1.
San Francisco
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
San Francisco
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San Francisco and the
Golden Gate Bridge from
Marin Headlands
San Francisco
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Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores)
San Francisco
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1853
United States Coast Survey Map
San Francisco
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Francis Samuel Marryat, Hilltop of San Francisco, California, Looking toward the Bay, 1849. M.& N. Hanhart Chromolithograph
2.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
California
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A forest of redwood trees in
Redwood National Park
California
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Flag
California
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Mount Shasta
California
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Aerial view of the
California Central Valley
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located 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, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
United States
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Native Americans meeting with Europeans, 1764
United States
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Flag
United States
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The signing of the
Mayflower Compact, 1620.
United States
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The
Declaration of Independence: the
Committee of Five presenting their draft to the
Second Continental Congress in 1776
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
Geographic coordinate system
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Longitude lines are perpendicular and latitude lines are parallel to the equator.
5.
List of concert halls
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A concert hall is a cultural building with a stage which serves as a performance venue and an auditorium filled with seats. In the 2010s, popular music such as music and traditional music such as folk music are also performed in these venues. Many concert halls exist as one of several halls or performance spaces within a performing arts center. In many towns, the hall is combined with a convention center. Concert halls typically also contain orchestral rehearsal rooms, many larger cities have both public and private concert halls. This list does not include other venues such as sports stadia, the list is organised alphabetically by geo-political region or continent and then by country within each region. See also Broadway Theatre for a listing of the theatres that support Broadway shows
List of concert halls
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The interior of the
Teatro Dal Verme in
Milan,
Italy, c. 1875
List of concert halls
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A modern orchestra concert hall: Philharmony in
Szczecin,
Poland
List of concert halls
–
Ríos Reyna Hall, in the
Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex of
Caracas,
Venezuela
List of concert halls
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Carnegie Hall,
New York
6.
Seating capacity
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Seating capacity is the number of people who can be seated in a specific space, in terms of both the physical space available, and limitations set by law. Seating capacity can be used in the description of anything ranging from an automobile that seats two to a stadium that seats hundreds of thousands of people. The International Fire Code, portions of which have adopted by many jurisdictions, is directed more towards the use of a facility than the construction. It specifies, For areas having fixed seating without dividing arms and it also requires that every public venue submit a detailed site plan to the local fire code official, including details of the means of egress, seating capacity, arrangement of the seating. Once safety considerations have been satisfied, determinations of seating capacity turn on the size of the venue. For sports venues, the decision on maximum seating capacity is determined by several factors, chief among these are the primary sports program and the size of the market area. Seating capacity of venues also plays a role in what media they are able to provide, in contracting to permit performers to use a theatre or other performing space, the seating capacity of the performance facility must be disclosed. Seating capacity may influence the kind of contract to be used, the seating capacity must also be disclosed to the copyright owner in seeking a license for the copyrighted work to be performed in that venue. Venues that may be leased for private functions such as ballrooms and auditoriums generally advertise their seating capacity, seating capacity is also an important consideration in the construction and use of sports venues such as stadiums and arenas. The seating capacity for restaurants is reported as covers, a restaurant that can seat 99 is said to have 99 covers, seating capacity differs from total capacity, which describes the total number of people who can fit in a venue or in a vehicle either sitting or standing. Use of the term public capacity indicates that a venue is allowed to more people than it can actually seat. Again, the total number of people can refer to either the physical space available or limitations set by law
Seating capacity
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The
Indianapolis Motor Speedway has the largest seating capacity of any venue in the world.
Seating capacity
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An aerial view of the
Melbourne Cricket Ground during the 1992
Cricket World Cup final packed with 90,000 people.
7.
