Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U. S. is one of the oldest cities in the United States. It was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, he named the area in honor of "God's merciful Providence" which he believed was responsible for revealing such a haven for him and his followers. The city is situated at the mouth of the Providence River at the head of Narragansett Bay. Providence was one of the first cities in the country to industrialize and became noted for its textile manufacturing and subsequent machine tool and silverware industries. Today, the city of Providence is home to eight hospitals and seven institutions of higher learning which have shifted the city's economy into service industries, though it still retains some manufacturing activity; the city is the third most populous city in New England after Worcester, Massachusetts. Providence was one of the original Thirteen Colonies. Williams and his company were compelled to leave Massachusetts Bay Colony, Providence became a refuge for persecuted religious dissenters, as Williams himself had been exiled from Massachusetts.
The city was burned to the ground in March 1676 by the Narragansetts during King Philip's War, despite the good relations between Williams and the sachems with whom the United Colonies of New England were waging war. In the year, the Rhode Island legislature formally rebuked the other colonies for provoking the war. Providence residents were among the first Patriots to spill blood in the lead-up to the American Revolutionary War during the Gaspée Affair of 1772, Rhode Island was the first of the Thirteen Colonies to renounce its allegiance to the British Crown on May 4, 1776, it was the last of the Thirteen Colonies to ratify the United States Constitution on May 29, 1790, once assurances were made that a Bill of Rights would become part of the Constitution. Following the war, Providence was the country's ninth-largest city with 7,614 people; the economy shifted from maritime endeavors to manufacturing, in particular machinery, silverware and textiles. By the start of the 20th century, Providence hosted some of the largest manufacturing plants in the country, including Brown & Sharpe, Nicholson File, Gorham Manufacturing Company.
Providence residents ratified a city charter in 1831 as the population passed 17,000. The seat of city government was located in the Market House in Market Square from 1832 to 1878, the geographic and social center of the city; the city offices outgrew this building, the City Council resolved to create a permanent municipal building in 1845. The city offices moved into the Providence City Hall in 1878. During the American Civil War, local politics split over slavery as many had ties to Southern cotton and the slave trade. Despite ambivalence concerning the war, the number of military volunteers exceeded quota, the city's manufacturing proved invaluable to the Union. Providence thrived after the war, waves of immigrants brought the population from 54,595 in 1865 to 175,597 by 1900. By the early 1900s, Providence was one of the wealthiest cities in the United States. Immigrant labor powered one of the nation's largest industrial manufacturing centers. Providence was a major manufacturer of industrial products, from steam engines to precision tools to silverware and textiles.
Giant companies were based in or near Providence, such as Brown & Sharpe, the Corliss Steam Engine Company, Babcock & Wilcox, the Grinnell Corporation, the Gorham Manufacturing Company, Nicholson File, the Fruit of the Loom textile company. From 1975 until 1982, $606 million of local and national community development funds were invested throughout the city. In the 1990s, the city pushed for revitalization, realigning the north-south railroad tracks, removing the huge rail viaduct that separated downtown from the capitol building and moving the rivers to create Waterplace Park and river walks along the rivers' banks, constructing the Fleet Skating Rink and the Providence Place Mall. Despite new investment, poverty remains an entrenched problem. 27.9 percent of the city population is living below the poverty line. Recent increases in real estate values further exacerbate problems for those at marginal income levels, as Providence had the highest rise in median housing price of any city in the United States from 2004 to 2005.
