California Quadrangle
The California Quadrangle, California Building, California Tower are historic structures located in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. They were built for the 1915–16 Panama-California Exposition and served as the grand entry to the Expo; the buildings and courtyard were designed by architect Bertram Goodhue. They were added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 17, 1974, they now house the San Diego Museum of Man. The Quadrangle includes the California Building and Tower on the north side, Evernham Hall and the St. Francis Chapel on the south side. Between them is an open space linked by arcaded passageways and massive arched gateways to form the Plaza de California; the original Balboa Park Administration Building lies just outside the Quadrangle, adjacent to and west of the California Building. Unlike most of the exhibits at the Expo, the Quadrangle buildings were intended to be permanent; the Plaza de California is the main entryway to Balboa Park, approached over the Cabrillo Bridge.
That entry is a two-lane road providing vehicle access to the park. The city approved plans to divert vehicle traffic away from the Plaza de California and restore it as a pedestrian-only promenade, hoping to complete the project in time to celebrate the 2015 centennial of the Exposition. However, the plan was challenged in court and was overturned by a judge on February 4, 2013, on the grounds that the city had not followed its own Municipal Code requirements in approving it; the California Building with its ornate facade and blue-and-gold dome, together with the adjoining California Tower, are among the most recognizable landmarks in San Diego. They house the San Diego Museum of Man; the design and ornamentation combine many style elements including Gothic, Baroque and Rococo to create the impression of a Spanish Colonial church. The dome's design looked to the dome at the Church of Santa Prisca and San Sebastián in Taxco, Mexico; the great central dome is encircled with the inscription "Terram Frumenti Hordei, ac Vinarum, in qua Ficus et Malogranata et Oliveta Nascuntur, Terram Olei ac Mellis", as well as the California motto, "Eureka".
The building's facade features stone ornamentation as well as many historical figures and busts sculpted from modeling clay and plaster, depicting prominent people from California, England and Spain. These include Junípero Serra, Philip III of Spain, Sebastián Vizcaíno, George Vancouver, Luís Jayme, Carlos III of Spain, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, Gaspar de Portolà, Antonio de la Ascención; the facade features the shield of the United States and the coats of arms of California and Mexico. The California Tower is 198 feet tall and is open for public tours as of January 1, 2015; the tower's design is Spanish. The tower is composed of three tiers that shift from a quadrangle to an octagon and a circle. There is a Maas-Rowe carillon in the tower, first installed in 1946 and replaced in 1967; the carillon can be heard throughout the park. It plays the Westminster Chimes every quarter-hour, a resident carilloneur plays three songs at noon every day; the tower has been described as "San Diego's Icon," the most photographed and best-known landmark in San Diego.
The State of California paid the $250,000 cost to develop the California Building and Tower for the 1915 Exposition. Although California owned the building, it was turned over to the San Diego government in 1926. During the Exposition the California Building was the home of the Expo's theme exhibit, an anthropological display called "The Story of Man through the Ages." After the Expo ended, the exhibit was retained and expanded becoming the San Diego Museum of Man. On the south side of the Quadrangle is the fair's original Fine Arts Building; the building is now used by the San Diego Museum of Man. It houses a banquet hall called Evernham Hall, is used for temporary exhibits; the St. Francis Chapel is a small chapel in Mission style, built to add a religious note to the Expo; the interior design is simple except for an elaborately gilded Spanish-style altar. To the right of the carved statue of Our Lady and Child is an effigy representing San Diego de Alcala, name-saint of the city, to commemorate the early Jesuit missions in Arizona on the left is an unknown Jesuit saint.
The chapel is not open to the public but is available for private events such as weddings and commitment ceremonies. It was used as a military chapel during World War II. Just outside the California Quadrangle, on the west, is the first building visitors encounter as they cross the Cabrillo Bridge and enter the El Prado Complex; this is the Administration Building. It was constructed in Balboa Park as the Panama-California Exposition Administration Building, completed in 1911 and designed by Irving Gill. Gill designed the building in his high style; this style is sometimes called Mission style, but, an incorrect label as it bears little resemblance to the California Missions. After Gill left the Exposition project, the design was augmented with the Bertram Goodhue style of Spanish Colonial ornamentation in an attempt to match the architectural theme of the rest of the Exposition; the building contained an auditorium. It served as the planning and administrative headquarters for the 1915-16 Exposition, as well as a place for international receptions.
