International Standard Serial Number
An International Standard Serial Number is an eight-digit serial number used to uniquely identify a serial publication, such as a magazine. The ISSN is helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title. ISSN are used in ordering, interlibrary loans, other practices in connection with serial literature; the ISSN system was first drafted as an International Organization for Standardization international standard in 1971 and published as ISO 3297 in 1975. ISO subcommittee TC 46/SC 9 is responsible for maintaining the standard; when a serial with the same content is published in more than one media type, a different ISSN is assigned to each media type. For example, many serials are published both in electronic media; the ISSN system refers to these types as electronic ISSN, respectively. Conversely, as defined in ISO 3297:2007, every serial in the ISSN system is assigned a linking ISSN the same as the ISSN assigned to the serial in its first published medium, which links together all ISSNs assigned to the serial in every medium.
The format of the ISSN is an eight digit code, divided by a hyphen into two four-digit numbers. As an integer number, it can be represented by the first seven digits; the last code digit, which may be 0-9 or an X, is a check digit. Formally, the general form of the ISSN code can be expressed as follows: NNNN-NNNC where N is in the set, a digit character, C is in; the ISSN of the journal Hearing Research, for example, is 0378-5955, where the final 5 is the check digit, C=5. To calculate the check digit, the following algorithm may be used: Calculate the sum of the first seven digits of the ISSN multiplied by its position in the number, counting from the right—that is, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, respectively: 0 ⋅ 8 + 3 ⋅ 7 + 7 ⋅ 6 + 8 ⋅ 5 + 5 ⋅ 4 + 9 ⋅ 3 + 5 ⋅ 2 = 0 + 21 + 42 + 40 + 20 + 27 + 10 = 160 The modulus 11 of this sum is calculated. For calculations, an upper case X in the check digit position indicates a check digit of 10. To confirm the check digit, calculate the sum of all eight digits of the ISSN multiplied by its position in the number, counting from the right.
The modulus 11 of the sum must be 0. There is an online ISSN checker. ISSN codes are assigned by a network of ISSN National Centres located at national libraries and coordinated by the ISSN International Centre based in Paris; the International Centre is an intergovernmental organization created in 1974 through an agreement between UNESCO and the French government. The International Centre maintains a database of all ISSNs assigned worldwide, the ISDS Register otherwise known as the ISSN Register. At the end of 2016, the ISSN Register contained records for 1,943,572 items. ISSN and ISBN codes are similar in concept. An ISBN might be assigned for particular issues of a serial, in addition to the ISSN code for the serial as a whole. An ISSN, unlike the ISBN code, is an anonymous identifier associated with a serial title, containing no information as to the publisher or its location. For this reason a new ISSN is assigned to a serial each time it undergoes a major title change. Since the ISSN applies to an entire serial a new identifier, the Serial Item and Contribution Identifier, was built on top of it to allow references to specific volumes, articles, or other identifiable components.
Separate ISSNs are needed for serials in different media. Thus, the print and electronic media versions of a serial need separate ISSNs. A CD-ROM version and a web version of a serial require different ISSNs since two different media are involved. However, the same ISSN can be used for different file formats of the same online serial; this "media-oriented identification" of serials made sense in the 1970s. In the 1990s and onward, with personal computers, better screens, the Web, it makes sense to consider only content, independent of media; this "content-oriented identification" of serials was a repressed demand during a decade, but no ISSN update or initiative occurred. A natural extension for ISSN, the unique-identification of the articles in the serials, was the main demand application. An alternative serials' contents model arrived with the indecs Content Model and its application, the digital object identifier, as ISSN-independent initiative, consolidated in the 2000s. Only in 2007, ISSN-L was defined in the
Compositing
Compositing is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously called "chroma key", "blue screen", "green screen" and other names. Today, though not all, compositing is achieved through digital image manipulation. Pre-digital compositing techniques, however, go back as far as the trick films of Georges Méliès in the late 19th century, some are still in use. All compositing involves the replacement of selected parts of an image with other material but not always, from another image. In the digital method of compositing, software commands designate a narrowly defined color as the part of an image to be replaced; the software replaces every pixel within the designated color range with a pixel from another image, aligned to appear as part of the original. For example, one could record a television weather presenter positioned in front of a plain blue or green background, while compositing software replaces only the designated blue or green color with weather maps.
