Indoor soccer
Indoor soccer or arena soccer, is a game derived from association football adapted for play in a walled indoor arena. Indoor soccer, as it is most known in the United States and Canada, was developed in these two countries as a way to play soccer during the winter months, when snow would make outdoor play difficult. In those countries, gymnasiums are adapted for indoor soccer play. In other countries the game is played in either indoor or outdoor arenas surrounded by walls, is referred to by different names. Indoor soccer has different regulations from other versions of association football designed for indoor play, such as futsal and five-a-side football. Unlike futsal, played on wooden or ceramic surfaces, indoor soccer is played on synthetic turf. Indoor soccer courts are delimited by walls instead of lines, there are no player throw-ins. FIFA, the international body that oversees international association football competitions, does not sanction the synthetic turf version of indoor soccer, having developed its own code of indoor football.
Indoor soccer is most popular in the United States and Mexico, with several amateur and professional leagues functioning. While internationally less popular than futsal, indoor soccer is played at the league level in many countries outside North America; the World Minifootball Federation is the governing body of indoor soccer at the international level, having replaced the International Fast Football Federation. The term minifootball, coined in Europe, has been adopted by the WMF as a standard international name for the sport. Indoor soccer is played throughout the world; the international federation dedicated to promoting the sport is the World Minifootball Federation based in the Czech Republic. The WMF replaced the International Fast Football Federation, based in Mexico and the United States. There are regional federations who govern the sport including: African Minifootball Federation, Asian Minifootball Confederation, Confederacion Panamericana de Minifutbol, European Minifootball Federation, Oceania Minifootball Federation.
During its existence, FIFRA organized several indoor soccer tournaments for national teams, including the Indoor Soccer World Championship. The only edition of this tournament took place in Mexico in 1997. No other indoor soccer world championship was held until 2015, when the WMF organized the first WMF World Cup in the United States; the second WMF World Cup took place in Tunisia in 2017. A world cup for Under-21 players was held in Prague with the Czech team taking the title. Star Sixes, an indoor six-a-side football tournament for national teams from around the world, was held in the O2 Arena in London in 2017. Held outside the auspices of the WMF, this tournament featured players which participated in the association football national teams of their home countries. A total of twelve teams participated, with France winning the title, it is intended to make Star Sixes a recurring event. A second edition took place with England winning the title. Indoor soccer is a common sport in the United States and Canada, with both amateur and professional leagues, due to the short season for outdoor soccer in Canada and the Northern United States, the ubiquity of arenas built for ice hockey and basketball which can be converted to indoor soccer.
It is popular in Northern Canada due to the unplayable outdoor conditions and its appearance in the Arctic Winter Games. Indoor soccer or futbol rapido has become a popular sport in Mexico, being included as part of the Universiada and the CONADEIP, in which university school teams from all over Mexico compete. In Mexico, "indoor" soccer fields are built outdoors. In 2012 an eight-team indoor soccer league was launched, which consists of former professional association football players from Liga MX. Indoor soccer is known in Brazil with several current regional leagues. Formal national leagues have formed in Bolivia, Uruguay and Peru. However, the most common variation of indoor soccer played in Brazil is Futsal. Indoor soccer is played in several European countries. In the United Kingdom, Masters Football is the most well-known competition. Tournaments among Masters teams are played. In Spain, some over-30 ex-professionals represent their clubs in the Liga Fertiberia which plays a five-a-side variant.
There is a European indoor soccer federation known as the European Minifootball Federation. EMF organize the European Minifootball Championship every year and in recent years countries have established official national minifootball associations to help them further organize and develop it. EMF organize variations of six-a-side football and this could come in different shapes and sizes from a large custom-built facility with multiple pitches or an 11-a-side pitch temporarily split into smaller pitches; this is not to be confused with the term used in Russia and some other former Soviet countries, where the term mini-fo
The Pale
The Pale or the English Pale was the part of Ireland directly under the control of the English government in the Late Middle Ages. It had been reduced by the late 15th century to an area along the east coast stretching from Dalkey, south of Dublin, to the garrison town of Dundalk; the inland boundary went to Naas and Leixlip around the Earldom of Kildare, towards Trim and north towards Kells. In this district, many townlands have French names; the Pale was a strip of land, centred on Dublin, that stretched from Dundalk in Louth to Bray in Wicklow and became the base of English rule in Ireland. The Norman invasion of Ireland, beginning in 1169, brought much of Ireland under the theoretical control of the Plantagenet Kings of England. From the 13th century onwards the Hiberno-Norman occupation in the rest of Ireland at first faltered waned. Across most of Ireland, the Normans assimilated into Irish culture after 1300, they made alliances with neighbouring autonomous Gaelic lords. In the long periods when there was no large royal army in Ireland, the Norman lords, like their Gaelic neighbours in the provinces, acted as independent rulers in their own areas.