During World War II it was used as a military hospital. For many yea
Science museum
A science museum is a museum devoted to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, geology and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in museology have broadened the range of subject matter and introduced many interactive exhibits. Many if not most modern science museums – which refer to themselves as science centers or "discovery centers" – emphasize technology, are therefore technology museums; the mission statements of science centers and modern museums vary, but they are united in being places that make science accessible and encourage the excitement of discovery. They are an integral and dynamic part of the learning environment, promoting exploration from the first "Eureka!" Moment to today's cutting-edge research. As early as the Renaissance, many aristocrats collected curiosities for display to their family. Universities and medical schools maintained study collections of specimens for their students. Scientists and collectors displayed their finds in private cabinets of curiosities.
Such collections were the predecessors of modern natural history museums. The first purpose-built museum covering natural philosophy and open to the public from 1683 was the original Ashmolean museum in Oxford, although its scope was mixed; the first dedicated science museum was the Museo de Ciencias Naturales, in Spain. Opened in 1752, it disappeared during the Franco regime, but it recovered afterwards and today works with the CSIC; the Utrecht University Museum, among others, still displays an extensive collection of 18th-century animal and human "rarities" in its original setting. Another line in the genealogy of science museums came during the Industrial Revolution, with great national exhibits intended to showcase the triumphs of both science and industry. For example, the Great Exhibition in The Crystal Palace gave rise to London's Science Museum. In America, various Natural History Societies established collections in the early 19th century, which evolved into museums. Notable was the early New England Museum of Natural History, which opened in Boston in 1864.
The Academy of Science of Saint Louis was founded in 1856 as the first scientific organization west of the Mississippi. The modern interactive science museum appears to have been pioneered by Munich’s Deutsches Museum in the early 20th century; this museum had moving exhibits. The concept was taken to the US by Julius Rosenwald, chairman of Sears and Company, who visited the Deutsches Museum with his young son in 1911, he was so-captivated by the experience. Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry opened in phases between 1933 and 1940. In 1959 the Museum of Science and Natural History was formally created by the Academy of Science of Saint Louis, featuring many interactive science and history exhibits. In August 1969, Frank Oppenheimer dedicated his new Exploratorium in San Francisco completely to interactive science exhibits; the Exploratorium published the details of their own exhibits in "Cookbooks" that served as an inspiration to many other museums around the world. Opened in September 1969, the Ontario Science Centre continued the trend of featuring interactive exhibits rather than static displays.
In 1973, the first Omnimax theater opened as the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center in San Diego's Balboa Park; the tilted-dome Space Theater doubled as a planetarium. The Science Center was an Exploratorium-style museum included as a small part of the complex; this combination interactive science museum and Omnimax theater pioneered a configuration that many major science museums follow today. In 1973, the Association of Science-Technology Centers was founded as an international organization to provide a collective voice, professional support, programming opportunities for science centers and related institutions; as the flavor of interactivity spread worldwide, the massive Cite des Sciences et de l'Industrie opened in Paris in 1986, smaller but no less influential national centers soon followed in Spain and Denmark. In the UK, the first interactive centers opened in 1986 on a modest scale, but their real blossoming more than a decade was fuelled by Lottery funding for projects to celebrate the millennium.