Pietro Belluschi
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Pietro Belluschi was an Italian-born American architect, a leader of the Modern Movement in architecture, and was responsible for the design of over 1,000 buildings. Born in Italy, Belluschis architectural career began as a draftsman in a Portland, Oregon and he achieved a national reputation within about 20 years, largely for his 1947 aluminum-clad Equitable Building. He won the 1972 AIA Gold Medal, pietro Belluschi was born in Ancona, Italy, in 1899. He grew up in Italy and served in the Italian armed forces during World War I when Italy was allied with Great Britain, France, serving in the army he fought against the Austrians at the battles of Caporetto and Vittorio Veneto. After the war, Belluschi studied at the University of Rome and he moved to the United States in 1923, despite speaking no English, and finished his education—as an exchange student on a scholarship—at Cornell University with a second degree in civil engineering. Instead of returning to Italy, he worked briefly as an engineer in Idaho earning $5 per day. He remained in the U. S. as friends in Italy had cautioned him to not return home because of the rise to power of Benito Mussolini, at Doyles office, Belluschi rose rapidly, soon becoming chief designer. After Doyle died in 1928, the firm took him into partnership in 1933, by 1943, Belluschi had assumed control of the firm by buying out all the other partners and was practicing under his own name. In 1951, Belluschi became Dean of the architecture and planning school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when he accepted the position of dean and moved to Massachusetts, he transferred his office in Portland to the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. The move reduced his income from $150,000 to a salary of $15,000. Belluschis churches and residences differed from his commercial works, Belluschi was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1952. In 1953, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and he served as a presidential appointee on the U. S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1950 to 1955 and he was a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects, and was awarded the AIA Gold Medal, the highest award given by the institute, in 1972. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1991 for his lifetime achievements, Belluschi was on the jury that selected the winning design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D. C. After leaving MIT in 1965, he continued to work, Belluschi would design and consult on both buildings and issues surrounding urban planning. Pietro Belluschi was married first to Helen Hemmila on December 1,1934, after her death in 1962, he married in 1965 Marjorie or Margaret. Pietro Belluschi died in Portland on February 14,1994
Pietro Belluschi
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Pietro Belluschi
Pietro Belluschi
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Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption in
San Francisco
Pietro Belluschi
–
Belluschi resided in the
Aloha Farmhouse from 1973 until his death in 1994.
Pietro Belluschi
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Commonwealth Building in Portland.
8.
Concert hall
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A concert hall is a cultural building with a stage which serves as a performance venue and an auditorium filled with seats. In the 2010s, popular music such as music and traditional music such as folk music are also performed in these venues. Many concert halls exist as one of several halls or performance spaces within a performing arts center. In many towns, the hall is combined with a convention center. Concert halls typically also contain orchestral rehearsal rooms, many larger cities have both public and private concert halls. This list does not include other venues such as sports stadia, the list is organised alphabetically by geo-political region or continent and then by country within each region. See also Broadway Theatre for a listing of the theatres that support Broadway shows
Concert hall
–
The interior of the
Teatro Dal Verme in
Milan,
Italy, c. 1875
Concert hall
–
A modern orchestra concert hall: Philharmony in
Szczecin,
Poland
Concert hall
–
Ríos Reyna Hall, in the
Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex of
Caracas,
Venezuela
Concert hall
–
Carnegie Hall,
New York
9.
San Francisco Symphony
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The San Francisco Symphony, founded in 1911, is an orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980, the orchestra has performed at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the Citys Hayes Valley neighborhood, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus are part of the organization. Its current music director is Michael Tilson Thomas, who has held the position since September 1995, among various awards and honors for the orchestra are an Emmy Award and 15 Grammy Awards in the past 25 years. The orchestras first concerts were led by conductor composer Henry Hadley, there were sixty musicians in the Orchestra at the beginning of their first season. The first concert included music by Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Haydn, there were thirteen concerts in the 1911–1912 season, five of which were popular music. Hertz helped to refine the orchestra and arranged for the Victor Talking Machine Company to record it at their new studio in Oakland in early 1925. Hertz also led the orchestra during a number of broadcasts, including on the The Standard Hour. The series began in 1926 when the orchestra faced bankruptcy, Standard Oil of California paid the orchestras debts, the first broadcast aired on the NBC Pacific Network, on October 24,1926. and the broadcasts continued for more than 30 years. After Hertzs retirement in 1930, the orchestra was led by two conductors, Basil Cameron and Issay Dobrowen, the French maestro Pierre Monteux, who had conducted the world premiere of Igor Stravinskys The Rite of Spring, was hired to restore the orchestra. Monteux succeeded to the point where NBC began broadcasting some of its concerts, in 1949, Monteux invited Arthur Fiedler to lead summer pops concerts in the Civic Auditorium. Fiedler also conducted the orchestra at concerts in Sigmund Stern Grove in San Francisco. Fiedlers relationship with the orchestra continued until the mid-1970s, stokowski made a series of RCA Victor recordings with the orchestra in 1952 and 1953. In 1954 the board hired the young Spanish maestro Enrique Jordá as music director, surviving eyewitness and newspaper accounts describe him as having youthful enthusiasm, energy, and charm. Jordá sometimes conducted so vigorously that his baton flew from his hand, szells comments, along with growing dissatisfaction among musicians and the public, led the symphony board to dismiss Jordá. In the fall of 1963, the Austrian conductor Josef Krips became music director and he quickly became known as a benevolent autocrat, and would not tolerate sloppy playing. He soon began to refine the performance of the musicians, particularly of the standard German-Austrian repertoire. One of his innovations was a tradition on New Years Eve, A Night in Old Vienna. Similar concerts continued into the 2000s, though the format has changed in recent years, Krips would not make recordings with the orchestra, insisting they werent ready
San Francisco Symphony
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San Francisco Symphony (SFS)
San Francisco Symphony
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Alfred Hertz on the cover of
Time magazine.
