1.
Heliography
–
Heliography is the photographic process invented by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce around 1822, which he used to make the earliest known surviving photograph from nature, View from the Window at Le Gras. The process used Bitumen of Judea, a naturally occurring asphalt and it hardened in proportion to its exposure to light. When the plate was washed with oil of lavender, only the areas remained. The word has also used to refer to other phenomena, for description of the sun, for photography in general, for signalling by heliograph. Found on old reproductions, may stand for the French word héliogravure, Art & Architecture Thesaurus, s. v. heliography. The University of Texas at Austin, an Improved Method in the Art of Signalling for Military & Scientific Purposes
2.
Photograph
–
A photograph or photo is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic medium such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scenes visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of what the eye would see. The process and practice of creating photographs is called photography, the word photograph was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on the Greek φῶς, meaning light, and γραφή, meaning drawing, writing, together meaning drawing with light. The first permanent photograph, a copy of an engraving, was made in 1822 using the bitumen-based heliography process developed by Nicéphore Niépce. In 1829 Niépce entered into a partnership with Louis Daguerre and the two collaborated to work out a similar but more sensitive and otherwise improved process, after Niépces death in 1833, Daguerre concentrated on silver halide-based alternatives. He named this first practical process for making photographs with a camera the daguerreotype and its existence was announced to the world on 7 January 1839 but working details were not made public until 19 August. Other inventors soon made improvements which reduced the exposure time from a few minutes to a few seconds, making portrait photography truly practical. The daguerreotype had shortcomings, notably the fragility of the image surface. Each was a unique opaque positive that could only be duplicated by copying it with a camera, inventors set about working out improved processes that would be more practical. By the end of the 1850s the daguerreotype had been replaced by the expensive and more easily viewed ambrotype and tintype. The mid-1930s saw the introduction of Kodachrome and Agfacolor Neu, the first easy-to-use color films of the modern multi-layer chromogenic type, the needs of the motion picture industry generated a number of special processes and systems, perhaps the best-known being the now-obsolete three-strip Technicolor process. Non-digital photographs are produced with a chemical process. In the two-step process the film captures a negative image. To produce an image, the negative is most commonly transferred onto photographic paper. Printing the negative onto transparent film stock is used to motion picture films. Alternatively, the film is processed to invert the negative image, such positive images are usually mounted in frames, called slides. Before recent advances in photography, transparencies were widely used by professionals because of their sharpness. Most photographs published in magazines were taken on color transparency film, originally, all photographs were monochromatic or hand-painted in color
3.
Camera obscura
–
The surroundings of the projected image have to be relatively dark for the image to be clear, so many historical camera obscura experiments were performed in dark rooms. The term camera obscura also refers to constructions or devices that use of the principle within a box. Camerae obscurae with a lens in the opening have been used since the second half of the 16th century, before the term camera obscura was first used in 1604, many other expressions were used including cubiculum obscurum, cubiculum tenebricosum, conclave obscurum and locus obscurus. Rays of light travel in straight lines and change when they are reflected and partly absorbed by an object, retaining information about the color, lit objects reflect rays of light in all directions. The human eye itself works much like a camera obscura with an opening, a biconvex lens, a camera obscura device consists of a box, tent or room with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside, where the scene is reproduced, inverted and reversed. The image can be projected onto paper, and can then be traced to produce an accurate representation. In order to produce a reasonably clear projected image, the aperture has to be about 1/100th the distance to the screen, many camerae obscurae use a lens rather than a pinhole because it allows a larger aperture, giving a usable brightness while maintaining focus. As the pinhole is made smaller, the image gets sharper, with too small a pinhole, however, the sharpness worsens, due to diffraction. Using mirrors, as in an 18th-century overhead version, it is possible to project a right-side-up image, another more portable type is a box with an angled mirror projecting onto tracing paper placed on the glass top, the image being upright as viewed from the back. There are theories that occurrences of camera obscura effects inspired paleolithic cave paintings and it is also suggested that camera obscura projections could have played a role in Neolithic structures. Perforated gnomons projecting an image of the sun were described in the Chinese Zhoubi Suanjing writings. The location of the circle can be measured to tell the time of day. In Arab and European cultures its invention was later attributed to Egyptian astronomer. Some ancient sightings of gods and spirits, especially in worship, are thought to possibly have been conjured up by means of camera obscura projections. In these writings it is explained how the image in a collecting-point or treasure house is inverted by an intersecting point that collected the light. Light coming from the foot of a person would partly be hidden below. Rays from the head would partly be hidden above and partly form the part of the image
4.
Pewter
–
Pewter is a malleable metal alloy, traditionally 85–99% tin, with the remainder consisting of copper, antimony, bismuth and sometimes, less commonly today, lead. Copper and antimony act as hardeners while lead is common in the grades of pewter. It has a low melting point, around 170–230 °C, depending on the mixture of metals. The word pewter is probably a variation of the word spelter, Pewter was first used around the beginning of the Bronze Age in the Near East. The earliest piece of pewter found is from an Egyptian tomb from 1450 BC, the constituents of pewter were first controlled in the 12th century by town guilds in France. By the 15th century, the Worshipful Company of Pewterers controlled pewter constituents in England and this company originally had two grades of pewter, but in the 16th century a third grade was added. The first type, known as metal, was used for tableware. It consisted of tin with as much copper as it could absorb, the second type, known as trifling metal or trifle, was used for holloware and is made up of fine metal with approximately 4% lead. The last type of pewter, known as lay or ley metal, was used for items that were not in contact with food or drink and it consisted of tin with 15% lead. These three alloys were used, with variation, until the 20th century. Older pewters with higher lead content are heavier, tarnish faster, pewters containing lead are no longer used in items that will come in contact with the human body due to health concerns stemming from the lead content. Modern pewters are available that are free of lead, although many pewters containing lead are still being produced for other purposes. A typical European casting alloy contains 94% tin, 1% copper, a European pewter sheet would contain 92% tin, 2% copper, and 6% antimony. Asian pewter, produced mostly in Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, contains a percentage of tin, usually 97. 5% tin, 1% copper. This makes the alloy slightly softer, Pewter items are often found in churches. Pewter was the chief tableware until the making of porcelain, mass production of pottery, porcelain and glass products has seen pewter universally replaced in day-to-day life. Pewter artifacts continue to be produced, mainly as decorative or specialty items, Pewter was also used around East Asia. Although some items still exist, Ancient Roman pewter is rare, in the early 19th century, changes in fashion caused a decline in the use of pewter flatware
5.