The Providence city limits enclose a small geographical region with a total area of 20.5 square miles. Providence is located at the head of Narragansett Bay, with the Providence River running into the bay through the center of the city, formed by the confluence of the Moshassuck and Woonasquatucket Rivers; the Waterplace Park amphitheater and riverwalks line the river's banks through downtown. Providence is one of many cities claimed to be founded on seven hills like Rome; the more prominent hills are: Constitution Hill, College Hill, Federal Hill. The other four are: Tockwotten Hill at Fox Point, Smith Hill, Christian Hill at Hoyle Square, Weybosset Hill at the lower end of Weybosset Street, leveled in the early 1880s. Providence has 25 official neighborhoods, though these neighborhoods are grouped together and referred to
Syracuse metropolitan area
The Syracuse Metropolitan Statistical Area, as defined by the United States Census Bureau, is an area consisting of three counties in central New York, anchored by the city of Syracuse. As of the 2010 census, the MSA had a population of 662,577. In the 2000 census, the MSA had a population of 650,154. Onondaga Oswego Madison Syracuse Cicero Clay DeWitt Manlius Salina Altmar Boylston Cleveland DeRuyter Earlville Fabius Georgetown Hannibal Lacona Madison Munnsville Parish Redfield Sand Ridge Sandy Creek Tully Wampsville As of the census of 2000, there were 650,154 people, 252,043 households, 164,202 families residing within the MSA; the racial makeup of the MSA was 88.36% White, 6.87% African American, 0.74% Native American, 1.61% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 0.74% from other races, 1.65% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.08% of the population. The median income for a household in the MSA was $39,210, the median income for a family was $47,862. Males had a median income of $35,698 versus $25,373 for females.
The per capita income for the MSA was $19,098. The Syracuse–Auburn Combined Statistical Area is made up of four counties in central New York; the statistical area includes one micropolitan area. As of 2014 population estimates, the CSA had a population of 742,603. Metropolitan Statistical Areas Syracuse Micropolitan Statistical Areas Auburn Professional teams in Syracuse include: Syracuse Mets Stadium: NBT Bank Stadium Syracuse Crunch Arena: War Memorial at Oncenter Syracuse Silver Knights Arena: War Memorial at OncenterCollege teams in Syracuse include: Syracuse University Orange, stadium: Carrier Dome Le Moyne College Dolphins Onondaga Community College Lazers SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry Mighty Oaks Syracuse University sports are by far the most attended sporting events in the Syracuse area. Basketball games draw over 30,000 fans, football games over 40,000; the university has bred dozens of famous professional players since starting an athletics program in the late nineteenth century, including all-time greats Jim Brown, Larry Csonka and Dave Bing, present professional stars Marvin Harrison, Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Freeney, Jason Hart, Donovan McNabb.
Both teams play in the Carrier Dome. Syracuse Pomeroy College of Nursing at Crouse Hospital St. Joseph's College of Nursing State University of New York at Oswego Metro Center State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry State University of New York Upstate Medical University Syracuse University Elsewhere in Onondaga County Bryant & Stratton College has campuses in Liverpool and Syracuse Columbia College has a campus at Hancock Field in Salina Empire State College has a campus in East Syracuse Le Moyne College in DeWitt Onondaga Community College in Onondaga Hill Madison County Cazenovia College in Cazenovia Colgate University in Hamilton Morrisville State College in Morrisville Utica School of Commerce in Canastota Oswego County State University of New York at Oswego in Fulton and Phoenix Several well-known individuals have ties to the Syracuse metropolitan area, including: New York census statistical areas Timeline of town creation in Central New York
Webcast
A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand. Webcasting is "broadcasting" over the Internet; the largest "webcasters" include existing radio and TV stations, who "simulcast" their output through online TV or online radio streaming, as well as a multitude of Internet only "stations". Webcasting consists of providing non-interactive linear streams or events. Rights and licensing bodies offer specific "webcasting licenses" to those wishing to carry out Internet broadcasting using copyrighted material. Webcasting is used extensively in the commercial sector for investor relations presentations, in e-learning, for related communications activities. However, webcasting does not bear much, if any, relationship to web conferencing, designed for many-to-many interaction; the ability to webcast using cheap/accessible technology has allowed independent media to flourish.
There are many notable independent shows that broadcast online. Produced by average citizens in their homes they cover many interests and topics. Webcasts relating to computers and news are popular and many new shows are added regularly. Webcasting differs from podcasting in that webcasting refers to live streaming while podcasting refers to media files placed on the Internet. Webcasting is the distribution of media files through the internet; the earliest graphically-oriented web broadcasts were not streaming video, but were in fact still frames which were photographed with a web camera every few minutes while they were being broadcast live over the Internet. One of the earliest instances of sequential live image broadcasting was in 1991 when a camera was set up next to the Trojan Room in the computer laboratory of the University of Cambridge, it provided a live picture every few minutes of the office coffee pot to all desktop computers on that office's network. A couple of years its broadcasts went to the Internet, became known as the Trojan Room Coffee Pot webcam, gained international notoriety as a feature of the fledgling World Wide Web.