San Francisco Symphony
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Michael Tilson Thomas
10.
San Francisco War Memorial Opera House
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The War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, California is located on the western side of Van Ness Avenue across from the rear facade of City Hall. It is part of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center and it has been the home of the San Francisco Opera since opening night in 1932. In 1927, $4 million in bonds were issued to finance the design. A colonnade of paired columns screens colossal arch-headed windows above a rusticated basement. The interior contains an entrance hall with a high barrel vaulted and coffered ceiling parallel to the street. The theater space is dominated by an aluminum and glass panel chandelier under a blue vault. The theater has 3,146 seats plus standing room for 200 behind the orchestra and this is smaller than the Metropolitan Opera and the Chicago Lyric Opera, but it follows the trend of larger capacity in American opera houses than the main European opera houses of the 19th century. The San Francisco Symphony performed most of its concerts in the house, RCA Victor recorded the orchestra here, under the direction of Pierre Monteux, from 1941 to 1952 and in a special stereophonic session in January 1960. The orchestra also made a few recordings for RCA with Enrique Jorda in 1957 and 1958, in later years, the orchestra used a special acoustical shell that was placed around the musicians, greatly enhancing acoustics for concerts. The orchestras final concert in the house was an all-Beethoven concert, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the house was regularly blacked out and performances were monitored by air raid wardens. In spring of 1945, the United Nations had its first conference there, the UN Charter was later drafted and signed in the Herbst Theatre next door. Six years later in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco was drafted and signed here, during the years of Kurt Herbert Adlers general directorship, the inadequacies of the house became apparent as the season was expanded. In particular, there was a lack of space and rehearsal space. In 1974, The Pointer Sisters were the first pop act to perform at the theatre, in 1979 the backstage area was extended, followed in 1981 by the opening of a new wing built onto the house on the Franklin Street side. This gave spaces for sets, coaches, and dancers as well as administrative space. At the same time, the nearby Zellerbach Rehearsal Hall, with a stage the size as that of the Opera House, was opened as part of the complex which included the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. In 1989, the powerful Loma Prieta earthquake that shook the Bay Area caused major damage to the Opera House, at this time additional private donations were raised for extensive technical improvements. The organ is not needed with the completion of the nearby Davies Symphony Hall, an underground extension below the neighboring plaza to accommodate additional dressing rooms and backstage facilities
San Francisco War Memorial Opera House
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War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco War Memorial Opera House
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The lobby has staircases with overlooks at each end and entrances to the main level at left.
San Francisco War Memorial Opera House
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Stage and proscenium
San Francisco War Memorial Opera House
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War Memorial Opera House Dress Circle & Balcony levels
11.