The Lordship controlled by the English king shrank accordingly, as parts of its perimeter in counties Meath and Kildare were fenced or ditched, it became known as the Pale, deriving from the Latin word palus, a stake, or, synecdochically, a fence. Parts can still be seen west of Clane on the grounds of; the military power of the crown itself was weakened by the Hundred Years War, the Wars of the Roses. The Parliament of Ireland was created sitting at Drogheda until the Tudors took greater interest in Irish affairs from 1485 and moved it back to Dublin; the Pale consisted of fertile lowlands which were easier for the garrison to defend from ambush than hilly or wooded ground. For reasons of trade and administration, a version of English became the official language, its closest modern derivative is said to be the accent used by natives of Fingal. In 1366, so that the English Crown could assert its authority over the settlers, a parliament was assembled in Kilkenny and the Statute of Kilkenny was enacted.
The statute decreed that intermarriage between English settlers and Irish natives was forbidden. It forbade the settlers from using the Irish language and adopting Irish modes of dress or other customs, as such practices were common; the adoption of Gaelic Brehon property law, in particular, undermined the feudal nature of the Lordship. The Act was never implemented even in the Pale itself; this inability to enforce the statute indicated that Ireland was withdrawing from English cultural norms. By the Tudor period, the Irish culture and language had regained most of the territory lost to the colonists: “even in the Pale, all the common folk... for the most part are of Irish birth, Irish habit and of Irish language”. At a higher social level, there was extensive intermarriage between the Gaelic Irish aristocracy and Anglo-Norman lords, beginning not long after the invasion. By the late 15th century, the Pale became the only part of Ireland that remained subject to the English king, with most of the island paying only token recognition of the overlordship of the English crown.
The tax base shrank to a fraction of what it had been in 1300. A proverb quoted by Sir John Davies said that “whoso lives by west of the Barrow, lives west of the law.” The earls of Kildare ruled as Lords Deputy from 1470. This lasted until the 1520s, when the earls passed out of royal favour, but the 9th earl was reinstated in the 1530s; the brief revolt by his son "Silken Thomas" in 1534–35 served in the following decades to hasten the Tudor conquest of Ireland, in which Dublin and the surviving Pale were used as the crown's main military base. A book A Perambulation of Leinster and Louth, of which consist the English Pale expressed contemporary usage; the word pale derives from the Latin word pālus, meaning "stake" a stake used to support a fence. A fence made of pales ganged side by side, a palisade, is derived from the same root. From this came the figurative meaning of "boundary" and the phrase beyond the pale, as something outside the boundary — i.e. uncivilised. Derived from the "boundary" concept was the idea of a pale as an area within which local laws were valid.
The term was used not only for the Pale in Ireland but for various other English colonial settlements, notably English Calais. The term was adapted by other nations: the term Pale of Settlement was applied to the area in the west of Imperial Russia where Jews were permitted to reside; the Pale boundary consisted of a fortified ditch and rampart built around parts of the medieval counties of Louth, Meath and Kildare, leaving out half of Meath, most of Kildare, southwest County Dublin. The northern frontier of the Pale was marked by the De Verdon fortress of Castle Roche, while the southern border corresponded to the present day M50 motorway in Dublin, which crosses the site of what was Carrickmines Castle; the following description is from The Parish of Taney: A History of Dundrum, near Dublin, Its Neighbourhood: In the period after the Norman Settlement was constructed the barrier, known as the "Pale," separating the lands occupied by the settlers from those remaining in the hands of the Irish.