Asphalt
–
Asphalt, also known as bitumen is a sticky, black and highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in deposits or may be a refined product. Until the 20th century, the term asphaltum was also used, the word is derived from the Ancient Greek ἄσφαλτος ásphaltos. The primary use of asphalt/bitumen is in construction, where it is used as the glue or binder mixed with aggregate particles to create asphalt concrete. Its other main uses are for bituminous waterproofing products, including production of roofing felt, the terms asphalt and bitumen are often used interchangeably to mean both natural and manufactured forms of the substance. In American English, asphalt is the carefully refined residue from the process of selected crude oils. Outside the United States, the product is often called bitumen, geologists often prefer the term bitumen. Common usage often refers to forms of asphalt/bitumen as tar. Naturally occurring asphalt/bitumen is sometimes specified by the crude bitumen. Its viscosity is similar to that of cold molasses while the material obtained from the distillation of crude oil boiling at 525 °C is sometimes referred to as refined bitumen. The Canadian province of Alberta has most of the reserves of natural bitumen, covering 142,000 square kilometres. Additionally, most natural bitumens contain organosulfur compounds, resulting in a sulfur content of up to 4%. Nickel and vanadium are found in the <10 ppm level, as is typical of some petroleum, the substance is soluble in carbon disulfide. It is commonly modelled as a colloid, with asphaltenes as the dispersed phase, and it is almost impossible to separate and identify all the different molecules of asphalt, because the number of molecules with different chemical structure is extremely large. Asphalt/bitumen can sometimes be confused with tar, which is a visually similar black. During the early and mid-20th century when town gas was produced, coal tar was a readily available byproduct, the addition of tar to macadam roads led to the word tarmac, which is now used in common parlance to refer to road-making materials. However, since the 1970s, when natural gas succeeded town gas, other examples of this confusion include the La Brea Tar Pits and the Canadian oil sands, both of which actually contain natural bitumen rather than tar. Pitch is another term used at times to refer to asphalt/bitumen
6.
Lavender oil
–
Lavender oil is an essential oil obtained by distillation from the flower spikes of certain species of lavender. Like all essential oils, it is not a compound, it is a complex mixture of naturally occurring phytochemicals, including linalool. Kashmir Lavender oil is famous for being produced from lavender at the foothills of the Himalayas, as of 2011, the biggest lavender oil producer in the world is Bulgaria. Lavender oil has long used in the production of perfume. Oil of spike lavender was used as a solvent in oil painting, Lavender oil appears to be an endocrine disruptor, exhibiting anti-androgenic activity in vitro. The exact composition of lavender essential oil varies from species to species, of these linalool and linalyl acetate dominate, with moderate levels of lavandulyl acetate, terpinen-4-ol and lavandulol. 1, 8-cineole and camphor are also present in low to moderate qualities, in all lavender oil typically contains many more than 100 compounds, although a great many of these are present at very low concentrations. The composition of lavender essential oil as obtained by chromatography, Lavender Essential oil
7.
White spirit
–
In western Europe about 60% of the total white spirit consumption is used in paints, lacquers and varnishes. White spirit is the most widely used solvent in the paint industry, White spirit is a mixture of aliphatic and alicyclic C7 to C12 hydrocarbons with a maximum content of 25% of C7 to C12 aromatic hydrocarbons. Three different types and three different grades of white spirit exist, the type refers to whether the solvent has been subjected to hydrodesulfurization alone, solvent extraction or hydrogenation. Each type comprises three different grades, low grade, regular grade, and high flash grade. The grade is determined by the oil used as the starting material. In addition there is type 0, which is defined as distillation fraction with no further treatment, dry cleaners began using the result of their work in 1928 and it soon became the predominant dry cleaning solvent in the United States, until the late 1950s. Turpentine substitute is not made to a standard and can have a wider range of components than products marketed as white spirit. The physical properties of the three types of spirit are, White Spirit is a petroleum distillate used as a paint thinner. In industry, mineral spirits are used for cleaning and degreasing machine tools and parts, mineral spirits are an inexpensive petroleum-based replacement for the vegetable-based turpentine. It is commonly used as a paint thinner for oil-based paint and cleaning brushes, mineral turpentine is chemically very different from turpentine, which mainly consists of pinene, and it has inferior solvent properties. Artists use mineral spirits as an alternative to turpentine since it is less flammable, because of interactions with pigments, artists require a higher grade of mineral spirits than many industrial users, including the complete absence of residual sulfur. Mineral spirits have a characteristic unpleasant kerosene-like odor, chemical manufacturers have developed a low odor version of mineral turpentine which contains less of the highly volatile shorter hydrocarbons. In screen printing, mineral spirits are used to clean and unclog screens after printing with oil-based textile. They are also used to thin inks used in making monoprints, mineral spirits are often used inside liquid-filled compasses and gauges. Mineral spirits are used for re-gripping golf clubs. After the old grip is removed, the spirits are poured into the new grip. After the mineral spirits are poured on, the new underlying tape, after an hour of drying out, the new grip and club are ready to use. Although not normally marketed as a fuel, white spirit can be used as an alternative to kerosene in portable stoves and it cannot be used as an alternative to white gas, which is a much more volatile gasoline-like fuel
8.
