Mattel, Inc. is an American multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company founded in 1945 with headquarters in El Segundo, California. The products and brands it produces include Fisher-Price, Monster High, Ever After High, Polly Pocket, Hot Wheels, Masters of the Universe, American Girl, Thomas & Friends, WWE. In the early 1980s, Mattel produced video game systems, under its own brands and under license from Nintendo; the company has presence in 40 countries and territories and sells products in more than 150 countries. The company operates through three business segments: North America and American Girl, it is the world's second largest toy maker in terms of revenue, after The Lego Group. In 2019, it ranked #575 on the Fortune 500 list. On January 17, 2017, Mattel named former Google executive Margo Georgiadis as CEO. Georgiadis stepped down as CEO of Mattel on April 19, 2018, her last day was on April 26, 2018. Ynon Kreiz is now the new CEO of Mattel; the name Mattel is a portmanteau of Harold "Matt" Matson and Elliot Handler, two of the company's founders.

Harold "Matt" Matson and Elliot Handler founded Mattel in 1945. The company sold picture frames, dollhouse furniture. Matson sold his share to Handler due to poor health, Handler's wife Ruth took Matson's role. In 1947, the company had its first hit toy, a ukulele called "Uke-A-Doodle"; the company incorporated the next year in California. Mattel became the first year-round sponsor of the Mickey Mouse Club TV series in 1955; the Barbie doll debuted in 1959. In 1960, Mattel introduced Chatty Cathy, a talking doll revolutionizing the toy industry, which led to pull-string talking dolls and toys flooding the market throughout the 1960s and 1970s; the company went public in 1960, the New York Stock Exchange listed them in 1963. Mattel acquired a number of companies during the 1960s. In 1965, the company built on its success with the Chatty Cathy doll to introduce the See'n Say talking toy, spawning a line of products, they released Hot Wheels to the market on May 18, 1968. In May 1970, Mattel formed a joint venture film production company Radnitz/Mattel Productions with producer Robert B.

Radnitz, entered a multimillion-dollar partnership with Mehra Entertainment, whose CEO, Dr. Nishpeksh Padmamohan Mehra, is one of Mattel's Inc.'s main directors for Barbie. Mattel purchased The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1971 for $40 million from the Feld family, whom Mattel kept as management. Mattel sold the circus corporation by December 1973, despite its profit contributions, as Mattel showed a $29.9 million loss in 1972. In 1974, an investigation found Mattel guilty of issuing false and misleading financial reports, which lead to the banishing of Elliot and Ruth Handler from their own company. Arthur S. Spear, a Mattel vice president, took control of the company in 1975, who returned the company to profitability in 1977. Ruth Handler sold her stock in 1980; the Mattel Electronics line debuted in 1977 with an all-electronic handheld game. The success of the handheld led to the expansion of the line with game console the line becoming its own corporation in 1982. Mattel Electronics forced Mattel to take a $394 million loss in 1983 and filed for bankruptcy.

In 1979, through Feld Productions, Mattel purchased the Holiday on Ice and Ice Follies for $12 million. Acquired that year was Western Publishing for $120 million in cash and stock; the Felds bought the circus in 1982 for $22.8 million. New York venture capital firms E. M. Warburg, Pincus & Co. and Drexel Burnham Lambert invested a couple hundred million in Mattel in 1984 to help the company survive. However, the Master of the Universe action figure line sales dropped, causing a $115 million loss in 1987. Chairman John W. Amerman improved the company's financial performance in 1987 by focusing on core brands. Mattel returned to working with the Disney company in 1988. In 1991, Mattel moved its headquarters from California to El Segundo, California. Mattel entered the game business in 1992 with the purchase of International Games, maker of Uno and Skip-Bo. Mattel purchased Fisher-Price, Inc. in 1993, Tyco Toys, Inc. in 1997, Pleasant Company in 1998. Mattel sold it in 2000 at a loss; the company had a $430.9 million net loss that year.

Mattel earned the first grant for Disney Princess doll licenses in 2000. In December 2000, Mattel sued the band Aqua, saying their song "Barbie Girl" violated the Barbie trademark and turned Barbie into a sex object, referring to her as a "blonde bimbo." The lawsuit was rejected in 2002. In 2000, Mattel signed a deal with Warner Bros to become the master licensee for Harry Potter-branded toys. In 2002, the companies extended their partnership, with Mattel becoming master licensee for Batman, Justice League and the Looney Tunes toys for all markets except Asia. In 2002, Mattel closed its last factory in the United States part of the Fisher-Price division, outsourcing production to China, which began a chain of events that led to a lead contamination scandal. On August 14, 2007, Mattel recalled over 18 million products; the New York Times covered Mattel's multiple recalls. Many of the products had exceeded the US limits set on surface coatings. Surface coatings cannot exceed.06% lead by weight. Additional recalls were because it was possible that some toys could pose a danger to children due to the use of strong magnets that could detach.