This barrier consisted of a ditch, raised some ten or twelve feet from the ground, with a hedge of thorn on the outer side. It was constructed, not so much to keep out the Irish, as to fo
Tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that can be played individually against a single opponent or between two teams of two players each. Each player uses a tennis racket, strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over or around a net and into the opponent's court; the object of the game is to maneuver the ball in such a way that the opponent is not able to play a valid return. The player, unable to return the ball will not gain a point, while the opposite player will. Tennis is played at all levels of society and at all ages; the sport can be played by anyone. The modern game of tennis originated in Birmingham, England, in the late 19th century as lawn tennis, it had close connections both to various field games such as croquet and bowls as well as to the older racket sport today called real tennis. During most of the 19th century, in fact, the term tennis referred to real tennis, not lawn tennis; the rules of modern tennis have changed little since the 1890s. Two exceptions are that from 1908 to 1961 the server had to keep one foot on the ground at all times, the adoption of the tiebreak in the 1970s.
A recent addition to professional tennis has been the adoption of electronic review technology coupled with a point-challenge system, which allows a player to contest the line call of a point, a system known as Hawk-Eye. Tennis is played by millions of recreational players and is a popular worldwide spectator sport; the four Grand Slam tournaments are popular: the Australian Open played on hard courts, the French Open played on red clay courts, Wimbledon played on grass courts, the US Open played on hard courts. Historians believe that the game's ancient origin lay in 12th century northern France, where a ball was struck with the palm of the hand. Louis X of France was a keen player of jeu de paume, which evolved into real tennis, became notable as the first person to construct indoor tennis courts in the modern style. Louis was unhappy with playing tennis outdoors and accordingly had indoor, enclosed courts made in Paris "around the end of the 13th century". In due course this design spread across royal palaces all over Europe.
In June 1316 at Vincennes, Val-de-Marne and following a exhausting game, Louis drank a large quantity of cooled wine and subsequently died of either pneumonia or pleurisy, although there was suspicion of poisoning. Because of the contemporary accounts of his death, Louis X is history's first tennis player known by name. Another of the early enthusiasts of the game was King Charles V of France, who had a court set up at the Louvre Palace, it wasn't until the 16th century that rackets came into use, the game began to be called "tennis", from the French term tenez, which can be translated as "hold!", "receive!" or "take!", an interjection used as a call from the server to his opponent. It was popular in England and France, although the game was only played indoors where the ball could be hit off the wall. Henry VIII of England was a big fan of this game, now known as real tennis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, as real tennis declined, new racket sports emerged in England. Further, the patenting of the first lawn mower in 1830, in Britain, is believed to have been the catalyst, for the preparation of modern-style grass courts, sporting ovals, playing fields, greens, etc.
This in turn led to the codification of modern rules for many sports, including lawn tennis, most football codes, lawn bowls and others. Between 1859 and 1865 Harry Gem, a solicitor and his friend Augurio Perera developed a game that combined elements of racquets and the Basque ball game pelota, which they played on Perera's croquet lawn in Birmingham, United Kingdom. In 1872, along with two local doctors, they founded the world's first tennis club on Avenue Road, Leamington Spa; this is. After Leamington, the second club to take up the game of lawn tennis appears to have been the Edgbaston Archery and Croquet Society in Birmingham. In Tennis: A Cultural History, Heiner Gillmeister reveals that on December 8, 1874, British army officer Walter Clopton Wingfield wrote to Harry Gem, commenting that he had been experimenting with his version of lawn tennis “for a year and a half”. In December 1873, Wingfield designed and patented a game which he called sphairistikè, was soon known as "sticky" – for the amusement of guests at a garden party on his friend's estate of Nantclwyd Hall, in Llanelidan, Wales.
According to R. D. C. Evans, turfgrass agronomist, "Sports historians all agree that deserves much of the credit for the development of modern tennis." According to Honor Godfrey, museum curator at Wimbledon, Wingfield "popularized this game enormously. He produced a boxed set which included a net, rackets, balls for playing the game – and most you had his rules, he was terrific at marketing and he sent his game all over the world. He had good connections with the clergy, the law profession, the aristocracy and he sent thousands of sets out in the first year or so, in 1874." The world's oldest annual tennis tournament took place at Leamington Lawn Tennis Club in Birmingham in 1874. This was three years before the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club would hold its first championships at Wimbledon, in 1877; the first Championships culminated a significant debate on. In the U. S. in 1874 Mary Ewing Outerbridge, a young socialite, returned from Bermuda with a sphairistikè set. She became fascin
Gaelic Athletic Association
The Gaelic Athletic Association is an Irish international amateur sporting and cultural organisation, focused on promoting indigenous Gaelic games and pastimes, which include the traditional Irish sports of hurling, Gaelic football, Gaelic handball and rounders. The association promotes Irish music and dance, the Irish language; as of 2014, the organisation had over 500,000 members worldwide, declared total revenues of €65.6 million in 2017. Gaelic football and hurling are the most popular activities promoted by the organisation, the most popular sports in the Republic of Ireland in terms of attendances. Gaelic football is the second most popular participation sport in Northern Ireland; the women's version of these games, ladies' Gaelic football and camogie, are organised by the independent but linked Ladies' Gaelic Football Association and the Camogie Association of Ireland respectively. GAA Handball is the Irish governing body for the sport of handball, while the other Gaelic sport, rounders, is managed by the GAA Rounders National Council.