San Francisco Opera
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San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola, in fact, Merolas initial visits to the city were as conductor of some of these troupes—the first in 1909 with the International Opera Company of Montreal. Continued visits for the next decade convinced him that a San Francisco company was viable, while it was a popular and critical triumph, the five-day season was not a financial success. It was clear to Merola that a solid financial base was needed. Appealing to more than the elite, Merola raised 2441 contributions of $50 each from many founding members. After the opening of La bohème, the first 1923/24 season included productions of Andrea Chénier, Mefistofele, Tosca (with Giuseppe de Luca and Martinelli, during the nine years following the opening season, the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House was conceived. The building was designed by Arthur Brown, Jr. the architect who also created San Franciscos Coit Tower, the company inaugurated the new opera house with a performance of Tosca on 15 October 1932 with Claudia Muzio in the title role. However, until well after Merolas death, the main San Francisco season rarely extended beyond late October and he died while conducting an open-air concert at Stern Grove on 30 August 1953. Edwin MacArthur led the San Francisco Opera Orchestra in several 78-rpm recordings for RCA Victor in the late 1930s, some of these were later reissued by RCA on LP and CD. Short versions of all the works in the season were broadcast on about 30 California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and British Columbia radio stations, starting about 1941. Kurt Herbert Adler came to the United States in 1938 after early experience and training in aspects of music and theatre in Austria, Germany. For five years, he worked to build the chorus of the Chicago Opera Company, Merola heard of him and, over the telephone, invited him to San Francisco opera in 1943 as chorus director. Adler was often regarded as a difficult, sometimes tyrannical person to work for, however, as Chatfield-Taylor notes, singers, conductors, directors, and designers came back season after season…. Among those who were offered new and exciting challenges were Geraint Evans, the Welsh baritone, Leontyne Price, and Luciano Pavarotti. He took on more and more details as Merolas health and energy diminished. After three months of acting as Artistic Director, and with the assistance of its president, Robert Watt Miller, Adler was confirmed as General Director, Adlers aims Adlers aims in taking over the company were several. Eventually, as seen in the 1961 SFO season, eleven operas were given five or six performances each on average while the season ran to late November. He heard Leontyne Price on the radio, and offered her a role in Dialogues of the Carmelites in 1957, thus providing her with her the first performance on a major operatic stage
San Francisco Opera
–
The
San Francisco War Memorial Opera House
12.
San Francisco Ballet
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San Francisco Ballet is a ballet company, founded in 1933 as the San Francisco Opera Ballet under the leadership of ballet master Adolph Bolm. The company is based in the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco. San Francisco Ballet was the first professional company in the United States. It is among the leading dance companies, presenting more than 100 performances annually. Willam Christensen, Harold Christensen, and Lew Christensen made up the trio of brothers considered by many to have done more than anyone else to establish ballet in the United States. As vaudeville faded from American popular culture, Harold and Lew joined George Balanchines new company, American Ballet, in 1932, Willam formed a ballet school in Portland, Oregon, in 1937, he was engaged as principal male soloist by San Francisco Opera Ballet. He became the ballet master and choreographer in 1938. With his brother Harold, he purchased the company from the Opera in 1942, in 1951, Willam retired as director of SF Ballet and moved to Utah, where he started teaching ballet in the country’s first university ballet department at the University of Utah. With a group of his students, he founded the Utah Civic Ballet in 1963, under Balanchines tutelage at American Ballet, Lew Christensen became the first American-born danseur noble. The United States Army drafted Christensen to fight in World War II, after the war ended, he joined Balanchines and Lincoln Kirsteins Ballet Society, eventually becoming ballet master, he served in the role from 1946 until 1950. In 1951, he joined his brother Willam as co-director of San Francisco Ballet, when Willam moved to Salt Lake City later that year, Lew took over as full director of SF Ballet, he held the position until 1976, when Michael Smuin joined him as co-director. Lew Christensen remained SF Ballet co-director until 1984, the year of his death, in 1940, his brother Willam invited him to become director of the San Francisco Ballet School, and in 1942 he and Willam purchased the SF Ballet. Harold continued to serve as the director until his retirement in 1975. In 1938, the companys first major production was Coppélia, choreographed by Willam Christensen, in 1940, it staged Swan Lake, the first time that the ballet was produced in its entirety by an American company. On Christmas Eve 1944, the company staged Nutcracker—the first complete production of Tchaikovskys most popular piece ever danced in the United States, in 1942, San Francisco Opera Ballet split into two independent companies, ballet and opera. The ballet half was sold to Willam and Harold Christensen, Willam became artistic director, while Harold took on the job of director of the San Francisco Ballet School. The San Francisco Ballet Guild was also formed as an organization for San Francisco Ballet. The year 1951 marked a significant shift in administration of San Francisco Ballet, Lew Christensen—premier danseur at the time—partnered with his brother Willam Christensen as co-directors
San Francisco Ballet
–
San Francisco Ballet
13.