Franz Bauer
–
Franz Andreas Bauer was an Austrian microscopist and botanical artist. Born in Feldsberg, Moravia, he was the son of Lucas Bauer, court painter to the Prince of Liechtenstein, after Lucas Bauers death, his wife, Therese continued to give her three sons lessons in art and illustration. Josef succeeded his father as court painter and eventually became keeper of the gallery in Vienna, during this time he tutored Queen Charlotte, Princess Elizabeth and William Hooker in the art of illustration, and often entertained friends and botanists at his home. He died in 1840, and is buried at St. Annes Church, Kew, delineations of Exotick Plants cultivated in the Royal Garden at Kew. Drawn and coloured and the Botanical characters displayed according to the Linnean System by Francis Bauer, 1796-83 The Genera and Species of Orchidaceous Plants, illustrated by drawings on stone from the sketches of Francis Bauerby John Lindley. London, Ridgways and Treuttel, Wurtz, 1830-1838, stewart, Joyce and William T. Stearn. The orchid paintings of Franz Bauer,1995 ADB Kew biography of Francis Bauer Description of drawings by Bauer at Senate House Library, University of London
9.
Royal Society
–
Founded in November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles II as The Royal Society. The society is governed by its Council, which is chaired by the Societys President, according to a set of statutes and standing orders. The members of Council and the President are elected from and by its Fellows, the members of the society. As of 2016, there are about 1,600 fellows, allowed to use the postnominal title FRS, there are also royal fellows, honorary fellows and foreign members, the last of which are allowed to use the postnominal title ForMemRS. The Royal Society President is Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, who took up the post on 30 November 2015, since 1967, the society has been based at 6–9 Carlton House Terrace, a Grade I listed building in central London which was previously used by the Embassy of Germany, London. The Royal Society started from groups of physicians and natural philosophers, meeting at variety of locations and they were influenced by the new science, as promoted by Francis Bacon in his New Atlantis, from approximately 1645 onwards. A group known as The Philosophical Society of Oxford was run under a set of rules still retained by the Bodleian Library, after the English Restoration, there were regular meetings at Gresham College. It is widely held that these groups were the inspiration for the foundation of the Royal Society, I will not say, that Mr Oldenburg did rather inspire the French to follow the English, or, at least, did help them, and hinder us. But tis well known who were the men that began and promoted that design. This initial royal favour has continued and, since then, every monarch has been the patron of the society, the societys early meetings included experiments performed first by Hooke and then by Denis Papin, who was appointed in 1684. These experiments varied in their area, and were both important in some cases and trivial in others. The Society returned to Gresham in 1673, there had been an attempt in 1667 to establish a permanent college for the society. Michael Hunter argues that this was influenced by Solomons House in Bacons New Atlantis and, to a lesser extent, by J. V. The first proposal was given by John Evelyn to Robert Boyle in a letter dated 3 September 1659, he suggested a scheme, with apartments for members. The societys ideas were simpler and only included residences for a handful of staff and these plans were progressing by November 1667, but never came to anything, given the lack of contributions from members and the unrealised—perhaps unrealistic—aspirations of the society. During the 18th century, the gusto that had characterised the early years of the society faded, with a number of scientific greats compared to other periods. The pointed lightning conductor had been invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1749, during the same time period, it became customary to appoint society fellows to serve on government committees where science was concerned, something that still continues. The 18th century featured remedies to many of the early problems
10.
Louis Daguerre
–
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre was a French artist and photographer, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography. He became known as one of the fathers of photography, though he is most famous for his contributions to photography, he was also an accomplished painter and a developer of the diorama theatre. Louis Daguerre was born in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, Val-dOise, France and he was apprenticed in architecture, theatre design, and panoramic painting to Pierre Prévost, the first French panorama painter. Exceedingly adept at his skill of theatrical illusion, he became a designer for the theatre, and later came to invent the diorama. In 1829, Daguerre partnered with Nicéphore Niépce, an inventor who had produced the worlds first heliograph in 1822, Niépce died suddenly in 1833, but Daguerre continued experimenting, and evolved the process which would subsequently be known as the daguerreotype. After efforts to interest private investors proved fruitless, Daguerre went public with his invention in 1839, under assurances of strict confidentiality, Daguerre explained and demonstrated the process only to the Academys perpetual secretary François Arago, who proved to be an invaluable advocate. Members of the Academy and other individuals were allowed to examine specimens at Daguerres studio. The images were enthusiastically praised as nearly miraculous, and news of the daguerreotype quickly spread, in 1839, he was elected to the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician. Daguerre died on 10 July 1851 in Bry-sur-Marne,12 km from Paris, a monument marks his grave there. Daguerres name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel tower, in the mid-1820s, prior to his association with Daguerre, Niépce used a coating of bitumen of Judea to make the first permanent camera photographs. The bitumen was hardened where it was exposed to light and the portion was then removed with a solvent. A camera exposure lasting for hours or days was required, Niépce and Daguerre later refined this process, but unacceptably long exposures were still needed. After the death of Niépce in 1833, Daguerre concentrated his attention on the properties of silver salts. The plate was exposed in the camera. Upon seeing the image, the contents of which are unknown, Daguerre said, the latent image on a daguerreotype plate was developed by subjecting it to the vapor given off by mercury heated to 75 °C. The resulting visible image was then fixed by removing the silver iodide with concentrated and heated salt water. Later, a solution of the more effective hypo was used instead, the resultant plate produced an exact reproduction of the scene. The image was laterally reversed—as images in mirrors are—unless a mirror or inverting prism was used during exposure to flip the image, daguerreotypes were usually portraits, the rarer landscape views and other unusual subjects are now much sought-after by collectors and sell for much higher prices than ordinary portraits
11.