Since the 1990s, science museums and centers, such as Thailand's National Science Museum, have been created or expanded in East Asia, South Asia, other parts of the developing word. However, in many more institutionalized organizations the improvised, experimental nature of the Oppenheimer era has been diluted in favor of a standardized view of science dominated by governmental and commercial messages. Museums that brand themselves as science centers emphasize a hands-on approach, featuring interactive exhibits that encourage visitors to experiment and explore; the first science center was Urania founded in Berlin in 1888. The Academy of Science of Saint Louis created the Saint Louis Museum of Science and Natural History in 1959, but science centers are a product of the 1960s and later. In the United Kingdom, many of them were founded as Millennium projects, with funding from the National Lotteries Fund; the first "science center" in the United States was the Science Center of Pinellas
Fleet Science Center
The Fleet Science Center is a science museum and planetarium in Balboa Park, located in San Diego, California. It is at the east end of the El Prado Drive walkway, next to the Bea Evenson Fountain and plaza in central Balboa Park. Established in 1973, it was the first science museum to combine interactive science exhibits with a planetarium and an IMAX Dome theater, setting the standard that most major science museums follow today; the facility is named for aviation pioneer Reuben H. Fleet, who founded the U. S. Air Mail service. Fleet's San Diego-based company, Consolidated Aircraft, built several of the famous aircraft of World War II, including the B-24 Liberator and PBY Catalina. Fleet and his family made the initial gift. Throughout the 1960s, the San Diego Hall of Science was planning a new planetarium for San Diego's Balboa Park, with the possibility of an adjacent science hall; the site on Laurel Street opposite the San Diego Natural History Museum was reserved in 1963. The planetarium incorporated several innovative features.
It was to be used for traditional planetarium shows. The 76-foot-diameter dome would be tilted 25 degrees; the audience would be placed in tiered rows facing outward into the tilted dome to give the feeling of being suspended in space and looking forward, rather than looking upward into an overhead dome. The founders wanted to eliminate the large dumbbell-shaped star projector used in traditional planetariums, which juts from the center of the room and blocks part of the view, would interfere with the movies being projected onto the dome; the San Diego Hall of Science approached Spitz Laboratories to create a new type of star projector that would not obstruct the view for part of the audience or interfere with the movie projection system. Spitz created a servo-controlled "starball" that became the centerpiece of the system, dubbed a "Space Transit Simulator"; the spherical star projector and a number of independent planet projectors maintained a low profile while projecting a realistic sky for the astronomy presentations.
These elements, along with a number of slide projectors and lighting systems, were all controlled by a PDP-15 minicomputer. Unlike conventional planetariums, which are limited to showing the night sky as it appears from various points on the surface of the Earth at various dates, the STS could show the sky as it would appear from anywhere within about 100 astronomical units of Earth. A joystick allowed the operator to "fly" the theater through space, showing the resulting apparent movement of planets through the sky, though in practice the planetarium presentations were always pre-programmed; the Fleet is home to the world’s first IMAX Dome Theater, presenting the biggest films on the planet. In addition to planetarium shows, the museum's founders wanted to use a large-format film projection system to show movies on the dome's interior; the San Diego Hall of Science approached IMAX to adapt their large-screen format, but the existing IMAX system was not designed for filling a hemispherical screen.
The system adopted was a modification of IMAX's 65mm format and was named OMNIMAX. The cameras would use a fisheye lens, taking in nearly a 180 degree field of view but with a distorted image on the film; when projected on the dome through another fisheye lens, the distortion would be reversed, the original panoramic view would be recreated. The audience would have a view, like being at the original scene, occupying nearly the entire field of vision; the theater opened in 1973 as the "Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center" showing two features, Voyage to the Outer Planets and the OMNIMAX film Garden Isle on a double bill. In addition to setting a new standard for planetariums, the science center was a pioneer in modern science museums. Following the example set four years earlier by the Exploratorium in San Francisco, all exhibits in the science center were required to have something for visitors to manipulate or otherwise participate in; the combination of a planetarium, IMAX Dome theater and interactive science exhibits is now a common thread with most major science museums.
