Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company is an American technology company that produces camera-related products with its historic basis on photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, is incorporated in New Jersey. Kodak provides packaging, functional printing, graphic communications and professional services for businesses around the world, its main business segments are Print Systems, Enterprise Inkjet Systems, Micro 3D Printing and Packaging and Solutions, Consumer and Film. It is best known for photographic film products. Kodak was founded by George Eastman and Henry A. Strong on September 4, 1888. During most of the 20th century, Kodak held a dominant position in photographic film; the company's ubiquity was such that its "Kodak moment" tagline entered the common lexicon to describe a personal event, demanded to be recorded for posterity. Kodak began to struggle financially in the late 1990s, as a result of the decline in sales of photographic film and its slowness in transitioning to digital photography, despite developing the first self-contained digital camera.
As a part of a turnaround strategy, Kodak began to focus on digital photography and digital printing, attempted to generate revenues through aggressive patent litigation. In January 2012, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. In February 2012, Kodak announced that it would stop making digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames and focus on the corporate digital imaging market. Digital cameras are still sold under the Kodak brand by JK Imaging Ltd thanks to an agreement with Kodak. In August 2012, Kodak announced its intention to sell its photographic film, commercial scanners and kiosk operations, as a measure to emerge from bankruptcy, but not its motion picture film operations. In January 2013, the Court approved financing for Kodak to emerge from bankruptcy by mid 2013. Kodak sold many of its patents for $525,000,000 to a group of companies under the names Intellectual Ventures and RPX Corporation.
On September 3, 2013, the company emerged from bankruptcy having shed its large legacy liabilities and exited several businesses. Personalized Imaging and Document Imaging are now part of Kodak Alaris, a separate company owned by the UK-based Kodak Pension Plan. From the company's founding by George Eastman in 1888, Kodak followed the razor and blades strategy of selling inexpensive cameras and making large margins from consumables – film and paper; as late as 1976, Kodak commanded 90% of film sales and 85% of camera sales in the U. S. Japanese competitor Fujifilm entered the U. S. market with lower-priced film and supplies, but Kodak did not believe that American consumers would desert its brand. Kodak passed on the opportunity to become the official film of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Fuji opened a film plant in the U. S. and its aggressive marketing and price cutting began taking market share from Kodak. Fuji went from a 10% share in the early 1990s to 17% in 1997. Fuji made headway into the professional market with specialty transparency films such as Velvia and Provia, which competed with Kodak's signature professional product, but used the more economical and common E-6 processing machines which were standard in most processing labs, rather than the dedicated machines required by Kodachrome.
Fuji's films soon found a competitive edge in higher-speed negative films, with a tighter grain structure. In May 1995, Kodak filed a petition with the US Commerce Department under section 301 of the Commerce Act arguing that its poor performance in the Japanese market was a direct result of unfair practices adopted by Fuji; the complaint was lodged by the United States with the World Trade Organization. On January 30, 1998, the WTO announced a "sweeping rejection of Kodak's complaints" about the film market in Japan. Kodak's financial results for the year ending December 1997 showed that company's revenues dropped from $15.97 billion in 1996 to $14.36 billion in 1997, a fall of more than 10%. Kodak's market share declined from 80.1% to 74.7% in the United States, a one-year drop of five percentage points that had observers suggesting that Kodak was slow to react to changes and underestimated its rivals. Although from the 1970s both Fuji and Kodak recognized the upcoming threat of digital photography, although both sought diversification as a mitigation strategy, Fuji was more successful at diversification.
Although Kodak developed a digital camera in 1975, the first of its kind, the product was dropped for fear it would threaten Kodak's photographic film business. In the 1990s, Kodak planned a decade-long journey to move to digital technology. CEO George M. C. Fisher reached out to other new consumer merchandisers. Apple's pioneering QuickTake consumer digital cameras, introduced in 1994, had the Apple label but were produced by Kodak; the DC-20 and DC-25 launched in 1996. Overall, there was little implementation of the new digital strategy. Kodak's core business faced no pressure from competing technologies, as Kodak executives could not fathom a world without traditional film there was little incentive to deviate from that course. Consumers switched to the digital offering from companies such as Sony. In 2001 film sales dropped, attributed by Kodak to the financial shocks caused by the September 11 attacks. Executives hoped that Kodak might be able to slow the sh
Thompson submachine gun
The Thompson submachine gun is an American submachine gun invented by John T. Thompson in 1918 which became infamous during the Prohibition era, being a signature weapon of various crime syndicates in the United States, it was a common sight in the media of the time, being used by both law enforcement officers and criminals. The Thompson submachine gun was known informally as the "Tommy Gun", "Annihilator", "Chicago Typewriter", "Chicago Submachine", "Chicago Piano", "Chicago Style", "Chicago Organ Grinder", "Trench Broom", "Trench Sweeper", "Drum Gun","The Chopper", "The Thompson"; the Thompson was favored by soldiers, police, FBI, civilians alike for its large.45 ACP cartridge and high volume of automatic fire. It has since gained popularity among civilian collectors for its historical significance, it has considerable significance in popular culture in works about the Prohibition era and World War II, is among the best-known firearms in history. The original automatic Thompsons are no longer produced, but numerous semi-automatic civilian versions are still being manufactured by Auto-Ordnance.