Henry Fox Talbot
–
His work in the 1840s on photomechanical reproduction led to the creation of the photoglyphic engraving process, the precursor to photogravure. He was the holder of a patent which affected the early development of commercial photography in Britain. He was also a photographer who contributed to the development of photography as an artistic medium. He published The Pencil of Nature, which was illustrated with original salted paper prints from his calotype negatives, and made important early photographs of Oxford, Paris, Reading. Talbot was the child of William Davenport Talbot, of Lacock Abbey, near Chippenham, Wiltshire. Talbot was educated at Rottingdean, Harrow School and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was awarded the Porson Prize in Classics in 1820, from 1822 to 1872, he communicated papers to the Royal Society, many of them on mathematical subjects. At an early period, he began optical researches, which bore fruit in connection with photography. At a meeting of the Royal Institution on 25 January 1839, within a fortnight, he communicated the general nature of his process to the Royal Society, followed by more complete details a few weeks later. Daguerre did not publicly reveal any details until mid-August, although by the spring it had become clear that his process. In the case of images, that could require an exposure of an hour or two if something more than a silhouette of objects against a bright sky was wanted. This reduced the exposure time in the camera to only a minute or two for subjects in bright sunlight. The simpler salted paper process was used when making prints from calotype negatives. Talbot announced his calotype process in 1841, and in August he licensed Henry Collen, the most celebrated practitioners of the process were Hill & Adamson. Another notable calotypist was Levett Landon Boscawen Ibbetson, in 1842, Talbot received the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society for his photographic discoveries. In 1852, Talbot discovered that gelatine treated with potassium dichromate and this later provided the basis for the important carbon printing process and related technologies. Dichromated gelatine is still used for some laser holography, Talbots later photographic work was concentrated on photomechanical reproduction methods. Talbot created the engraving process, later perfected by others as the photogravure process. Daguerres work on his process had commenced at about the time as Talbots earliest work on his salted paper process
12.
Photo manipulation
–
Photo manipulation involves transforming or altering a photograph using various methods and techniques to achieve desired results. For example, Ansel Adams employed some of the common manipulations using darkroom exposure techniques. There are a number of applications available for digital image manipulation. Photo manipulation dates back to some of the earliest photographs captured on glass, the practice began not long after the creation of the first photograph by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce who developed heliography and made the first photographic print from a photoengraved printing plate. Negatives can be manipulated while still in the camera using double-exposure techniques, in the early 19th century, photography and the technology that made it possible was rather crude and cumbersome. While the equipment and technology progressed over time, it wasnt until the late 20th Century that photography evolved into the digital realm. At the onset, digital photography was considered by some to be a new approach. Close observation of the photograph raises questions and brings to light certain details in the photograph that simply do not add up, Photo manipulation has been used to deceive or persuade viewers or improve storytelling and self-expression. Often even subtle and discreet changes can have a impact on how we interpret or judge a photograph. As early as the American Civil War, photographs were published as engravings based on more than one negative, Joseph Stalin made use of photo retouching for propaganda purposes. On May 5,1920 his predecessor Vladimir Lenin held a speech for Soviet troops that Leon Trotsky attended, Stalin had Trotsky retouched out of a photograph showing Trotsky in attendance. In a well known case of damnatio memoriae image manipulation, NKVD leader Nikolai Yezhov, in the 1930s, artist John Heartfield used a type of photo manipulation known as the photomontage to critique Nazi propaganda. Some ethical theories have been applied to image manipulation, during a panel on the topic of ethics in image manipulation Aude Oliva theorized that categorical shifts are necessary in order for an edited image to be viewed as a manipulation. In Image Act Theory, Carson Reynolds extended speech act theory by applying it to photo editing, in How to Do Things with Pictures, William Mitchell details the long history of photo manipulation and discusses it critically. A notable incident of controversial photo manipulation occurred over a photograph that was altered to fit the vertical orientation of a 1982 National Geographic magazine cover, the altered image made two Egyptian pyramids appear closer together than they actually were in the original photograph. The incident triggered a debate about the appropriateness of falsifying an image and we regarded that afterwards as a mistake, and we wouldn’t repeat that mistake today. There are other incidents of questionable photo manipulation in journalism, one such incident arose in early 2005 after Martha Stewart was released from prison. Newsweek used a photograph of Stewarts face on the body of a much slimmer woman for their cover, staley also explained that Newsweek disclosed on page 3 that the cover image of Martha Stewart was a composite
13.
University of Texas at Austin
–
Founded in 1881 as The University of Texas, its campus is in Austin, Texas—approximately 1 mile from the Texas State Capitol. The institution has the nations seventh-largest single-campus enrollment, with over 50,000 undergraduate and graduate students and over 24,000 faculty, UT Austin was inducted into the American Association of Universities in 1929, becoming only the third university in the American South to be elected. It is a center for academic research, with research expenditures exceeding $550 million for the 2014–2015 school year. J. Pickle Research Campus and the McDonald Observatory, among university faculty are recipients of the Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, the Wolf Prize, the Emmy Award, the Turing Award, and the National Medal of Science, as well as many other awards. UT Austin student athletes compete as the Texas Longhorns and are members of the Big 12 Conference and its Longhorn Network is the only sports network featuring the college sports of a single university. The first mention of a university in Texas can be traced to the 1827 constitution for the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. Although Title 6, Article 217 of the Constitution promised to establish education in the arts and sciences. On April 18,1838, An Act to Establish the University of Texas was referred to a committee of the Texas Congress. On January 26,1839, the Texas Congress agreed to set aside fifty leagues of land towards the establishment of a publicly funded university, in addition,40 acres in the new capital of Austin were reserved and designated College Hill. In 1845, Texas was annexed into the United States, interestingly, the states Constitution of 1845 failed to mention higher education. On February 11,1858, the Seventh Texas Legislature approved O. B,102, an act to establish the University of Texas, which set aside $100,000 in United States bonds toward construction of the states first publicly funded university. The legislature also designated land reserved for the encouragement of railroad construction toward the universitys endowment, Texas secession from the Union and the American Civil War delayed repayment of the borrowed monies. At the end of the Civil War in 1865, The University of Texas endowment was just over $16,000 in warrants, the more valuable lands reverted to the fund to support general education in the state. The legislature additionally appropriated $256,272.57 to repay the funds taken from the university in 1860 to pay for frontier defense, the 1883 grant of land increased the land in the Permanent University Fund to almost 2.2 million acres. Under the Act of 1858, the university was entitled to just over 1,000 acres of land for every mile of railroad built in the state. On March 30,1881, the legislature set forth the structure and organization. By popular election on September 6,1881, Austin was chosen as the site, galveston, having come in second in the election was designated the location of the medical department. On November 17,1882, on the original College Hill, smite the earth, smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth
14.
