Edson Stroll
Edson Stroll was an American actor. He made over 20 film and television appearances since 1958. Born in Chicago, Stroll enlisted in the US Navy in the late 1940s began his career as a bodybuilder in the 1950s, he studied acting and singing at the American Theater Wing in New York City and received a Fulbright Scholarship for voice performance, followed by an artists’ contract for performance and advance study by the National Broadcasting CompanyHe did a variety of stage work from 1958 had bit parts on television shows such as How to Marry a Millionaire and Sea Hunt. He appeared in two episodes of The Twilight Zone, "Eye of the Beholder" and "The Trade-Ins", he played "Dynamite" in the Elvis Presley film G. I. Blues, he landed a steady role on McHale's Navy as Virgil Edwards. Fans of slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges remember Stroll for his roles in two 1960s-era feature films, Snow White and the Three Stooges and The Three Stooges in Orbit. Throughout the 2000s, Stroll provided voice-overs, appeared at Hollywood autograph signing shows, near his Marina del Rey home in Southern California.
Stoll was a licensed ship's captain and marine surveyor. Edson Stroll died of cancer on July 18, 2011 at age 82. Edson Stroll on IMDb
Television in the United States
Television is one of the major mass media of the United States. As of 2011, household ownership of television sets in the country is 96.7%, with 114,200,000 American households owning at least one television set as of August 2013. The majority of households have more than one set; the peak ownership percentage of households with at least one television set occurred during the 1996–97 season, with 98.4% ownership. As a whole, the television networks that broadcast in the United States are the largest and most distributed in the world, programs produced for U. S.-based networks are the most syndicated internationally. Due to a recent surge in the number and popularity of critically acclaimed television series during the 2000s and the 2010s to date, many critics have said that American television is undergoing a modern golden age. In the United States, television is available via broadcast – the earliest method of receiving television programming, which requires an antenna and an equipped internal or external tuner capable of picking up channels that transmit on the two principal broadcast bands high frequency and ultra high frequency, in order to receive the signal – and four conventional types of multichannel subscription television: cable, unencrypted satellite, direct-broadcast satellite television and IPTV.
There are competing video services on the World Wide Web, which have become an popular mode of television viewing since the late 2000s with younger audiences as an alternative or a supplement to the aforementioned traditional forms of viewing television content. Individual broadcast television stations in the U. S. transmit on either VHF channels 2 through 13 or UHF channels 14 through 51. During the era of analog television, broadcast stations transmitted on a single universal channel; the UHF band spanned from channels 14 to 83, though the Federal Communications Commission has twice rescinded the high-end portions of the band from television broadcasting use for emergency and other telecommunications purposes in 1983 and 2009. As in other countries, television stations require a license to broadcast and must comply with certain requirements in order to retain it. Free-to-air and subscription television networks, are not required to file for a license to operate. Over-the-air and free-to-air television do not necessitate any monthly payments, while cable, direct broadcast satellite, IPTV and virtual MVPD services require monthly payments that vary depending on the number of channels that a subscriber chooses to pay for in a particular package.
Channels are sold in groups, rather than singularly. Most conventional subscription television services offer a limited basic tier, a minimum base package that includes only broadcast stations within the television market where the service is located, public and government access cable channels. Elevated programming tiers start with an expanded basic package, offering a selection of subscription channels intended for wide distribution. A la carte subscription services in the U. S. are limited to pay television channels that are offered as add-ons to any programming package that a customer of a multichannel video programming distributor can subscribe to for an additional monthly fee. The United States has a "decentralized", market-oriented television system in regard to broadcast television; the nation has a national publi
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. NASA was established in 1958; the new agency was to have a distinctly civilian orientation, encouraging peaceful applications in space science. Since its establishment, most US space exploration efforts have been led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station, the Space Shuttle. NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the Space Launch System and Commercial Crew vehicles; the agency is responsible for the Launch Services Program which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. NASA science is focused on better understanding Earth through the Earth Observing System. From 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1.
