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of Theodore's distant cousin, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his paternal grandfather was of Dutch descent. Theodore Sr. was the fifth son of businessman Cornelius Van Schaack "C.
V. S." Roosevelt and Margaret Barnhill. Theodore's fourth cousin, James Roosevelt I, a businessman, was the father of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Mittie was the younger daughter of Major James Stephens Bulloch and Martha P. "Patsy" Stewart. Through the Van Schaacks, Roosevelt was a descendant of the Schuyler family. Roosevelt's youth was shaped by his poor health and debilitating asthma, he experienced sudden nighttime asthma attacks that caused the experience of being smothered to death, which terrified both Theodore and his parents. Doctors had no cure, he was energetic and mischievously inquisitive. His lifelong interest in zoology began at age seven. Having learned the rudiments of taxidermy, he filled his makeshift museum with animals that he killed or caught. At age nine, he recorded his observation of insects in a paper entitled "The Natural History of Insects". Roosevelt'
Library of Congress Classification
The Library of Congress Classification is a system of library classification developed by the Library of Congress. It is used by most research and academic libraries in the U. S. and several other countries. LCC should not be confused with LCCN, the system of Library of Congress Control Numbers assigned to all books, which defines URLs of their online catalog entries, such as "82006074" and "http://lccn.loc.gov/82006074". The Classification is distinct from Library of Congress Subject Headings, the system of labels such as "Boarding schools" and "Boarding schools—Fiction" that describe contents systematically; the classifications may be distinguished from the call numbers assigned to particular copies of books in the collection, such as "PZ7. J684 Wj 1982 FT MEADE Copy 1" where the classification is "PZ7. J684 Wj 1982"; the classification was invented by Herbert Putnam in 1897, just before he assumed the librarianship of Congress. With advice from Charles Ammi Cutter, it was influenced by his Cutter Expansive Classification, the Dewey Decimal System, the Putnam Classification System.
It was designed for the purposes and collection of the Library of Congress to replace the fixed location system developed by Thomas Jefferson. By the time Putnam departed from his post in 1939, all the classes except K and parts of B were well developed. LCC has been criticized for lacking a sound theoretical basis. Although it divides subjects into broad categories, it is enumerative in nature; that is, it provides a guide to the books in one library's collections, not a classification of the world. In 2007 The Wall Street Journal reported that in the countries it surveyed most public libraries and small academic libraries used the older Dewey Decimal Classification system; the National Library of Medicine classification system uses the initial letters W and QS–QZ, which are not used by LCC. Some libraries use NLM in conjunction with LCC. Others include Medicine R. Subclass AC -- Collections. Series. Collected works Subclass AE – Encyclopedias Subclass AG – Dictionaries and other general reference works Subclass AI – Indexes Subclass AM – Museums.
Collectors and collecting Subclass AN – Newspapers Subclass AP – Periodicals Subclass AS – Academies and learned societies Subclass AY – Yearbooks. Almanacs. Directories Subclass AZ – History of scholarship and learning; the humanities Subclass B – Philosophy Subclass BC – Logic Subclass BD – Speculative philosophy Subclass BF – Psychology Subclass BH – Aesthetics Subclass BJ – Ethics Subclass BL – Religions. Mythology. Rationalism Subclass BM – Judaism Subclass BP – Islam. Bahaism. Theosophy, etc. Subclass BQ – Buddhism Subclass BR – Christianity Subclass BS – The Bible Subclass BT – Doctrinal theology Subclass BV – Practical Theology Subclass BX – Christian Denominations Subclass C – Auxiliary Sciences of History Subclass CB – History of Civilization Subclass CC – Archaeology Subclass CD – Diplomatics. Archives. Seals Subclass CE – Technical Chronology. Calendar Subclass CJ – Numismatics Subclass CN – Inscriptions. Epigraphy Subclass CR – Heraldry Subclass CS – Genealogy Subclass CT – Biography Subclass D – History Subclass DA – Great Britain Subclass DAW – Central Europe Subclass DB – Austria – Liechtenstein – Hungary – Czechoslovakia Subclass DC – France – Andorra – Monaco Subclass DD – Germany Subclass DE – Greco-Roman World Subclass DF – Greece Subclass DG – Italy – Malta Subclass DH – Low Countries – Benelux Countries Subclass DJ – Netherlands Subclass DJK – Eastern Europe Subclass DK – Russia.
Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics – Poland Subclass DL – Northern Europe. Scandinavia Subclass DP – Spain – Portugal Subclass DQ – Switzerland Subclass DR – Balkan Peninsula Subclass DS – Asia Subclass DT – Africa Subclass DU – Oceania Subclass DX – Romanies Class E does not have any subclasses. Class F does not have any subclasses, however Canadian Universities and the Canadian National Library use FC for Canadian History, a subclass that the LC has not adopted, but which it has agreed not to use for anything else Subclass G – Geography. Atlases. Maps Subclass GA – Mathematical geography. Cartography Subclass GB – Physical geography Subclass GC – Oceanography Subclass GE – Environmental Sciences Subclass GF – Human ecology. Anthropogeography Subclass GN – Anthropology Subclass GR – Folklore Subclass GT – Manners and customs Subclass GV – Recreation. Leisure Subclass H – Social sciences Subclass HA – Statistics Subclass HB – Economic theory. Demography Subclass HC – Economic history and conditions Subclass HD – Industries.
Land use. Labor Subclass HE – Transportation and communications Subclass HF – Commerce Subclass HG – Finance Subclass HJ – Public finance Subclass HM – Sociology Subclass HN – Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform Subclass HQ – The family. Marriage and Sexuality Subclass HS – Societies: secret, etc. Subclass HT – Communities. Classes. Races Subclass HV – Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology Subclass HX – Socialism. Communism. Anarchism Subclass J – General legislative and executive papers Subclass JA – Political science Subclass JC – Political theory Subclass JF – Political institutions and public administration Subclass JJ – Political institutions and public administration Subclass JK – Political institutions and public administration Subclass JL – Political instit
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register, adopting its current name on 1 January 1788; the Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, itself wholly owned by News Corp. The Times and The Sunday Times do not share editorial staff, were founded independently, have only had common ownership since 1967. In 1959, the historian of journalism Allan Nevins analysed the importance of The Times in shaping the views of events of London's elite: For much more than a century The Times has been an integral and important part of the political structure of Great Britain, its news and its editorial comment have in general been coordinated, have at most times been handled with an earnest sense of responsibility. While the paper has admitted some trivia to its columns, its whole emphasis has been on important public affairs treated with an eye to the best interests of Britain.
To guide this treatment, the editors have for long periods been in close touch with 10 Downing Street. The Times is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to numerous other papers around the world, such as The Times of India and The New York Times. In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is referred to as The London Times or The Times of London, although the newspaper is of national scope and distribution; the Times is the originator of the used Times Roman typeface developed by Stanley Morison of The Times in collaboration with the Monotype Corporation for its legibility in low-tech printing. In November 2006 The Times began printing headlines in Times Modern; the Times was printed in broadsheet format for 219 years, but switched to compact size in 2004 in an attempt to appeal more to younger readers and commuters using public transport. The Sunday Times remains a broadsheet; the Times had an average daily circulation of 417,298 in January 2019. An American edition of The Times has been published since 6 June 2006.
It has been used by scholars and researchers because of its widespread availability in libraries and its detailed index. A complete historical file of the digitised paper, up to 2010, is online from Gale Cengage Learning; the Times was founded by publisher John Walter on 1 January 1785 as The Daily Universal Register, with Walter in the role of editor. Walter had lost his job by the end of 1784 after the insurance company where he worked went bankrupt due to losses from a Jamaican hurricane. Unemployed, Walter began a new business venture. Henry Johnson had invented the logography, a new typography, reputedly faster and more precise. Walter bought the logography's patent and with it opened a printing house to produce a daily advertising sheet; the first publication of the newspaper The Daily Universal Register in Great Britain was 1 January 1785. Unhappy because the word Universal was omitted from the name, Walter changed the title after 940 editions on 1 January 1788 to The Times. In 1803, Walter handed editorship to his son of the same name.