Harry Ransom Center
–
The Ransom Center houses 36 million literary manuscripts,1 million rare books,5 million photographs, and more than 100,000 works of art. The Center has a room for scholars and galleries which display rotating exhibitions of works. Harry Ransom founded the Humanities Research Center in 1957 with the ambition of expanding the rare books and he acquired the Edward Alexander Parsons Collection, the T. Edward Hanley Collection, and the Norman Bel Geddes Collection. The Center moved into its current building in 1972, after Robertss tenure, John Payne and then Carlton Lake served as interim directors from 1976 to 1980. It was during this time that the Center acquired its complete copy of the Gutenberg Bible, in 1980, the Center hired Decherd Turner as director. Upon Decherd Turners retirement in 1988, Thomas F. Staley became director of the Center, Staley has acquired the Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers, a copy of the Plantin Polyglot Bible, and more than 100 literary archives. In September 2013, Stephen Enniss was appointed director of the Ransom Center, Enniss was formerly the Head Librarian of the Folger Shakespeare Library. The two most prominent items in the Ransom Centers collections are a Gutenberg Bible and Nicéphore Niépces View from the Window at Le Gras, both of these objects are on permanent display in the main lobby. Beyond these, the Center houses many important documents and artifacts. Particular strengths include modern literature, performing arts, and photography, the first edition of the book Os Lusíadas, printed in 1572. E. Lawrence, D. H. Lawrence, T. H, boyle, McSweeneys, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Ian McEwan. S. Eliot, John Osborne, Edward Gordon Craig, J. B, the organizational archives of B. J. Simmons, Theatre Guild, and the College of Fellows of the American Theatre. A historic collection of 19th and 20th century portrait photography of actors and dancers, and production photography holdings including Joseph Abeles and Leo Friedman, Fred Fehl, design archives of Norman Bel Geddes, Gordon Conway, Eldon Elder, and Boris Aronson. David Garricks diary from his 1751 trip to Paris, which belonged to Harry Houdini. John Wilkes Booths personal production promptbook for Richard III, original costumes from the Ballets Russes including pieces from Narcisse and The Rite of Spring. Design holdings include two of Pablo Picassos costume designs and a set design from The Three-Cornered Hat, the original manuscripts for George Aikens 1852 stage adaptation of Uncle Toms Cabin and the archive of its producing company, George C. A1730 manuscript of George Frideric Handels Coronation Anthems made by his principal copyist. The papers of Robert De Niro, David O. Selznick, Nicholas Ray, Edward Carrick, Alfred Junge, Jay Presson Allen, Lewis Allen, Ernest Lehman, King Vidor, Tobe Hooper and Gloria Swanson
15.
Austin, Texas
–
Austin is the capital of the U. S. state of Texas and the seat of Travis County. It is the 11th-most populous city in the U. S. and it is the fastest growing large city in the United States and the second most populous capital city after Phoenix, Arizona. As of the U. S. Census Bureaus July 1,2015 estimate and it is the cultural and economic center of the Austin–Round Rock metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 2,056,405 as of July 1,2016. In the 1830s, pioneers began to settle the area in central Austin along the Colorado River, in 1839, the site was officially chosen to replace Houston as the new capital of the Republic of Texas and was incorporated under the name Waterloo. Shortly thereafter, the name was changed to Austin in honor of Stephen F. Austin, the Father of Texas and the republics first secretary of state. The city subsequently grew throughout the 19th century and became a center for government and education with the construction of the Texas State Capitol and the University of Texas at Austin. After a lull in growth from the Great Depression, Austin resumed its development into a city and, by the 1980s, it emerged as a center for technology. A number of Fortune 500 companies have headquarters or regional offices in Austin, including Amazon. com, cisco, eBay, Google, IBM, Intel, Oracle Corporation, Texas Instruments, 3M, and Whole Foods Market. Dells worldwide headquarters is located in nearby Round Rock, a suburb of Austin, residents of Austin are known as Austinites. They include a mix of government employees, college students, musicians, high-tech workers, blue-collar workers. The city also adopted Silicon Hills as a nickname in the 1990s due to an influx of technology. In the late 1800s, Austin was known as the City of the Violet Crown because of the glow of light across the hills just after sunset. Even today, many Austin businesses use the term Violet Crown in their name, Austin is known as a clean-air city for its stringent no-smoking ordinances that apply to all public places and buildings, including restaurants and bars. The FBI ranked Austin as the second-safest major city in the U. S. for the year 2012, U. S. News & World Report named Austin the best place to live in the U. S. in 2017. Austin, Travis County and Williamson County have been the site of habitation since at least 9200 BC. When settlers arrived from Europe, the Tonkawa tribe inhabited the area, the Comanches and Lipan Apaches were also known to travel through the area. Spanish colonists, including the Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre expedition, traveled through the area for centuries, in 1730, three missions from East Texas were combined and reestablished as one mission on the south side of the Colorado River, in what is now Zilker Park, in Austin. The mission was in area for only about seven months
16.