In television studios, blue or green screens may back news-readers to allow the compositing of stories behind them, before being switched to full-screen display. In other cases, presenters may be within compositing backgrounds that are replaced with entire "virtual sets" executed in computer graphics programs. In sophisticated installations, cameras, or both can move about while the computer-generated imagery environment changes in real time to maintain correct relationships between the camera angles and virtual "backgrounds". Virtual sets are used in motion picture filmmaking photographed in blue or green screen environments, as for example in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. More composited backgrounds are combined with sets – both full-size and models – and vehicles and other physical objects that enhance the realism of the composited visuals. "Sets" of unlimited size can be created digitally because compositing software can take the blue or green color at the edges of a backing screen and extend it to fill the rest of the frame outside it.
That way, subjects recorded in modest areas can be placed in large virtual vistas. Most common are set extensions: digital additions to actual performing environments. In the film Gladiator, for example, the arena and first tier seats of the Roman Colosseum were built, while the upper galleries were computer graphics, composited onto the image above the physical set. For motion pictures recorded on film, high-quality video conversions called "digital intermediates" enable compositing and other operations of computerized post production. Digital compositing is a type of matting, one of four basic compositing methods; the others are physical compositing, multiple exposure, background projection, a method which utilizes both front projection and rear projection. In physical compositing the separate parts of the image are placed together in the photographic frame and recorded in a single exposure; the components are aligned. The most common physical compositing elements are partial models and glass paintings.
Partial models are used as set extensions such as ceilings or the upper stories of buildings. The model, built to match the actual set but on a much smaller scale, is hung in front of the camera, aligned so that it appears to be part of the set. Models are quite large because they must be placed far enough from the camera so that both they and the set far beyond them are in sharp focus. Glass shots are made by positioning a large pane of glass so that it fills the camera frame, is far enough away to be held in focus along with the background visible through it; the entire scene is painted on the glass, except for the area revealing the background where action is to take place. This area is left clear. Photographed through the glass, the live action is composited with the painted area. A classic example of a glass shot is the approach to Ashley Wilkes' plantation in Gone with the Wind; the plantation and fields are all painted, while the road and the moving figures on it are photographed through the glass area left clear.
A variant uses the opposite technique: most of the area is clear, except for individual elements affixed to the glass. For example, a ranch house could be added to an empty valley by placing an appropriately scaled and positioned picture of it between the valley and the camera. An in-camera multiple exposure is made by recording on only one part of each film frame, rewinding the film to the same start point, exposing a second part, repeating the process as needed; the resulting negative is a composite of all the individual exposures. Exposing one section at a time is made possible by enclosing the camera lens in a light-tight box fitted with maskable openings, each one corresponding to one of the action areas. Only one opening is revealed per exposure. Multiple exposure is difficult. However, as early as 1900 Georges Méliès used seven-fold exposure in L'homme-orchestre/The One-man Band.
The West Australian
The West Australian known as The West is the only locally edited daily newspaper published in Perth, Western Australia, is owned by Seven West Media, as is the state's other major newspaper, The Sunday Times. The West is the second-oldest continuously produced newspaper in Australia, having been published since 1833; the West tends to have conservative leanings, has supported the Liberal–National Party Coalition. The West is Australia's fourth largest newspaper by circulation, is the only newspaper in the top 20 not owned by either News Limited or Nine Publishing; the tabloid newspaper publishes international and local news. As of 23 February 2015, newsgathering was integrated with the TV news and current-affairs operations of Seven News, which moved its news staff to the paper's Osborne Park premises. A "breaking news" and video news website are staffed in the same area, together with sales and other departments. In the 1990s, the newspaper introduced a weekly "Earth 2000" segment on environmental matters and an "Asia Desk" feature covering events in South East Asia.
