Organization.

The 1900 Games were held as part of the 1900 Exposition Universelle. The Baron de Coubertin believed that this would help public awareness of the Olympics and submitted elaborate plans to rebuild the ancient site of Olympia, complete with statues, temples, stadia and gymnasia. The director of the Exposition Universelle, Alfred Picard, thought holding an ancient sport event at the Exposition Universelle was an "absurd anachronism". After thanking de Coubertin for his plans, Picard filed them away and nothing more came of it.  A committee was formed for the organization of the Games, consisting of some of the more able sports administrators of the day and a provisional program was drawn up. Sports to be included at the games were track and field athletics, swimming, wrestling, gymnastics, fencing, French and British boxing, river and ocean yacht racing, cycling, golf, lifesaving, archery, weightlifting, rowing, diving and water polo.  British and Irish sports associations announced a desire to compete, as did a number of powerful American universities and sports clubs. Competitors from Russia and Australia also confirmed their intentions to travel to Paris.  On 9 November 1898, the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques ("Union of the French Societies for Athletic Sports" or USFSA) put out an announcement that it would have sole right to any organised sport held during the World's Fair. It was an empty threat but Viscount Charles de La Rochefoucauld, the nominated head of the organizing committee, stepped down rather than be embroiled in the political battle. The Baron de Coubertin, who was also secretary-general of the USFSA, was urged to withdraw from active involvement in the running of the Games and did so, only to comment later, "I surrendered – and was incorrect in doing so."  The IOC ceded control of the Games to a new committee which was to oversee every sporting activity connected to the 1900 Exposition Universelle. Alfred Picard appointed Daniel Mérillon, the head of the French Shooting Association, as president of this organization in February 1899. Mérillon proceeded to publish an entirely different schedule of events, with the result that many of those that had made plans to compete in concordance with the original program withdrew, and refused to deal with the new committee.  Between May and October 1900, the new organizing committee held an enormous number of sporting activities alongside the Paris Exposition. The sporting events rarely used the term of "Olympic". Indeed, the term "Olympic Games" was replaced by ""Concours internationaux d'exercices physiques et de sport"" ("International physical exercises and sports" in English) in the official report of the sporting events of the 1900 Exposition Universelle. The press reported competitions variously as "International Championships", "International Games", "Paris Championships", "World Championships" and "Grand Prix of the Paris Exposition".  De Coubertin commented later to friends: "It's a miracle that the Olympic Movement survived that celebration".

Sports.

The IOC has never decided which events were "Olympic" and which were not. In fact, Pierre de Coubertin had ceded that entire determination to the organizers. Weightlifting and wrestling had been dropped since the 1896 Summer Olympics, while 13 new sports were added. Swimming and water polo were considered to be two disciplines within a single sport of "aquatics" in the Olympic context. Among the sports below, only croquet was not an international competition, being contested by French players only. The number of events in each discipline is noted in parentheses.  More recently, the IOC website has affirmed a total of 95 medal events. It appears that the IOC has accepted Olympic historian Bill Mallon's recommendation for events that should be considered "Olympic", based on four applied criteria. These events include two additional cycling events, Basque pelota and three of five additional sailing events, all of which appear in the IOC database. Four other recommended events are included: two equestrian and two sailing events, not in the database. These are reflected in the table below. Complete acceptance of Mallon' s recommendation would entail including one archery event (championnat du monde) and removing one shooting event (20 metre military pistol, which was an event for pros) from the database.

Venues.

14 venues were used at the 1900 Summer Olympics to host 20 sports.

Sport-by-sport overview.

The standard of competition at the Games was variable. Despite a poor quality track, a strong contingent of top-class American collegiate athletes ensured the track and field competitions were of the highest quality. The tennis gold medalists were all former Wimbledon champions, swimming and fencing events were of a good standard and even polo, a minority sport for the social elite, was well represented by some of the best players in the game. Other sports were noticeably weak in both quality and depth. Only athletics, swimming and fencing had competitors from more than ten nations.

Archery.

The history of the archery competition at the 1900 Olympics is one of confusion. The IOC currently lists six events with Olympic status, but a case has been made that as many as eight other events equally deserve to be considered part of official Olympic history. About 150 archers competed in the six events that later had official status conferred. However, as many as 5,000 were involved in archery competition in conjunction with the 1900 World's Fair. Belgian Hubert Van Innis took two gold medals and one silver and would add to his tally twenty years later in Antwerp.

Athletics.