These retain a similar appearance to the original models, but they have various modifications in order to comply with US firearm laws. General John T. Thompson developed the Thompson Submachine Gun, he envisioned an "auto rifle" to replace the bolt action service rifles in use, but he came across a patent issued to John Bell Blish in 1915 while searching for a way to allow his weapon to operate safely without the complexity of a recoil or Gas-operated reloading mechanism. Blish's design was based on the adhesion of inclined metal surfaces under pressure. Thompson gained financial backing from Thomas F. Ryan and started the Auto-Ordnance Company in 1916 for the purpose of developing his "auto rifle", it was developed in Cleveland and the principal designers were Theodore H. Eickhoff, Oscar V. Payne, George E. Goll. By late 1917, the limits of the Blish Principle were discovered, it was found that the only cartridge in service, suitable for use with the lock was the.45 ACP round. Thompson envisioned a "one-man, hand-held machine gun" in.45 ACP as a "trench broom" for use in the ongoing trench warfare of World War I.
Payne drum magazines. The project was titled "Annihilator I", most of the design issues had been resolved by 1918. At an Auto-Ordnance board meeting in 1919 to discuss the marketing of the "Annihilator", with the war now over, the weapon was renamed the "Thompson Submachine Gun". While other weapons had been developed shortly prior with similar objectives in mind, the Thompson was the first weapon to be labeled and marketed as a "submachine gun". Thompson intended the weapon as an automatic "trench-broom" to sweep enemy troops from the trenches, filling a role for which the Browning Automatic Rifle had been proven ill-suited; this concept had been developed by German troops using their own Bergmann MP 18, the world's first submachine gun, in concert with Sturmtruppen tactics. The Thompson first entered production as the M1921, it was available to civilians. M1921 Thompsons were sold in small quantities to the United States Postal Inspection Service to protect the mail from a spate of robberies and to the United States Marine Corps.
Federal sales were followed by sales to several police departments in the US and minor international sales to various armies and constabulary forces, chiefly in Central and South America. The Marines used their Thompsons in China, it was popular as a point-defense weapon for countering ambush by Nicaraguan guerrillas, led to the organization of four-man fire teams with as much firepower as a nine-man rifle squad. The major complaints against the Thompson were its weight, inaccuracy at ranges over 50 yards, the lack of penetrating power of the.45 ACP pistol cartridge. Some of the first batches of Thompsons were bought in America by agents of the Irish Republic, notably Harry Boland; the first test of a Thompson in Ireland was performed by West Cork Brigade commander Tom Barry in presence of IRA leader Michael Collins. They purchased a total of 653, but US customs authorities in New York seized 495 of them in June 1921; the remainder made their way to the Irish Republican Army by way of Liverpool and were used in the last month of the Irish War of Independence.