In spite of Walter Sr's sixteen-month stay in Newgate Prison for libel printed in The Times, his pioneering efforts to obtain Continental news from France, helped build the paper's reputation among policy makers and financiers. The Times used contributions from significant figures in the fields of politics, science and the arts to build its reputation. For much of its early life, the profits of The Times were large and the competition minimal, so it could pay far better than its rivals for information or writers. Beginning in 1814, the paper was printed on the new steam-driven cylinder press developed by Friedrich Koenig. In 1815, The Times had a circulation of 5,000. Thomas Barnes was appointed general editor in 1817. In the same year, the paper's printer James Lawson and passed the business onto his son John Joseph Lawson. Under the editorship of Barnes and his successor in 1841, John Thadeus Delane, the influence of The Times rose to great heights in politics and amongst the City of London.
Peter Fraser and Edward Sterling were two noted journalists, gained for The Times the pompous/satirical nickname'The Thunderer'. The increased circulation and influence of the paper was based in part to its early adoption of the steam-driven rotary printing press. Distribution via steam trains to growing concentrations of urban populations helped ensure the profitability of the paper and its growing influence; the Times was the first newspaper to send war correspondents to cover particular conflicts. W. H. Russell, the paper's correspondent with the army in the Crimean War, was immensely influential with his dispatches back to England. In other events of the nineteenth century, The Times opposed the repeal of the Corn Laws until the number of demonstrations convinced the editorial board otherwise, only reluctantly supported aid to victims of the Irish Potato Famine, it enthusiastically supported the Great Reform Bill of 1832, which reduced corruption and increased the electorate from 400,000 people to 800,000 people.
During the American Civil War, The Times represented the view of the wealthy classes, favouring the secessionists, but it was not a supporter of slavery. The third John Walter, the founder's grandson, succeeded his father in 1847; the paper continued as more or less independent, but from t
Isaac Walton Taber
Isaac Walton Taber was an American illustrator active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was known as "Walton Taber." As his work was credited to "I. W. Taber," he has been confused with the photographer Isaiah West Taber. Born in New Bedford, Tabor was the third of four sons born to merchant Isaac W. Taber and Lydia Taber, he exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy. He was known for his ink work drawn from photographs, his illustrations were published in popular magazines including Century. He illustrated Rudyard Kipling's Captains Courageous, Frank T. Bullen's Cruise of the Cachalot, the 1928 edition of Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Taber died in New York City on February 12, 1933. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 1887 Internet Archive Captains Courageous, 1899 Internet Archive The Cruise of the Cachalot, 1906 Internet Archive
New York Central Railroad
The New York Central Railroad was a railroad operating in the Great Lakes region of the United States. The railroad connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Midwest along with the intermediate cities of Albany, Cleveland and Detroit. New York Central was headquartered in New York City's New York Central Building, adjacent to its largest station, Grand Central Terminal; the railroad was established in 1853. In 1968 the NYC merged with the Pennsylvania Railroad, to form Penn Central. Penn Central went bankrupt in 1970 and merged into Conrail in 1976. Conrail was broken up in 1998, portions of its system were transferred to CSX and Norfolk Southern Railway, with CSX acquiring most of the old New York Central trackage. Extensive trackage existed in the states of New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and West Virginia plus additional trackage in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. At the end of 1925, the NYC operated 26,395 miles of track; the railroad was formed in 1853 through a consolidation of earlier independent companies running between Albany and Buffalo: The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad was the oldest segment of the NYC merger and was the first permanent railroad in the state of New York and one of the first railroads in the United States.
