Semiconductor device
A semiconductor device is an electronic component that exploits the electronic properties of semiconductor material, principally silicon and gallium arsenide, as well as organic semiconductors. Semiconductor devices have replaced vacuum tubes in most applications, they use electrical conduction in the solid state rather that the gaseous state or thermionic emission in a vacuum. Semiconductor devices are manufactured both as single discrete devices and as integrated circuits, which consist of two or more devices—which can number in the billions—manufactured and interconnected on a single semiconductor wafer. Semiconductor materials are useful because their behavior can be manipulated by the deliberate addition of impurities, known as doping. Semiconductor conductivity can be controlled by the introduction of an electric or magnetic field, by exposure to light or heat, or by the mechanical deformation of a doped monocrystalline silicon grid. Current conduction in a semiconductor occurs due to mobile or "free" electrons and electron holes, collectively known as charge carriers.
Doping a semiconductor with a small proportion of an atomic impurity, such as phosphorus or boron increases the number of free electrons or holes within the semiconductor. When a doped semiconductor contains excess holes, it is called a p-type semiconductor. A majority of mobile charge carriers have negative charge; the manufacture of semiconductors controls the location and concentration of p- and n-type dopants. The connection of n-type and p-type semiconductors form a p–n junctions. Semiconductor devices made per year have been growing by 9.1% on average since 1978, shipments in 2018 are predicted for the first time to exceed 1 trillion, meaning that well over 7 trillion has been made to date, in just in the decade prior. A semiconductor diode is a device made from a single p–n junction. At the junction of a p-type and an n-type semiconductor there forms a depletion region where current conduction is inhibited by the lack of mobile charge carriers; when the device is forward biased, this depletion region is diminished, allowing for significant conduction, while only small current can be achieved when the diode is reverse biased and thus the depletion region expanded.
Exposing a semiconductor to light can generate electron–hole pairs, which increases the number of free carriers and thereby the conductivity. Diodes optimized to take advantage of this phenomenon are known as photodiodes. Compound semiconductor diodes can be used to generate light, as in light-emitting diodes and laser diodes. Bipolar junction transistors are formed from two p–n junctions, in either n–p–n or p–n–p configuration; the middle, or base, region between the junctions is very narrow. The other regions, their associated terminals, are known as the emitter and the collector. A small current injected through the junction between the base and the emitter changes the properties of the base-collector junction so that it can conduct current though it is reverse biased; this creates a much larger current between the collector and emitter, controlled by the base-emitter current. Another type of transistor, the field-effect transistor, operates on the principle that semiconductor conductivity can be increased or decreased by the presence of an electric field.
An electric field can increase the number of free electrons and holes in a semiconductor, thereby changing its conductivity. The field may be applied by a reverse-biased p–n junction, forming a junction field-effect transistor or by an electrode insulated from the bulk material by an oxide layer, forming a metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor; the MOSFET, a solid-state device, is the most used semiconductor device today. The gate electrode is charged to produce an electric field that controls the conductivity of a "channel" between two terminals, called the source and drain. Depending on the type of carrier in the channel, the device may be an n-channel or a p-channel MOSFET. Although the MOSFET is named in part for its "metal" gate, in modern devices polysilicon is used instead. By far, silicon is the most used material in semiconductor devices, its combination of low raw material cost simple processing, a useful temperature range makes it the best compromise among the various competing materials.
Silicon used in semiconductor device manufacturing is fabricated into boules that are large enough in diameter to allow the production of 300 mm wafers. Germanium was a used early semiconductor material but its thermal sensitivity makes it less useful than silicon. Today, germanium is alloyed with silicon for use in very-high-speed SiGe devices. Gallium arsenide is widely used in high-speed devices but so far, it has been difficult to form large-diameter boules of this material, limiting the wafer diameter to sizes smaller than silicon wafers thus making mass production of GaAs devices more expensive than silicon. Other less common materials are in use or under investigation. Silicon carbide has found some application as the raw material for blue light-emitting diodes and is being investigated for use in semiconductor devices that could withstand high operating temperatures and environments with the presence of significant levels of ionizing radiation. IMPATT diodes have been fabr
Baptists
Baptists are Christians distinguished by baptizing professing believers only, doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches generally subscribe to the tenets of soul competency/liberty, salvation through faith alone, scripture alone as the rule of faith and practice, the autonomy of the local congregation. Baptists recognize two ordinances: baptism and the Lord's supper. Diverse from their beginning, those identifying as Baptists today differ from one another in what they believe, how they worship, their attitudes toward other Christians, their understanding of what is important in Christian discipleship. Historians trace the earliest "Baptist" church to 1609 in Amsterdam, Dutch Republic with English Separatist John Smyth as its pastor. In accordance with his reading of the New Testament, he rejected baptism of infants and instituted baptism only of believing adults. Baptist practice spread to England, where the General Baptists considered Christ's atonement to extend to all people, while the Particular Baptists believed that it extended only to the elect.
