Southern California
Southern California is a geographic and cultural region that comprises California's southernmost counties, is the second most populous urban agglomeration in the United States. The region is traditionally described as eight counties, based on demographics and economic ties: Imperial, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Ventura; the more extensive 10-county definition, which includes Kern and San Luis Obispo counties, is used and is based on historical political divisions. The Colorado Desert and the Colorado River are located on southern California's eastern border with Arizona, the Mojave Desert is located north on California's Nevada border. Southern California's southern border is part of the Mexico–United States border. Southern California includes the built-up urban area which stretches along the Pacific coast from Ventura through Greater Los Angeles down to Greater San Diego, inland to the Inland Empire and Coachella Valley, it encompasses eight metropolitan areas, three of which together form the Greater Los Angeles Combined Statistical Area with over 18 million people, the second-biggest CSA after the New York CSA.
These three MSAs are: the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the Inland Empire (, the Oxnard–Thousand Oaks–Ventura metropolitan area. In addition, Southern California contains the San Diego metropolitan area with 3.3 million people, Bakersfield metro area with 0.9 million, the Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, El Centro metropolitan areas. The Southern California Megaregion is larger still, extending east into Las Vegas and south across the Mexican border into Tijuana. Within southern California are two major cities, Los Angeles and San Diego, as well as three of the country's largest metropolitan areas. With a population of 4,042,000, Los Angeles is the most populous city in California and the second most populous in the United States. South of Los Angeles and with a population of 1,307,402 is San Diego, the second most populous city in the state and the eighth most populous in the nation; the counties of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside are the five most populous in the state, are in the top 15 most populous counties in the United States.
The motion picture and music industry are centered in the Los Angeles area in southern California. Hollywood, a district of Los Angeles, gives its name to the American motion picture industry, synonymous with the neighborhood name. Headquartered in southern California are The Walt Disney Company, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, MGM, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. Universal, Warner Bros. and Sony run major record companies. Southern California is home to a large homegrown surf and skateboard culture. Companies such as Vans, Quiksilver, No Fear, RVCA, Body Glove are all headquartered here. Skateboarder Tony Hawk; some of the most famous surf locations are in southern California as well, including Trestles, The Wedge, Huntington Beach, Malibu. Some of the world's largest action sports events, including the X Games, Boost Mobile Pro, the U. S. Open of Surfing, are held in southern California; the region is important to the world of yachting with premier events including the annual Transpacific Yacht Race, or Transpac, from Los Angeles to Hawaii.
The San Diego Yacht Club held the America's Cup, the most prestigious prize in yachting, from 1988 to 1995 and hosted three America's Cup races during that time. The first modern era triathlon was held in Mission Bay, San Diego, California in 1974. Since southern California, San Diego in particular have become a mecca for triathlon and multi-sport racing and culture. Southern California is home to many sports sports networks such as Fox Sports Net. Many locals and tourists frequent the southern California coast for its beaches; the inland desert city of Palm Springs is popular. Southern California is not a formal geographic designation and definitions of what constitutes southern California vary. Geographically, California's North-South midway point lies at 37° 9' 58.23" latitude, around 11 miles south of San Jose. When the state is divided into two areas, the term southern California refers to the 10 southernmost counties of the state; this definition coincides neatly with the county lines at 35° 47′ 28″ North latitude, which form the northern borders of San Luis Obispo and San Bernardino counties.