Bolt, Beranek and Newman
–
BBN Technologies is an American high-technology company which provides research and development services. BBN is based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts and it is a military contractor, primarily for DARPA, and also known for its 1978 acoustical analysis for the House Select Committee on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. BBN of the 1950s and 1960s has been referred to by two of its alumni as the university of Cambridge, after MIT and Harvard. In 1966, the Franklin Institute awarded the firm the Frank P. Brown Medal, Ray Tomlinson of BBC Technologies is widely credited as having invented email in 1971. BBN Technologies registered the bbn. com domain on April 24,1985, BBN became a wholly owned subsidiary of Raytheon in 2009. On February 1,2013, BBN Technologies was awarded the National Medal of Technology, founded in 1948, by Leo Beranek and Richard Bolt, professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with Bolts former student Robert Newman. Bolt, Beranek and Newman started life as a consulting company. Their first contract was consultation for the design of the acoustics of the United Nations Assembly Hall in New York. Experts at the company examined the Richard Nixon tape with the 18.5 minutes erased during the Watergate scandal, the substantial calculations required for acoustics work led to an interest, and later business opportunities, in computing. BBN was a pioneer in developing models of roadway and aircraft noise. Some of this technology was used in legal cases where BBN scientists were expert witnesses. BBN bought a number of computers in the late 1950s and early 1960s, BBN was involved in building some of the earliest Internet networks, including ARPANET, MILNET, CSNET, and NEARNET. C. R. Licklider, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Dan Murphy, Severo Ornstein, Seymour Papert, Oliver Selfridge, Bob Thomas, Ray Tomlinson, former board members include Jim Breyer, Anita K. Jones and Gilman Louie. In the 1970s, BBN created Telenet, Inc. to run the first public packet-switched network, in 1989, BBNs acoustical consulting business was spun off into a new corporation, Acentech Incorporated, located across the street from BBN headquarters in Cambridge. BBN formed an early Internet service provider in 1994 as its BBN Planet division, previously traded as BBN on the stock market, the company was purchased by GTE in 1997 as a wholly owned subsidiary. BBN Planet was joined with GTEs national fiber network to become GTE Internetworking, Genuity was later acquired out of bankruptcy by Level 3 Communications in 2003. In September 2009, Raytheon entered into an agreement to acquire BBN as an owned subsidiary. The acquisition was completed on October 29,2009 and the company was valued at approximately $350 million, in December 2014, the domain name bbn. com, the second oldest currently registered domain name on the Internet, was redirected to www. raytheon. com/ourcompany/bbn/
Bolt, Beranek and Newman
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Dr. Talib Hussain, senior scientist at BBN Technologies, looks over the shoulder of a recruit during a training session on the Virtual Environments for Ship and Shore Experiential Learning system at Recruit Training Command.
Bolt, Beranek and Newman
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BBN Technologies
14.
Reverberation
–
Reverberation, in psychoacoustics and acoustics, is the persistence of sound after a sound is produced. This is most noticeable when the sound source stops but the reflections continue, decreasing in amplitude, until they reach zero amplitude. In comparison to an echo that is a minimum of 50 to 100 ms after the initial sound. As time passes, the amplitude of the reflections is reduced until it is reduced to zero, Reverberation is not limited to indoor spaces as it exists in forests and other outdoor environments where reflection exists. Reverberation occurs naturally when a person sings, talks or plays an instrument acoustically in a hall or performance space with sound-reflective surfaces. The sound of reverberation is often added to the vocals of singers in live sound systems. The time it takes for a signal to drop by 60 dB is the reverberation time, RT60 is the time required for reflections of a direct sound to decay 60 dB. Reverberation time is stated as a single value, if measured as a wide band signal, however, being frequency dependent. Being frequency dependent, the time measured in narrow bands will differ depending on the frequency band being measured. For precision, it is important to know what ranges of frequencies are being described by a time measurement. In the late 19th century, Wallace Clement Sabine started experiments at Harvard University to investigate the impact of absorption on the reverberation time. Using a portable wind chest and organ pipes as a sound source and he found that the reverberation time is proportional to room dimensions and inversely proportional to the amount of absorption present. The optimum reverberation time for a space in which music is played depends on the type of music that is to be played in the space, rooms used for speech typically need a shorter reverberation time so that speech can be understood more clearly. If the reflected sound from one syllable is still heard when the syllable is spoken. Cat, Cab, and Cap may all sound very similar, if on the other hand the reverberation time is too short, tonal balance and loudness may suffer. Reverberation effects are used in studios to add depth to sounds. Reverberation changes the perceived spectral structure of a sound, but does not alter the pitch, basic factors that affect a rooms reverberation time include the size and shape of the enclosure as well as the materials used in the construction of the room. Every object placed within the enclosure can also affect this time, including people
Reverberation
–
Folded line reverberation device.