X-ray fluorescence
–
X-ray fluorescence is the emission of characteristic secondary X-rays from a material that has been excited by bombarding with high-energy X-rays or gamma rays. When materials are exposed to short-wavelength X-rays or to gamma rays, ionization consists of the ejection of one or more electrons from the atom, and may occur if the atom is exposed to radiation with an energy greater than its ionization energy. X-rays and gamma rays can be enough to expel tightly held electrons from the inner orbitals of the atom. The removal of an electron in this way makes the structure of the atom unstable. In falling, energy is released in the form of a photon, thus, the material emits radiation, which has energy characteristic of the atoms present. The term fluorescence is applied to phenomena in which the absorption of radiation of a specific energy results in the re-emission of radiation of a different energy, each element has electronic orbitals of characteristic energy. Following removal of an electron by an energetic photon provided by a primary radiation source. There are a number of ways in which this can happen. The main transitions are given names, an L→K transition is traditionally called Kα, an M→K transition is called Kβ, an M→L transition is called Lα, and so on. Each of these transitions yields a fluorescent photon with an energy equal to the difference in energy of the initial and final orbital. Once sorted, the intensity of each characteristic radiation is directly related to the amount of element in the material. This is the basis of a technique in analytical chemistry. Figure 2 shows the form of the sharp fluorescent spectral lines obtained in the wavelength-dispersive method. In order to excite the atoms, a source of radiation is required, conventional X-ray generators are most commonly used, because their output can readily be tuned for the application, and because higher power can be deployed relative to other techniques. However, gamma ray sources can be used without the need for a power supply. When the energy source is a synchrotron or the X-rays are focused by an optic like a polycapillary, as a result, atomic information on the sub-micrometre scale can be obtained. X-ray generators in the range 20–60 kV are used, which allow excitation of a range of atoms. The continuous spectrum consists of bremsstrahlung radiation, radiation produced when high-energy electrons passing through the tube are progressively decelerated by the material of the tube anode, a typical tube output spectrum is shown in figure 3
17.
Infrared spectroscopy
–
Infrared spectroscopy involves the interaction of infrared radiation with matter. It covers a range of techniques, mostly based on absorption spectroscopy, as with all spectroscopic techniques, it can be used to identify and study chemicals. Sample may be solid, liquid, or gas, the method or technique of infrared spectroscopy is conducted with an instrument called an infrared spectrometer to produce an infrared spectrum. An IR spectrum is essentially a graph of infrared light absorbance on the vertical axis vs. frequency or wavelength on the horizontal axis, typical units of frequency used in IR spectra are reciprocal centimeters, with the symbol cm−1. Units of IR wavelength are commonly given in micrometers, symbol μm, a common laboratory instrument that uses this technique is a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer. Two-dimensional IR is also possible as discussed below, the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is usually divided into three regions, the near-, mid- and far- infrared, named for their relation to the visible spectrum. The higher-energy near-IR, approximately 14000–4000 cm−1 can excite overtone or harmonic vibrations, the mid-infrared, approximately 4000–400 cm−1 may be used to study the fundamental vibrations and associated rotational-vibrational structure. The far-infrared, approximately 400–10 cm−1, lying adjacent to the region, has low energy. The names and classifications of these subregions are conventions, and are loosely based on the relative molecular or electromagnetic properties. Infrared spectroscopy exploits the fact that molecules absorb frequencies that are characteristic of their structure and these absorptions occur at resonant frequencies, i. e. the frequency of the absorbed radiation matches the vibrational frequency. The energies are affected by the shape of the potential energy surfaces, the masses of the atoms. In particular, in the Born–Oppenheimer and harmonic approximations, i. e, the resonant frequencies are also related to the strength of the bond and the mass of the atoms at either end of it. Thus, the frequency of the vibrations are associated with a normal mode of motion. In order for a mode in a sample to be IR active. A permanent dipole is not necessary, as the rule requires only a change in dipole moment, a molecule can vibrate in many ways, and each way is called a vibrational mode. For molecules with N number of atoms, linear molecules have 3N –5 degrees of vibrational modes, as an example H2O, a non-linear molecule, will have 3 ×3 –6 =3 degrees of vibrational freedom, or modes. Simple diatomic molecules have only one bond and only one vibrational band, if the molecule is symmetrical, e. g. N2, the band is not observed in the IR spectrum, but only in the Raman spectrum. Asymmetrical diatomic molecules, e. g. CO, absorb in the IR spectrum, more complex molecules have many bonds, and their vibrational spectra are correspondingly more complex, i. e. big molecules have many peaks in their IR spectra
18.
Tin
–
Tin is a chemical element with symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a metal in group 14 of the periodic table. It is obtained chiefly from the mineral cassiterite, which contains tin dioxide, Tin shows a chemical similarity to both of its neighbors in group 14, germanium and lead, and has two main oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4. Tin is the 49th most abundant element and has, with 10 stable isotopes, metallic tin is not easily oxidized in air. The first alloy used on a scale was bronze, made of tin and copper. After 600 BC, pure metallic tin was produced, pewter, which is an alloy of 85–90% tin with the remainder commonly consisting of copper, antimony, and lead, was used for flatware from the Bronze Age until the 20th century. In modern times, tin is used in alloys, most notably tin/lead soft solders. Another large application for tin is corrosion-resistant tin plating of steel, inorganic tin compounds are rather non-toxic. Because of its low toxicity, tin-plated metal was used for packaging as tin cans. However, overexposure to tin may cause problems with metabolizing essential trace elements such as copper and zinc, Tin is a soft, malleable, ductile and highly crystalline silvery-white metal. When a bar of tin is bent, a sound known as the tin cry can be heard from the twinning of the crystals. Tin melts at the low temperature of about 232 °C, the lowest in group 14, the melting point is further lowered to 177.3 °C for 11 nm particles. β-tin, which is stable at and above room temperature, is malleable, in contrast, α-tin, which is stable below 13.2 °C, is brittle. α-tin has a cubic crystal structure, similar to diamond. α-tin has no properties at all because its atoms form a covalent structure in which electrons cannot move freely. It is a dull-gray powdery material with no common uses other than a few specialized semiconductor applications and these two allotropes, α-tin and β-tin, are more commonly known as gray tin and white tin, respectively. Two more allotropes, γ and σ, exist at temperatures above 161 °C, in cold conditions, β-tin tends to transform spontaneously into α-tin, a phenomenon known as tin pest. Commercial grades of tin resist transformation because of the effect of the small amounts of bismuth, antimony, lead
19.