Another definition for southern California uses Point Conception and the Tehachapi Mountains as the northern boundary. Though there is no official definition for the northern boundary of southern California, such a division has existed from the time when Mexico ruled California and political disputes raged between the Californios of Monterey in the upper part and Los Angeles in the lower part of Alta California. Following the acquisition of California by the United States, the division continued as part of the attempt by several pro-slavery politicians to arrange the division of Alta California at 36 degrees, 30 minutes, the line of the Missouri Compromise. Instead, the passing of the Compromise of 1850 enabled California to be a
Tasimeter
The tasimeter, or microtasimeter, or measurer of infinitesimal pressure, is a device designed by Thomas Edison to measure infrared radiation. In 1878, Samuel Langley, Henry Draper, other American scientists needed a sensitive instrument that could be used to measure minute temperature changes in heat emitted from the Sun's corona during the July 29 solar eclipse, due to occur along the Rocky Mountains. To satisfy those needs Edison devised a microtasimeter employing a carbon button; the value of the instrument lies in its ability to detect small variations of temperature. This is accomplished indirectly; the change of temperature causes expansion or contraction of a rod of vulcanite, which changes the resistance of an electric circuit by varying the pressure it exerts upon a carbon-button included in the circuit. During the total eclipse of the sun in 1878, it demonstrated the existence of heat in the corona, it is of service in ascertaining the relative expansion of substances due to a rise of temperature.
The functional parts are represented in the partial cross section, which shows its construction and mode of operation. The substance whose expansion is to be measured is shown at A, it is clamped at B, its lower end fitting into a slot in the metal plate, M, which rests upon the carbon-button. The latter is in an electric circuit, which includes a delicate galvanometer. Any variation in the length of the rod changes the pressure upon the carbon, alters the resistance of the circuit; this causes a deflection of the galvanometer-needle—a movement in one direction denoting expansion of A, while an opposite motion signifies contraction. To avoid any deflection which might arise from change in strength of battery, the tasimeter is inserted in an arm of a Wheatstone bridge. In order to ascertain the exact amount of expansion in decimals of an inch, the screw S, seen in front of the dial, is turned until the deflection caused by the change of temperature is reproduced; the screw works a second screw, causing the rod to ascend or descend, the exact distance through which the rod moves is indicated by the needle, N, on the dial.
The instrument can be advantageously used to measure changes in the humidity of the atmosphere. In this case the strip of vulcanite is replaced by one of gelatine, which changes its volume by absorbing moisture. 1878 was a time when great advances were being made in electric arc lighting, during the solar eclipse expedition, which Edison accompanied, the men discussed the practicality of subdividing the intense arc lights so that electricity could be used for lighting in the same fashion as with small, individual gas burners. The basic problem seemed to be to keep the burner, or bulb, from being consumed by preventing it from overheating. Edison thought he would be able to solve this by fashioning a microtasimeter-like device to control the current, he boldly announced that he would invent a safe and inexpensive electric light that would replace the gaslight. Edison declined to patent the device, saying it was only of interest to scientists, allowed companies in London and Philadelphia to manufacture tasimeters royalty-free.
The scientists who tested it found it too erratic to be of use for quantitative measurement purposes, it was soon abandoned. Bolometer Infrared telescope Eclipse Vicissitudes:Thomas Edison and the Chickens, J. Donald Fernie, American Scientist. Edison the scientist, John A. Eddy, Applied Optics
Hollywood
Hollywood is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, notable as the home of the U. S. film industry, including several of its historic studios. Its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the people associated with it. Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903, it was consolidated with the city of Los Angeles in 1910 and soon thereafter, a prominent film industry emerged becoming the most recognizable film industry in the world. In 1853, one adobe hut stood in Nopalera, named for the Mexican Nopal cactus indigenous to the area. By 1870, an agricultural community flourished; the area was known as the Cahuenga Valley, after the pass in the Santa Monica Mountains to the north. According to the diary of H. J. Whitley known as the "Father of Hollywood", on his honeymoon in 1886 he stood at the top of the hill looking out over the valley. Along came a Chinese man in a wagon carrying wood; the man bowed. The Chinese man was asked what he was doing and replied, "I holly-wood," meaning'hauling wood.'
H. J. Whitley decided to name his new town Hollywood. "Holly" would represent England and "wood" would represent his Scottish heritage. Whitley had started over 100 towns across the western United States. Whitley arranged to buy the 480 acres E. C. Hurd ranch, they shook hands on the deal. Whitley shared his plans for the new town with General Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, Ivar Weid, a prominent businessman in the area. Daeida Wilcox learned of the name Hollywood from Ivar Weid, her neighbor in Holly Canyon and a prominent investor and friend of Whitley's, she recommended the same name to Harvey. H. Wilcox, who had purchased 120 acres on February 1, 1887, it wasn't until August 1887 Wilcox decided to use that name and filed with the Los Angeles County Recorder's office on a deed and parcel map of the property. The early real-estate boom busted at the end of that year. By 1900, the region had a post office, newspaper and two markets. Los Angeles, with a population of 102,479 lay 10 miles east through the vineyards, barley fields, citrus groves.
