1.
San Francisco
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
2.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
4.
Plywood
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Plywood is a sheet material manufactured from thin layers or plies of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is a wood from the family of manufactured boards which includes medium-density fibreboard. All plywoods bind resin and wood fibre sheets to form a composite material, there is usually an odd number of plies, so that the sheet is balanced—this reduces warping. Because plywood is bonded with grains running against one another and with an odd number of composite parts, the word ply derives from the French verb plier, to fold, from the Latin verb plico, from the ancient Greek verb πλέκω. In 1797 Samuel Bentham applied for patents covering several machines to produce veneers, in his patent applications, he described the concept of laminating several layers of veneer with glue to form a thicker piece – the first description of what we now call plywood. Samuel Bentham was a British naval engineer with many shipbuilding inventions to his credit. Veneers at the time of Bentham were flat sawn, rift sawn or quarter sawn, i. e. cut along or across the log manually in different angles to the grain and thus limited in width and length. One can thus presume that rotary lathe plywood manufacture was a process in France in the 1860s. Plywood was introduced into the United States in 1865 and industrial production started shortly after, in 1928, the first standard-sized 4 ft by 8 ft plywood sheets were introduced in the United States for use as a general building material. Artists use plywood as a support for paintings to replace traditional canvas or cardboard. Ready-made artist boards for oil painting in three-layered plywood were produced, in India, plywood is more commonly called Kitply after a leading brand which pioneered the concept of waterproof plywood in the early 1970s. A typical plywood panel has face veneers of a higher grade than the core veneers, the principal function of the core layers is to increase the separation between the outer layers where the bending stresses are highest, thus increasing the panels resistance to bending. As a result, thicker panels can span greater distances under the same loads, in bending, the maximum stress occurs in the outermost layers, one in tension, the other in compression. Bending stress decreases from the maximum at the layers to nearly zero at the central layer. Shear stress, by contrast, is higher in the center of the panel, the most common dimension is 1.2 by 2.4 metres or the slightly larger imperial dimension of 4 feet ×8 feet. Plies vary in thickness from 1.4 mm to 4.3 mm, the number of plies—which is always odd—depends on the thickness and grade of the sheet. Roofing can use the thinner 5/8 plywood, subfloors are at least 3/4 thick, the thickness depending on the distance between floor joists. T&G plywood is usually found in the 1/2 to 1 range, hardwood plywood is made out of wood from angiosperm trees and used for demanding end uses
5.
Thermostat
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A thermostat is a component which senses the temperature of a system so that the systems temperature is maintained near a desired setpoint. It is a closed loop control device, as it seeks to reduce the error between the desired and measured temperatures, sometimes a thermostat combines both the sensing and control action elements of a controlled system, such as in an automotive thermostat. A thermostat exerts control by switching heating or cooling devices on or off, or by regulating the flow of a heat transfer fluid as needed, to maintain the correct temperature. Thermostats can be constructed in ways and may use a variety of sensors to measure the temperature. The output of the sensor then controls the heating or cooling apparatus, instead, the heating or cooling equipment runs at full capacity until the set temperature is reached, then shuts off. Increasing the difference between the setting and the desired temperature therefore does not shorten the time to achieve the desired temperature. A thermostat may have a maximum switching frequency, or switch heating and cooling equipment on and this reduces the risk of equipment damage from frequent switching. The term thermostat is derived from the Greek words θερμός thermos, hot and στατός statos, standing, early technologies included mercury thermometers with electrodes inserted directly through the glass, so that when a certain temperature was reached the contacts would be closed by the mercury. These were accurate to within a degree of temperature, common sensor technologies in use today include, Bimetallic mechanical or electrical sensors. He invented a mercury thermostat to regulate the temperature of a chicken incubator and this is one of the first recorded feedback-controlled devices. Modern thermostat control was developed in the 1830s by Andrew Ure, a Scottish chemist, Warren S. Johnson of Wisconsin patented a bi-metal room thermostat in 1883, and two years later filed a patent for the first multi-zone thermostatic control system. Albert Butz invented the electric thermostat and patented it in 1886, one of the first industrial uses of the thermostat was in the regulation of the temperature in poultry incubators. Charles Hearson, a British engineer, designed the first modern incubator for eggs that was taken up for use on farms in 1879. The incubators incorporated an accurate thermostat to regulate the temperature so as to simulate the experience of an egg being hatched naturally. This covers only devices which both sense and control using purely mechanical means, domestic water and steam based central heating systems have traditionally been controlled by bi-metallic strip thermostats, and this is dealt with later in this article. Purely mechanical control has been localised steam or hot-water radiator bi-metallic thermostats which regulated the individual flow, however, Thermostatic Radiator Valves are now being widely used. Purely mechanical thermostats are used to regulate dampers in some rooftop turbine vents, some automobile passenger heating systems have a thermostatically controlled valve to regulate the water flow and temperature to an adjustable level. In older vehicles the thermostat controls the application of engine vacuum to actuators that control water valves, in modern vehicles, the vacuum actuators may be operated by small solenoids under the control of a central computer
6.