In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch an artificial satellite for the International Geophysical Year. An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard. After the Soviet launch of the world's first artificial satellite on October 4, 1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts; the US Congress, alarmed by the perceived threat to national security and technological leadership, urged immediate and swift action. On January 12, 1958, NACA organized a "Special Committee on Space Technology", headed by Guyford Stever. On January 14, 1958, NACA Director Hugh Dryden published "A National Research Program for Space Technology" stating: It is of great urgency and importance to our country both from consideration of our prestige as a nation as well as military necessity that this challenge be met by an energetic program of research and development for the conquest of space... It is accordingly proposed that the scientific research be the responsibility of a national civilian agency...
NACA is capable, by rapid extension and expansion of its effort, of providing leadership in space technology. While this new federal agency would conduct all non-military space activity, the Advanced Research Projects Agency was created in February 1958 to develop space technology for military application. On July 29, 1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, establishing NASA; when it began operations on October 1, 1958, NASA absorbed the 43-year-old NACA intact. A NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA. A significant contributor to NASA's entry into the Space Race with the Soviet Union was the technology from the German rocket program led by Wernher von Braun, now working for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, which in turn incorporated the technology of American scientist Robert Goddard's earlier works. Earlier research efforts within the US Air Force and many of ARPA's early space programs were transferred to NASA.
In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a contractor facility operated by the California Institute of Technology. The agency's leader, NASA's administrator, is nominated by the President of the United States subject to approval of the US Senate, reports to him or her and serves as senior space science advisor. Though space exploration is ostensibly non-partisan, the appointee is associated with the President's political party, a new administrator is chosen when the Presidency changes parties; the only exceptions to this have been: Democrat Thomas O. Paine, acting administrator under Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, stayed on while Republican Richard Nixon tried but failed to get one of his own choices to accept the job. Paine was confirmed by the Senate in March 1969 and served through September 1970. Republican James C. Fletcher, appointed by Nixon and confirmed in April 1971, stayed through May 1977 into the term of Democrat Jimmy Carter. Daniel Goldin was appointed by Republican George H. W. Bush and stayed through the entire administration of Democrat Bill Clinton.
Robert M. Lightfoot, Jr. associate administrator under Democrat Barack Obama, was kept on as acting administrator by Republican Donald Trump until Trump's own choice Jim Bridenstine, was confirmed in April 2018. Though the agency is independent, the survival or discontinuation of projects can depend directly on the will of the President; the first administrator was Dr. T. Keith Glennan appointed by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower. During his term he brought together the disparate projects in American space development research; the second administrator, James E. Webb, appointed by President John F. Kennedy, was a Democrat who first publicly served under President Harry S. Truman. In order to implement the Apollo program to achieve Kennedy's Moon la
CBS
CBS is an American English language commercial broadcast television and radio network, a flagship property of CBS Corporation. The company is headquartered at the CBS Building in New York City with major production facilities and operations in New York City and Los Angeles. CBS is sometimes referred to as the Eye Network, in reference to the company's iconic symbol, in use since 1951, it has been called the "Tiffany Network", alluding to the perceived high quality of CBS programming during the tenure of William S. Paley, it can refer to some of CBS's first demonstrations of color television, which were held in a former Tiffany & Co. building in New York City in 1950. The network has its origins in United Independent Broadcasters Inc. a collection of 16 radio stations, purchased by Paley in 1928 and renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System. Under Paley's guidance, CBS would first become one of the largest radio networks in the United States, one of the Big Three American broadcast television networks.
In 1974, CBS dropped its former full name and became known as CBS, Inc. The Westinghouse Electric Corporation acquired the network in 1995, renamed its corporate entity to the current CBS Broadcasting, Inc. in 1997, adopted the name of the company it had acquired to become CBS Corporation. In 2000, CBS came under the control of Viacom, formed as a spin-off of CBS in 1971. In late 2005, Viacom split itself into two separate companies and re-established CBS Corporation – through the spin-off of its broadcast television and select cable television and non-broadcasting assets – with the CBS television network at its core. CBS Corporation is controlled by Sumner Redstone through National Amusements, which controls the current Viacom. CBS operated the CBS Radio network until 2017, when it merged its radio division with Entercom. Prior to CBS Radio provided news and features content for its portfolio owned-and-operated radio stations in large and mid-sized markets, affiliated radio stations in various other markets.