In 1996 an American college student and conceptual artist, Jenny Ringley, set up a web camera similar to the Trojan Room Coffee Pot's webcam in her dorm room. That webcam photographed her every few minutes while it broadcast those images live over the Internet upon a site called JenniCam. Ringley wanted to portray all aspects of her lifestyle and the camera captured her doing everything – brushing her teeth, doing her laundry, having sex with her boyfriend, her website generated millions of hits upon the Internet, became a pay site in 1998, spawned hundreds of female imitators who would use streaming video to create a new billion dollar industry called camming, brand themselves as camgirls or webcam models. One of the earliest webcast equivalent of an online concert and one of the earliest examples of webcasting itself was by Apple Computer's Webcasting Group in partnership with the entrepreneurs Michael Dorf and Andrew Rasiej. Together with David B. Pakman from Apple, they launched the Macintosh New York Music Festival from July 17–22, 1995.
This event audio webcast concerts from more than 15 clubs in New York City. Apple webcast a concert by Metallica on June 10, 1996 live from Slim's in San Francisco. In 1995, Benford E. Standley produced one of the first audio/video webcasts in history. On October 31, 1996, UK rock band Caduseus broadcast their one-hour concert from 11 pm to 12 midnight at Celtica in Machynlleth, Wales, UK – the first live streamed audio and simultaneous live streamed video multicast – around the globe to more than twenty direct "mirrors" in more than twenty countries. In September 1997, Nebraska Public Television started webcasting Big Red Wrap Up from Lincoln, Nebraska which combined highlights from every Cornhusker football game, coverage of the coaches' weekly press conferences, analysis with Nebraska sportswriters, appearances by special guests and questions and answers with viewers. On August 13, 1998, it is believed the first webcast wedding took place, between Alan K'necht and Carrie Silverman in Toronto Canada.
On October 22, 1998, the first Billy Graham Crusade was broadcast live to a worldwide audience from the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Florida courtesy of Dale Ficken and the WebcastCenter in Pennsylvania. The live signal was broadcast via satellite to PA encoded and streamed via the BGEA website; the first teleconferenced/webcast wedding to date is believed to have occurred on December 31, 1998. Dale Ficken and Lorrie Scarangella wed on this date as they stood in a church in Pennsylvania, were married by Jerry Falwell while he sat in his office in Lynchburg, Virginia. All major broadcasters now have a webcast of their output, from the BBC to CNN to Al Jazeera to UNTV in television to Radio China, Vatican Radio, United Nations Radio and the World Service in radio. On November 4, 1994, Stef van der Ziel distributed the first live video images over the web from the Simplon venue in Groningen. On November 7, 1994, WXYC, the college radio station of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill became the first radio station in the world to broadcast its signal over the internet.
Translated versions including Subtitling are now possible using SMIL Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language. A wedcast of a wedding. Allows family and friends of the couple to watch the wedding in real time on the Internet, it is sometimes used for weddings in exotic locations, such as Cancun and the Riviera Maya, Hawaii or the Caribbean, for which it is expensive or difficul
AM broadcasting
AM broadcasting is a radio broadcasting technology, which employs amplitude modulation transmissions. It was the first method developed for making audio radio transmissions, is still used worldwide for medium wave transmissions, but on the longwave and shortwave radio bands; the earliest experimental AM transmissions began in the early 1900s. However, widespread AM broadcasting was not established until the 1920s, following the development of vacuum tube receivers and transmitters. AM radio remained the dominant method of broadcasting for the next 30 years, a period called the "Golden Age of Radio", until television broadcasting became widespread in the 1950s and received most of the programming carried by radio. Subsequently, AM radio's audiences have greatly shrunk due to competition from FM radio, Digital Audio Broadcasting, satellite radio, HD radio and Internet streaming. AM transmissions are much more susceptible than FM or digital signals are to interference, have lower audio fidelity.