Since its foundation in 1884, the association has grown to become a major influence in Irish sporting and cultural life with considerable reach into communities throughout Ireland and among the Irish diaspora. On 1 November 1884, a group of Irishmen gathered in the Hayes' Hotel billiard room to formulate a plan and establish an organisation to foster and preserve Ireland's unique games and athletic pastimes, and so, the Gaelic Athletic Association was founded. The architects and founding members were Michael Cusack of County Clare, Maurice Davin, Joseph K. Bracken, Thomas St George McCarthy, a District Inspector in the Royal Irish Constabulary, P. J. Ryan of Tipperary, John Wise-Power, John McKay. Maurice Davin was elected President, Wyse-Power and McKay were elected Secretaries and it was agreed that Archbishop Croke, Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Davitt would be asked to become Patrons. In 1922 it passed over the job of promoting athletics to the National Athletic and Cycling Association.
The association has had a long history of promoting Irish culture. Through a division of the association known as Scór, the association promotes Irish cultural activities, running competitions in music, singing and storytelling. Rule 4 of the GAA's official guide states: The Association shall support the Irish language, traditional Irish dancing, music and other aspects of Irish culture, it shall foster an awareness and love of the national ideals in the people of Ireland, assist in promoting a community spirit through its clubs. The group was formally founded in 1969, is promoted through various Association clubs throughout Ireland; the association has many stadiums scattered throughout Ireland and beyond. Every county, nearly all clubs, have grounds on which to play their home games, with varying capacities and utilities; the hierarchical structure of the GAA is applied to the use of grounds. Clubs play at their own grounds for the early rounds of the club championship, while the latter rounds from quarter-finals to finals are held at a county ground, i.e. the ground where inter-county games take place or where the county board is based.
The provincial championship finals are played at the same venue every year. However, there have been exceptions, such as in Ulster, where in 2004 and 2005 the Ulster Football Finals were played in Croke Park, as the anticipated attendance was to far exceed the capacity of the traditional venue of St Tiernach's Park, Clones. Croke Park is the association's flagship venue and is known colloquially as Croker or Headquarters, since the venue doubles as the association's base. With a capacity of 82,300, it ranks among the top five stadiums in Europe by capacity, having undergone extensive renovations for most of the 1990s and early 21st century; every September, Croke Park hosts the All-Ireland inter-county Hurling and Football Finals as the conclusion to the summer championships. Croke Park holds the All-Ireland club football and hurling finals on every St. Patrick's Day. Croke Park is named after Archbishop Thomas Croke, elected as a patron of the GAA during the formation of the GAA in 1884; the next three biggest grounds are all in Munster: Semple Stadium in Thurles, County Tipperary, with a capacity of 53,000, the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick, which holds 50,000, Páirc Uí Chaoimh, County Cork, which can accommodate 45,000.