Reverberation
–
Sound level in a reverberant cavity excited by a pulse, as a function of time (very simplified diagram).
15.
Fratelli Ruffatti
–
Famiglia Artigiana Fratelli Ruffatti is a manufacturer of pipe organs based in Padua, Italy. The firm has produced more than five hundred instruments of all sizes, in Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, since their fathers retirement in 1992, Francesco and Piero have shared the responsibility of running Fratelli Ruffatti. The primary objective of the design is to blend with the existing architecture. Although most Ruffatti instruments utilize the traditional mechanical action, they also produce instruments with electro-pneumatic and all-electric actions, after manufacture and before shipping, each organ is completely assembled in the erecting room of the factory. Every part of the instrument is then checked to avoid any work to be completed at the installation site. San Francisco Symphony, Davies Symphony Hall - San Francisco, California, shrine of Our Lady of Fatima - Fátima, Portugal. F. Symphonys mighty Ruffatti organ to get a big birthday workout -BNet Article
Fratelli Ruffatti
–
The Crystal Cathedral Ruffatti
16.
Pipe organ
–
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through organ pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre. Most organs have multiple ranks of pipes of differing timbre, pitch, a pipe organ has one or more keyboards played by the hands, and a pedalboard played by the feet, each keyboard has its own group of stops. The keyboard, pedalboard, and stops are housed in the organs console, the smallest portable pipe organs may have only one or two dozen pipes and one manual, the largest may have over 20,000 pipes and seven manuals. A list of some of the most notable and largest pipe organs in the world can be viewed at List of pipe organs. The origins of the organ can be traced back to the water organ in Ancient Greece, in the 3rd century BC. By the 6th or 7th century AD, bellows were used to supply organs with wind, beginning in the 12th century, the organ began to evolve into a complex instrument capable of producing different timbres. A pipe organ with great leaden pipes was sent to the West by the Byzantine emperor Constantine V as a gift to Pepin the Short, King of the Franks, in 757. Pepins son Charlemagne requested a similar organ for his chapel in Aachen in 812, by the 17th century, most of the sounds available on the modern classical organ had been developed. From that time, the organ was the most complex man-made device - a distinction it retained until it was displaced by the telephone exchange in the late 19th century. Pipe organs are installed in churches, synagogues, concert halls, schools and they are used in the performance of classical music, sacred music, secular music, and popular music. The beginning of the 21st century has seen a resurgence in installations in concert halls, the organ boasts a substantial repertoire, which spans over 500 years. The organ is one of the oldest instruments used in European classical music that has commonly been credited as having derived from Greece. Its earliest predecessors were built in Ancient Greece in the 3rd century BC. The word organ is derived from the Greek όργανον, a term for an instrument or a tool, via the Latin organum. The Greek engineer Ctesibius of Alexandria is credited with inventing the organ in the 3rd century BC and he devised an instrument called the hydraulis, which delivered a wind supply maintained through water pressure to a set of pipes. The hydraulis was played in the arenas of the Roman Empire, the 9th century Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih, in his lexicographical discussion of instruments, cited the urghun as one of the typical instruments of the Eastern Roman Empire. It was often used in the Hippodrome in the capital of Constantinople
Pipe organ
–
The pipe organ in
Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois,
Paris
Pipe organ
–
The
Salt Lake Tabernacle organ found at the
Salt Lake Tabernacle in
Salt Lake City,
Utah has 11,623 pipes and accompanies the
Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Pipe organ
–
Interior of the
Seville Cathedral, showing the pipes of the organ.