Opinion columnists now include Zoltan Kovacs, Paul Murray and a variety of writers syndicated from Nine Publishing including Gerard Henderson, Danny Katz and Brian Toohey. The paper publishes a supplement titled WestWeekend Magazine, included as an insert in The Weekend West; the Saturday edition was rebranded as The Weekend West in October 2010. There is an enlarged classified-advertising section for motor vehicles each Wednesday. A digital archive subscription enables past editions to be accessed for $220 per month or $2,200 per year; the West has conservative leanings, has supported the Liberal–National Party Coalition throughout the political group's existence. At the state election held in March 2017, the newspaper's editorial endorsed the Australian Labor Party opposition, led by Mark McGowan, over the Coalition government led by Colin Barnett; as of January 2015, refraining from reporting reduced print circulation, the paper claimed "readership across print and online platforms" of 1.8 million per month.
Online readership is limited by requirement of paid subscription According to Roy Morgan Research, total cross-platform readership is less than 50,000 daily, having declined 4.5% in the year to September 2014. The West Australian was owned by the publicly listed company West Australian Newspapers Ltd from the 1920s. In 1969, the Melbourne-based The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd bought WAN and published the paper until 1987 when it was sold to Robert Holmes à Court's Bell Group in 1987 when the remainder of H&WT was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation; the following year Alan Bond, through Bond Corporation, gained control of Bell Group and hence the paper. This ownership structure only survived for a few years until the collapse of Bond Corporation. A newly formed company, West Australian Newspapers Holdings purchased the paper from the receivers before being floated in an oversubscribed $185 million public offering. Chairman Trevor Eastwood announced in the annual report that the company was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange on 9 January 1992.
A management fee of $217,000 and underwriting/brokers handling fee of $1,981,136 were paid to companies associated with former short-term directors John Poynton and J. H. Nickson. After having acquired Seven Media Group in February 2011, West Australian Newspapers Holdings Limited became Seven West Media, Australia's largest diversified media business; the West Australian traces its origins to The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, the first edition of which appeared on 5 January 1833. Owned and edited by Perth postmaster Charles Macfaull, it was a four-page weekly, it was, at first, published on Saturdays, but changed to Fridays in 1864. From 7 October 1864 it was known as The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Times and was published by Arthur Shenton, until 24 March 1871, after which the publisher was Joseph Mitchell, until 29 September 1871; the new publisher, M. Shenton, remained in place until 26 June 1874; when it was bought by a syndicate who renamed it The Western Australian Times and who in September 1874 increased production to two editions a week.
On 18 November 1879, it was relaunched as The West Australian. In October 1883, production was increased to three editions per week; the proprietors of the West Australian at that time inaugurated the Western Mail, in 1885. Delivery of the paper beyond settled areas was problematic, but the growth and development of the rural railway system in the early 1900s facilitated wider circulation. Newspaper House, the former office and publishing plant of The West on St Georges Terrace, across the road from the Palace Hotel, was a prominent landmark in the life of the city and state for over 50 years, it was vacated in the mid-1980s for the ill-fated "Westralia Square" redevelopment, completed in 2012 under the name Brookfield Place. The editorial staff was temporarily relocated in a nearby office building. Recognised as part of an important heritage precinct, Newspaper House was scheduled for preservation and refurbishment. In 1988, larger and more modern accommodation for the paper's printing presses was commissioned in Osborne Park.