Thus, AM broadcasters tend to specialise in spoken-word formats, such as talk radio, all news and sports, leaving the broadcasting of music to FM and digital stations. The idea of broadcasting — the unrestricted transmission of signals to a widespread audience — dates back to the founding period of radio development though the earliest radio transmissions known as "Hertzian radiation" and "wireless telegraphy", used spark-gap transmitters that could only transmit the dots-and-dashes of Morse code. In October 1898 a London publication, The Electrician, noted that "there are rare cases where, as Dr. Lodge once expressed it, it might be advantageous to'shout' the message, spreading it broadcast to receivers in all directions". However, it was recognized that this would involve significant financial issues, as that same year The Electrician commented "did not Prof. Lodge forget that no one wants to pay for shouting to the world on a system by which it would be impossible to prevent non-subscribers from benefiting gratuitously?"On January 1, 1902, Nathan Stubblefield gave a short-range "wireless telephone" demonstration, that included broadcasting speech and music to seven locations throughout Murray, Kentucky.
However, this was transmitted using induction rather than radio signals, although Stubblefield predicted that his system would be perfected so that "it will be possible to communicate with hundreds of homes at the same time", "a single message can be sent from a central station to all parts of the United States", he was unable to overcome the inherent distance limitations of this technology. The earliest public radiotelegraph broadcasts were provided as government services, beginning with daily time signals inaugurated on January 1, 1905, by a number of U. S. Navy stations. In Europe, signals transmitted from a station located on the Eiffel tower were received throughout much of Europe. In both the United States and France this led to a small market of receiver lines designed geared for jewelers who needed accurate time to set their clocks, including the Ondophone in France, the De Forest RS-100 Jewelers Time Receiver in the United States The ability to pick up time signal broadcasts, in addition to Morse code weather reports and news summaries attracted the interest of amateur radio enthusiasts.
It was recognized that, much like the telegraph had preceded the invention of the telephone, the ability to make audio radio transmissions would be a significant technical advance. Despite this knowledge, it still took two decades to perfect the technology needed to make quality audio transmissions. In addition, the telephone had been used for distributing entertainment, outside of a few "telephone newspaper" systems, most of which were established in Europe. With this in mind, most early radiotelephone development envisioned that the device would be more profitably developed as a "wireless telephone" for personal communication, or for providing links where regular telephone lines could not be run, rather than for the uncertain finances of broadcasting; the person credited as the primary early developer of AM technology is Canadian-born inventor Reginald Fessenden. The original spark-gap radio transmitters were impractical for transmitting audio, since they produced discontinuous pulses known as "damped waves".
Fessenden realized that what was needed was a new type of radio transmitter that produced steady "undamped" signals, which could be "modulated" to reflect the sounds being transmitted. Fessenden's basic approach was disclosed in U. S. Patent 706,737, which he applied for on May 29, 1901, was issued the next year, it called for the use of a high-speed alternator that generated "pure sine waves" and produced "a continuous train of radiant waves of uniform strength", or, in modern terminology, a continuous-wave transmitter. Fessenden began his research on audio transmissions while doing developmental work for the United States Weather Service on Cobb Island, Maryland; because he did not yet have a continuous-wave transmitter he worked with an experimental "high-frequency spark" transmitter, taking advantage of the fact that the higher the spark rate, the closer a spark-gap transmission comes to producing continuous waves. He reported that, in the fall of 1900, he transmitted speech over a distance of about 1.6 kilometers, which appears to have been the first successful audio transmission using radio signals.