Pipe organ
–
Cross-section of one note of a mechanical-action windchest. Trackers attach to the wires hanging through the bottom board at the left. A wire pulls down on the pallet (valve) against the tension of the V-shaped spring. Wind under pressure surrounds the pallet, and when it is pulled down, the wide rectangular chamber above the pallet feeds wind to all pipes of this note and stop; note the cutaway passages at the top.
17.
Organ stop
–
An organ stop is a component of a pipe organ that admits pressurized air to a set of organ pipes. Its name comes from the fact that stops can be used selectively by the organist, some can be on, the term can also refer to the control that operates this mechanism, commonly called a stop tab, stop knob, or drawknob. On electric or electronic organs that imitate a pipe organ, the terms are often used, with the exception of the Hammond organ and clonewheel organs. The term is sometimes used as a synonym for register. Registration is the art of combining stops, the phrase pull out all the stops has entered general usage, for deploying all available means to pursue a goal. Organ pipes are organized within the organ according to note and timbre. A set of pipes producing the same timbre for each note is called a rank, while each key on a pipe organ controls a note which may be sounded by different ranks of pipes, alone or in combination. The use of stops enables the organist to selectively turn off certain ranks in order to produce different combinations of sounds, a stop may be linked to a single rank, or to multiple ranks. While nowadays one speaks of drawing a stop to select a particular rank or set of ranks, when the organist desires a rank to sound, he or she operates the corresponding control at the console, allowing wind to flow to the pipes. Likewise, the organist can deny wind to the pipes by operating the control in the opposite direction. Common stop controls include stop knobs, which move in and out of the console, and stop tabs, some organs, particularly smaller historical organs from England or Spain, feature divided registers, in which there are two stop knobs for certain ranks. One stop knob will control the upper portion of the keyboard, over the course of the history of the pipe organ, there have been several different designs by which stops are actuated. In the longest-standing design, known as the slider chest, there is a strip of material called a slider which fits underneath a given rank of pipes, the slider has small holes drilled in it, one for each pipe in the rank. When the stop is set such that pipes are inactive, the holes are misaligned with the pipes, when the stop is set such that the pipes are active, the slider moves over, aligning the holes with the pipes, allowing air to reach them. Because the slider chest was developed before the advent of electricity, many organs originally built with mechanical actuators have been retrofitted with electric actuators. Other common designs include the spring chest, the valve chest. The term unification refers to the practice of expanding the resources of an organ without adding extra pipes by making notes available to different stops from the same rank of pipes. For example, an 8′ Gedeckt may also be available as a 4′ Gedeckt
Organ stop
–
The choir division of the organ at
St. Raphael's Cathedral,
Dubuque, Iowa. Shown here are several ranks of pipes, each of which would be controlled from one of the stops on the console.
Organ stop
–
Stop tabs on an electronic organ, located above the uppermost manual. Compare this placement to that of the stop knobs on the pipe organ console pictured below.
Organ stop
–
The organ at the
Naval Academy Chapel has 522 stops.
18.
Henry Moore
–
Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English artist. He is best known for his monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Moore produced many drawings, including a series depicting Londoners sheltering from the Blitz during the Second World War and his forms are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically depicting mother-and-child or reclining figures. Moores works are usually suggestive of the body, apart from a phase in the 1950s when he sculpted family groups. His forms are generally pierced or contain hollow spaces, many interpreters liken the undulating form of his reclining figures to the landscape and hills of his birthplace, Yorkshire. Moore was born in Castleford, the son of a coal miner and he became well-known through his carved marble and larger-scale abstract cast bronze sculptures, and was instrumental in introducing a particular form of modernism to the United Kingdom. His ability in later life to fulfill large-scale commissions made him exceptionally wealthy, despite this, he lived frugally, most of the money he earned went towards endowing the Henry Moore Foundation, which continues to support education and promotion of the arts. Henry Moore was born in Castleford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, to Mary Baker and his father was of Irish origin and became pit deputy and then under-manager of the Wheldale colliery in Castleford. He was an autodidact with an interest in music and literature, determined that his sons would not work in the mines, he saw formal education as the route to their advancement. Henry was the seventh of eight children in a family often struggled with poverty. He attended infant and elementary schools in Castleford, where he began modelling in clay and he professed to have decided to become a sculptor when he was eleven after hearing of Michelangelos achievements at a Sunday School reading. On his second attempt he was accepted at Castleford Grammar School, which several of his siblings had attended, where his headmaster soon noticed his talent and interest in medieval sculpture. His art teacher broadened his knowledge of art and, with her encouragement, he determined to make art his career, despite his early promise, Moores parents had been against him training as a sculptor, a vocation they considered manual labour with few career prospects. After a brief introduction as a student teacher, Moore became a teacher at the school he had attended, upon turning eighteen, Moore volunteered for army service. He was the youngest man in the Prince of Wales Own Civil Service Rifles regiment and was injured in 1917 in a gas attack, on 30 November at Bourlon Wood, during the Battle of Cambrai. After recovering in hospital, he saw out the remainder of the war as a training instructor. He recalled later, for me the war passed in a haze of trying to be a hero. And I still have that feeling, after the Great War Moore received an ex-servicemans grant to continue his education and in 1919 he became a student at the Leeds School of Art, which set up a sculpture studio especially for him
Henry Moore
–
Moore in 1975
Henry Moore
–
A replica in Mexico City of the [Chac Mool] stone statue at
Chichen Itza,
Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. This reclining
Toltec -
Maya figure influenced Moore's sculpture.