Bedding
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Bedding, also known as bedclothes or bed linen, is the materials laid above the mattress of a bed for hygiene, warmth, protection of the mattress, and decorative effect. Bedding is the removable and washable portion of a human sleeping environment, multiple sets of bedding for each bed will often be washed in rotation and/or changed seasonally to improve sleep comfort at varying room temperatures. In American English, the word bedding generally does not include the mattress, bed frame, or bed base, in Australian and New Zealand English, bedding is often called manchester. Additional blankets, etc. may be added to ensure the necessary insulation in cold sleeping areas, a common practice for children and some adults is to decorate a bed with plush stuffed animals, dolls, and other soft toys. These are not included under the designation of bedding, although they may provide warmth to the sleeper. Goose or duck down and other feathers are used as a warm and lightweight filling in duvets, comforters. But such fill can protrude in part even from tightly-woven fabric, natural and synthetic down alternatives are marketed. Cotton, wool or polyester batting is commonly used as fill in quilts and these are less expensive and more easily laundered than natural down or feathers. Synthetic fibers are best in the form of thermofused batting, thick-woven or knitted wool, cotton, acrylic or other microfiber synthetics, or blends of these, are typically used for blankets. Around 3400 BC Egyptian pharaohs had their beds moved off the ground, bed linen was widely evolved in Egypt. It was seen as a symbol of light and purity, as well as a symbol of prosperity, the Egyptian mummies were often wrapped in bed linen. Roman Empire mattresses were stuffed with wool, feather, reeds or hay, the beds were decorated with paint, bronze, silver, jewels and gold. In Japan, mattress types were stuffed with cotton and rolled up for storage during the day, during the Renaissance, mattresses were stuffed with straw and feathers and then covered with silks, velvets or satin material. In the 18th century, Europeans began to use bed frames made from cast iron, in the 19th century the bed spring was invented, also called the box spring. Bed skirt, A decorative piece used to cover the boxspring and it fits between the mattress and boxspring and hangs to or almost to the floor. Bedspread, A bed cover, often decorative, with sides that go to or near the floor, protects bedding during daytime from dust or other contamination. This does not require a bed skirt, and was popular in North America after World War II. Blanket, A woven cloth covering used for warmth, bolster, A long, narrow and commonly cylindrical pillow filled with down or feathers
7.
Elizabeth Gaskell
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Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer. Her novels offer a portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848, Gaskells The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published in 1857, was the first biography of Brontë. Some of Gaskells best known novels are Cranford, North and South, Gaskell was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson on 29 September 1810 in Lindsey Row, Chelsea, at the house which is now 93 Cheyne Walk. She was the youngest of eight children, only she and her brother John survived infancy and that position did not materialise, however, and instead Stevenson was nominated Keeper of the Treasury Records. While she was growing up, Elizabeths future was uncertain, as she had no wealth and no firm home, though she was a permanent guest at her aunt. Her father married Catherine Thomson in 1814 and they had a son, William, although Elizabeth spent several years without seeing her father, to whom she was devoted, her older brother John often visited her in Knutsford. John was destined for the Royal Navy from an age, like his grandfathers and uncles. John went missing in 1827 during an expedition to India, a beautiful young woman, Elizabeth was well-groomed, tidily dressed, kind, gentle and considerate of others. Her temperament was calm and collected, joyous and innocent, she revelled in the simplicity of rural life, much of Elizabeths childhood was spent in Cheshire, where she lived with her aunt Hannah Lumb in Knutsford, the town she immortalised as Cranford. They lived in a large house called Sandlebridge that overlooked the township of Alderley Edge. Her aunts gave her the classics to read, and she was encouraged by her father in her studies and her brother John sent her modern books, and descriptions of his life at sea and his experiences abroad. Seeking new experiences she opened her mind to the solace of nature, on other occasions when her cousins came to play she found consolation in young friendships. Exploring the green hollows, old shady glades of ruined cottages, she collected wild flowers and her favourite plant the Saxifrage is now extinct, but the pleasure natural things brought reflected clearly in her literary observations. Sandlebridge was demolished before 1900, only its chimney remained, there among the visitors and cousinage she played shuffleboard on the kitchen table. A young Elizabeth would go shopping to a woman in Knutsford, church House was directly accessible in Cranford with its high walls and garden walks. She generated confidence and self-respect from the country life and her family regularly visited the Royal George Hotel, which impressed upon her a sensibility for the subtler points of architecture. Led by an interpreter Gaskell later told Anne Thackeray Ritchie how like Cranford it was and she learnt from Lord Clive that his mother was a Gaskell and a friend of the whiggish Holland set
8.