However, at this time the sound was far too distorted to be commercially practical. For a time he continued working with more sophist
Disc jockey
A disc jockey abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays existing recorded music for a live audience. Most common types of DJs include radio DJ, club DJ who performs at a nightclub or music festival and turntablist who uses record players turntables, to manipulate sounds on phonograph records; the disc in disc jockey referred to gramophone records, but now DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to describe someone who mixes recorded music from any source, including cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ or laptop. The title DJ is used by DJs in front of their real names or adopted pseudonyms or stage names. In recent years it has become common for DJs to be featured as the credited artist on tracks they produced despite having a guest vocalist that performs the entire song: like for example Uptown Funk. DJs use audio equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music and mix them together to create seamless transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs; this involves aligning the beats of the music sources so their rhythms do not clash when played together or to enable a smooth transition from one song to another.
DJs use specialized DJ mixers, small audio mixers with crossfader and cue functions to blend or transition from one song to another. Mixers are used to pre-listen to sources of recorded music in headphones and adjust upcoming tracks to mix with playing music. DJ software can be used with a DJ controller device to mix audio files on a computer instead of a console mixer. DJs may use a microphone to speak to the audience; the "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to gramophone records, but now "DJ" is used as an all-encompassing term to describe someone who mixes recorded music from any source, including vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, or digital audio files stored on USB stick or laptop. DJs perform for a live audience in a nightclub or dance club or a TV, radio broadcast audience, or in the 2010s, an online radio audience. DJs create mixes and tracks that are recorded for sale and distribution. In hip hop music, DJs may create beats, using percussion breaks and other musical content sampled from pre-existing records.
In hip hop, rappers and MCs use. DJs use equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music and mix them together; this allows the DJ to create seamless transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs. This involves aligning the beats of the music sources so their rhythms do not clash when they are played together, either so two records can be played at the same time, or to enable the DJ to make a smooth transition from one song to another. An important tool for DJs is the specialized DJ mixer, a small audio mixer with a crossfader and cue functions; the crossfader enables the DJ to transition from one song to another. The cue knobs or switches allow the DJ to listen to a source of recorded music in headphones before playing it for the live club or broadcast audience. Previewing the music in headphones helps the DJ pick the next track they want to play, cue up the track to the desired starting location, align the two tracks' beats in traditional situations where auto sync technology is not being used.
This process ensures that the selected song will mix well with the playing music. DJs may use a microphone to speak to the audience; the title "DJ" is commonly used by DJs in front of their real names or adopted pseudonyms or stage names as a title to denote their profession. Some DJs focus on creating a good mix of songs for the club dancers or radio audience. Other DJs use turntablism techniques such as scratching, in which the DJ or turntablist manipulates the record player turntable to create new rhythms and sounds. DJs need to have a mixture of artistic and technical skills for their profession, because they have to understand both the creative aspects of making new musical beats and tracks, the technical aspects of using mixing consoles, professional audio equipment, and, in the 2010s, digital audio workstations and other computerized music gear. In many types of DJing, including club DJing and radio/TV DJing, a DJ has to have charisma and develop a good rapport with the audience. Professional DJs specialize in a specific genre of music, such as house music or hip hop music.
DJs have an extensive knowledge about the music they specialize in. Many DJs are avid music collectors of rare or obscure tracks and records. Radio DJs or radio personalities introduce and play music broadcast on AM, FM, digital or Internet radio stations. Club DJs referred as DJs in general, play music at musical events, such as parties at music venues or bars, music festivals and private events. Club DJs mix music recordings from two or more sources using different mixing techniques in order to produce non-stopping flow of music. One key technique used for seamlessly transitioning from one song to another is beatmatching. A DJ who plays and mixes one specific music genre is given the title of that genre; the quality of a DJ performance consists of two main features: technical skills, or how well can DJ operate the equipment and produce sm
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is a professional baseball organization, the oldest of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. A total of 30 teams play with 15 teams in each league; the NL and AL were formed as separate legal entities in 1901 respectively. After cooperating but remaining separate entities beginning in 1903, the leagues merged into a single organization led by the Commissioner of Baseball in 2000; the organization oversees Minor League Baseball, which comprises 256 teams affiliated with the Major League clubs. With the World Baseball Softball Confederation, MLB manages the international World Baseball Classic tournament. Baseball's first all-professional team was founded in Cincinnati in 1869; the first few decades of professional baseball were characterized by rivalries between leagues and by players who jumped from one team or league to another. The period before 1920 in baseball was known as the dead-ball era. Baseball survived a conspiracy to fix the 1919 World Series, which came to be known as the Black Sox Scandal.