After a truce with the British in July 1921, the IRA imported more Thompsons and used them in the subsequent Irish Civil War. They were not found to be effective in Ireland; the Thompson achieved most of its early notoriety in the hands of Prohibition and Great Depression-era gangsters, the lawmen who pursued them, in Hollywood films about their exploits, most notably in the St Valentine's Day Massacre. The two Thompson guns used in the massacre are still held by the Berrien County Sheriff's Department; the Thompson has been referred to by one researcher as the "gun that made the twenties roar". In 1926, the Cutts Compensator was offered as an option for the M1921. 21AC at the original price of $200, with the plain M1921 designated No. 21A at a reduced price of $175. In 1928, Federal Laboratories took over the dist
General Motors
General Motors Company referred to as General Motors, is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Detroit that designs, manufactures and distributes vehicles and vehicle parts, sells financial services, with global headquarters in Detroit's Renaissance Center. It was founded by William C. Durant on September 16, 1908 as a holding company; the company is the largest American automobile manufacturer, one of the world's largest. As of 2018, General Motors is ranked #10 on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. General Motors manufactures vehicles in 37 countries, it owns or holds controlling interest in foreign brands such as Holden, Wuling and Jiefang. Annual worldwide sales volume reached a milestone of 10 million vehicles in 2016. In addition to its twelve brands, General Motors holds a 20% stake in IMM, a 77% stake in GM Korea, it has a number of joint-ventures, including Shanghai GM, SAIC-GM-Wuling and FAW-GM in China, GM-AvtoVAZ in Russia, GM Uzbekistan, General Motors India, General Motors Egypt, Isuzu Truck South Africa.
General Motors does business in more than 140 countries. General Motors is divided into four business segments: GM North America, GM International Operations, GM Cruze, GM Financial; the company operates a mobility division called Maven, which operates car-sharing services in the United States, is studying alternatives to individual vehicle ownership. GM Defense is General Motors' military defense division, catering to the needs of the military for advanced technology and propulsion systems for military vehicles. General Motors led global vehicle sales for 77 consecutive years from 1931 through 2007, longer than any other automaker, in 2012 was among the world's largest automakers by vehicle unit sales. General Motors acts in most countries outside the U. S. via wholly owned subsidiaries, but operates in China through 10 joint ventures. GM's OnStar subsidiary provides vehicle safety and information services. In 2009, General Motors shed several brands, closing Saturn and Hummer, emerged from a government-backed Chapter 11 reorganization.
In 2010, the reorganized GM made an initial public offering, one of the world's top five largest IPOs to date, returned to profitability that year. General Motors Company was formed with an escrow account set up by R S McLaughlin for 15 years of Buick Motors in 1907 on September 16, 1908, in Flint, Michigan, as a holding company controlled by William C. Durant, owner of Buick. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were fewer than 8,000 automobiles in the U. S. and Durant had become a leading manufacturer of horse-drawn vehicles in Flint helped by his purchase of the Carriage Gear patent from the McLaughlin family in Canada, in the 1880s and 1890s, before making his foray into the automotive industry in 1904 by purchasing the fledgling Buick Motor Company. GM's co-founder was Charles Stewart Mott, whose carriage company was merged into Buick prior to GM's creation in 1918. Over the years, Mott became the largest single stockholder in The USA, spent his life with his Mott Foundation, which has benefited the city of Flint, his adopted home.
GM acquired Oldsmobile that year. In 1909, Durant brought in Cadillac, Elmore and several others. In 1909, GM acquired the Reliance Motor Truck Company of Owosso and the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company of Pontiac, the predecessors of GMC Truck. Durant, along with R. S. McLaughlin, lost control of GM in 1910 to a bankers who held the Escrow account' trust, because of the large amount of debt taken on in its acquisitions, coupled with a collapse in new vehicle sales; the next year, Durant started the Chevrolet Motor Car Company in the U. S. and in Canada in 1915, through this, he and McLaughlin in Canada secretly purchased a controlling interest in GM. Durant regained control of the company after one of the most dramatic proxy wars in U. S. business history. Durant reorganized General Motors Holding Company into General Motors Company in 1916, merging Chevrolet with GM and allying General Motors of Canada Limited in 1918 after McLaughlin Traded his Outstanding Stocks for GM stocks to allow the Corporation in the USA.
Shortly thereafter, he again lost control, this time for good, after the new vehicle market collapsed. Alfred P. Sloan was picked to take charge of the corporation, led it to its post-war global dominance when the seven manufacturing facilities operated by Chevrolet before Chevrolet acquired the company began to contribute to GM operations; these facilities were added to the individual factories that were exclusive to Cadillac, Oldsmobile and other companies acquired by the corporation. This unprecedented growth of GM would last into the early 1980s, when it employed 349,000 workers and operated 150 assembly plants in the USA. On July 10, 2009, General Motors emerged from government backed Chapter 11 reorganization after an initial filing on June 8, 2009. Through the Troubled Asset Relief Program the US Treasury invested $49.5 billion in General Motors and recovered $39 billion when it sold its shares on December 9, 2013 resulting in a loss of $10.3 billion. The Treasury invested an additional $17.2 billion into GM's former financing company, GMAC.