Other grounds with capacities above 25,000 include: Fitzgerald Stadium, in Killarney, a capacity of 43,180 MacHale Park in Castlebar, the largest stadium in Connacht, a capacity of 42,000 St Tiernach's Park in Clones, County Monaghan, hosts most Ulster finals, a capacity of 36,000 Kingspan Breffni Park, in Cavan Town, County Cavan, which hosted International rules football series games in 2013, a capacity of 32,000 Casement Park, in Belfast, a capacity of 32,600 O'Moore Park, in Portlaoise, County Laois, a capacity of 27,000 Healy Park, in Omagh, County Tyrone, a capacity of 26,500 Pearse Stadium in Galway, which has hosted International rules football series games, a capacity of 26,197Research by former Fermanagh county footballer Niall Cunningham led to the publication in 2016 by his website, gaapitchlocator.net, of a map of 1,748 GAA grounds in Ireland, ranging from 24 grounds in his own county to 171 in Cork. The association has, since its inception, been associated with Irish nationalism, this has continued to the present in relation to Northern Ireland, where the sports are played exclusively by members of the ma
Shire
A shire is a traditional term for a division of land, found in Great Britain, New Zealand and some other English-speaking countries. It was first used in Wessex from the beginning of Anglo-Saxon settlement, spread to most of the rest of England in the tenth century. In some rural parts of Australia, a shire is a local government area; the word derives from the Old English scir, itself a derivative of the Proto-Germanic skizo, meaning care or official charge. In the UK, "shire" is the original term for what is known now as a county; the two are nearly synonymous. Although in modern British usage counties are referred to as "shires" in poetic contexts, terms such as Shire Hall remain common. Shire remains a common part of many county names. In regions with so-called rhotic pronunciation such as Scotland, the word shire is pronounced. In non-rhotic areas the final R is silent; when shire is a suffix as part of a placename in England, the vowel is unstressed and thus shortened and/or monophthongised: pronunciations include, or sometimes, with the pronunciation of the final R again depending on rhoticity.
In many words, the vowel is reduced all the way to a single schwa, as in for instance Leicestershire or Berkshire. Outside England, in Scotland and the US, it is more common for shire as part of a placename to be pronounced identically to the full word, as a result of spelling pronunciation; the system was first used in the kingdom of Wessex from the beginning of Anglo-Saxon settlement, spread to most of the rest of England in the tenth century, along with the West Saxon kingdom's political domination. In Domesday the city of York was divided into shires; the first shires of Scotland were created in English-settled areas such as Lothian and the Borders, in the ninth century. King David I more created shires and appointed sheriffs across lowland shores of Scotland; the shire in early days was governed by an Ealdorman and in the Anglo-Saxon period by royal official known as a "shire reeve" or sheriff. The shires were divided into hundreds or wapentakes, although other less common sub-divisions existed.
An alternative name for a shire was a "sheriffdom" until sheriff court reforms separated the two concepts. The phrase "shire county" applies, unofficially, to non-metropolitan counties in England those that are not local Unitary authority areas. In Scotland the word "county" was not adopted for the shires. Although "county" appears in some texts, "shire" was the normal name until counties for statutory purposes were created in the nineteenth century. "Shire" refers, in a narrower sense, to ancient counties with names that ended in "shire". These counties are named after their county town; the suffix -shire is attached to most of the names of English and Welsh counties. It tends not to be found in the names of shires. Essex and Sussex, for example, have never borne a -shire, as each represents a former Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Cornwall was a British kingdom before it became an English county; the term'shire' is not used in the names of the six traditional counties of Northern Ireland. Counties in England bearing the "-shire" suffix include: Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cheshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Staffordshire, Wiltshire and Yorkshire.
These counties, on their historical boundaries, cover a little more than half the area of England. The counties that do not use "-shire" are in three areas, in the south-east, south-west and far north of England. Several of these counties no longer exist as administrative units, or have had their administrative boundaries reduced by local government reforms. Several of the successor authorities retain the "-shire" county names, such as West Yorkshire and South Gloucestershire; the county of Devon was known as Devonshire, although this is no longer the official name. Dorset and Somerset were known as Dorsetshire and Somersetshire, but these terms are no longer official, are used outside the local populations. Hexhamshire was a county in the north-east of England from the early 12th century until 1572, when it was incorporated into Northumberland. In Scotland affected by the Norman conquest of England, the word "shire" prevailed over "county" until the 19th century. Earliest sources have the same usage of the "-shire" suffix as in England.