A single-track streetcar line ran down the middle of Prospect Avenue from it, but service was infrequent and the trip took two hours. The old citrus fruit-packing house was converted into a livery stable, improving transportation for the inhabitants of Hollywood; the Hollywood Hotel was opened in 1902 by H. J. Whitley, a president of the Los Pacific Boulevard and Development Company. Having acquired the Hurd ranch and subdivided it, Whitley built the hotel to attract land buyers. Flanking the west side of Highland Avenue, the structure fronted on Prospect Avenue, still a dusty, unpaved road, was graded and graveled; the hotel was to become internationally known and was the center of the civic and social life and home of the stars for many years. Whitley's company sold one of the early residential areas, the Ocean View Tract. Whitley did much to promote the area, he paid thousands of dollars for electric lighting, including bringing electricity and building a bank, as well as a road into the Cahuenga Pass.
The lighting ran for several blocks down Prospect Avenue. Whitley's land was centered on Highland Avenue, his 1918 development, Whitley Heights, was named for him. Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality on November 14, 1903, by a vote of 88 for and 77 against. On January 30, 1904, the voters in Hollywood decided, by a vote of 113 to 96, for the banishment of liquor in the city, except when it was being sold for medicinal purposes. Neither hotels nor restaurants were allowed to serve liquor before or after meals. In 1910, the city voted for merger with Los Angeles in order to secure an adequate water supply and to gain access to the L. A. sewer system. With annexation, the name of Prospect Avenue changed to Hollywood Boulevard and all the street numbers were changed. By 1912, major motion-picture companies had set up production in Los Angeles. In the early 1900s, most motion picture patents were held by Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company in New Jersey, filmmakers were sued to stop their productions.
To escape this, filmmakers began moving out west to Los Angeles, where attempts to enforce Edison's patents were easier to evade. The weather was ideal and there was quick access to various settings. Los Angeles became the capital of the film industry in the United States; the mountains and low land prices made Hollywood a good place to establish film studios. Director D. W. Griffith was the first to make a motion picture in Hollywood, his 17-minute short film In Old California was filmed for the Biograph Company. Although Hollywood banned movie theaters—of which it had none—before annexation that year, Los Angeles had no such restriction; the first film by a Hollywood studio, Nestor Motion Picture Company, was shot on October 26, 1911. The H. J. Whitley home was used as its set, the unnamed movie was filmed in the middle of their groves at the corner of Whitley Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard; the first studio in Hollywood, the Nestor Company, was established by the New Jersey–based Centaur Company in a roadhouse at 6121 Sunset Boulevard, in October 1911.
Four major film companies – Paramount, Warner Bros. RKO, Columbia – had studios in Hollywood, as did several minor companies and rental studios. In the 1920s, Hollywood was the fifth-largest industry in the nation. By the 1930s, Hollywood studios became vertically integrated, as production and exhibition was controlled by these companies, enabling Hollywood to produce 600 films per year. H
Phonograph
The phonograph is a device for the mechanical recording and reproduction of sound. In its forms, it is called a gramophone or, since the 1940s, a record player; the sound vibration waveforms are recorded as corresponding physical deviations of a spiral groove engraved, incised, or impressed into the surface of a rotating cylinder or disc, called a "record". To recreate the sound, the surface is rotated while a playback stylus traces the groove and is therefore vibrated by it faintly reproducing the recorded sound. In early acoustic phonographs, the stylus vibrated a diaphragm which produced sound waves which were coupled to the open air through a flaring horn, or directly to the listener's ears through stethoscope-type earphones; the phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison. While other inventors had produced devices that could record sounds, Edison's phonograph was the first to be able to reproduce the recorded sound, his phonograph recorded sound onto a tinfoil sheet wrapped around a rotating cylinder.