The shares in Ally were sold on December 2014 for $19.6 billion netting $2.4 billion. A study by the Center for Automotive Research found that the GM bailout saved 1.2 million jobs and preserved $34.9 billion in tax revenue. In 2009 General Motors of Canada Limited was not part of the General Motors Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, the company shed several brands
George Eastman
George Eastman was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and popularized the use of roll film, helping to bring photography to the mainstream. Roll film was the basis for the invention of motion picture film stock in 1888 by the world's first film-makers Eadweard Muybridge and Louis Le Prince, a few years by their followers Léon Bouly, William Kennedy Dickson, Thomas Edison, the Lumière Brothers, Georges Méliès, he was a major philanthropist, establishing the Eastman School of Music, schools of dentistry and medicine at the University of Rochester and in London Eastman Dental Hospital. In addition, he made major donations to Tuskegee University and Hampton University black universities in the South. With interests in improving health, he provided funds for clinics in London and other European cities to serve low-income residents. In his final two years, Eastman was in intense pain caused by a disorder affecting his spine. On March 14, 1932, Eastman shot himself in the heart, leaving a note which read, "To my friends: my work is done.
Why wait?"The George Eastman Museum has been designated a National Historic Landmark. Eastman is the only person represented by two stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame recognizing the same achievement, for his invention of roll film. Eastman was born in Waterville, New York as the youngest son of George Washington Eastman and Maria Eastman, at the 10-acre farm which his parents had bought in 1849, he had Ellen Maria and Katie. He was self-educated, although he attended a private school in Rochester after the age of eight. In the early 1840s his father had started a business school, the Eastman Commercial College in Rochester, New York; the city became one of the first "boomtowns" in the United States, based on rapid industrialization. As his father's health started deteriorating, the family gave up the farm and moved to Rochester in 1860, his father died of a brain disorder in May 1862. To survive and afford George's schooling, his mother took in boarders; the second daughter, had contracted polio when young and died in late 1870 when George was 15 years old.
The young George started working to help support the family. As Eastman began to have success with his photography business, he vowed to repay his mother for the hardships she had endured in raising him. In 1884, Eastman patented the first film in roll form to prove practicable. In 1888, he perfected the Kodak Black camera, the first camera designed to use roll film. In 1889 he first offered film stock, by 1896 became the leading supplier of film stock internationally, he incorporated his company under the name Eastman Kodak, in 1892. As film stock became standardized, Eastman continued to lead in innovations. Refinements in colored film stock continued after his death. In an era of growing trade union activities, Eastman sought to counter the union movement by devising worker benefit programs, including, in 1910, the establishment of a profit-sharing program for all employees. Considered to be a progressive leader for the times, Eastman promoted Florence McAnaney to be head of the personnel department.
She was one of the first women to hold an executive position in a major U. S. company. George Eastman never married, he was close to his sister and her family. He had a long platonic relationship with Josephine Dickman, a trained singer and the wife of business associate George Dickman, becoming close to her after the death of his mother, Maria Eastman, in 1907, he was an avid traveler and had a passion for playing the piano. The loss of his mother, was crushing to George. Pathologically concerned with decorum, he found himself unable for the first time to control his emotions in the presence of his friends. "When my mother died I cried all day," he explained later. "I could not have stopped to save my life." Due to his mother's reluctance to accept his gifts, George Eastman could never do enough for his mother during her lifetime. He continued to honor her after her death. On September 4, 1922, he opened the Eastman Theater in Rochester, which included a chamber-music hall, Kilbourn Theater, dedicated to his mother's memory.
At the Eastman House he maintained a rose bush home. Eastman was associated with the Kodak company in an administrative and a business executive capacity until his death. In 1911 he founded the Eastman Savings Bank, he was one of the outstanding philanthropists of his time, donating more than $100 million to various projects in Rochester. In 1918, he endowed the establishment of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, in 1921 a school of medicine and dentistry there. In 1925 Eastman gave up his daily management of Kodak to become treasurer, he concentrated on philanthropic activities, to which he had donated substantial sums. For example, he donated funds to establish the Eastman Dental Dispensary in 1916, he ranked behind Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, a few others in his philanthropy, but did not seek publicity for his activities, he concentrated on institution-building and causes. From 1926 until his death, Eastman donated $22,050 per year to the American Eugenics Society, a popular cause among many of the
Wilton, Connecticut
Wilton is a town in Fairfield County in southwestern Connecticut in the United States. According to the 2010 census, the town population was 18,062. Recognized as a parish in 1726, Wilton is today, like many other Fairfield County towns, an expensive residential community with open lands, historic architecture such as the Round House and antique colonial homes, as well as extensive town services. A little more than an hour from New York City, residents commute there and to Stamford, although there are a number of office buildings in town. Wilton is home to many successful global corporations such as ASML, Deloitte & Touche, Sun Products, Breitling SA, Cannondale Bicycle Corporation, Melissa & Doug, Clear Conscience Pet and the Blue Buffalo Company. Many Fortune 500 companies are headquartered within a 30-minute commute. AIG Financial Products was headquartered in Wilton, it is notable as the first Connecticut headquarters of Bridgewater Associates and residence of Ray Dalio before the company's move to Westport in the'90s.
