The Montana-class battleships were planned as successors of the Iowa class for the United States Navy, to be slower but larger, better armored, with superior firepower. Five were approved for construction during World War II, but changes in wartime building priorities resulted in their cancellation in favor of the Essex-class aircraft carrier and Iowa class before any Montana class keels were laid. Intended armament would have been twelve 16-inch Mark 7 guns in four 3-gun turrets, up from the Iowas' three triple-gun 16's. Unlike the three preceding classes of battleships, the Montana class was designed without any restrictions from treaty limitations. With an increased anti-aircraft capability and thicker armor in all areas, the Montanas would have been the largest, best-protected, most armed U. S. battleships ever. They were the only class to rival the Empire of Japan's immense Yamato-class battleships. Preliminary design work for the Montana class began before the US entry into World War II.

The first two vessels were approved by Congress in 1939 following the passage of the Second Vinson Act. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor delayed construction of the Montana class; the success of carrier combat at the Battle of the Coral Sea and, to a greater extent, the Battle of Midway, diminished the value of the battleship. The US Navy chose to cancel the Montana class in favor of more urgently needed aircraft carriers and anti-submarine vessels; because the Iowas were far along enough in construction and urgently needed to operate alongside the new Essex-class aircraft carriers, their orders were retained, making them the last U. S. Navy battleships to be commissioned; as the political situation in Europe and Asia worsened in the prelude to World War II, Carl Vinson, the chairman of the House Committee on Naval Affairs, instituted the Vinson Naval Plan, which aimed to get the Navy into fighting shape after the cutbacks imposed by the Great Depression and pair of London Naval Treaties of the 1930s.

As part of the overall plan Congress passed the Second Vinson Act in 1938, promptly signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and cleared the way for construction of the four South Dakota-class fast battleships and the first two Iowa-class fast battleships. Four additional battleships were approved for construction in 1940, with the last two intended to be the first ships of the Montana class. By 1942, it was apparent to the US Navy high command that they needed as many fast battleships as possible, hull numbers BB-65 and BB-66 were allocated to planned Iowa-class fast battleships Illinois and Kentucky; the Navy had been considering large battleship design schemes since 1938 to counter the threat posed by potential battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, which had refused to sign the Second London Naval Treaty and furthermore refused to provide details about their Yamato-class battleships. Although the Navy knew little about the Yamato class, some rumors regarding the new Japanese battleships placed main gun battery caliber at 18 inches.

The potential of naval treaty violations by the new Japanese battleships resulted in the remaining treaty powers, United States and France, invoking the tonnage "Escalator Clause" of the Second London Naval Treaty in June 1938, which raised the maximum standard displacement limit from 35,000 long tons to 45,000 long tons. The increased displacement limit allowed the Navy to begin evaluating 45,000-ton battleship designs, including "slow" 27-knot schemes that increased firepower and protection over previous designs and "fast" 33-knot schemes; the "fast" design evolved into the Iowa class while the "slow" design, with main armament battery settled on twelve 16-inch guns and evolution into a 60,500-ton design, was assigned the name Montana and cleared for construction by the United States Congress under the Two-Ocean Navy Act in 1940. These ships, the last battleships to be ordered by the Navy, were to be designated BB-65 through BB-69. Completion of the Montana class, the last two Iowa-class battleships, was intended to give the US Navy a considerable advantage over any other nation, or probable combination of nations, with a total of 17 new battleships by the late 1940s.