A stylus responding to sound vibrations produced an down or hill-and-dale groove in the foil. Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory made several improvements in the 1880s and introduced the graphophone, including the use of wax-coated cardboard cylinders and a cutting stylus that moved from side to side in a zigzag groove around the record. In the 1890s, Emile Berliner initiated the transition from phonograph cylinders to flat discs with a spiral groove running from the periphery to near the center, coining the term gramophone for disc record players, predominantly used in many languages. Improvements through the years included modifications to the turntable and its drive system, the stylus or needle, the sound and equalization systems; the disc phonograph record was the dominant audio recording format throughout most of the 20th century. In the 1980s, phonograph use on a standard record player declined due to the rise of the cassette tape, compact disc, other digital recording formats. However, records are still a favorite format for some audiophiles, DJs and turntablists, have undergone a revival in the 2010s.
The original recordings of musicians, which may have been recorded on tape or digital methods, are sometimes re-issued on vinyl. Usage of terminology is not uniform across the English-speaking world. In more modern usage, the playback device is called a "turntable", "record player", or "record changer"; when used in conjunction with a mixer as part of a DJ setup, turntables are colloquially called "decks". In electric phonographs, the motions of the stylus are converted into an analogous electrical signal by a transducer converted back into sound by a loudspeaker; the term phonograph was derived from the Greek words φωνή and γραφή. The similar related terms gramophone and graphophone have similar root meanings; the roots were familiar from existing 19th-century words such as photograph and telephone. The new term may have been influenced by the existing words phonographic and phonography, which referred to a system of phonetic shorthand. Arguably, any device used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of "phonograph", but in common practice the word has come to mean historic technologies of sound recording, involving audio-frequency modulations of a physical trace or groove.
In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, "Phonograph", "Gramophone", "Graphophone", "Zonophone", the like were still brand names specific to various makers of sometimes different machines. "Talking machine" had earlier been used to refer to complicated devices which produced a crude imitation of speech, by simulating the workings of the vocal cords and lips – a potential source of confusion both and now. In British English, "gramophone" may refer to any sound-reproducing machine using disc records, which were introduced and popularized in the UK by the Gramophone Company. "gramophone" was a proprietary trademark of that company and any use of the name by competing makers of disc records was vigorously prosecuted in the courts, but in 1910 an English court decision decreed that it had become a generic term. The term "phonograph" was restricted to machines that used cylinder records. "Gramophone" referred to a wind-up machine. After the introduction of the softer vinyl records, 33 1⁄3-rpm LPs and 45-rpm "single" or two-song records, EPs, the common name became "record player" or "turntable".
The home record player was part of a system that included a radio and might play audiotape cassettes. From about 1960, such a system began to be described as a "hi-fi" or a "stereo". In American English, "phonograph", properly specific to machines made by Edison, was sometimes used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder
Selig Polyscope Company
The Selig Polyscope Company was an American motion picture company, founded in 1896 by William Selig in Chicago. Selig Polyscope is noted for establishing Southern California's first permanent movie studio, in the historic Edendale district of Los Angeles; the company produced hundreds of early distributed commercial moving pictures, including the first films starring Tom Mix, Harold Lloyd, Colleen Moore, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. The business became a struggling zoo and amusement park attraction in East Los Angeles, having ended film production in 1918. Selig had worked as a magician and minstrel show operator on the west coast of California. On, in Chicago he attempted to enter the film business using his own photographic equipment, free from patent restrictions imposed through companies controlled by Thomas Edison. In 1896, with help from Union Metal Works and Andrew Schustek, he shot his first film and the Dog, he went on to produce local actualities, slapstick comedies, early travelogues and industrial films.