Thomas Helwys formulated a distinctively Baptist request that the church and the state be kept separate in matters of law, so that individuals might have freedom of religion. Helwys died in prison as a consequence of the religious conflict with English dissenters under King James I. In 1638, Roger Williams established the first Baptist congregation in the North American colonies. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the First and Second Great Awakening increased church membership in the United States. Baptist missionaries have spread their faith to every continent. Baptist historian Bruce Gourley outlines four main views of Baptist origins: the modern scholarly consensus that the movement traces its origin to the 17th century via the English Separatists, the view that it was an outgrowth of Anabaptist traditions, the perpetuity view which assumes that the Baptist faith and practice has existed since the time of Christ, the successionist view, or "Baptist successionism", which argues that Baptist churches existed in an unbroken chain since the time of Christ.
Modern Baptist churches trace their history to the English Separatist movement in the 1600s, the century after the rise of the original Protestant denominations. This view of Baptist origins has the most historical support and is the most accepted. Adherents to this position consider the influence of Anabaptists upon early Baptists to be minimal, it was a time of considerable religious turmoil. Both individuals and churches were willing to give up their theological roots if they became convinced that a more biblical "truth" had been discovered. During the Protestant Reformation, the Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church. There were some Christians who were not content with the achievements of the mainstream Protestant Reformation. There were Christians who were disappointed that the Church of England had not made corrections of what some considered to be errors and abuses. Of those most critical of the Church's direction, some chose to stay and try to make constructive changes from within the Anglican Church.
They are described by Gourley as cousins of the English Separatists. Others decided they must leave the Church because of their dissatisfaction and became known as the Separatists. Historians trace the earliest Baptist church back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with John Smyth as its pastor. Three years earlier, while a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, he had broken his ties with the Church of England. Reared in the Church of England, he became "Puritan, English Separatist, a Baptist Separatist," and ended his days working with the Mennonites, he began meeting in England with 60–70 English Separatists, in the face of "great danger." The persecution of religious nonconformists in England led Smyth to go into exile in Amsterdam with fellow Separatists from the congregation he had gathered in Lincolnshire, separate from the established church. Smyth and his lay supporter, Thomas Helwys, together with those they led, broke with the other English exiles because Smyth and Helwys were convinced they should be baptized as believers.
In 1609 Smyth first baptized himself and baptized the others. In 1609, while still there, Smyth wrote a tract titled "The Character of the Beast," or "The False Constitution of the Church." In it he expressed two propositions: first, infants are not to be baptized. Hence, his conviction was that a scriptural church should consist only of regenerate believers who have been baptized on a personal confession of faith, he rejected the Separatist movement's doctrine of infant baptism. Shortly thereafter, Smyth left the group, layman Thomas Helwys took over the leadership, leading the church back to England in 1611. Smyth became committed to believers' baptism as the only biblical baptism, he was convinced on the basis of his interpretation of Scripture that infants would not be damned should they die in infancy. Smyth, convinced that his self-baptism was invalid, applied with the Mennonites for membership, he died while waiting for membership, some of his followers became Mennonites. Thomas Helwys and others kept their Baptist commitments.
The modern Baptist denomination is an outgrowth of Smyth's movement. Baptists rejected the name Anabaptist. McBeth writes that as late as the 18th century, many Baptists referred to themselves as "the Christians commonly—though falsely—called Anabaptists."Another milestone in the early dev
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank AG is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany. The bank is operational in 58 countries with a large presence in Europe, the Americas and Asia; as of April 2018, Deutsche Bank is the 15th largest bank in the world by total assets. As the largest German banking institution in the world, it is a component of the DAX stock market index; the company is a universal bank resting on three pillars – the Private & Commercial Bank, the Corporate & Investment Bank and Asset Management. Its investment banking operations command substantial deal flow in the "Bulge Bracket" category, maintain different "sell side" and "buy side" departments. Deutsche Bank was founded in Berlin in 1870 as a specialist bank for financing foreign trade and promoting German exports, it subsequently played a large part in developing Germany's industry, as its business model focused on providing finance to industrial customers. The bank's statute was adopted on 22 January 1870, on 10 March 1870 the Prussian government granted it a banking licence.