The "Shire" appears as a separate word. "Shire" names in Scotland include Aberdeenshire, Banffshire, Clackmannanshire, Dumfriesshire, Inverness-shire, Kinross-shire, Kirkcudbrightshire, Morayshire, Peeblesshire, Renfrewshire, Ross-shire, Selkirkshire and Wigtownshire. In Scotland four shires have alternative names with the "-shire" suffix: Angus, East Lothian and West Lothian. Sutherland is still referred to as Sutherlandshire. Argyllshire, Caithness-shire and Fifeshire are sometimes found. Morayshire was called Elginshire. There is debate about whether Arg
Wicklow
Wicklow is the county town of County Wicklow in Ireland. Located south of Dublin on the east coast of the island, it has a population of 10,584 according to the 2016 census; the town is to the east of the N11 route between Wexford. Wicklow is linked to the rail network, with Dublin commuter services now extending to the town. Additional services connect with Arklow and Rosslare Europort, a main ferry port. There is a commercial port importing timber and textiles; the River Vartry is the main river. Wicklow town forms a rough semicircle around Wicklow harbour. To the immediate north lies'The Murrough', a popular grassy walking area beside the sea, the eastern coastal strip; the Murrough is a place of growing commercial use, so much so that a road by-passing the town directly to the commercial part of the area commenced construction in 2008 and was completed in summer of 2010. The eastern coastal strip includes Wicklow bay, a crescent shaped stone beach 10 km in length. Ballyguile Hill is to the southwest of the town.
Much of the housing developments of the 1970s and 1980s occurred in this area, despite the considerable gradient from the town centre. The land rises into rolling hills to the west, going on to meet the Wicklow Mountains in the centre of the county; the dominant feature to the south is the rocky headlands of Bride's Head and Wicklow Head, the easternmost mainland point of the Republic of Ireland. On a clear day it is possible to see the Snowdonia mountain range in Wales. Similar to much of the rest of northwestern Europe, Wicklow experiences a maritime climate with cool summers, mild winters, a lack of temperature extremes; the average maximum January temperature is 9.2 °C, while the average maximum August temperature is 21.2 °C. On average, the sunniest month is May; the wettest month is October with 118.9 mm of rain and the driest month is April with 60.7 mm. With the exceptions of October and November, rainfall is evenly distributed throughout the year with rainfall falling within a narrow band of between 60 and 86 mm for any one month.
However, a considerable spike occurs in October and November each of which records double the typical rainfall of April. Wicklow is sheltered locally by Ballyguile hill and, more distantly by the Wicklow mountains; this sheltered location makes it one of the warmest places in Ireland. It receives only about 60% the rainfall of the west coast. In addition because Wicklow is protected by the mountains from southwesterly and westerly winds, it enjoys higher average temperatures than much of Ireland, its average high in August of 21.2 °C is a full 1 °C higher than the highest average month in Dublin, only 50 km to the north. While its location is favorable for protection against the prevailing westerly and southwesterly winds that are common to much of Ireland, Wicklow is exposed to easterly winds; as these winds come from the northern European landmass Wicklow can, along with much of the east coast of Ireland, experience sharp temperature drops in winter for short periods. Since 1995, the town has undergone significant change and expansion reflecting the simultaneous growth in the Irish economy.
Considerable residential development has taken place to the west of the town along Marlton Road. More housing developments have been concentrated to the northwest of the town towards the neighbouring village of Rathnew; the completion of the Ashford/Rathnew bypass in 2004 has meant that Wicklow is now linked to the capital, lying 42 km to the north, by dual carriageway and motorway. These factors have led to a steady growth in population of Wicklow and its surrounding townlands while its importance as a commuter town to Dublin increases. Earlier spellings of the town's name include Wykinglo in 1173, Wygingelow in 1185, Wykinglo in 1192, Wykinglowe in 1355; the Swedish toponymist Magne Oftedal criticises the usual explanation that the name comes from Old Norse Vikingr and Old Norse ló, to say "the Vikings' meadow" or "Viking's meadow". He notices that -lo was never used outside Norway and Scandinavia. Furthermore, this word is never combined with a male name or a general word meaning "a category of person".
Moreover, "Viking" never appears in toponymic records. For him, the first element can be explained as Uikar- or Uik- "bay" in Old Norse and the intermediate N of the old forms is a mistake by the clerks. However, all recorded forms show this N; that is the reason why Liam Price says it is a Norwegian place-name and A. Sommerfelt gives it as a former Vikinga-ló and understands it as "the Vikings' meadow"; the Irish patronimics Ó hUiginn and Mac Uiginn could bring a key for the meaning "Meadow of a man called Viking". Wykinglo was the usual name used by the Viking sailors and the traders who travelled around the Anglo-Scandinavian world; the Normans and Anglo-Normans who conquered Ireland preferred the non-Gaelic placename. The origin of the Irish name Cill Mhantáin bears no relation to the name Wicklow, it has an interesting folklore of its own. Saint Patrick and some followers are said to have tried to land on Travailahawk beach, to the south of the harbour. Hostile locals attacked them. Manntach, as he became known, was undeterred and returned to the town founding a church.