It was chartered in 1826 to connect the Mohawk River at Schenectady to the Hudson River at Albany, providing a way for freight and passengers to avoid the extensive and time-consuming locks on the Erie Canal between Schenectady and Albany. The Mohawk and Hudson opened on September 24, 1831, changed its name to the Albany and Schenectady Railroad on April 19, 1847; the Utica and Schenectady Railroad was chartered April 29, 1833. Revenue service began August 2, 1836, extending the line of the Albany and Schenectady Railroad west from Schenectady along the north side of the Mohawk River, opposite the Erie Canal, to Utica. On May 7, 1844 the railroad was authorized to carry freight with some restrictions, on May 12, 1847 the ban was dropped, but the company still had to pay the equivalent in canal tolls to the state; the Syracuse and Utica Railroad was chartered May 1, 1836, had to pay the state for any freight displaced from the canal. The full line opened July 1839, extending the line further to Syracuse via Rome.
This line was not direct, going out of its way to stay near the Erie Canal and serve Rome, so the Syracuse and Utica Direct Railroad was chartered January 26, 1853. Nothing of that line was built, though the West Shore Railroad, acquired by the NYC in 1885, served the same purpose; the Auburn and Syracuse Railroad was chartered May 1, 1834, opened in 1838, the remaining 4 miles opening on June 4, 1839. A month with the opening of the Syracuse and Utica Railroad, this formed a complete line from Albany west via Syracuse to Auburn, about halfway to Geneva; the Auburn and Rochester Railroad was chartered May 13, 1836, as a further extension via Geneva and Canandaigua to Rochester, opening on November 4, 1841. The two lines merged on August 1850, to form the rather indirect Rochester and Syracuse Railroad. To fix this, the Rochester and Syracuse Direct Railway was chartered and merged into the Rochester and Syracuse Railroad on August 6, 1850; that line opened June 1, 1853, running much more directly between those two cities parallel to the Erie Canal.
The Tonawanda Railroad, to the west of Rochester, was chartered April 24, 1832 to build from said city to Attica. The first section, from Rochester southwest to Batavia, opened May 5, 1837, the rest of the line to Attica opened on January 8, 1843; the Attica and Buffalo Railroad chartered in 1836 and opened on November 24, 1842, running from Buffalo east to Attica. When the Auburn and Rochester Railroad opened in 1841, there was no connection at Rochester to the Tonawanda Railroad, but with that exception there was now an all-rail line between Buffalo and Albany. On March 19, 1844, the Tonawanda Railroad was authorized to build the connection, it opened that year; the Albany and Schenectady Railroad bought all the baggage and emigrant cars of the other railroads between Albany and Buffalo on February 17, 1848, began operating through cars. On December 7, 1850, the Tonawanda Railroad and Attica and Buffalo Railroad merged to form the Buffalo and Rochester Railroad. A new direct line opened from Buffalo east to Batavia on April 26, 1852, the old line between Depew and Attica was sold to the Buffalo and New York City Railroad on November 1.
The line was added to the New York and Erie Railroad system and converted to the Erie's 6 ft broad gauge. The Schenectady and Troy Railroad was chartered in 1836 and opened in 1842, providing another route between the Hudson River and Schenectady, with its Hudson River terminal at Troy; the Lockport and Niagara Falls Railroad was incorporated April 24, 1834 to run from Lockport on the Erie Canal west to Niagara Falls. On December 14, 1850, it was reorganized as the Rochester and Niagara Falls Railroad, an extension east to Rochester opened on July 1, 1852; the railroad was consolidated into the New York Central Railroad under the act of 1853. A portion of the line is operate
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital of the U. S. state of New York and the seat of Albany County. Albany is located on the west bank of the Hudson River 10 miles south of its confluence with the Mohawk River and 135 miles north of New York City. Albany is known for its rich history, culture and institutions of higher education. Albany constitutes the economic and cultural core of the Capital District of New York State, which comprises the Albany–Schenectady–Troy, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area, including the nearby cities and suburbs of Troy and Saratoga Springs. With a 2013 Census-estimated population of 1.1 million the Capital District is the third-most populous metropolitan region in the state. As of the 2010 census, the population of Albany was 97,856; the area that became Albany was settled by Dutch colonists who in 1614, built Fort Nassau for fur trading and, in 1624, built Fort Orange. In 1664, the English took over the Dutch settlements, renaming the city as Albany, in honor of the Duke of Albany, the future James II of England and James VII of Scotland.