Artifact (archaeology)
–
An artifact or artefact is. something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest. In archaeology, however, the word has become a term of particular nuance and is defined as, an object recovered by archaeological endeavor, which may have a cultural interest. However, modern archaeologists take care to distinguish material culture from ethnicity, examples include stone tools, pottery vessels, metal objects such as weapons, and items of personal adornment such as buttons, jewelry and clothing. Bones that show signs of modification are also examples. Natural objects, such as fire cracked rocks from a hearth or plant material used for food, are classified by archeologists as ecofacts rather than as artifacts, natural objects that humans have moved but not changed are called manuports. Examples include seashells moved inland, or rounded pebbles placed away from the action that made them. For instance, a bone removed from a carcass is a biofact. Similarly there can be debate over early stone objects that could be either crude artifacts or naturally occurring and it can be difficult to distinguish the differences between actual man-made lithic artifacts and geofacts – naturally occurring lithics that resemble man-made tools. It is possible to authenticate artifacts by examining the general attributed to man-made tools. Artifact Collection at the Royal Military College of Canada Museum in Kingston, Ontario
20.
Life (magazine)
–
Life was an American magazine that ran weekly from 1883 to 1936 as a humor magazine with limited circulation. Time owner Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936, solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name, Life was published weekly until 1972, as an intermittent special until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 to 2000. After 2000 Time Inc. continued to use the Life brand for special, Life returned to regularly scheduled issues when it became a weekly newspaper supplement from 2004 to 2007. The website life. com, originally one of the channels on Time Inc. s Pathfinder service, was for a time in the late 2000s managed as a joint venture with Getty Images under the name See Your World, LLC. On January 30,2012 the LIFE. com URL became a channel on Time. com. When Life was founded in 1883, it was developed as similar to the British magazine and it was published for 53 years as a general-interest light entertainment magazine, heavy on illustrations, jokes and social commentary. The Luce Life was the first all-photographic American news magazine, the magazines role in the history of photojournalism is considered its most important contribution to publishing. Life was wildly successful for two generations before its prestige was diminished by economics and changing tastes, Life was founded January 4,1883, in a New York City artists studio at 1155 Broadway, as a partnership between John Ames Mitchell and Andrew Miller. Mitchell held a 75 per cent interest in the magazine with the remainder by Miller, both men retained their holdings until their deaths. Miller served as secretary-treasurer of the magazine and was very successful managing the side of the operation. Mitchell, a 37-year-old illustrator who used a $10,000 inheritance to invest in the weekly magazine, Mitchell created the first Life name-plate with cupids as mascots, he later drew its masthead of a knight leveling his lance at the posterior of a fleeing devil. Mitchell took advantage of a new printing process using zinc-coated plates. This edge helped because Life faced stiff competition from the humor magazines Judge and Puck. Edward Sandford Martin was brought on as Lifes first literary editor, the motto of the first issue of Life was, While theres Life, theres hope. The new magazine set forth its principles and policies to its readers and we shall try to domesticate as much as possible of the casual cheerfulness that is drifting about in an unfriendly world. The magazine was a success and soon attracted the leading contributors. Among the most important was Charles Dana Gibson, three years after the magazine was founded, the Massachusetts native first sold Life a drawing for $4, a dog outside his kennel howling at the moon. Encouraged by a publisher who was also an artist, Gibson was joined in Life early days by such illustrators as Palmer Cox
21.
100 Photographs that Changed the World
–
Life,100 Photographs that Changed The World is a book of photographs, that are believed to have pushed towards a change, accumulated by the editors of Life in 2003. The project began with a question posted on Lifes website in 2003 and The Digital Journalist. The question remained on the website for visitors to openly answer to for several weeks, the book was edited by Robert Sullivan and picture editor Barbara Baker Burrows, and published by Time, Inc. An updated edition of the book was published August 9,2011, the work is divided into four major chapters and three accompanying subsections. The major quarters are, The Arts, Society, War, the three subsections are, Photographic Art, Trick Photography, and Stop Action. Some of the photos are identified with larger events, such as H. S. Wongs 1937 photograph of a child crying at a demolished train station on Bloody Saturday as representative of the entire bombing of Shanghai. Other photographs are excerpts from larger historic collections, such as Roger Fentons and Alexander Gardners respective groundbreaking documentations of the Crimean War, margin notes document the circumstantial background of many photographs, as well as instances where the images have been accused of being staged. Some of the photos are depicted below
22.
History of photography
–
In the mid-1820s, Nicéphore Niépce succeeded, but several days of exposure in the camera were required and the earliest results were very crude. Niépces associate Louis Daguerre went on to develop the daguerreotype process, the daguerreotype required only minutes of exposure in the camera, and produced clear, finely detailed results. It was commercially introduced in 1839, a generally accepted as the birth year of practical photography. The metal-based daguerreotype process soon had some competition from the paper-based calotype negative, subsequent innovations made photography easier and more versatile. In the mid-20th century, developments made it possible for amateurs to take pictures in color as well as in black-and-white. The commercial introduction of computer-based electronic digital cameras in the 1990s soon revolutionized photography, the coining of the word photography is usually attributed to Sir John Herschel in 1839. It is based on the Greek φῶς, meaning light, and γραφή, meaning drawing, writing, Photography is the result of combining several different technical discoveries. Long before the first photographs were made, Greek mathematicians Aristotle, daniel Barbaro described a diaphragm in 1568. Wilhelm Homberg described how light darkened some chemicals in 1694, the novel Giphantie described what could be interpreted as photography. In 1614, Angelo Sala demonstrated that silver nitrate is blackened by the sun. This discovery of the effect on powdered silver nitrate was not supported and was subsequently disregarded by then-respected scientists who said that his discovery had no practical application. But what he noticed and found to be strange was that part of it remained white and he then observed a cord hanging down and going across in front of the window, which he found out to be the cause. On further examination, he found that the entire mixture inevitably reverted to its white color. Experimenting further, Schulze succeeded in transferring words he pasted on the bottle printed into the substance. ”He put the silver nitrate in an oven and this proved to him, definitively, that heat had not facilitated the transformation, as popularly suspected. Of greater potential usefulness, Scheele found that ammonia dissolved the silver chloride and this discovery, which could have been used to stabilize or fix a camera image captured with silver chloride, was little-noticed at the time and unknown to the earliest photography experimenters. It was not until around the year 1800 that Thomas Wedgwood made the first known attempt to capture the image in a camera obscura by means of a light-sensitive substance and he used paper or white leather treated with silver nitrate. The shadow images eventually darkened all over because o attempts that have made to prevent the uncoloured part of the copy or profile from being acted upon by light have as yet been successful. Wedgwood may have abandoned his experiments due to frail and failing health
23.