In 1908 Selig Polyscope was involved in the production of The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, a touring "multimedia" attempt to bring L. Frank Baum's Oz books to a wider public. By 1909 Selig had studios making the Edendale district of Los Angeles; the company distributed stock film footage and titles from other studios. That year, Roscoe Arbuckle's first movie was a Selig comedy short; the company's early existence was fraught with legal turmoil over disputes with lawyers representing Thomas Edison's interests. In 1909 Selig and several other studio heads settled with Edison by creating an alliance with the inventor. A cartel, Motion Picture Patents Company dominated the industry for a few years until the Supreme Court ruled the firm was an illegal monopoly. In 1910 Selig Polyscope produced a wholly new filmed version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; the company produced the first commercial two-reel film and Pythias distributed its pictures in Great Britain and maintained an office in London for several years before World War I.
Although Selig Polyscope produced a wide variety of moving pictures, the company was most known for its wild animal shorts, historical subjects and early westerns. Attracted by Southern California's mild, dry climate, varied geography for location shooting and isolation from Edison's legal representatives on the east coast, Selig set up his studio in Edendale in 1909 with director Francis Boggs, who began the facility in a rented bungalow and expanded, designing the studio's front entrance after Mission San Gabriel. An early production there was The Count of Monte Cristo. Edendale soon became Selig Polyscope's headquarters, but in 1911 Boggs was murdered by a Japanese gardener who wounded Selig; the company produced hundreds of short features at Edendale, including many early westerns featuring Tom Mix. Selig Polyscope made dozens of successful short movies involving wild animals in exotic settings, including a popular re-creation of an African safari hunt by Teddy Roosevelt. In 1914 Selig made 14 short experimental "talking pictures" with Scottish actor Harry Lauder.
In 1913, through a collaborative partnership with the Chicago Tribune, Selig produced The Adventures of Kathlyn, introducing a dramatic serial plot device which came to be known as the cliffhanger. Each chapter's story was published in the newspaper. A combination of wild animals, clever dramatic action and Kathlyn Williams' screen presence resulted in significant success; the Tribune’s circulation increased by 10% and both dance and cocktail were named after Williams, whose likeness was sold on over 50,000 postcards. In 1915, Selig entered into an agreement with Vitagraph Studios, Lubin Manufacturing Company, Essanay Studios to form a film distribution partnership known as V-L-S-E, Incorporated. By 1913 Selig had gathered a large collection of animals for his films and spent substantial funds acquiring and developing 32 acres of land in Lincoln Heights northeast of downtown Los Angeles, where he opened a large public zoo. In 1917 Selig sold the Edendale facility to producer William Fox and moved his movie studio to the zoo in East Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, World War I cut into the substantial revenues Selig Polyscope had been garnering in Europe and the company shunned profitable movie industry trends, which had shifted towards dramatic full length feature films. Selig Polyscope became insolvent and ceased operations in 1918. Mix signed with Fox back at Edendale and went on to greater success as a matinée cowboy star. Movie staged many shoots at the Selig zoo; the First Tarzan movie was filmed there. In 1920 Louis B. Mayer rented his first studio space for Mayer Pictures at the site. Selig planned to develop it into a major tourist attraction, amusement park and popular resort named Selig Zoo Park with a Ferris wheel, mechanical rides, an enormous swimming pool with a sandy beach and a wave making machine, theatre, cinema and thousands of daily visitors. Only a single carousel was built. Selig Polyscope's extensive collection of props and furnishings were auctioned off at the zoo in 1923. Selig sold the zoo following a flood during the Great Depression.
Some of the animals were donated to Los Angeles County, forming a substantial addition to Griffith Park Zoo. The property was used as a jalopy racetrack during th
Feature film
A feature film or theatrical film is a film with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole film to fill a program. The term feature film referred to the main, full-length film in a cinema program that included a short film and a newsreel; the notion of how long a feature film should be has varied according to place. According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute and the British Film Institute, a feature film runs for at least 45 minutes, while the Screen Actors Guild asserts that a feature's running time is 75 minutes or longer. Most feature films are between 210 minutes long; the first narrative feature film was the 60-minute The Story of the Kelly Gang. The first -feature-length adaptation was Les Misérables. Other early feature films include The Inferno, Defence of Sevastopol, Quo Vadis?, Oliver Twist, Richard III, From the Manger to the Cross and Cleopatra. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute, the British Film Institute all define a feature as a film with a running time of 2,700 seconds or longer.