Ten years the editorial operations moved to the Osborne Park complex. In September 2015 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission approved the acquisition of The Sunday Times, which would give Seven West Media a monopoly over major newspapers in the state. Finalisation of the deal, which includes the website PerthNow, was announced by The West on 8 November
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or from a combination of fission and fusion reactions. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from small amounts of matter; the first test of a fission bomb released an amount of energy equal to 20,000 tons of TNT. The first thermonuclear bomb test released energy equal to 10 million tons of TNT. A thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than 2,400 pounds can release energy equal to more than 1.2 million tons of TNT. A nuclear device no larger than traditional bombs can devastate an entire city by blast and radiation. Since they are weapons of mass destruction, the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a focus of international relations policy. Nuclear weapons have been used twice in war, both times by the United States against Japan near the end of World War II. On August 6, 1945, the U. S. Army Air Forces detonated a uranium gun-type fission bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
S. Army Air Forces detonated a plutonium implosion-type fission bomb nicknamed "Fat Man" over the Japanese city of Nagasaki; these bombings caused injuries that resulted in the deaths of 200,000 civilians and military personnel. The ethics of these bombings and their role in Japan's surrender are subjects of debate. Since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have been detonated over two thousand times for testing and demonstration. Only a few nations are suspected of seeking them; the only countries known to have detonated nuclear weapons—and acknowledge possessing them—are the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, China, India and North Korea. Israel is believed to possess nuclear weapons, though, in a policy of deliberate ambiguity, it does not acknowledge having them. Germany, Turkey and the Netherlands are nuclear weapons sharing states. South Africa is the only country to have independently developed and renounced and dismantled its nuclear weapons.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons aims to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons, but its effectiveness has been questioned, political tensions remained high in the 1970s and 1980s. Modernisation of weapons continues to this day. There are two basic types of nuclear weapons: those that derive the majority of their energy from nuclear fission reactions alone, those that use fission reactions to begin nuclear fusion reactions that produce a large amount of the total energy output. All existing nuclear weapons derive some of their explosive energy from nuclear fission reactions. Weapons whose explosive output is from fission reactions are referred to as atomic bombs or atom bombs; this has long been noted as something of a misnomer, as their energy comes from the nucleus of the atom, just as it does with fusion weapons. In fission weapons, a mass of fissile material is forced into supercriticality—allowing an exponential growth of nuclear chain reactions—either by shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another or by compression of a sub-critical sphere or cylinder of fissile material using chemically-fueled explosive lenses.
The latter approach, the "implosion" method, is more sophisticated than the former. A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is to ensure that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before the weapon destroys itself; the amount of energy released by fission bombs can range from the equivalent of just under a ton to upwards of 500,000 tons of TNT. All fission reactions generate the remains of the split atomic nuclei. Many fission products are either radioactive or moderately radioactive, as such, they are a serious form of radioactive contamination. Fission products are the principal radioactive component of nuclear fallout. Another source of radioactivity is the burst of free neutrons produced by the weapon; when they collide with other nuclei in surrounding material, the neutrons transmute those nuclei into other isotopes, altering their stability and making them radioactive. The most used fissile materials for nuclear weapons applications have been uranium-235 and plutonium-239.
Less used has been uranium-233. Neptunium-237 and some isotopes of americium may be usable for nuclear explosives as well, but it is not clear that this has been implemented, their plausible use in nuclear weapons is a matter of dispute; the other basic type of nuclear weapon produces a large proportion of its energy in nuclear fusion reactions. Such fusion weapons are referred to as thermonuclear weapons or more colloquially as hydrogen bombs, as they rely on fusion reactions between isotopes of hydrogen. All such weapons derive a significant portion of their energy from fission reactions used to "trigger" fusion reactions, fusion reactions can themselves trigger additional fission reactions. Only six countries—United States, United Kingdom, China and India—have conducted thermonuclear weapon tests. North Korea claims to have tested a fusion weapon as of January 2016. Thermonuclear weapons a
Hiroshima
Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. Hiroshima gained city status on April 1, 1889. On April 1, 1980, Hiroshima became a designated city; as of August 2016, the city had an estimated population of 1,196,274. The gross domestic product in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui has been the city's mayor since April 2011. Hiroshima was the first city targeted by a nuclear weapon, when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on the city at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, near the end of World War II. Hiroshima was established on the delta coastline of the Seto Inland Sea in 1589 by powerful warlord Mōri Terumoto. Hiroshima Castle was built, in 1593 Mōri moved in. Terumoto was on the losing side at the Battle of Sekigahara; the winner of the battle, Tokugawa Ieyasu, deprived Mōri Terumoto of most of his fiefs, including Hiroshima and gave Aki Province to Masanori Fukushima, a daimyō who had supported Tokugawa.