The sport rose in popularity in the 1920s, survived potential downturns during the Great Depression and World War II. Shortly after the war, Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier; the 1950s and 1960s were a time of expansion for the AL and NL new stadiums and artificial turf surfaces began to change the game in the 1970s and 1980s. Home runs dominated the game during the 1990s, media reports began to discuss the use of anabolic steroids among Major League players in the mid-2000s. In 2006, an investigation produced the Mitchell Report, which implicated many players in the use of performance-enhancing substances, including at least one player from each team. Today, MLB is composed of 1 in Canada. Teams play 162 games each season and five teams in each league advance to a four-round postseason tournament that culminates in the World Series, a best-of-seven championship series between the two league champions that dates to 1903. Baseball broadcasts are aired on television and the Internet throughout North America and in several other countries throughout the world.
MLB has the highest season attendance of any sports league in the world with more than 73 million spectators in 2015. MLB is governed by the Major League Baseball Constitution; this document has undergone several incarnations since its creation in 1876. Under the direction of the Commissioner of Baseball, MLB hires and maintains the sport's umpiring crews, negotiates marketing and television contracts. MLB maintains a unique, controlling relationship over the sport, including most aspects of Minor League Baseball; this is due in large part to the 1922 U. S. Supreme Court ruling in Federal Baseball Club v. National League, which held that baseball is not interstate commerce and therefore not subject to federal antitrust law; this ruling has been weakened only in subsequent years. The weakened ruling granted more stability to the owners of teams and has resulted in values increasing at double-digit rates. There were several challenges to MLB's primacy in the sport between the 1870s and the Federal League in 1916.
The chief executive of MLB is the commissioner Rob Manfred. The chief operating officer is Tony Petitti. There are five other executives: president, chief communications officer, chief legal officer, chief financial officer, chief baseball officer; the multimedia branch of MLB, based in Manhattan, is MLB Advanced Media. This branch oversees each of the 30 teams' websites, its charter states that MLB Advanced Media holds editorial independence from the league, but it is under the same ownership group and revenue-sharing plan. MLB Productions is a structured wing of the league, focusing on video and traditional broadcast media. MLB owns 67 percent of MLB Network, with the other 33 percent split between several cable operators and satellite provider DirecTV, it operates out of studios in Secaucus, New Jersey, has editorial independence from the league. In 1920, the weak National Commission, created to manage relationships between the two leagues, was replaced with the much more powerful Commissioner of Baseball, who had the power to make decisions for all of professional baseball unilaterally.
From 1901 to 1960, the American and National Leagues fielded eight teams apiece. In the 1960s, MLB expansion added eight teams, including the first non-U. S. Team. Two teams were added in the 1970s. From 1969 through 1993, each league consisted of an West Division. A third division, the Central Division, was formed in each league in 1994; until 1996, the two leagues met on the field only during the All-Star Game. Regular-season interleague play was introduced in 1997. In March 1995 two new franchises, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays, were awarded by MLB, to begin play in 1998; this addition brought the total number of franchises to 30. In early 1997, MLB decided to assign one new team to each league: Tampa Bay joined the AL and Arizona joined the NL; the original plan was to have an odd number of teams in each league, but in order for every team to be able to play daily, this would have required interleague play to be scheduled throughout the entire season. However, it
National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association is a men's professional basketball league in North America. It is considered to be the premier men's professional basketball league in the world; the NBA is an active member of USA Basketball, recognized by FIBA as the national governing body for basketball in the United States. The NBA is one of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. NBA players are the world's best paid athletes by average annual salary per player; the league was founded in New York City on June 1946, as the Basketball Association of America. The league adopted the name National Basketball Association on August 3, 1949, after merging with the competing National Basketball League; the league's several international as well as individual team offices are directed out of its head offices located in the Olympic Tower at 645 Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. NBA Entertainment and NBA TV studios are directed out of offices located in New Jersey; the Basketball Association of America was founded in 1946 by owners of the major ice hockey arenas in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States and Canada.