Hence Cill Mhantáin, meaning "church of the toothless one". Although its anglicised spelling Kilmantan was used for a time, it fell out of use. During
Information technology
Information technology is the use of computers to store, retrieve and manipulate data, or information in the context of a business or other enterprise. IT is considered to be a subset of communications technology. An information technology system is an information system, a communications system or, more speaking, a computer system – including all hardware and peripheral equipment – operated by a limited group of users. Humans have been storing, retrieving and communicating information since the Sumerians in Mesopotamia developed writing in about 3000 BC, but the term information technology in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 article published in the Harvard Business Review. We shall call it information technology." Their definition consists of three categories: techniques for processing, the application of statistical and mathematical methods to decision-making, the simulation of higher-order thinking through computer programs. The term is used as a synonym for computers and computer networks, but it encompasses other information distribution technologies such as television and telephones.
Several products or services within an economy are associated with information technology, including computer hardware, electronics, internet, telecom equipment, e-commerce. Based on the storage and processing technologies employed, it is possible to distinguish four distinct phases of IT development: pre-mechanical, electromechanical, electronic; this article focuses on the most recent period, which began in about 1940. Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years initially in the form of a tally stick; the Antikythera mechanism, dating from about the beginning of the first century BC, is considered to be the earliest known mechanical analog computer, the earliest known geared mechanism. Comparable geared devices did not emerge in Europe until the 16th century, it was not until 1645 that the first mechanical calculator capable of performing the four basic arithmetical operations was developed. Electronic computers, using either valves, began to appear in the early 1940s.
The electromechanical Zuse Z3, completed in 1941, was the world's first programmable computer, by modern standards one of the first machines that could be considered a complete computing machine. Colossus, developed during the Second World War to decrypt German messages, was the first electronic digital computer. Although it was programmable, it was not general-purpose, being designed to perform only a single task, it lacked the ability to store its program in memory. The first recognisably modern electronic digital stored-program computer was the Manchester Baby, which ran its first program on 21 June 1948; the development of transistors in the late 1940s at Bell Laboratories allowed a new generation of computers to be designed with reduced power consumption. The first commercially available stored-program computer, the Ferranti Mark I, contained 4050 valves and had a power consumption of 25 kilowatts. By comparison the first transistorised computer, developed at the University of Manchester and operational by November 1953, consumed only 150 watts in its final version.
Early electronic computers such as Colossus made use of punched tape, a long strip of paper on which data was represented by a series of holes, a technology now obsolete. Electronic data storage, used in modern computers, dates from World War II, when a form of delay line memory was developed to remove the clutter from radar signals, the first practical application of, the mercury delay line; the first random-access digital storage device was the Williams tube, based on a standard cathode ray tube, but the information stored in it and delay line memory was volatile in that it had to be continuously refreshed, thus was lost once power was removed. The earliest form of non-volatile computer storage was the magnetic drum, invented in 1932 and used in the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercially available general-purpose electronic computer. IBM introduced the first hard disk drive as a component of their 305 RAMAC computer system. Most digital data today is still stored magnetically on hard disks, or optically on media such as CD-ROMs.
Until 2002 most information was stored on analog devices, but that year digital storage capacity exceeded analog for the first time. As of 2007 94% of the data stored worldwide was held digitally: 52% on hard disks, 28% on optical devices and 11% on digital magnetic tape, it has been estimated that the worldwide capacity to store information on electronic devices grew from less than 3 exabytes in 1986 to 295 exabytes in 2007, doubling every 3 years. Database management systems emerged in the 1960s to address the problem of storing and retrieving large amounts of data and quickly. One of the earliest such systems was IBM's Information Management System, still deployed more than 50 years later. IMS stores data hierarchically, but in the 1970s Ted Codd proposed an alternative relational storage model based on set theory and predicate logic and the familiar concepts of tables and columns; the first commercially available relational database management system was available from Oracle in 1981. All database management systems consist of a number of components that together allow the data they store to be accessed simultan