While CBS Corporation owns a 72% stake in Entercom, it no longer owns or operates any radio stations directly, though CBS still provides radio news broadcasts to its radio affiliates and the new owners of its former radio stations. The television network has more than 240 owned-and-operated and affiliated television stations throughout the United States; the company ranked 197th on the 2018 Fortune 500 of the largest United States corporations by revenue. The origins of CBS date back to January 27, 1927, with the creation of the "United Independent Broadcasters" network in Chicago by New York City talent-agent Arthur Judson; the fledgling network soon needed additional investors though, the Columbia Phonograph Company, manufacturers of Columbia Records, rescued it in April 1927. Columbia Phonographic went on the air on September 18, 1927, with a presentation by the Howard L. Barlow Orchestra from flagship station WOR in Newark, New Jersey, fifteen affiliates. Operational costs were steep the payments to AT&T for use of its land lines, by the end of 1927, Columbia Phonograph wanted out.
In early 1928 Judson sold the network to brothers Isaac and Leon Levy, owners of the network's Philadelphia affiliate WCAU, their partner Jerome Louchheim. None of the three were interested in assuming day-to-day management of the network, so they installed wealthy 26-year-old William S. Paley, son of a Philadelphia cigar family and in-law of the Levys, as president. With the record company out of the picture, Paley streamlined the corporate name to "Columbia Broadcasting System", he believed in the power of radio advertising since his family's "La Palina" cigars had doubled their sales after young William convinced his elders to advertise on radio. By September 1928, Paley bought out the Louchhheim share of CBS and became its majority owner with 51% of the business. During Louchheim's brief regime, Columbia paid $410,000 to A. H. Grebe's Atlantic Broadcasting Company for a small Brooklyn station, WABC, which would become the network's flagship station. WABC was upgraded, the signal relocated to 860 kHz.
The physical plant was relocated – to Steinway Hall on West 57th Street in Manhattan, where much of CBS's programming would originate. By the turn of 1929, the network could boast to sponsors of having 47 affiliates. Paley moved right away to put his network on a firmer financial footing. In the fall of 1928, he entered into talks with Adolph Zukor of Paramount Pictures, who planned to move into radio in response to RCA's forays into motion pictures with the advent of talkies; the deal came to fruition in September 1929: Paramount acquired 49% of CBS in return for a block of its stock worth $3.8 million at the time. The agreement specified that Paramount would buy that same stock back by March 1, 1932 for a flat $5 million, provided CBS had earned $2 million during 1931 and 1932. For a brief time there was talk that the network might be renamed "Paramount Radio", but it only lasted a month – the 1929 stock market crash sent all stock value tumbling, it galvanized Paley and his troops, who "had no alternative but to turn the network around and earn the $2,000,000 in two years....
This is the atmosphere in which the CBS of today was born." The near-bankrupt movie studio sold its CBS shares back to CBS in 1932. In the first year of Paley's wa
Reggie Hayes
Reginald "Reggie" C. Hayes is an American actor and director, he is best known for his role as William Dent on Girlfriends. Reginald Hayes was born on July 1969 in Chicago, Illinois; as the youngest of four, he had to continuously work hard to keep up with his siblings. Reggie always had an interest in the arts, but was obliged to attend the “Northwestern Military Naval Academy”, who recognized him as one of three “Notable Men of the Academy.” After the Academy, Reggie’s love for acting inspired him to attend Illinois State University, where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Theater. In 2004, he won the “Outstanding Young Alumni Award” and was a member of the “Illinois Shakespeare Festival.” Reggie is an avid supporter of his community and worked alongside his sister at various events for a charity dear to his heart, the “Reginald and Frances Hayes H. O. P. E. Scholarship Award”, he made a surprise appearance at the University of Illinois in 2009 to present scholarships to deserving students. Reggie continues to help charities with missions he is passionate about in the hope of creating positive change.