From 1619 until 1871, Hiroshima was ruled by the Asano clan. After the Han was abolished in 1871, the city became the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture. Hiroshima became a major urban center during the imperial period, as the Japanese economy shifted from rural to urban industries. During the 1870s, one of the seven government-sponsored English language schools was established in Hiroshima. Ujina Harbor was constructed through the efforts of Hiroshima Governor Sadaaki Senda in the 1880s, allowing Hiroshima to become an important port city; the San'yō Railway was extended to Hiroshima in 1894, a rail line from the main station to the harbor was constructed for military transportation during the First Sino-Japanese War. During that war, the Japanese government moved temporarily to Hiroshima, Emperor Meiji maintained his headquarters at Hiroshima Castle from September 15, 1894, to April 27, 1895; the significance of Hiroshima for the Japanese government can be discerned from the fact that the first round of talks between Chinese and Japanese representatives to end the Sino-Japanese War was held in Hiroshima, from February 1 to February 4, 1895.
New industrial plants, including cotton mills, were established in Hiroshima in the late 19th century. Further industrialization in Hiroshima was stimulated during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, which required development and production of military supplies; the Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall was constructed in 1915 as a center for trade and exhibition of new products. Its name was changed to Hiroshima Prefectural Product Exhibition Hall, again to Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. During World War I, Hiroshima became a focal point of military activity, as the Japanese government entered the war on the Allied side. About 500 German prisoners of war were held in Ninoshima Island in Hiroshima Bay; the growth of Hiroshima as a city continued after the First World War, as the city now attracted the attention of the Catholic Church, on May 4, 1923, an Apostolic Vicar was appointed for that city. During World War II, the Second General Army and Chūgoku Regional Army were headquartered in Hiroshima, the Army Marine Headquarters was located at Ujina port.
The city had large depots of military supplies, was a key center for shipping. The bombing of Tokyo and other cities in Japan during World War II caused widespread destruction and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. There were no such air raids on Hiroshima. However, a real threat was recognized. In order to protect against potential firebombings in Hiroshima, school children aged 11–14 years were mobilized to demolish houses and create firebreaks. On Monday, August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m. the nuclear weapon "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima from an American Boeing B-29 Superfortress, the Enola Gay, flown by Colonel Paul Tibbets, directly killing an estimated 70,000 people, including 20,000 Japanese combatants and 2,000 Korean slave laborers. By the end of the year and radiation brought the total number of deaths to 90,000–166,000; the population before the bombing was around 340,000 to 350,000. About 70% of the city's buildings were destroyed, another 7% damaged; the public release of film footage of the city following the attack, some of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission research about the human effects of the attack, were restricted during the occupation of Japan, much of this information was censored until the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco in 1951, restoring control to the Japanese.
As Ian Buruma observed, "News of the terrible consequences of the atom bomb attacks on Japan was deliberately withheld from the Japanese public by US military censors during the Allied occupation—even as they sought to teach the natives the virtues of a free press. Casualty statistics were suppressed. Film shot by Japanese cameramen in Nagasaki after the bombings was confiscated. "Hiroshima", the account written by John Hersey for The New Yorker, had a huge impact in the US, but was banned in Japan. As Dower says:'In the localities themselves, suffering was compounded not by the unprecedented nature of the catastrophe... but by the fact that public struggle with this traumatic experience was not permitted." The US occupation authorities maintained a monopoly on scientific and medical information about the effects of the atomic bomb through the work of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, which treated the data gathered in studies of hibakusha as privileged information rather than making the results available for the treatment of victims or providing financial or medical support to aid victims.