The Montanas would have been the only American ships to rival Japan's massive Yamato and her sister Musashi in size and raw firepower. Preliminary planning for the Montana-class battleships took place in 1939, when the aircraft carrier was still considered strategically less important than the battleship; the initial schemes for what would become the Montana class were continuations of various 1938 design studies for a 45,000-ton "slow" battleship alternative to the "fast" battleship design that would become the Iowa class. The "slow" battleship design proposals had maximum speed of 27–28 knots and considered various main gun battery options, including 16-inch /45 cal, 16-inch/50 cal, 16-inch/56 cal, 18-inch /48 cal guns; the initial design schemes for the Montana class were given the "BB65" prefix. In July 1939, a series of 45,000-ton BB65 design schemes were evaluated, but in 1940, with the start of World War II and the abandonment of the naval treaties, the Battleship Design Advisory Board moved to larger designs ca

A bash valve is a valve within a piston engine, used to control the admission of the working fluid. They are directly actuated valves, operated by contact between the valve tip. Bash valves have the advantage of great simplicity, for operation, their disadvantages are that their opening and closing times are crudely controlled, compared to other types of valve gear. The valve is constructed as a circular poppet valve with a conical seat, inserted into the cylinder from the outside. A protrusion on the inside is hit by the piston as it approaches top dead centre, forcing the valve open. Bash valves are held closed by the pressure of fluid in the reservoir behind them. There may be a light spring to assist closing. For this reason they are used as inlet valves. An exhaust bash valve would have the cylinder pressure and the piston actuation both acting to open it, with nothing to close it. Bash valves are not used in steam engines, although they are known. Most examples were applied to some form of uniflow steam engine.

Although the opening time of a bash valve is fixed, imprecisely controlled and always occurs near top dead centre, this is not a major drawback for a steam engine. A more important requirement is the ability to control the closing time of the valve, for its duration to be adjustable in order to'drive' the engine, according to varying load; some designs of uniflow engine have used a combined electromagnetic valve to do this. The valve is opened mechanically held by an electromagnet; this requires less electrical power to hold the valve than to open it. A patent for such an engine was granted to Sturtevant in 1968; the same idea has been revived as the main feature of an Advanced Uniflow Steam Engine. In this engine, a second valve is used for exhaust purposes in the part of the cycle too, although this one is bashed shut, rather than opened. Bash valves have been used for the ad hoc conversion of commonplace petrol small engines, such as lawnmowers, into hobbyist steam engines; the original petrol engine sparkplug mounting hole is used as the location for a new piston-actuated bash valve, together with the original exhaust valve.

Performance and efficiency are not a need of such projects. One successful application for bash valves has been to pneumatic motors. Owing to the characteristics of compressed air pneumatic power, their simplicity is valuable and their inefficiencies with other fluids are less important. Compressed air is supplied cold to the motor. Energy is represented by the pressure of the air not, unlike steam, by the combination of pressure and temperature. Efficient operation of a steam engine relies upon expansion of the steam during the piston stroke, which relies upon accurate valve timing and an early closure of the valve. During the expansion phase of the steam it does not expand in a simple isothermal fashion, but does so adiabatically, much of the energy having been supplied as heat rather than pressure; the compressed air motor is thermodynamically simpler. It uses simple isothermal expansion; this means that expansion is less important, valve timings are thus longer and less crucial and so a simple valve may be adequate.

To provide long opening times, the bash valve incorporates some form of tappet mechanism. Rather than a valve, held open by the piston directly, the valve becomes double-acting and is opened by the piston's impact at one end of the stroke and closed by a further impact at the other end of the stroke; the tappet and valve are separate, allowing the valve to remain in a well-defined open position throughout the stroke, however the tappet is bounced around by the piston. Where a reciprocating action is produced, such as for a rock drill, the valve may be actuated either by inertia of the frame or by the movement of the working piston; as the piston hammers back and forth, it impacts a small tappet, which in turn moves the air valve and so reverses the flow of air to the piston. One form of this, the arc tappet valve, was an important feature of the Ingersoll rock drill, the first successful compressed air rock drill for use in mining and tunneling; this used a valve that rotated rather than sliding.