Reggie is best known for his role as William Dent on BET/UPN/CW’s hit T. V. show “Girlfriends” that aired for 8 years until 2008. It earned him the “Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series” for three NAACP Image Awards, People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” in 2007. Reggie went on to appear in several other movies and T. V. shows, including Criminal Minds, Will & Grace and NCIS. After a short career break, Hayes teamed up with Key Entertainment to launch his new brand. Actor Reginald C. Hayes was among the first to be recognized as one of three "Notable Men of the Academy" from St. John's Northwestern Military Academy on May 28, 2011. Chicago productions of "Chicago Conspiracy Trial" "A Raisin in the Sun" The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts "Hellcab Does Christmas" "Bang the Drum Slowly" "Othello" "Five Times Noh" "Any Place but Here" "Less Than Equal" "Native Speech" "No One Goes Mad" "Inspecting Carol" "Richard II" Numerous other Shakespeare productions. Reggie Hayes on IMDb Reggie Hayes's biography on filmbug Sexiest Man Alive 2007 Cinemax FEMME FATALES episode guide Instagram @reggieh69
DVD
DVD is a digital optical disc storage format invented and developed in 1995. The medium can store any kind of digital data and is used for software and other computer files as well as video programs watched using DVD players. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than compact discs. Prerecorded DVDs are mass-produced using molding machines that physically stamp data onto the DVD; such discs are a form of DVD-ROM because data can only be not written or erased. Blank recordable DVD discs can be recorded once using a DVD recorder and function as a DVD-ROM. Rewritable DVDs can be erased many times. DVDs are used in DVD-Video consumer digital video format and in DVD-Audio consumer digital audio format as well as for authoring DVD discs written in a special AVCHD format to hold high definition material. DVDs containing other types of information may be referred to as DVD data discs; the Oxford English Dictionary comments that, "In 1995 rival manufacturers of the product named digital video disc agreed that, in order to emphasize the flexibility of the format for multimedia applications, the preferred abbreviation DVD would be understood to denote digital versatile disc."
The OED states that in 1995, "The companies said the official name of the format will be DVD. Toshiba had been using the name ‘digital video disc’, but, switched to ‘digital versatile disc’ after computer companies complained that it left out their applications.""Digital versatile disc" is the explanation provided in a DVD Forum Primer from 2000 and in the DVD Forum's mission statement. There were several formats developed for recording video on optical discs before the DVD. Optical recording technology was invented by David Paul Gregg and James Russell in 1958 and first patented in 1961. A consumer optical disc data format known as LaserDisc was developed in the United States, first came to market in Atlanta, Georgia in 1978, it used much larger discs than the formats. Due to the high cost of players and discs, consumer adoption of LaserDisc was low in both North America and Europe, was not used anywhere outside Japan and the more affluent areas of Southeast Asia, such as Hong-Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.
CD Video released in 1987 used analog video encoding on optical discs matching the established standard 120 mm size of audio CDs. Video CD became one of the first formats for distributing digitally encoded films in this format, in 1993. In the same year, two new optical disc storage formats were being developed. One was the Multimedia Compact Disc, backed by Philips and Sony, the other was the Super Density disc, supported by Toshiba, Time Warner, Matsushita Electric, Mitsubishi Electric, Thomson, JVC. By the time of the press launches for both formats in January 1995, the MMCD nomenclature had been dropped, Philips and Sony were referring to their format as Digital Video Disc. Representatives from the SD camp asked IBM for advice on the file system to use for their disc, sought support for their format for storing computer data. Alan E. Bell, a researcher from IBM's Almaden Research Center, got that request, learned of the MMCD development project. Wary of being caught in a repeat of the costly videotape format war between VHS and Betamax in the 1980s, he convened a group of computer industry experts, including representatives from Apple, Sun Microsystems and many others.
This group was referred to as the Technical Working Group, or TWG. On August 14, 1995, an ad hoc group formed from five computer companies issued a press release stating that they would only accept a single format; the TWG voted to boycott both formats unless the two camps agreed on a converged standard. They recruited president of IBM, to pressure the executives of the warring factions. In one significant compromise, the MMCD and SD groups agreed to adopt proposal SD 9, which specified that both layers of the dual-layered disc be read from the same side—instead of proposal SD 10, which would have created a two-sided disc that users would have to turn over; as a result, the DVD specification provided a storage capacity of 4.7 GB for a single-layered, single-sided disc and 8.5 GB for a dual-layered, single-sided disc. The DVD specification ended up similar to Toshiba and Matsushita's Super Density Disc, except for the dual-layer option and EFMPlus modulation designed by Kees Schouhamer Immink.