The statute laid great stress on foreign business: The object of the company is to transact banking business of all kinds, in particular to promote and facilitate trade relations between Germany, other European countries and overseas markets. Three of the founders were Georg Siemens, whose father's cousin had founded Siemens and Halske, Adelbert Delbrück and Ludwig Bamberger. Previous to the founding of Deutsche Bank, German importers and exporters were dependent upon British and French banking institutions in the world markets—a serious handicap in that German bills were unknown in international commerce disliked and subject to a higher rate of discount than English or French bills. Hermann Zwicker Anton Adelssen Adelbert Delbrück Heinrich von Hardt Ludwig Bamberger Victor Freiherr von Magnus Adolph vom Rath Gustav Kutter Gustav Müller Wilhelm Platenius, Georg Siemens and Hermann WallichThe bank's first domestic branches, inaugurated in 1871 and 1872, were opened in Bremen and Hamburg, its first foray overseas came shortly afterwards, in Shanghai and London followed sometime by South America.
The branch opening in London, after one failure and another successful attempt, was a prime necessity for the establishment of credit for the German trade in what was the world's money centre. Major projects in the early years of the bank included the Northern Pacific Railroad in the US and the Baghdad Railway. In Germany, the bank was instrumental in the financing of bond offerings of steel company Krupp and introduced the chemical company Bayer to the Berlin stock market; the second half of the 1890s saw the beginning of a new period of expansion at Deutsche Bank. The bank formed alliances with large regional banks, giving itself an entrée into Germany's main industrial regions. Joint ventures were symptomatic of the concentration under way in the German banking industry. For Deutsche Bank, domestic branches of its own were still something of a rarity at the time. In addition, the bank perceived the value of specialist institutions for the promotion of foreign business. Gentle pressure from the Foreign Ministry played a part in the establishment of Deutsche Ueberseeische Bank in 1886 and the stake taken in the newly established Deutsch-Asiatische Bank three years but the success of those companies in showed that their existence made sound commercial sense.
The immediate postwar period was a time of liquidations. Having lost most of its foreign assets, Deutsche Bank was obliged to sell other holdings. A great deal of energy went into shoring up, but there was new business, some of, to have an impact for a long time to come. The bank played a significant role in the establishment of the film production company, UFA, the merger of Daimler and Benz; the bank merged with other local banks in 1929 to create Deutsche Bank und DiscontoGesellschaft, at that point the biggest merger in German banking history. Increasing costs were one reason for the merger. Another was the trend towards concentration throughout the industry in the 1920s; the merger came at just the right time to help counteract the emerging world economic and banking crisis. In 1937, the company name changed back to Deutsche Bank; the crisis was, in terms of its political impact, the most disastrous economic event of the century. The shortage of liquidity that paralyzed the banks was fuelled by a combination of short-term foreign debt and borrowers no longer able to pay their debts, while the inflexibility of the state exacerbated the situation.
For German banks, the crisis in the industry was a watershed. A return to circumstances that might in some ways have been considered reminiscent of the "golden age" before World War I was ruled out for many years. After Adolf Hitler came to power, instituting the Third Reich, Deutsche Bank dismissed its three Jewish board members in 1933. In subsequent years, Deutsche Bank took part in the aryanization of Jewish-owned businesses. During the war, Deutsche Bank incorporated other banks that fell into German hands du
Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control; the Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche Mark from West Berlin. The Western Allies organised the Berlin airlift to carry supplies to the people of West Berlin, a difficult feat given the size of the city's population. Aircrews from the United States Air Force, the Royal Air Force, the French Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force, the South African Air Force flew over 200,000 sorties in one year, providing to the West Berliners up to 12,941 tons of necessities in a day, such as fuel and food, with the original plan being to lift 3,475 tons of supplies. However, by the end of the airlift, that number was met twofold.