The valve was double-acting, controlling the air supply for the return stroke. The innovation that made this valve so reliable, thus successful, was a separate tappet, actuated by the piston in passing at the middle of the stroke, rather than being hammered by a jarring direct impact of the piston; the mid-stroke actuation opened the valve passageways earlier, before top dead centre, allowing in air that provided a cushioning effect. This further improved the action of the drill, giving a powerful stroke on the working piston and drill rod, but with less damaging hammering to the frame of the drill. Bash valves are not used in such engines; the cylinder peak pressures of an Otto cycle engine are too high for such a valve to remain on its seat. Bash valves are used in a'single-shot' situation, where a valve is opened once and remains open until the contents of a pressure vessel are released; such valves are used in pre-charged air rifles. These valves are arranged so that once lifted off their seat, pressure underneath the valve becomes sufficient to keep the valve raised and so it remains open until the pressure reservoir is empty.

The valve is closed by a light spring. Valve gear

Storm Catcher is a 1999 American action film starring Dolph Lundgren and directed by Tony Hickox, who co-stars in the film. New Zealand model and actress Kylie Bax debuts as Jessica Holloway; the film tells the story of a renegade general who plans to bomb Washington, D. C. with a new stealth fighter. Although intended for a larger audience, Storm Catcher, after a short theatrical run, was released direct-to-video. Flanked by buddy Sparks Johnson on the ground, co-pilot Lucas in the air, Major Jack Holloway flies America's top secret "Phoenix" stealth-capable fighter jet. While Holloway's mentor, General William Jacobs, keeps FBI agents Lock and Load from snooping into his pet project and Sparks enjoy some R&R with Holloway's wife Jessica and daughter Nicole, it turns out Lucas is an operative for the "Serpent Killers", an intra-military right-wing group, temporarily assuming Holloway's identity, he steals the Phoenix. Holloway is accused of the murders of the guards that protect the aircraft, Branded a pariah, Holloway not only gets court martialed but he is nearly obliterated when his prison transport is ambushed and blown up.

Determined to clear his name, Holloway escapes. After he touches base with his family, extremist soldiers shoot Jessica and kidnap Nicole. No sooner does Sparks convince Lock and Load of Holloway's innocence than Lucas guns them down and kidnaps Sparks. However, Jacobs tells Holloway that if he wants to see Nicole alive again, Holloway must bomb the White House. Storm Catcher is set and filmed in Los Angeles, California with B-roll footage in Washington, D. C. taking place in 18 days from October 19 to November 6, 1998. The Phoenix aircraft used for filming, relying on stock shots, was the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter aircraft; the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle pictured on the film's movie poster was never seen in the film. The other main aerial adversary in the film was the Grumman F-14 Tomcat. Storm Catcher premiered on HBO before landing on VHS and DVD, it was released on January 2000 by Columbia TriStar Home Video. Although not critically reviewed in major media outlets, the film did garner some attention from other film reviewers.

David Parkinson of Radio Times rated Storm Catcher, 1/5 stars and wrote, "Faced with a minuscule budget, a few feet of stock aerial footage and a script with dialogue that amounts to an aural assault, director Anthony Hickox has done well to produce a film that's only as bad as this one." Robert Pardi of TV Guide rated it 2/5 stars and wrote, "As action fodder goes, this Lundgren vehicle benefits from solid wild blue yonder photography and enthusiastically executed assault sequences. As the bombs fall on familiar terrain and the fists smash into standard-issue bad guys, the landscape fills with deja-vu." List of American films of 1999 Storm Catcher on IMDb Storm Catcher at Rotten Tomatoes Storm Catcher at the TCM Movie Database

Jacques Leiser is an international artists manager and photographer who has represented and collaborated with many of the world's greatest concert pianists, composers and singers. Early in his life, Leiser became fascinated with photography, for most of his career, he has never been far from his camera. Today his photo archives are a vast treasure trove of images of famous musicians and artists including Dmitri Shostakovich, Aram Khachaturian, Krysztof Penderecki, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Maria Callas, Sviatoslav Richter, Maurizio Pollini, Krystian Zimerman, Lazar Berman, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Artur Rubinstein, Julius Katchen, Alfred Cortot, Edwin Fischer, Annie Fischer, Clara Haskil, Heinrich Neuhaus, David Oistrakh, Mstislav Rostropovich, Otto Klemperer, Claudio Abbado, as well as Pablo Picasso, Serge Poliakoff, Tennessee Williams, Queen Elisabeth of Belgium and Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Leiser first met and photographed Sviatoslav Richter while Leiser was working with the Artists Department of EMI records.