On November 1, 1946, in Toronto, Canada, the Toronto Huskies hosted the New York Knickerbockers at Maple Leaf Gardens, in a game the NBA now refers to as the first game played in NBA history. The first basket was made by Ossie Schectman of the Knickerbockers. Although there had been earlier attempts at professional basketball leagues, including the American Basketball League and the NBL, the BAA was the first league to attempt to play in large arenas in major cities. During its early years, the quality of play in the BAA was not better than in competing leagues or among leading independent clubs such as the Harlem Globetrotters. For instance, the 1948 ABL finalist Baltimore Bullets moved to the BAA and won that league's 1948 title, the 1948 NBL champion Minneapolis Lakers won the 1949 BAA title. Prior to the 1948–49 season, however, NBL teams from Fort Wayne, Indianapolis and Rochester jumped to the BAA, which established the BAA as the league of choice for collegians looking to turn professional.
On August 3, 1949, the remaining NBL teams–Syracuse, Tri-Cities, Sheboygan and Waterloo–merged into the BAA. In deference to the merger and to avoid possible legal complications, the league name was changed to the present National Basketball Association though the merged league retained the BAA's governing body, including Podoloff. To this day, the NBA claims the BAA's history as its own, it now reckons the arrival of the NBL teams as an expansion, not a merger, does not recognize NBL records and statistics. The new league had seventeen franchises located in a mix of large and small cities, as well as large arenas and smaller gymnasiums and armories. In 1950, the NBA consolidated to eleven franchises, a process that continued until 1953–54, when the league reached its smallest size of eight franchises: the New York Knicks, Boston Celtics, Philadelphia Warriors, Minneapolis Lakers, Rochester Royals, Fort Wayne Pistons, Tri-Cities Blackhawks, Syracuse Nationals, all of which remain in the league today.
The process of contraction saw. The Hawks shifted from the Tri-Cities to Milwaukee in 1951, to St. Louis in 1955; the Rochester Royals moved from Rochester, New York, to Cincinnati in 1957 and the Pistons relocated from Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Detroit in 1957. Japanese-American Wataru Misaka broke the NBA color barrier in the 1947–48 season when he played for the New York Knicks, he remained the only non-white player in league history prior to the first African-American, Harold Hunter, signing with the Washington Capitols in 1950. Hunter was cut from the team during training camp, but several African-American players did play in the league that year, including Chuck Cooper with the Celtics, Nathaniel "Sweetwater" Clifton with the Knicks, Earl Lloyd with the Washington Capitols. During this period, the Minneapolis Lakers, led by center George Mikan, won five NBA Championships and established themselves as the league's first dynasty. To encourage shooting and discourage stalling, the league introduced the 24-second shot clock in 1954.
If a team does not attempt to score a field goal within 24 seconds of obtaining the ball, play is stopped and the ball given to its opponent. In 1957, rookie center Bill Russell joined the Boston Celtics, which featured guard Bob Cousy and coach Red Auerbach, went on to lead the club to eleven NBA titles in thirteen seasons. Center Wilt Chamberlain entered the league with the Warriors in 1959 and became a dominant individual star of the 1960s, setting new single game records in scoring and rebounding. Russell's rivalry with Chamberlain became one of the greatest rivalries in the history of American team sports; the 1960s were dominated by the Celtics. Led by Russell, Bob Cousy and coach Red Auerbach, Boston won eight straight championships in the NBA from 1959 to 1966; this championship streak is the longest in NBA history. They did not win the title in 1966–67, but regained it in the 1967–68 season and repeated in 1969; the domination totaled nine of the ten championship banners of the 1960s.
Through this period, the NBA continued to evolve with the shift of the Minneapolis Lakers to Los Angeles, the Philadelphia Warriors to San Francisco, the Syracuse Nationals to Philadelphia to become the Philadelphia 76ers, the St. Louis Hawks moving to Atlanta, as well as the addition of its first expansion franchises; the Chicago Packers (now Wa