The book Hiroshima by
Trove
Trove is an Australian online library database aggregator. It is one of the most well-respected and accessed GLAM services in Australia, with over 70,000 daily users. Trove's origins can be seen in the development of earlier services such as the Australian Bibliographic Network, it was known as the Single Business Discovery Service, a project, launched in August 2008. The intention was to create a single point of entry for the public to the various online discovery services developed by the library between 1997 and 2008-2009 including Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts, Picture Australia, Libraries Australia, Music Australia, Australia Dancing, PANDORA search service, ARROW Discovery Service and the Australian Newspapers Beta service; the key features of the service were designed to create a faceted search system for Australian content. Tight integration with the provider databases has allowed "Find and Get" functions. Important extra features include the provision of a "check copyright" tool and persistent identifiers.
The scope of the project is to help "you find and use resources relating to Australia" and therefore the content is Australian-focused. Much of the material may be difficult to retrieve with other search tools as it is part of the deep web, including records held in collection databases, or in projects such as Picture Australia, Music Australia, the Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts, Australia Dancing, Australian Research Online and the PANDORA web archive. Trove includes content from many libraries, museums and other organisations; the site's content is split into "zones" designating different forms of content which can be searched all together, or separately. Books: allows searching of the collective catalogues of institutions findable in Libraries Australia using the Australian National Bibliographic Database. Diaries People: allows searching of biographical information and other resources about associated people and organisations, from resources including the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
Journals: searching of academic periodicals. Maps Music and videos: allows searching of digitised historic sheet music and audio recordings. Replacing the previous "Music Australia" website. Includes searchable transcripts from many Radio National programs. Newspapers: allows text-searching of digitised historic newspapers. Replacing the previous "Australian Newspapers" website. Pictures: Including digitised photographs, posters, postcards etc. Considerable numbers of images on Flickr with the appropriate licensing are donated as well. Replacing the previous "Pictures Australia" website. Websites: the primary search portal of the PANDORA web-archiving service, which itself includes the "Australian Government Web Archive". Government Gazettes: allows searching of official publications written for the purpose of notifying the public of government business. A final "zone" called Lists allows logged-in users of Trove to make their own public compilations of items found in Trove searches. There is a facility to join the Trove community and make contributions to the resources such as tags and corrections.
The book zone provides access to books, audio books, conference proceedings and pamphlets listed in Australia's National Bibliographic Database, a union catalogue of items held in Australian libraries and a national bibliographic database of resources including Australian online publications. Bibliographic records from the ANBD are uploaded into the WorldCat global union catalogue; the results can be filtered by format if searching for braille, audio books, theses or conference proceedings and by decade and language of publication. A filter for Australian content is provided. Trove provides text-searchable access to over 700 historic Australian newspapers from each State and Territory. By 2014, over 13.5 million digitised newspaper pages had been made available through Trove as part of the Australian Newspaper Plan, a "collaborative program to collect and preserve every newspaper published in Australia, guaranteeing public access" to these important historical records. The extent of digitised newspaper archives is wide reaching and includes now defunct publications, such as the Australian Home Companion and Band of Hope Journal and The Barrier Miner in New South Wales and The Argus in Victoria.
It includes the earliest published Australian newspaper, the Sydney Gazette, some community language newspapers. Included is The Australian Women's Weekly; the Canberra Times is the only major newspaper available beyond 1957. It allowed publication of its in-copyright archive up to 1995 as part of the "centenary of Canberra" in 2013, the digitisation costs were raised with a crowdfunding campaign. Crowdfunded, the Australian feminist magazine The Dawn was included on International Women's Day 2012. On 25 July 2008 the "Australian Newspapers Beta" service was released to the public as a standalone website and a year became a integrated part of the newly launched Trove; the service contains millions of articles from 1803 onwards, with more content being added regularly. The website was the public face of the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Project, a coordination of major libraries in Australia to convert historic newspapers to text-searchable digital files; the Australian Newspapers website allowed users to search the database of digitised newspapers from 1803 to 1954 which are now in the public domain.