The Centre National de la Cinématographie in France defines it as a 35 mm film longer than 1,600 metres, 58 minutes and 29 seconds for sound films, the Screen Actors Guild gives a minimum running time of at least 75 minutes. The term feature film came into use to refer to the main film presented in a cinema and the one, promoted or advertised; the term was used to distinguish the longer film from the short films presented before the main film, such as newsreels, animated cartoons, live-action comedies, documentaries. There was no sudden increase in the running times of films to the present-day definitions of feature-length. Early features had been produced in the United States and France, but were released in individual scenes; this left exhibitors the option of playing them alone, to view an incomplete combination of some films, or to run them all together as a short film series. Early features were documentary-style films of noteworthy events; some of the earliest feature-length productions were films of boxing matches, such as The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight, Reproduction Of The Corbett-Jeffries Fight, The Jeffries-Sharkey Fight.
Some consider the 100-minute The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight to be the first documentary feature film, but it is more characterized as a sports program as it included the full unedited boxing match. In 1900, the documentary film In the Army was made, it was about the training techniques of the British soldier. Inauguration of the Australian Commonwealth ran for 35 minutes, "six times longer than any previous Australian film", has been called "possibly the first feature-length documentary made in Australia"; the American company S. Lubin released a Passion Play titled Lubin's Passion Play in January 1903 in 31 parts, totaling about 60 minutes; the French company Pathé Frères released a different Passion Play, The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, in May 1903 in 32 parts running about 44 minutes. Defined by length, the first dramatic feature film was the Australian 70-minute film The Story of the Kelly Gang; the first European feature was the 90-minute film L'Enfant prodigue, although, an unmodified record of a stage play.
The first Russian feature was Defence of Sevastopol in 1911. Early Italian features were The Inferno, Quo Vadis?, The Last Days of Pompeii, Cabiria. The first UK features were the documentary With Our King and Queen Through India, filmed in Kinemacolor and Oliver Twist; the first American features were adaptations of Oliver Twist, From the Manger to the Cross and Richard III. The latter starring actor Frederick Warde starred in some of these movie adaptations; the first Asian feature was Japan's The Life Story of Tasuke Shiobara, the first Indian feature was Raja Harishchandra, the first South American feature was Brazil's O Crime dos Banhados, the first African feature was South Africa's Die Voortrekkers. 1913 saw China's first feature film, Zhang Shichuan's Nan Fu Nan Qi. By 1915 over 600 feature films were produced annually in the United States, it is incorrectly cited that The Birth of a Nation was the first American feature film. The most prolific year of U. S. feature production was 1921, with 682 releases.
Between 1922 and 1970, the U. S. and Japan alternated as leaders in the quantity of feature film production. Since 1971, the country with the highest feature output has been India, which produces a thousand films in more than twelve Indian languages each year. In 1927, Warner Bros. released the first feature-length film with sound, The Jazz Singer, whose audio track was recorded with a proprietary technology called Vitaphone. The film's success persuaded other studios to go to the considerable expense of adding microphones to their sets, scramble to start producing their own "talkies". One of the next major advancements made in movie production was color film. Before color was a possibility in movies, early film makers were interested in how color could enhance their stories. Early technique
Irrigation
Irrigation is the application of controlled amounts of water to plants at needed intervals. Irrigation helps to grow agricultural crops, maintain landscapes, revegetate disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of less than average rainfall. Irrigation has other uses in crop production, including frost protection, suppressing weed growth in grain fields and preventing soil consolidation. In contrast, agriculture that relies only on direct rainfall is referred to as rain-fed or dry land farming. Irrigation systems are used for cooling livestock, dust suppression, disposal of sewage, in mining. Irrigation is studied together with drainage, the removal of surface and sub-surface water from a given area. Irrigation has been a central feature of agriculture for over 5,000 years and is the product of many cultures, it was the basis for economies and societies across the globe, from Asia to the Southwestern United States. Archaeological investigation has found evidence of irrigation in areas lacking sufficient natural rainfall to support crops for rainfed agriculture.