Mattel re-wrote its policy on magnets issuing a recall in August 2007. The recall included 7.1 million Polly

The Ekman spiral is a structure of currents or winds near a horizontal boundary in which the flow direction rotates as one moves away from the boundary. It derives its name from the Swedish oceanographer Vagn Walfrid Ekman; the deflection of surface currents was first noticed by the Norwegian oceanographer Fridtjof Nansen during the Fram expedition and the effect was first physically explained by Vagn Walfrid Ekman. The effect is a consequence of the Coriolis effect which subjects moving objects to an apparent force to the right of their direction of motion in the northern hemisphere. Thus, when a persistent wind blows over an extended area of the ocean surface in the northern hemisphere, it causes a surface current which accelerates in that direction, which experiences a Coriolis force and acceleration to the right of the wind: the current will turn to the right as it gains speed; as the flow is now somewhat right of the wind, the Coriolis force perpendicular to the flow's motion is now directed against the wind.

The current will reach a top speed when the force of the wind, of the Coriolis effect, the resistant drag of the subsurface water balance, the current will flow at a constant speed and direction as long as the wind persists. This surface current drags on the water layer below it, applying a force in its own direction of motion to that layer, repeating the process whereby that layer becomes a steady current further to the right of the wind, so on for deeper layers of water, resulting in a continuous rotation of current direction with changing depth; as depth increases, the force transmitted from the driving wind declines and thus the speed of the resultant steady current decreases, hence the tapered spiral representation in the accompanying diagram. The depth to which the Ekman spiral penetrates is determined by how far turbulent mixing can penetrate over the course of a pendulum day; the diagram above attempts to show the forces associated with the Ekman spiral as applied to the Northern hemisphere.

The force from above is in red, the Coriolis force is in dark yellow, the net resultant water movement is in pink, which becomes the force from above for the layer below it, accounting for the gradual clockwise spiral motion as you move down. The first documented observations of an oceanic Ekman spiral were made in the Arctic Ocean from a drifting ice flow in 1958. More recent observations include: SCUBA diving observations during a study of upwelling water transport through a kelp forest on the west coast of South Africa in 1978 The 1980 Mixed Layer Experiment Within the Sargasso Sea during the 1982 Long-Term Upper Ocean Study Within the California Current during the 1993 Eastern Boundary Current experiment Within the Drake Passage region of the Southern Ocean North of the Kerguelan Plateau during the 2008 SOFINE experiment Common to several of these observations spirals were found to be'compressed', displaying larger estimates of eddy viscosity when considering the rate of rotation with depth than the eddy viscosity derived from considering the rate of decay of speed.

Though in the Southern Ocean the'compression', or spiral flattening effect disappeared when new data permitted a more careful treatment of the effect of geostrophic shear. The classic Ekman spiral has been observed under sea ice, but observations remain rare in open-ocean conditions; this is due both to the fact that the turbulent mixing in the surface layer of the ocean has a strong diurnal cycle and to the fact that surface waves can destabilize the Ekman spiral. Ekman spirals are found in the atmosphere. Surface winds in the Northern Hemisphere tend to blow to the left of winds aloft. Ekman transport Ekman layer Secondary flow Upwelling AMS Glossary, mathematical description A. Gnanadesikan and R. A. Weller, 1995 · "Structure and instability of the Ekman spiral in the presence of surface gravity waves" · Journal of Physical Oceanography 25, pp. 3148–3171. J. F. Price, R. A. Weller and R. Pinkel, 1986 · "Diurnal cycling: Observations and models of the upper ocean response to diurnal heating and wind mixing" · Journal of Geophysical Research 91, pp. 8411–8427.