Elmira, New York
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Elmira /ˌɛlˈmaɪrə/ is a city in Chemung County, New York, US. It is the city of the Elmira, New York Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 29,200 at the 2010 census and it is the county seat of Chemung County. The City of Elmira is in the part of the county. It is in the Southern Tier of New York, a distance north of the Pennsylvania state line. This was long an area inhabited by indigenous people, in historic times, it was occupied by the Cayuga nation of the Iroquois Confederacy, also called the Kanawaholla. They had some relations with Europeans and English over fur trading, during the American Revolutionary War, the Sullivan Expedition of 1779 was mounted against the four Iroquois nations who had allied with the British and Loyalist forces. It fought a combined British-Iroquois force at the Battle of Newtown, south of the current city, in which Sullivan, after the conclusion of the war, the Iroquois and the new United States made a treaty at Elmira in 1791 to settle territorial disputes in the region. Most of the Seneca emigrated under pressure with the other Iroquois to Canada, the first European-American settler in Elmira was captain Abraham Miller of the Continental Army. He built a cabin after resigning just before the Revolutionary War, millers Pond and Miller Street are named after him and are near the location of his house. The New York legislature established the Township of Chemung, now Chemung County, the settlement of Newtown was soon established at the intersection of Newtown Creek and the Chemung River. In 1792, the settlement at Newtown joined with the Wisnerburg and DeWittsburg settlements to form the village of Newtown, in 1808, the village officially changed its name to the Town of Elmira, at a town meeting held at Teals Tavern. It is said the town was named after tavern owner Nathan Teals young daughter, in any case, the City of Elmira, also called The Queen City, was incorporated in 1864 from part of the town of Elmira and the village of Elmira. The remaining part of the town of Elmira exists still, surrounding the city on the west, north, the city and town share an intricately entwined history. Carpenters Family History book printed in 1898, Elmira is named after Major General Matthew Carpenters daughter and this occurred according to the book in 1821 at the constitutional convention which Matthew was a delegate to. In 1849, the New York and Erie Railroad was built through Elmira, in 1850, the Elmira and Jefferson Railroad gave the area a route north and the Elmira and Williamsport Railroad a route south in 1854. This made the city a prime location for an Army training, in 1872 the Utica Ithaca and Elmira Railroad was begun, eventually creating a route to Cortland and Syracuse via Horseheads, Breesport and VanEtten. The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad was completed in 1884, the camp, in use from June 6,1864 until autumn 1865, was dubbed Hellmira by its inmates
9.
Mark Twain
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Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. Among his novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He served an apprenticeship with a printer and then worked as a typesetter and he later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He referred humorously to his lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, the short story brought international attention and was even translated into classic Greek. His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty. He filed for bankruptcy in the wake of financial setbacks. He chose to pay all his creditors in full, even though he had no legal responsibility to do so. Twain was born shortly after an appearance of Halleys Comet, and he predicted that he would go out with it as well and he was lauded as the greatest American humorist of his age, and William Faulkner called him the father of American literature. His parents met when his father moved to Missouri, and they were married in 1823, Twain was of Cornish, English, and Scots-Irish descent. Only three of his siblings survived childhood, Orion, Henry, and Pamela and his sister Margaret died when Twain was three, and his brother Benjamin died three years later. His brother Pleasant died at six months of age, slavery was legal in Missouri at the time, and it became a theme in these writings. His father was an attorney and judge, but he died of pneumonia in 1847, the next year, Twain left school after the fifth grade to become a printers apprentice. In 1851, he working as a typesetter, contributing articles and humorous sketches to the Hannibal Journal. He educated himself in libraries in the evenings, finding wider information than at a conventional school. Twain describes his boyhood in Life on the Mississippi, stating there was but one permanent ambition among his comrades. Pilot was the grandest position of all, the pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary – from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay. As Twain describes it, the pilots prestige exceeded that of the captain, bixby took Twain on as a cub pilot to teach him the river between New Orleans and St. Louis for $500, payable out of Twains first wages after graduating. It was more than two years before he received his pilots license, piloting gave also him his pen name from mark twain, the leadsmans cry for a measured river depth of two fathoms, which was safe water for a steamboat
10.