At EMI Leiser had created the milestone series of the "Great Recordings of the Century". Determined to sign up Richter for EMI, Leiser sought out the Russian pianist during his first visit to the West. What followed this initial contact was a 37-year professional association and friendship one that included the creation of a remarkable photographic essay on one of the giants of the piano. Early in 1998, some of Leiser's photographs of Sviatoslav Richter were featured at the Louvre Museum as part of its Film Festival of Great Pianists of the 20th Century. Subsequent exhibits were held at Lincoln Center, the San Diego Museum of Art, at Portland State University in 1999, at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara in 2001 and at USC in Los Angeles in 2002. A major exhibit, consisting of about 70 photographic portraits was displayed at the Music Conservatory in Zürich in October 2005. Future exhibits are planned in 2006 at prominent Swiss Music Festivals and at the Geneva Conservatory of Music.

Leiser is preparing a book of his recollections of music celebrities with whom he has been associated and will include numerous photographs. Official Website David Dubal interview with Jacques Leiser, WNCN-FM, 5-Feb-1982

The Arkansas Valley Interurban Railway was an interurban railway that operated in Kansas USA from 1910 to 1938 for passengers and to 1942 for freight, running between Wichita and Hutchinson. It operated a small fleet of electrically powered freight equipment. Service was suspended during World War II and never resumed, except on a small portion owned the Hutchinson and Northern Railroad, still in operation; the AVI, as it emerged, was only a portion of a proposal in 1910 for a large network of interurban lines focusing on Wichita, running passenger and freight services in competition with the Atchison and Santa Fe Railway and expecting to feed freight to the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway and the Midland Valley Railroad to Wichita's new transcontinental line the Kansas City and Orient Railway when, finished -it never was.. The main line was to have been from Wichita to Salina, which two cities lacked any direct passenger railroad service between them -although the line would have run parallel with the Santa Fe to Newton the Missouri Pacific Railroad to McPherson and the Union Pacific Railroad to Salina.

From this line, another one would have run from Van Arsdale Junction to Hutchinson and Great Bend, again paralleling Santa Fe lines. From Hutchinson, a third line would have run direct to Hudson and would have given rail access to a portion of territory that lacked it. To the south of Wichita, a line would have run to Oxford via Belle Plaine, with a short branch to Wellington from the latter place. At Oxford, it would have joined a circular service running Oxford - Winfield - Arkansas City - Geuda Springs- Oxford which would have subsumed a pre-existing little interurban between Winfield and Arkansas City called the Southwestern Interurban Railway of Kansas; the project was a local one, financed with capital raised by selling shares in the cities it hoped to serve. The chief promoters were W. O. Van Arsdale, a Wichita stockbroker who gave his name to the railway's main junction, George Theis Jnr, to acquire control and who had an amusement park named after him on the line outside Newton; the city of Wichita was in support, invested $30 000.

Theis, a Wichita capitalist and enthusiast for interurbans, founded the Interurban Construction Company to build the system. Construction began in 1910 on the first 17.8 mile long section from Wichita north to Sedgwick. On 19 November 1910 the line from Wichita to Valley Center was opened, service was extended to Sedgwick on 18 December. In 1911, construction began on the Sedgwick to Newton segment, opened on 9 October 1911. With the completion of the line to Newton, work began on the line to Halstead, which branched off of the Newton line at Van Arsdale Junction and headed straight west for five miles; this section opened late in 1911. It was not until 1915 that construction began on extending the Halstead branch another 24 miles to reach Hutchinson, but work commenced in April of that year and the first AVI car ran to Hutchinson on 22 December 1915; the only other branch operated by the AVI was a short line north from Newton to Bethel College which opened in 1913 and was abandoned in 1925. This was an urban streetcar line nicknamed the Bethel Line -the city lacked a system of its own.