By the late 1990s the science center had become small and outdated compared to newer science museums. In 1998 the science center was expanded and modernized to include rides such as the Virtual Zone, a motion-simulator offering virtual rides with a scientific bent; the scientific and interactive exhibits dwarfed the planetarium/theater, so the name was changed to the Reuben H. Fleet Science re-branded in late 2016 as the Fleet Science Center; the STS was used for many years but was replaced by an Evans and Sutherland Digistar II in 2001. The facility has been cited as a leading example of energy sustainability. In 2012 the theater was renamed the Eugene Heikoff and Marilyn Jacobs Heikoff Dome Theater, after receiving a large grant from the Irwin Jacobs family for a major renovation; the planetarium projection system was improved again, uses two Global Immersion GSX systems, each containing two Sony SRX 420 4K video projectors. The renovation include improving the dome's screen with the world's first NanoSeam Dome screen in an IMAX Theater.
This system is used for digital movies. IMAX Dome movies are still shown using the original
Consolidated PBY Catalina
The Consolidated PBY Catalina known as the Canso in Canadian service, is an American flying boat, an amphibious aircraft of the 1930s and 1940s produced by Consolidated Aircraft. It was one of the most used seaplanes of World War II. Catalinas served with every branch of the United States Armed Forces and in the air forces and navies of many other nations. During World War II, PBYs were used in anti-submarine warfare, patrol bombing, convoy escort and rescue missions, cargo transport; the PBY was the most numerous aircraft of its kind, the last military PBYs served until the 1980s. As of 2014, nearly 80 years after its first flight, the aircraft continues to fly as a waterbomber in aerial firefighting operations in some parts of the world; the designation "PBY" was determined in accordance with the U. S. Navy aircraft designation system of 1922. Catalinas built by other manufacturers for the U. S. Navy were designated according to different manufacturer codes, thus Canadian Vickers-built examples were designated PBV, Boeing Canada examples PB2B and Naval Aircraft Factory examples were designated PBN.
In accordance with contemporary British naming practice of naming seaplanes after coastal port towns, Royal Canadian Air Force examples were named Canso, for the town of that name in Nova Scotia. The Royal Air Force used the name Catalina and the U. S. Navy adopted this name in 1942; the United States Army Air Forces and the United States Air Force used the designation OA-10. U. S. Navy Catalinas used in the Pacific against the Japanese for night operations were painted black overall; the PBY was designed to be a patrol bomber, an aircraft with a long operational range intended to locate and attack enemy transport ships at sea in order to disrupt enemy supply lines. With a mind to a potential conflict in the Pacific Ocean, where troops would require resupply over great distances, the U. S. Navy in the 1930s invested millions of dollars in developing long-range flying boats for this purpose. Flying boats had the advantage of not requiring runways, in effect having the entire ocean available. Several different flying boats were adopted by the Navy, but the PBY was the most used and produced.
Although slow and ungainly, Catalinas distinguished themselves in World War II. Allied forces used them in a wide variety of roles for which the aircraft was never intended. PBYs are remembered for their rescue role, in which they saved the lives of thousands of aircrew downed over water. Catalina airmen called their aircraft the "Cat" on combat missions and "Dumbo" in air-sea rescue service; as American dominance in the Pacific Ocean began to face competition from Japan in the 1930s, the U. S. Navy contracted Consolidated and Douglas in October 1933 to build competing prototypes for a patrol flying boat. Naval doctrine of the 1930s and 1940s used flying boats in a wide variety of roles that today are handled by multiple special-purpose aircraft; the U. S. Navy had adopted the Consolidated P2Y and Martin P3M models for this role in 1931, but both aircraft were underpowered and hampered by inadequate range and limited payloads. Consolidated and Douglas both delivered single prototypes of their new designs, the XP3Y-1 and XP3D-1, respectively.
Consolidated's XP3Y-1 was an evolution of the XPY-1 design that had competed unsuccessfully for the P3M contract two years earlier and of the XP2Y design that the Navy had authorized for a limited production run. Although the Douglas aircraft was a good design, the Navy opted for Consolidated's because the projected cost was only $90,000 per aircraft. Consolidated's XP3Y-1 design had a parasol wing with external bracing struts, mounted on a pylon over the fuselage. Wingtip stabilizing floats were retractable in flight to form streamlined wingtips and had been licensed from the Saunders-Roe company; the two-step hull design was similar to that of the P2Y, but the Model 28 had a cantilever cruciform tail unit instead of a strut-braced twin tail. Cleaner aerodynamics gave the Model 28 better performance than earlier designs. Construction is all-metal, stressed-skin, of aluminum sheet, except the ailerons and wing trailing edge, which are fabric covered; the prototype was powered by two 825 hp Pratt & Whitney R-1830-54 Twin Wasp radial engines mounted on the wing’s leading edges.