The city was chartered in 1686 under English rule. It became the capital of New York in 1797 following formation of the United States. Albany is one of the oldest surviving settlements of the original British thirteen colonies, is the longest continuously chartered city in the United States. During the late 18th century and throughout most of the 19th, Albany was a center of trade and transportation; the city lies toward the north end of the navigable Hudson River, was the original eastern terminus of the Erie Canal connecting to the Great Lakes, was home to some of the earliest railroad systems in the world. In the 1920s, a powerful political machine controlled by the Democratic Party arose in Albany. In the latter part of the 20th century, Albany experienced a decline in its population due to urban sprawl and suburbanization. In the early 21st century, Albany has experienced growth in the high-technology industry, with great strides in the nanotechnology sector. Albany is one of the oldest surviving European settlements from the original thirteen colonies and the longest continuously chartered city in the United States.
The Hudson River area was inhabited by Algonquian-speaking Mohican, who called it Pempotowwuthut-Muhhcanneuw, meaning "the fireplace of the Mohican nation." Based to the west along the Mohawk River, the Iroquoian-speaking Mohawk referred to it as Sche-negh-ta-da, or "through the pine woods," referring to the path they took there. The Mohawk were one of the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, or Haudenosaunee, became strong trading partners with the Dutch and English, it is the Albany area was visited by European fur traders as early as 1540, but the extent and duration of those visits has not been determined. Permanent European claims began when Englishman Henry Hudson, exploring for the Dutch East India Company on the Half Moon, reached the area in 1609, claiming it for the United Netherlands. In 1614, Hendrick Christiaensen built Fort Nassau, a fur-trading post and the first documented European structure in present-day Albany. Commencement of the fur trade provoked hostility from the French colony in Canada and among the natives, all of whom vied to control the trade.
In 1618, a flood ruined the fort on Castle Island. Both forts were named in honor of the Dutch royal House of Orange-Nassau. Fort Orange and the surrounding area were incorporated as the village of Beverwijck in 1652. In these early decades of trade, the Dutch and Mohawk developed relations that reflected differences among their three cultures; when New Netherland was captured by the English in 1664, the name was changed from Beverwijck to Albany in honor of the Duke of Albany. Duke of Albany was a Scottish title given since 1398 to a younger son of the King of Scots; the name is derived from Alba, the Gaelic name for Scotland. The Dutch regained Albany in August 1673 and renamed the city Willemstadt. On November 1, 1683, the Province of New York was split into counties, with Albany County being the largest. At that time the county included all of present New York State north of Dutchess and Ulster Counties in addition to present-day Bennington County, theoretically stretching west to the Pacific Ocean.
Albany was formally chartered as a municipality by provincial Governor Thomas Dongan on July 22, 1686. The Dongan Charter was identical in content to the charter awarded to the city of New York three months earlier. Dongan created Albany as a strip of land 16 miles long. Over the years Albany would lose much of the land to the annex land to the north and south. At this point, Albany had a population of about 500 people. In 1754, representatives of seven British North American colonies met in the Stadt Huys, Albany's city hall, for the Albany Congress. Although it was never adopted by Parliament, it was an important precursor to the United States Constitution; the same year, the fourth in a series of wars dating back to 1689, began.
Captains Courageous public domain audiobook at LibriVox