The newspapers (frequent
Alan Bond
Alan Bond was an Australian businessman noted for his high-profile business dealings, including his central role in the WA Inc scandals of the 1980s, what was at the time the biggest corporate collapse in Australian history. The Alan Cup road hockey tournament is held at Bond University in his name. Born in London and raised in Australia from the age of 12, Bond began his career as a signwriter and formed what became the Bond Corporation in 1959, he became a public hero in his adopted country after bankrolling challenges for the America's Cup, which resulted in his selection in 1978 as Australian of the Year. His Australia II syndicate won the 1983 America's Cup, held by the New York Yacht Club since 1851, thus breaking the longest winning streak in the history of sport. In 1992, Bond was declared bankrupt with personal debts totalling A$1.8 billion. He was subsequently convicted of fraud and imprisoned after pleading guilty to using his controlling interest in Bell Resources to deceptively siphon off A$1.2 billion into the coffers of Bond Corporation.
The funds were used to shore up the cash resources of the ailing Bond Corporation, which spectacularly collapsed, leaving Bell Resources in a precarious situation. Following release, he became active in various mining investments, predominately in Africa, including Madagascar Oil PLC and Global Diamond Resources, of Lesotho and was included in Business Review Weekly's "Rich 200 List" in 2008. On 24 and 25 April 2017, the Nine Network aired a fictionalised TV mini-series, House of Bond, based on Bond's rise and fall. Alan Bond was born on 22 April 1938, the son of Frank and Kathleen Bond in the Hammersmith district of London, England. In 1950, aged 12, he emigrated to Australia with his parents and his older sister Geraldine, living in Fremantle, near Perth. At the age of 14, he was charged with being unlawfully on premises. At the age of 18, he was arrested for being unlawfully on premises and admitted planning a robbery; the Perth-based Bond made his fortune in property development and at one time was one of Australia's most prominent businesspeople.
In 1970 he bought three America's Cup challenge yachts from Sir Frank Packer. He extended his business interests into other fields including brewing, gold mining and airships. In 1987, Australia's first private university, Bond University was founded by Bond Corporation, he purchased QTQ-9 Brisbane and settled an outstanding defamation dispute the station had with the Queensland premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen by paying out A$400,000. He said in a television interview several years that he paid because "Sir Joh left no doubt that if we were going to continue to do business in Queensland he expected the matter to be resolved". In 1987, Bond purchased Vincent van Gogh's renowned painting, for $54 million—the highest price paid for a single painting. However, the purchase was funded by a substantial loan from the auctioneer, Sotheby's, which Bond failed to repay; the transaction was criticised by art dealers as a manipulated sale designed to artificially inflate values generally. The painting was subsequently re-sold in 1990 to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
In 1987, he built and developed the Bond Centre in Hong Kong. It was bought by the Lippo Group of Indonesia and is now known as the Lippo Centre. In 1987, Bond paid $1 billion to purchase the Australia-wide Channel Nine television network from Kerry Packer's PBL. In a 2003 interview with Andrew Denton, Bond described the negotiations as follows: "...when we first sat down, we said,'We're either going to sell our stations to you for $400 million, or you're going to sell your stations to us.' And said,'Well, I don't want to sell my stations.' And I said,'Oh, is that right?' So, after much discussion, Kerry thumped the table and said,'Listen, if you can pay me $1 billion, I'll sell them to you, otherwise bugger off'.... Hen I rang the National Australia Bank. I said,'Look, I'm in discussions here to buy these television stations. Kerry will sell to me, what I want to do is put our stations together and with Sky Channel, I'm going to float it off as a separate entity and raise the capital to pay for it... said $1 billion, but I think I'll get it for $800 million.'... duly rang back and said yes.
I said,'Thank God. I'll have some further negotiations with Kerry,' which I did, and true to his word, he never budged one penny off it. So I settled the deal with a $200 million note. So he put his own $200 million in. So I had $1 billion, and we put our other two stations up as collateral, which were worth $400 million." In fact, the agreed price was $1.05 billion. Packer took $250 million in subordinated debt in Bond Media. Once Bond went bankrupt, Packer was able to turn the debt into a 37% equity in Bond Media, which now included Channel 9 in Brisbane, was worth about $500 million, it had $500 million in debt on the books. Still, Packer was quoted as saying "You only get one Alan Bond in your lifetime, I've had mine". In 1992, Bond was declared bankrupt after