Philips and Sony decided that it was in their best interests to end the format war, agreed to unify with companies backing the Super Density Disc to release a single format, with technologies from both. After other compromises between MMCD and SD, the computer companies through TWG won the day, a single format was agreed upon; the TWG collaborated with the Optical Storage Technology Association on the use of their implementation of the ISO-13346 file system for use on the new DVDs. Movie and home entertainment distributors adopted the DVD format to replace the ubiquitous VHS tape as the primary consumer digital video distribution format, they embraced DVD as it produced higher quality video and sound, provided superior data lifespan, could be interactive. Interactivity on LaserDiscs had proven desirable to consumers collectors; when LaserDisc prices dropped from $100 per
And When the Sky Was Opened
"And When the Sky Was Opened" is episode eleven of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It aired on December 11, 1959, it is an adaptation of the Richard Matheson short story "Disappearing Act". United States Air Force Colonel Clegg Forbes arrives at a military hospital to visit his friend and co-pilot Major William Gart; the two had piloted an experimental spaceplane, the X-20 DynaSoar, on a mission that took them 900 miles beyond the confines of the Earth's atmosphere for the first time. During their voyage the men blacked out for four hours and the craft itself disappeared from radar screens for a full day before reappearing and crash landing in the desert leaving Gart with a broken leg. Gart inquires as to the status of the plane, but Forbes is agitated and asks Gart if he remembers how many people were on the mission, producing a newspaper whose front page shows the likenesses of the two men and a headline stating that two astronauts were rescued from the desert crash.
Gart confirms that only he and Forbes piloted the plane but Forbes insists that a third man – Colonel Ed Harrington, his best friend for 15 years – accompanied them. In the flashback, the previous morning and Forbes are shown joking with Gart as they are discharged from the hospital after passing their physical exams, leaving the Major to recuperate alone; the same newspaper that Forbes would show Gart is present but instead asserts three astronauts were recovered from the crash of the X-20 with a photo depicting a crew of three. The two men visit a bar downtown. While there, Harrington is overcome by a feeling that he no longer "belongs" in the world. Disturbed, he phones his parents who tell him they have no son named Ed Harrington and believe the person calling them to be a prankster. Harrington mysteriously vanishes from the phone booth and no one in the bar but Forbes remembers his existence. Desperate, Forbes searches for any trace of his friend but can find nothing in the bar, his girlfriend, does not remember Harrington, neither does his commanding officer.
Returning to the closed bar, he breaks in calling his name repeatedly. He returns to the hospital the next morning to talk with Gart. Back in the present, Forbes is dismayed by Gart's claim that he doesn't know anyone named Harrington. Forbes glances at a mirror and discovers he casts no reflection, causing him to flee the room in terror. Gart tries to hobble. Calling the duty nurse to ask if she saw where Forbes went, Gart is stunned at the nurse's claim that nobody named Forbes has been in the building and that Gart was the only man, aboard his plane. After getting back into bed, he notices, it now says that Gart was the sole pilot of the X-20 – all mention of Forbes, including his photo, is gone. Horrified, Gart disappears. An officer enters the building and asks the duty nurse if there are any unused rooms available to accommodate new patients; the nurse takes him to the now empty room which hosted the three astronauts, stating that it has been unoccupied. In the hangar which housed the X-20, the sheet that covered the craft is shown lying on the ground.
There is no trace of the plane. Rod Taylor as Lieutenant Colonel Clegg Forbes Charles Aidman as Colonel Ed Harrington Jim Hutton as Major William Gart Maxine Cooper as Amy Sue Randall as Nurse Paul Bryar as Bartender Joe Bassett as Medical officer Gloria Pall as Girl in bar Elizabeth Fielding as Blond Nurse This episode is loosely based on the short story "Disappearing Act" by Richard Matheson; the story was first published in The Magazine of Science Fiction. Rod Taylor and director Douglas Heyes worked together on the TV series Bearcats!. "Remember Me", an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which ship's doctor Beverly Crusher undergoes a comparable experience. "Revisions", a Stargate SG-1 episode with a similar plot. "Games People Play", a Eureka episode with a similar plot. DeVoe, Bill. Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0. Grams, Martin; the Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0.
"And When the Sky Was Opened" on IMDb "And When the Sky Was Opened" at TV.com And When The Sky Was Opened | John's Twilight Zone Page