The earliest known use of the technology dates to the 6th millennium BCE in Khuzistan in the south-west of present-day Iran. Irrigation was used as a means of manipulation of water in the alluvial plains of the Indus valley civilization, the application of it is estimated to have begun around 4500 BC and drastically increased the size and prosperity of their agricultural settlements; the Indus Valley Civilization developed sophisticated irrigation and water-storage systems, including artificial reservoirs at Girnar dated to 3000 BCE, an early canal irrigation system from c. 2600 BCE. Large-scale agriculture was practiced, with an extensive network of canals used for the purpose of irrigation. Farmers in the Mesopotamian plain used irrigation from at least the third millennium BCE, they developed perennial irrigation watering crops throughout the growing season by coaxing water through a matrix of small channels formed in the field. Ancient Egyptians practiced basin irrigation using the flooding of the Nile to inundate land plots, surrounded by dykes.
The flood water remained until the fertile sediment had settled before the engineers returned the surplus to the watercourse. There is evidence of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Amenemhet III in the twelfth dynasty using the natural lake of the Faiyum Oasis as a reservoir to store surpluses of water for use during dry seasons; the lake swelled annually from the flooding of the Nile. The Ancient Nubians developed a form of irrigation by using a waterwheel-like device called a sakia. Irrigation began in Nubia some time between the third and second millennia BCE, it depended upon the flood waters that would flow through the Nile River and other rivers in what is now the Sudan. In sub-Saharan Africa irrigation reached the Niger River region cultures and civilizations by the first or second millennium BCE and was based on wet-season flooding and water harvesting. Evidence of terrace irrigation occurs in pre-Columbian America, early Syria and China. In the Zana Valley of the Andes Mountains in Peru, archaeologists have found remains of three irrigation canals radiocarbon-dated from the 4th millennium BCE, the 3rd millennium BCE and the 9th century CE.
These canals provide the earliest record of irrigation in the New World. Traces of a canal dating from the 5th millennium BCE were found under the 4th-millennium canal. Ancient Persia used irrigation as far back as the 6th millennium BCE to grow barley in areas with insufficient natural rainfall; the Qanats, developed in ancient Persia about 800 BCE, are among the oldest known irrigation methods still in use today. They are now found in the Middle East and North Africa; the system comprises a network of vertical wells and sloping tunnels driven into the sides of cliffs and of steep hills to tap groundwater. The noria, a water wheel with clay pots around the rim powered by the flow of the stream, first came into use at about this time among Roman settlers in North Africa. By 150 BCE the pots were fitted with valves to allow smoother filling as they were forced into the water; the irrigation works of ancient Sri Lanka, the earliest dating from about 300 BCE in the reign of King Pandukabhaya, under continuous development for the next thousand years, were one of the most complex irrigation systems of the ancient world.
In addition to underground canals, the Sinhalese were the first to build artificial reservoirs to store water. These reservoirs and canal systems were used to irrigate paddy fields, which require a lot of water to cultivate. Most of these irrigation systems still exist undamaged up to now, in Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, because of the advanced and precise engineering; the system was further extended during the reign of King Parakrama Bahu. The oldest known hydraulic engineers of China were Sunshu Ao of the Spring and Autumn period and Ximen Bao of the Warring States period, both of whom worked on large irrigation projects. In the Sichuan region belonging to the state of Qin of ancient China, the Dujiangyan Irrigation System devised by the Qin Chinese hydrologist and irrigation engineer Li Bing was built in 256 BCE to irrigate a vast area of farmland that today still supplies water. By the 2nd century AD, during the Han Dynasty, the Chinese used chain pumps which lifted water from a lower elevation to a higher one.
These were powered by manual foot-pedal, hydraulic waterwheels, or rotating mechanical wheels pulled by oxen. The water was used for public works, providing water for urban residential quarters and palace gardens, bu