The Soviets did not disrupt the airlift for fear this might lead to open conflict though they far outnumbered the allies in Germany and Berlin. By the spring of 1949, the airlift was succeeding, by April it was delivering more cargo than had been transported into the city by rail. On 12 May 1949, the USSR lifted the blockade of West Berlin, although for a time the U. S. U. K and France continued to supply the city by air anyway because they were worried that the Soviets were going to resume the blockade and were only trying to disrupt western supply lines; the Berlin Blockade served to highlight the competing ideological and economic visions for postwar Europe and was the first major multinational skirmish of the cold war. From July 17 to August 2, 1945, the victorious Allies reached the Potsdam Agreement on the fate of postwar Europe, calling for the division of defeated Germany into four temporary occupation zones; these zones were located around the then-current locations of the allied armies.
Divided into occupation zones, Berlin was located 100 miles inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany. The United States, United Kingdom, France controlled western portions of the city, while Soviet troops controlled the eastern sector. In the eastern zone, the Soviet authorities forcibly unified the Communist Party of Germany and Social Democratic Party in the Socialist Unity Party, claiming at the time that it would not have a Marxist–Leninist or Soviet orientation; the SED leaders called for the "establishment of an anti-fascist, democratic regime, a parliamentary democratic republic" while the Soviet Military Administration suppressed all other political activities. Factories, technicians and skilled personnel were removed to the Soviet Union. In a June 1945 meeting, Stalin informed German communist leaders that he expected to undermine the British position within their occupation zone, that the United States would withdraw within a year or two and that nothing would stand in the way of a united Germany under communist control within the Soviet orbit.
Stalin and other leaders told visiting Bulgarian and Yugoslavian delegations in early 1946 that Germany must be both Soviet and communist. A further factor contributing to the Blockade was that there had never been a formal agreement guaranteeing rail and road access to Berlin through the Soviet zone. At the end of the war, western leaders had relied on Soviet goodwill to provide them with access. At that time, the western allies assumed that the Soviets' refusal to grant any cargo access other than one rail line, limited to ten trains per day, was temporary, but the Soviets refused expansion to the various additional routes that were proposed; the Soviets granted only three air corridors for access to Berlin from Hamburg, Bückeburg, Frankfurt. In 1946 the Soviets stopped delivering agricultural goods from their zone in eastern Germany, the American commander, Lucius D. Clay, responded by stopping shipments of dismantled industries from western Germany to the Soviet Union. In response, the Soviets started a public relations campaign against American policy and began to obstruct the administrative work of all four zones of occupation.
Until the blockade began in 1948, the Truman Administration had not decided whether American forces should remain in West Berlin after the establishment of a West German government, planned for 1949. Berlin became the focal point of both US and Soviet efforts to re-align Europe to their respective visions; as Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov noted, "What happens to Berlin, happens to Germany. Berlin had suffered enormous damage. After harsh treatment, forced emigration, political repression and the hard winter of 1945–1946, Germans in the Soviet-controlled zone were hostile to Soviet endeavours. Local elections in 1946 resulted in a massive anti-communist protest vote in the Soviet sector of Berlin. Berlin's citizens overwhelmingly elected non-Communist members to its city government. Meanwhile, to coordinate the economies of the British and United States occupation zones, these were combined on 1 January 1947 into what was referred to as the Bizone. After March 1946 the British zonal advisory board was established, with representatives of the states, the central offices, political parties, trade unions, consumer organisations.
As indicated by its name, the zonal advisory board had no legislative p
Nuremberg trials
The Nuremberg trials were a series of military tribunals held by the Allied forces under international law and the laws of war after World War II. The trials were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in the Holocaust and other war crimes; the trials were held in the city of Nuremberg and their decisions marked a turning point between classical and contemporary international law. The first and best known of these trials was that of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal, it was described as "the greatest trial in history" by Sir Norman Birkett, one of the British judges who presided over them. Held between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, the Tribunal was given the task of trying 24 of the most important political and military leaders of the Third Reich – though the proceeding against Martin Bormann was tried in absentia, while another defendant, Robert Ley, committed suicide within a week of the trial's commencement.