Wayback Machine
–
The Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine in October 2001. It was set up by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, and is maintained with content from Alexa Internet, the service enables users to see archived versions of web pages across time, which the archive calls a three dimensional index. Since 1996, the Wayback Machine has been archiving cached pages of websites onto its large cluster of Linux nodes and it revisits sites every few weeks or months and archives a new version. Sites can also be captured on the fly by visitors who enter the sites URL into a search box, the intent is to capture and archive content that otherwise would be lost whenever a site is changed or closed down. The overall vision of the machines creators is to archive the entire Internet, the name Wayback Machine was chosen as a reference to the WABAC machine, a time-traveling device used by the characters Mr. Peabody and Sherman in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, an animated cartoon. These crawlers also respect the robots exclusion standard for websites whose owners opt for them not to appear in search results or be cached, to overcome inconsistencies in partially cached websites, Archive-It. Information had been kept on digital tape for five years, with Kahle occasionally allowing researchers, when the archive reached its fifth anniversary, it was unveiled and opened to the public in a ceremony at the University of California, Berkeley. Snapshots usually become more than six months after they are archived or, in some cases, even later. The frequency of snapshots is variable, so not all tracked website updates are recorded, Sometimes there are intervals of several weeks or years between snapshots. After August 2008 sites had to be listed on the Open Directory in order to be included. As of 2009, the Wayback Machine contained approximately three petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of 100 terabytes each month, the growth rate reported in 2003 was 12 terabytes/month, the data is stored on PetaBox rack systems manufactured by Capricorn Technologies. In 2009, the Internet Archive migrated its customized storage architecture to Sun Open Storage, in 2011 a new, improved version of the Wayback Machine, with an updated interface and fresher index of archived content, was made available for public testing. The index driving the classic Wayback Machine only has a bit of material past 2008. In January 2013, the company announced a ground-breaking milestone of 240 billion URLs, in October 2013, the company announced the Save a Page feature which allows any Internet user to archive the contents of a URL. This became a threat of abuse by the service for hosting malicious binaries, as of December 2014, the Wayback Machine contained almost nine petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of about 20 terabytes each week. Between October 2013 and March 2015 the websites global Alexa rank changed from 162 to 208, in a 2009 case, Netbula, LLC v. Chordiant Software Inc. defendant Chordiant filed a motion to compel Netbula to disable the robots. Netbula objected to the motion on the ground that defendants were asking to alter Netbulas website, in an October 2004 case, Telewizja Polska USA, Inc. v. Echostar Satellite, No.02 C3293,65 Fed. 673, a litigant attempted to use the Wayback Machine archives as a source of admissible evidence, Telewizja Polska is the provider of TVP Polonia and EchoStar operates the Dish Network
24.
ArXiv
–
In many fields of mathematics and physics, almost all scientific papers are self-archived on the arXiv repository. Begun on August 14,1991, arXiv. org passed the half-million article milestone on October 3,2008, by 2014 the submission rate had grown to more than 8,000 per month. The arXiv was made possible by the low-bandwidth TeX file format, around 1990, Joanne Cohn began emailing physics preprints to colleagues as TeX files, but the number of papers being sent soon filled mailboxes to capacity. Additional modes of access were added, FTP in 1991, Gopher in 1992. The term e-print was quickly adopted to describe the articles and its original domain name was xxx. lanl. gov. Due to LANLs lack of interest in the rapidly expanding technology, in 1999 Ginsparg changed institutions to Cornell University and it is now hosted principally by Cornell, with 8 mirrors around the world. Its existence was one of the factors that led to the current movement in scientific publishing known as open access. Mathematicians and scientists regularly upload their papers to arXiv. org for worldwide access, Ginsparg was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2002 for his establishment of arXiv. The annual budget for arXiv is approximately $826,000 for 2013 to 2017, funded jointly by Cornell University Library, annual donations were envisaged to vary in size between $2,300 to $4,000, based on each institution’s usage. As of 14 January 2014,174 institutions have pledged support for the period 2013–2017 on this basis, in September 2011, Cornell University Library took overall administrative and financial responsibility for arXivs operation and development. Ginsparg was quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education as saying it was supposed to be a three-hour tour, however, Ginsparg remains on the arXiv Scientific Advisory Board and on the arXiv Physics Advisory Committee. The lists of moderators for many sections of the arXiv are publicly available, additionally, an endorsement system was introduced in 2004 as part of an effort to ensure content that is relevant and of interest to current research in the specified disciplines. Under the system, for categories that use it, an author must be endorsed by an established arXiv author before being allowed to submit papers to those categories. Endorsers are not asked to review the paper for errors, new authors from recognized academic institutions generally receive automatic endorsement, which in practice means that they do not need to deal with the endorsement system at all. However, the endorsement system has attracted criticism for allegedly restricting scientific inquiry, perelman appears content to forgo the traditional peer-reviewed journal process, stating, If anybody is interested in my way of solving the problem, its all there – let them go and read about it. The arXiv generally re-classifies these works, e. g. in General mathematics, papers can be submitted in any of several formats, including LaTeX, and PDF printed from a word processor other than TeX or LaTeX. The submission is rejected by the software if generating the final PDF file fails, if any image file is too large. ArXiv now allows one to store and modify an incomplete submission, the time stamp on the article is set when the submission is finalized
25.
Geographic coordinate system
–
A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
. Bibcode:2007NIMPB.261..426P. doi:10.1016/j.nimb.2007.04.259.