Henry Moore
–
West Wind, 1928–29; Moore's first public commission was carved from
Portland stone and shows the influence of
Michelangelo 's figures for the
Medici Chapel and the
Chac Mool figure.
Henry Moore
–
Women and Children in the Tube (1940) (Art.IWM ART LD 759)
19.
The New York Times
–
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper, founded and continuously published in New York City since September 18,1851, by The New York Times Company. The New York Times has won 119 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper, the papers print version in 2013 had the second-largest circulation, behind The Wall Street Journal, and the largest circulation among the metropolitan newspapers in the US. The New York Times is ranked 18th in the world by circulation, following industry trends, its weekday circulation had fallen in 2009 to fewer than one million. Nicknamed The Gray Lady, The New York Times has long been regarded within the industry as a newspaper of record. The New York Times international version, formerly the International Herald Tribune, is now called the New York Times International Edition, the papers motto, All the News Thats Fit to Print, appears in the upper left-hand corner of the front page. On Sunday, The New York Times is supplemented by the Sunday Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine and T, some other early investors of the company were Edwin B. Morgan and Edward B. We do not believe that everything in Society is either right or exactly wrong, —what is good we desire to preserve and improve, —what is evil, to exterminate. In 1852, the started a western division, The Times of California that arrived whenever a mail boat got to California. However, when local California newspapers came into prominence, the effort failed, the newspaper shortened its name to The New-York Times in 1857. It dropped the hyphen in the city name in the 1890s, One of the earliest public controversies it was involved with was the Mortara Affair, the subject of twenty editorials it published alone. At Newspaper Row, across from City Hall, Henry Raymond, owner and editor of The New York Times, averted the rioters with Gatling guns, in 1869, Raymond died, and George Jones took over as publisher. Tweed offered The New York Times five million dollars to not publish the story, in the 1880s, The New York Times transitioned gradually from editorially supporting Republican Party candidates to becoming more politically independent and analytical. In 1884, the paper supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in his first presidential campaign, while this move cost The New York Times readership among its more progressive and Republican readers, the paper eventually regained most of its lost ground within a few years. However, the newspaper was financially crippled by the Panic of 1893, the paper slowly acquired a reputation for even-handedness and accurate modern reporting, especially by the 1890s under the guidance of Ochs. Under Ochs guidance, continuing and expanding upon the Henry Raymond tradition, The New York Times achieved international scope, circulation, in 1910, the first air delivery of The New York Times to Philadelphia began. The New York Times first trans-Atlantic delivery by air to London occurred in 1919 by dirigible, airplane Edition was sent by plane to Chicago so it could be in the hands of Republican convention delegates by evening. In the 1940s, the extended its breadth and reach. The crossword began appearing regularly in 1942, and the section in 1946
The New York Times
–
Cover of The New York Times (November 15, 2012), with the headline story reporting on
Operation Pillar of Defense.
The New York Times
–
First published issue of New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851.
The New York Times
–
The Times Square Building, The New York Times ' publishing headquarters, 1913–2007
The New York Times
–
The New York Times newsroom, 1942
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