Adolf Hitler, Wilhelm Burgdorf, Hans Krebs and Joseph Goebbels had all committed suicide in the spring of 1945 to avoid capture. Heinrich Himmler was captured before he could succeed. Krebs and Burgdorf committed suicide two days after Hitler in the same place. Reinhard Heydrich had been assassinated by Czech partisans in 1942. Josef Terboven killed himself with dynamite in Norway in 1945. Adolf Eichmann fled to Argentina to avoid Allied capture, but was apprehended by Israel's intelligence service and hanged in 1962. Hermann Göring was sentenced to death, but committed suicide by consuming cyanide the night before his execution in defiance of his captors. Miklós Horthy appeared as a witness at the Ministries trial held in Nuremberg in 1948; this article deals with the first trial, conducted by the IMT. Further trials of lesser war criminals were conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 at the U. S. Nuremberg Military Tribunal, which included the Doctors' trial and the Judges' Trial; the categorization of the crimes and the constitution of the court represented a juridical advance that would be used afterwards by the United Nations for the development of a specific international jurisprudence in matters of war crime, crimes against humanity, war of aggression, as well as for the creation of the International Criminal Court.
The Nuremberg indictment mentions genocide for the first time in international law A precedent for trying those accused of war crimes had been set at the end of World War I in the Leipzig War Crimes Trials held in May to July 1921 before the Reichsgericht in Leipzig, although these had been on a limited scale and regarded as ineffectual. At the beginning of 1940, the Polish government-in-exile asked the British and French governments to condemn the German invasion of their country; the British declined to do so. Bland because of Anglo-French reservations, it proclaimed the trio's "desire to make a formal and public protest to the conscience of the world against the action of the German government whom they must hold responsible for these crimes which cannot remain unpunished."Three-and-a-half years the stated intention to punish the Germans was much more trenchant. On 1 November 1943, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States published their "Declaration on German Atrocities in Occupied Europe", which gave a "full warning" that, when the Nazis were defeated, the Allies would "pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth... in order that justice may be done....
The above declaration is without prejudice to the case of the major war criminals whose offences have no particular geographical location and who will be punished by a joint decision of the Government of the Allies." This intention by the Allies to dispense justice was reiterated at the Yalta Conference and at Potsdam in 1945. British War Cabinet documents, released on 2 January 2006, showed that as early as December 1944 the Cabinet had discussed their policy for the punishment of the leading Nazis if captured; the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, had advocated a policy of summary execution in some circumstances, with the use of an Act of Attainder to circumvent legal obstacles, being dissuaded from this only by talks with US and Soviet leaders in the war. In late 1943, during the Tripartite Dinner Meeting at the Tehran Conference, the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, proposed executing 50,000–100,000 German staff officers. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt joked that 49,000 would do.
Churchill, believing them to be serious, denounced the idea of "the cold blooded execution of soldiers who fought for their country" and that he would rather be "taken out in the courtyard and shot" himself than partake in any such action. However, he stated that war criminals must pay for their crimes and that, in accordance with the Moscow Document which he himself had written, they should be tried at the places where the crimes were committed. Churchill was vigorously opposed to executions "for political purposes." According to the minutes of a meeting between Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, on 4 February 1945, at the Livadia Palace, President Roosevelt "said
Germany
Germany the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north, the Alps to the south. It borders Denmark to the north and the Czech Republic to the east and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to the west. Germany includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,386 square kilometres, has a temperate seasonal climate. With 83 million inhabitants, it is the second most populous state of Europe after Russia, the most populous state lying in Europe, as well as the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is a decentralized country, its capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while Frankfurt serves as its financial capital and has the country's busiest airport. Germany's largest urban area is the Ruhr, with its main centres of Essen; the country's other major cities are Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Bremen and Nuremberg. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity.
A region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation. After the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, the German Confederation was formed in 1815; the German revolutions of 1848–49 resulted in the Frankfurt Parliament establishing major democratic rights. In 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the revolution of 1918–19, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic; the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to the establishment of a dictatorship, the annexation of Austria, World War II, the Holocaust. After the end of World War II in Europe and a period of Allied occupation, Austria was re-established as an independent country and two new German states were founded: West Germany, formed from the American and French occupation zones, East Germany, formed from the Soviet occupation zone.
Following the Revolutions of 1989 that ended communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, the country was reunified on 3 October 1990. Today, the sovereign state of Germany is a federal parliamentary republic led by a chancellor, it is a great power with a strong economy. As a global leader in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the world's third-largest exporter and importer of goods; as a developed country with a high standard of living, it upholds a social security and universal health care system, environmental protection, a tuition-free university education. The Federal Republic of Germany was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957 and the European Union in 1993, it is part of the Schengen Area and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999. Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G7, the G20, the OECD. Known for its rich cultural history, Germany has been continuously the home of influential and successful artists, musicians, film people, entrepreneurs, scientists and inventors.