The New York Times
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The New York Times is an American daily newspaper, founded and continuously published in New York City since September 18,1851, by The New York Times Company. The New York Times has won 119 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper, the papers print version in 2013 had the second-largest circulation, behind The Wall Street Journal, and the largest circulation among the metropolitan newspapers in the US. The New York Times is ranked 18th in the world by circulation, following industry trends, its weekday circulation had fallen in 2009 to fewer than one million. Nicknamed The Gray Lady, The New York Times has long been regarded within the industry as a newspaper of record. The New York Times international version, formerly the International Herald Tribune, is now called the New York Times International Edition, the papers motto, All the News Thats Fit to Print, appears in the upper left-hand corner of the front page. On Sunday, The New York Times is supplemented by the Sunday Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine and T, some other early investors of the company were Edwin B. Morgan and Edward B. We do not believe that everything in Society is either right or exactly wrong, —what is good we desire to preserve and improve, —what is evil, to exterminate. In 1852, the started a western division, The Times of California that arrived whenever a mail boat got to California. However, when local California newspapers came into prominence, the effort failed, the newspaper shortened its name to The New-York Times in 1857. It dropped the hyphen in the city name in the 1890s, One of the earliest public controversies it was involved with was the Mortara Affair, the subject of twenty editorials it published alone. At Newspaper Row, across from City Hall, Henry Raymond, owner and editor of The New York Times, averted the rioters with Gatling guns, in 1869, Raymond died, and George Jones took over as publisher. Tweed offered The New York Times five million dollars to not publish the story, in the 1880s, The New York Times transitioned gradually from editorially supporting Republican Party candidates to becoming more politically independent and analytical. In 1884, the paper supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in his first presidential campaign, while this move cost The New York Times readership among its more progressive and Republican readers, the paper eventually regained most of its lost ground within a few years. However, the newspaper was financially crippled by the Panic of 1893, the paper slowly acquired a reputation for even-handedness and accurate modern reporting, especially by the 1890s under the guidance of Ochs. Under Ochs guidance, continuing and expanding upon the Henry Raymond tradition, The New York Times achieved international scope, circulation, in 1910, the first air delivery of The New York Times to Philadelphia began. The New York Times first trans-Atlantic delivery by air to London occurred in 1919 by dirigible, airplane Edition was sent by plane to Chicago so it could be in the hands of Republican convention delegates by evening. In the 1940s, the extended its breadth and reach. The crossword began appearing regularly in 1942, and the section in 1946
11.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science-fiction writer. Often called the dean of science writers, his controversial works continue to have an influential effect on the genre. Heinlein became one of the first science-fiction writers to break into mainstream magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. He was one of the best-selling science-fiction novelists for many decades, and he, Isaac Asimov and he also speculated on the influence of space travel on human cultural practices. Heinlein was named the first Science Fiction Writers Grand Master in 1974 and he also anticipated mechanical Computer Aided Design with Drafting Dan and described a modern version of a waterbed in his novel The Door into Summer, though he never patented or built one. In the first chapter of the novel Space Cadet he anticipated the cell-phone,35 years before Motorola invented the technology, several of Heinleins works have been adapted for film and television. Heinlein was born on July 7,1907 to Rex Ivar Heinlein and Bam Lyle Heinlein, in Butler and he was a 6th-generation German-American, a family tradition had it that Heinleins fought in every American war starting with the War of Independence. His childhood was spent in Kansas City, Missouri, Heinleins experience in the U. S. Navy exerted a strong influence on his character and writing. He graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland with the class of 1929 and he was assigned to the new aircraft carrier USS Lexington in 1931, where he worked in radio communications, then in its earlier phases, with the carriers aircraft. The captain of this carrier was Ernest J. King, who served as the Chief of Naval Operations and Commander-in-Chief. Heinlein was frequently interviewed during his later years by historians who asked him about Captain King. Heinlein also served aboard the destroyer USS Roper in 1933 and 1934, reaching the rank of lieutenant. His brother, Lawrence Heinlein, served in the U. S. Army, the U. S. Air Force, and the Missouri National Guard, in 1929, Heinlein married Elinor Curry of Kansas City in Los Angeles, and their marriage lasted about a year. His second marriage in 1932 to Leslyn MacDonald lasted for 15 years, in 1934, Heinlein was discharged from the Navy due to pulmonary tuberculosis. During a lengthy hospitalization, he developed a design for a waterbed, Heinlein supported himself at several occupations, including real estate sales and silver mining, but for some years found money in short supply. Heinlein was active in Upton Sinclairs socialist End Poverty in California movement in the early 1930s, when Sinclair gained the Democratic nomination for Governor of California in 1934, Heinlein worked actively in the campaign. Heinlein himself ran for the California State Assembly in 1938, but was unsuccessful, while not destitute after the campaign—he had a small disability pension from the Navy—Heinlein turned to writing in order to pay off his mortgage. His first published story, Life-Line, was printed in the August 1939 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction, originally written for a contest, it was instead sold to Astounding for significantly more than the contests first-prize payoff