The service always ran at a loss after a renovation of the track and the provision of new cars in 1921. In 1923, the company tried to abandon but the Public Utilities Commission of Kansas enforced a continuation order; the AVI appealed this, the case was heard in the Supreme Court of the United States in 1927. Judgment was against the company on the grounds that the Bethel Line was an integral part of the franchise conditions granted by the city of Newton, but by nobody cared much -and the service never resumed; the interurban passenger services used the streetcar systems of Wichita and Hutchinson to access downtown, although these were separately owned. However, a private right of way was constructed into Wichita in 1923; this was fortunate, because the Wichita streetcars were abandoned in 1933 and the interurban would have had to shut to passengers in that year otherwise. In 1932 the AVI was forced to build its own access to the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad station at Hutchinson, after the city streetcar company went bankrupt and was scrapped.

These downtown extensions were the only ones that the AVI built, the rest of the original scheme was given up in the Twenties. In 1922 George Theis Jnr. President of the AVI, bought out the Southwestern Interurban Railway of Kansas on his own account, restructured it as the Arkansas City and Northern Railway; this was with the intention of making it part of the AVI system, but his tragic death when hit by a taxiing airplane on 13 August 1926 put an end to any hope of extension. The ACW&N was a hopeless enterprise opened in 1909 as an extension of Winfield's streetcar system, was to be scrapped on 8 June 1927; the interurban was three years younger than the Ford Model T automobile, so always suffered from increasing automobile use. It was hit by the mechanisation of agriculture in the Twenties, as combine harvesters and tractors reduced the demand for farm workers and so the number of rural travellers. On the other hand, bus competition was patchy and the company ran feeder bus services; the company responded to declining passenger revenue by raising fares to 3.6 cents a mile -very high for any interurban- but this did not help.

On the other hand, freight revenue increas

François Henri Hallopeau was a French dermatologist. He studied medicine under Sigismond Jaccoud, he co-founded and was secretary general of the Société Française de dermatologie et de syphiligraphie. He became a member of the Académie de Médecine in 1893, he coined the medical term "trichotillomania" in 1889. He coined the word "antibiotique" in 1871 to describe a substance opposed to the development of life. Selman Waksman would be credited with coining the word "antibiotic" to describe such compounds that were derived from other living organisms such as penicillin. Recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa Pemphigus vegetans of Hallopeau Hallopeau F. "Sur un cas d'adenomes sébacés à forme sclereuse". Annales de dermatologie et de syphiligraphie. 6: 473–9. Hallopeau F. "Lichen plan scléreux". Annales de dermatologie et de syphiligraphie. 10: 447–9. Hallopeau F. "Leçons cliniques sur les maladies cutanées et syphilitiques. Première leçon, suite et fin. Le lichen plan atrophique". Union médicale. 43: 742–7.

Hallopeau F. "Sur une nouvelle forme de dermatite pustuleuse chronique en foyers à progression excentrique". Congrès international de dermatologie et de syphiligraphie tenu à Paris en 1889: 344–62. Hallopeau F. "Sur une asphyxie locale des extrémités avec polydactylie suppurative chronique et poussées éphémères de dermatite pustuleuse disséminée et symétrique". Bulletin de la Société française de dermatologie et de syphiligraphie: 39–45. Hallopeau F. "Sur une dermatose bulleuse congénitale avec cicatrices indélébiles, kystes épidermiques et manifestations buccales". Bulletin de la Société française de dermatologie et de syphiligraphie: 3–10. Timeline of tuberous sclerosis Enersen, Ole Daniel. "François Henri Hallopeau". Who Named It?. Retrieved 2007-01-24."François Henri Hallopeau". BIUM. Retrieved 2007-01-24."History of Biology: Dates 1850–1874". Genetics of Bacterial Genomes. Retrieved 2007-01-24."François Henri Hallopeau". Historiadelamedicina.org. Retrieved 2007-01-24. Tilles G, Wallach D. "François Henri Hallopeau".

Annales de Dermatologie et de Vénérologie. 128: 1379. PMID 11908156