The original 40 families of the parish began their own Congregational church and were allowed by Norwalk to hire a minister, open schools and build roads. During the Revolutionary War in 1777, the British used Wilton as an escape route after their successful raid on Danbury. Several homes were burned. In 1802, Wilton was granted a Town Charter by the Connecticut General Assembly and became a political entity independent from Norwalk. With a strong anti-slavery sentiment by its residents, Wilton served as a stop on the Underground Railroad at the house of William Wakeman, "an earnest abolitionist and undergrounder for many years."Wilton was classified as a "dry" town until 1993, when the local ordinance was altered to permit the sale of alcoholic beverages in restaurants. The town was referred to as "damp." On November 5, 2009, a referendum proposal was passed to allow liquor stores. The town Board enacted an ordinance to allow liquor stores to sell alcoholic beverages in 2010 and several stores have since opened.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 27.4 square miles, of which 27.0 square miles is land and 0.4 square miles, or 1.50%, is water, including the South Norwalk Reservoir. Wilton is bordered by Ridgefield to the Northwest, Norwalk to the South, New Canaan to the Southwest, Westport to the Southeast, Weston and Redding to the Northeast, it is bordered on the west by the hamlet of Vista in Lewisboro, Westchester County, New York. The scenic Ridgefield Road offers a look at many historic homes and sights; the latitude of Wilton is 41.201 N. The longitude is -73.438 W. Wilton has 500 surviving 18th- and 19th-century homes. In 2005, Marilyn Gould—director of the Wilton Historical Society—told the New York Times, "People aren't taking down historic houses but the more modest homes that were built in the'50s and'60s," she said. "What that's doing is changing the affordability of the town and the demographic of the town. Wilton used to have a wide demographic of people who worked with their hands - artisans, mechanics.
Now it's management and upper management." Between 1999 and 2005, the town's voters endorsed spending $23 million through municipal bonds to preserve land. South Norwalk Electric and Water has a reservoir on the western side of town with about 350 acres of land, along with another 25 acres adjacent in New Canaan. In the fall, hunters with bows and arrows—no more than 10 at a time—are allowed to hunt deer on the Wilton property, in order to keep down the number of deer in the area. Wilton town center contains several local restaurants, retail stores, a Starbucks, a Stop & Shop, a four-screen movie theater owned by Bow-Tie Cinemas; these stores were added around 2000 next to the old Wilton Center, which consists of the Wilton Library, the Wilton Post Office, a CVS/Pharmacy, the Old Post Office Square, the Village Market. In the southern part of town, US 7 contains a commercial section. Recent nature access developments in town include the expansion of the Norwalk River Valley Trail, a multi-use trail, designed to run between Norwalk and Danbury.
The southwest corner of town includes part of the Silvermine neighborhood. Georgetown, in Redding and in Weston, extends a bit into the northeast corner of town. Other neighborhoods in town are South Wilton, Wilton Center, Gilbert Corners and North Wilton. Cannondale Historic District: Roughly bounded by Cannon and Seeley Rds. David Lambert House: 150 Danbury Rd. Georgetown Historic District, located on the northeast of town. Hurlbutt Street School: 157 Hurlbutt St. Marvin Tavern: 405 Danbury Rd. Sloan-Raymond-Fitch House: 224 Danbury Rd. Weir Farm National Historic Site: 735 Nod Hill Road located in both Wilton and Ridgefield. Wilton Center Historic District: Roughly, area around jct. of Lovers Ln. and Belden Hill and Ridgefield Rds. As of the census of 2000, there were 17,633 people, 5,923 households, 4,874 families residing in Wilton; the population density was 654.3 people per square mile. There were 6,113 housing units at an average density of 226.8 per square mile. The racial makeup of the town was 95.55% White, 0.60% African American, 0.09% Native American, 2.69% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.27% from other races, 0.79% from two or more races.
Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.53% of the population. There were 5
Spot welding
Resistance spot welding is a process in which contacting metal surface points are joined by the heat obtained from resistance to electric current. It is a subset of electric resistance welding. Work-pieces are held together under pressure exerted by electrodes; the sheets are in the 0.5 to 3 mm thickness range. The process uses two shaped copper alloy electrodes to concentrate welding current into a small "spot" and to clamp the sheets together. Forcing a large current through the spot will melt the metal and form the weld; the attractive feature of spot welding is that a lot of energy can be delivered to the spot in a short time. That permits the welding to occur without excessive heating of the remainder of the sheet; the amount of heat delivered to the spot is determined by the resistance between the electrodes and the magnitude and duration of the current. The amount of energy is chosen to match the sheet's material properties, its thickness, type of electrodes. Applying too little energy will not melt the metal or will make a poor weld.
Applying too much energy will melt too much metal, eject molten material, make a hole rather than a weld. Another feature of spot welding is that the energy delivered to the spot can be controlled to produce reliable welds. Projection welding is a modification of spot welding. In this process, the weld is localized by means of raised sections, or projections, on one or both of the workpieces to be joined. Heat is concentrated at the projections, which permits the welding of heavier sections or the closer spacing of welds; the projections can serve as a means of positioning the workpieces. Projection welding is used to weld studs and other threaded machine parts to metal plate, it is frequently used to join crossed wires and bars. This is another high-production process, multiple projection welds can be arranged by suitable designing and jigging. Spot welding is used when welding particular types of sheet metal, welded wire mesh or wire mesh. Thicker stock is more difficult to spot weld because the heat flows into the surrounding metal more easily.
Spot welding can be identified on many sheet metal goods, such as metal buckets. Aluminium alloys can be spot welded, but their much higher thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity requires higher welding currents; this requires larger, more powerful, more expensive welding transformers. The most common application of spot welding is in the automobile manufacturing industry, where it is used universally to weld the sheet metal to form a car. Spot welders can be automated, many of the industrial robots found on assembly lines are spot welders. Spot welding is used in the orthodontist's clinic, where small-scale spot welding equipment is used when resizing metal "molar bands" used in orthodontics. Another application is spot welding straps to nickel–cadmium, nickel–metal hydride or Lithium-ion battery cells to make batteries; the cells are joined by spot welding thin nickel straps to the battery terminals. Spot welding can keep the battery from getting too hot, as might happen if conventional soldering were done.
Good design practice must always allow for adequate accessibility. Connecting surfaces should be free of contaminants such as scale and dirt, to ensure quality welds. Metal thickness is not a factor in determining good welds. Spot welding involves three stages; the current from the electrodes is applied after which the current is removed but the electrodes remain in place for the material to cool. Weld times range from 0.01 sec to 0.63 sec depending on the thickness of the metal, the electrode force and the diameter of the electrodes themselves. The equipment used in the spot welding process consists of tool electrodes; the tool holders function as a mechanism to hold the electrodes in place and support optional water hoses that cool the electrodes during welding. Tool holding methods include a paddle-type, light duty and regular offset; the electrodes are made of a low resistance alloy copper, are designed in many different shapes and sizes depending on the application needed. The two materials being welded together must conduct electricity.
The width of the workpieces is limited by the throat length of the welding apparatus and ranges from 5 to 50 inches. Workpiece thickness can range from 0.008 to 1.25 inches. After the current is removed from the workpiece, it is cooled via the coolant holes in the center of the electrodes. Both water and a brine solution may be used as coolants in spot welding mechanisms. In the case of resistance spot welding, there are two main parts of the tooling system, the features of which fundamentally influence the whole process: the gun and its type, the size and shape of the electrode. In such application, where the gun layout should be as rigid as possible due to the high applying forces, the C-type gun is used; as well as the high resulting rigidity, this arrangement leads to a high tooling flexibiliy, as the motion of the electrodes is collinear. Unlike the C-type, the so-called X-type arrangement provides less rigidity, although the reachable workspace is far larger than with the C-type, thus this layout is common, where thin and flat objects are being processed.
However, it offers less flexibility in terms of tooling, because the paths of
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