Germany has a large number of World Heritage sites and is among the top tourism destinations in the world. The English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine; the German term Deutschland diutisciu land is derived from deutsch, descended from Old High German diutisc "popular" used to distinguish the language of the common people from Latin and its Romance descendants. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz "popular", derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- "people", from which the word Teutons originates; the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a coal mine in Schöningen between 1994 and 1998 where eight 380,000-year-old wooden javelins of 1.82 to 2.25 m length were unearthed. The Neander Valley was the location where the first non-modern human fossil was discovered.
The Neanderthal 1 fossils are known to be 40,000 years old. Evidence of modern humans dated, has been found in caves in the Swabian Jura near Ulm; the finds included 42,000-year-old bird bone and mammoth ivory flutes which are the oldest musical instruments found, the 40,000-year-old Ice Age Lion Man, the oldest uncontested figurative art discovered, the 35,000-year-old Venus of Hohle Fels, the oldest uncontested human figurative art discovered. The Nebra sky disk is a bronze artefact created during the European Bronze Age attributed to a site near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt, it is part of UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme. The Germanic tribes are thought to date from the Pre-Roman Iron Age. From southern Scandinavia and north Germany, they expanded south and west from the 1st century BC, coming into contact with the Celtic tribes of Gaul as well
Osram
OSRAM Licht AG is a multinational lighting manufacturer headquartered in Munich, Germany. OSRAM was founded in 1919 by the merger of the lighting businesses of Auergesellschaft, Siemens & Halske and Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft. On 5 July 2013, OSRAM was spun off from Siemens, the listing of its stock began on 8 July 2013 on Frankfurt Stock Exchange; the "Osram" name is derived from osmium and Wolfram, as both these elements were used for lighting filaments at the time the company was founded. The brand name of OSRAM was registered by the Deutsche Gasglühlicht-Anstalt. In 1906 the Osram incandescent lamp was developed by Carl Auer von Welsbach; the British General Electric Company imported Osram filaments for their own production of light bulbs. In 1919 Auergesellschaft, Siemens & Halske and Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft combined their electric-lamp production with the formation of the company Osram. In 1998 Osram acquired the lamp business of ECE Industries India Ltd at a cost of $9.55 million.
In 2009 Osram acquired TRAXON Technologies. In 2011 Osram acquired Siteco. On 8 July 2013 Siemens spun Osram off, it listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Osram is a multinational corporation with headquarters in Munich and it employs around 34,000 people throughout the world. Osram has operations in over 120 countries. In the 2014 financial year, revenue of about €5.1 billion was achieved. The company's North American operation is Osram Sylvania, headquartered in Wilmington, Massachusetts. Osram Opto Semiconductors is a wholly owned subsidiary of Osram which designs and manufactures opto-semiconductor products. One of the main products of this subsidiary is light-emitting diodes; as the world's second largest manufacturer of optoelectronic semiconductor for the illumination and visualization sectors, Osram Opto Semiconductors GmbH combines extensive know-how in semiconductors, converter materials and packages under one roof. Besides its headquarters in Regensburg, Germany, it has further production sites in Penang and Kulim and Wuxi, China and a global network of sales and marketing centre.
Osram Sylvania Inc. manufactures and markets a wide range of lighting products for homes and vehicles and holds the largest share of the North American lighting market. In fiscal year 2006, the company achieved sales of about 2 billion euros, which comprises 43% of total Osram sales, it employs about 11,200 people in North America and is headquartered in Wilmington, north of Boston. Most of the company's products are marketed in North and South America under the SYLVANIA or OSRAM brand names. Traxon Technologies, together with its control brand, "e:cue lighting control", is a solid state lighting and control systems provider. In 2009, Traxon Technologies entered into a joint venture with OSRAM, a partnership which led to OSRAM's complete acquisition of Traxon in 2011. German author and Nobel prize winner Günter Grass describes the birth of Oscar Matzerath, the hero of The Tin Drum, as “I first saw the light of this world in the form of two sixty-watt bulbs; as a result, the biblical text »Let there be light and there was light« still strikes me today as the perfect slogan for Osram light bulbs.“ German football manager Jupp Heynckes was nicknamed "Osram" because his face would sometimes redden under the stress of matches.
EnOcean Fluorescent lamp LEDVANCE Phoebus cartel OSRAM OSRAM Licht AG – website of the publicly listed holding company