Armament comprised up to 2,000 lb of bombs. The XP3Y-1 had its maiden flight on 28 March 1935, after which it was transferred to the U. S. Navy for service trials; the XP3Y-1 was a significant performance improvement over previous patrol flying boats. The Navy requested further development in order to bring the aircraft into the category of patrol bomber, in October 1935, the prototype was returned to Consolidated for further work, including installation of 900 hp R-1830-64 engines. For the redesignated XPBY-1, Consolidated introduced redesigned vertical tail surfaces which resolved a problem with the tail becoming submerged on takeoff, which had made lift-off impossible under some conditions; the XPBY-1 had its maiden flight on 19 May 1936, during which a record non-stop distance flight of 3,443 mi was achieved. The XPBY-1 was delivered to VP-11F in October 1936; the second squadron to be equipped was VP-12, which received the first of its aircraft in early 1937. The second production order was placed on 25 July 1936.
Over the next three years, the design was developed further and successive models introduced. The aircr
Dumbbell
The dumbbell, a type of free weight, is a piece of equipment used in weight training. It can be used individually or in pairs, with one in each hand The forerunner of the dumbbell, were used in ancient Greece as lifting weights and as weights in the ancient Greek version of the long jump. A kind of dumbbell was used in India for more than a millennium, shaped like a club – so it was named Indian club; the design of the "Nal", as the equipment was referred to, can be seen as a halfway point between a barbell and a dumbbell. It was used in pairs, in workouts by wrestlers, sports players, others wishing to increase strength and muscle size; the term "dumbbell" or "dumb bell" originated in late Stuart England. In 1711 the poet Joseph Addison mentioned exercising with a "dumb bell" in an essay published in The Spectator. Although Addison elsewhere in the same publication describes having used equipment similar to the modern understanding of dumbbells, according to sport historian Jan Todd, the form of the first dumbbells remains unclear.
The Oxford English Dictionary describes "apparatus similar to that used to ring a church bell, but without the bell, so noiseless or ‘dumb’", implying the action of pulling a bell rope to practise English bellringing. By the early 17th century, the familiar shape of the dumbbell, with two equal weights attached to a handle, had appeared. There are three main types of dumbbell: Adjustable dumbbells consist of a metal bar whose centre portion is engraved with a crosshatch pattern to improve grip. Weight plates are secured with clips or collars. Shown to the right is a "spinlock" dumbbell, whose ends are threaded to accept large nuts as collars. Alternatively, a dumbbell may have smooth ends with plates being secured by a sprung collar. Nowadays, many commercially sold dumbbells are available with sophisticated, easy-to-use methods for weight increments adjustments. Fixed-weight dumbbells are weights created in a dumbbell shape. Inexpensive varieties consist of cast iron, sometimes coated with rubber or neoprene for comfort, cheaper versions consist of a rigid plastic shell, filled with concrete.
Their weight is written on them in kg. "Selectorized" dumbbells are adjustable dumbbells whose number of plates can be changed when resting in the dumbbell stand. This is achieved by adjusting the number of plates that follow the handle when lifted, e.g. by turning a dial or moving a selector pin — rather than manually adding or removing plates. This makes it easy to change the weight of the dumbbell between exercises, the stand doubles as storage for the additional weights not being used for a particular exercise. Barbell Kettlebell Weights Weight lifting belt Pool dumbbell Bulgarian Bag Media related to Dumbbells at Wikimedia Commons
Alcazar Garden
Alcazar Garden is a garden in San Diego's Balboa Park, in the United States. Media related to Alcazar Garden at Wikimedia Commons Alcazar Garden in Balboa Park San Diego, California USA on YouTube, The Travel Channel