J. G. Richman, R. deSzoeke and R. E. Davis, 1987 · "Measurements of near-surface shear in the ocean" · Journal of Geophysical Research 92, pp. 2851–2858. Field, J. G. C. L. Griffiths, E. A. S. Linley, P. Zoutendyk and R. Carter, 1981 Wind-induced water movements in a Benguela kelp bed. Coastal Upwelling. F. A. Richards, Washington D. C. American Geophysical Union: 507-513. ISBN 0-87590-250-2

Joseph R. Walker was a mountain man and experienced scout, he established the segment of the California Trail, the primary route for the emigrants to the gold fields during the California gold rush, from Fort Hall, Idaho to the Truckee River. The Walker River and Walker Lake in Nevada were named for him by John C. Frémont. Walker was born in Roane County, the fourth child of seven born to Joseph and Susan Willis Walker. In 1819, the family emigrated to Missouri. In 1820, he was detained for a short while by Spanish authorities, he may have become one of the "Taos trappers" trapping beaver in the Spanish/Mexican territory of Alta California working on the Santa Fe Trail from Missouri to Santa Fe with "Old" Bill Williams. He in 1827 was appointed sheriff of Jackson County. In 1830, Walker was driving horses to Fort Gibson in Oklahoma. Walker wanted to explore the American frontier, Bonneville offered him an opportunity to join him in his expeditions. In 1832, Walker left from Fort Osage with Bonneville and 110 other men, traveling to the Green River in Wyoming.

In 1833, Bonneville sent Walker in command of a party of men, including Old Bill Williams and Zenas Leonard, from the Green River to explore the Great Salt Lake and to find an overland route to California. They left on July 27 and discovered a route along the Humboldt River across present-day Nevada, they followed it to the Humboldt Sink made their way to present day Genoa, Nevada at the base of the Sierra Nevada. They began their ascent of the Sierra by traveling up the west fork of the Carson River to Hawkins Peak. At that point, they began wandering, trying to find a path to a dividing ridge and down the western slope, they made their way to the headwaters of the Stanislaus River and descended on the ridgeline north of the river canyon. They made it to the river itself followed it down to the Central Valley of California. On February 14, 1834, Walker and his party of fifty-two men left on their return trip from California, crossing back over the Sierra Nevada through one of the southern passes.

The group made it to Owens Valley on May 1, 1834, traveled up it but became impatient to turn east. They soon became alarmed by the lack of water, they went back west to the base of the Sierra and traveled north to the Humboldt Sink they traveled back to the Rocky Mountains the way they had come the previous summer. At some point in the ensuing years, Walker took a Shoshone wife. In 1840 Walker and a band of followers made the first known north to south crossing of the eastern Great Basin by Americans. Starting from Browns Park along the Green River and his men crossed the Wasatch Range to the Sevier Lake and traveled south to the upper Virgin River which they descended until reaching its confluence with the Colorado River. From the Colorado, they crossed the Mojave Desert to Los Angeles where Walker sold 417 pounds of beaver pelts to Abel Stearns, an American expatriate living in Los Angeles, who became Walker's business agent in purchasing horses. Walker left an unknown number of mules. After travelling to California in the Bartleson–Bidwell Party of 1841 Joseph B.

Chiles returned to western Missouri and organized the first wagon train of California bound emigrants in 1843. At Fort Laramie, Chiles hired Walker to guide the wagon train to California for $300. In August, at Black's Fork of the Green River, the party stopped to rest the animals and hunt, trying to stock dried meat for the trail, they were marginally successful, being able to only acquire four head of cattle at Ft. Hall and Chiles decided to split the party in order to make best use of the remaining provisions. After leaving Fort Hall on September 16, Chiles took 13 men on horseback to Fort Boise for further provisions. If food was not available, he was to cross the Sierra Nevada in the vicinity of the Truckee River, proceed to Sutter's Fort for food, bring it across the Sierra to Humboldt Sink where Walker and the wagon train would be waiting. Once reunited they would proceed south through the Owens Valley, along the eastern scarp of the Sierra Nevada to a southern pass Oak Creek Pass where Walker believed the wagons could cross.

The Chiles group was unable to obtain provisions at Fort Boise and circumvented the Sierra Nevada far to the north, rather than crossing at the Truckee River. Chiles reached Sutter's Fort on 11 November. Walker's group left the Humboldt Sink about 1 November and traded horseshoe nails for fish with the Paiute at what would be known as Walker Lake; because of inadequate forage the animals were unable to pull the wagons beyond Owens Lake where the wagons were abandoned along with a disassembled saw mill. The party proceeded on foot and crossed the summit of the Sierras on December 3, 1843. Thereafter they crossed the San Joaquin Valley and the Coast Range and wintered pleasantly in Peachtree Valley on the headwaters of a tributary to the Salinas River in the Salinas Valley. About the journey Gilbert states, "The overland caravan had done no true exploring but had laid down 500 miles of what was to become the California Trail"; the trail segment referred to appears to extend from Fort Hall to the Truckee River.

After the expedition dispersed, Walker once again presented his passport to the authorities and was granted permission to trade. As before, he left southern California with a herd of horses and mules in April 1844 along