The track and field events were held at the home of the Racing Club de France at the Croix-Catelan stadium in Bois de Boulogne. No track was laid and races took place on an uneven field of grass littered with trees. Additional events were held for professionals and a series of handicap races also took place. These are not considered official Olympic events.

The sprints.

In the seven events contested over 400 metres or less, the United States took 13 out of a possible 21 medals. Athletes from Columbia University, Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania all won gold medals. Indeed, two would-be dentists from the University of Pennsylvania were among the stars of the Games. Alvin Kraenzlein won 4 individual gold medals, a feat that has never repeated, while Walter Tewksbury took five medals including two golds. The hurdles in the 400 m hurdle race were -long telegraph poles arranged on the track and the race, uniquely in Olympic competition, had a water jump on the final straight. Adolphe Klingelhoeffer, who had Brazilian citizenship in 1900, competed for France in three events.

Middle and long distance races.

United States dominance in sprinting was matched in the longer track races by United Kingdom. Only George Orton, who won Canada's first Olympic title in the shorter of the two steeplechases, ruined a perfect record for the British. Orton won his title less than an hour after placing third in the 400 metre hurdles.

The Marathon.

The most contentious of all the events in these Games began and ended in the Bois de Boulogne. Intended to follow the track of the old city wall, the course was poorly marked out and runners often got lost and had to double back on themselves before continuing. On some parts of the course, runners had to contend with distractions from cars, bicycles, pedestrians and animals. Arthur Newton of the United States finished fifth but stated he had not been passed by any other runner during the race. Another American, Richard Grant, claimed he was run down by a cyclist as he made ground on the leaders. French honour seemed to have been satisfied when Michel Théato crossed the finish line and a military band struck up La Marseillaise. However, modern research has revealed that Théato was born in Luxembourg and maintained Luxembourgian citizenship throughout his life.

Field events.

The Hungarian discus thrower Rudolf Bauer was the only non-American crowned as Olympic Champion. American domination was even greater in the field events than the track events, with outstanding performances coming from Ray Ewry and Irving Baxter. Ewry started his Olympic career with a sweep of the three standing jumps, while Baxter finished second to Ewry three times and won both the regular high jump and pole vault. Meyer Prinstein became the first Jewish Olympic gold medalist in the triple jump.

Basque pelota.

The chistera form of the game was played at this, the sport's only appearance at full Olympic level. Two pairs entered and the Spanish partnerships of Amezola and Villota became their nations' first Olympic champions. The mano form of the game and a chistera tournament for professional players were contested unofficially.

Cricket.

After the withdrawal of teams from the Netherlands and Belgium, only two teams played in the cricket tournament. A team made up of players from the Albion Cricket Club and the Standard Athletic Club, two Paris clubs consisting almost exclusively of British expatriates, played a touring team from the southwest of England. The Devon and Somerset Wanderers were no more than a team of competent club cricketers (made up from Blundells School old boys and members of Castle Cary Cricket Club), and only Montagu Toller and Alfred Bowerman were deemed good enough to play at county level for Somerset. The game was played before a small crowd at the Vélodrome de Vincennes. An emphatic second innings bowling performance from Toller captured victory for the visitors as time appeared to be running out for them. If the French had held out for five more minutes the game would have been a draw. Knowledge of the game would have been lost but for the forethought of John Symes, a member of the victorious team, who kept a scorecard in his own writing.

Croquet.

The croquet tournament was notable as it marked the first appearance of women at Olympic level. Madame Desprès, Madame Filleul-Brohy and Mademoiselle Ohier were eliminated in the first round of competition. All players were French. A single paying spectator attended the tournament, an elderly English gentleman who travelled from Nice for the early stages. An unofficial two-ball handicap competition was also held.

Cycling.

The home nation won six of the nine medals available. A number of unofficial events were held for both amateurs and professionals.

Equestrian.

Equestrian sport made its debut at the Olympic Games with three jumping events being held, plus two other events. The Italian rider Gian Giorgio Trissino won a gold and a silver. He narrowly missed making Olympic history by winning two medals in the same event. Competing with two different horses in the high jump, he jointly won the gold medal and finished in 4th place on his second horse.

Fencing.

Nineteen nations were represented in the fencing competition, which was held in a field near the cutlery exhibit at the 1900 World's Fair. French fencers dominated the proceedings but both Cuba and Italy also took titles. The early rounds of the foil competitions were judged on style rather than the actual result of the contest. This meant that some fencers were eliminated without losing a contest while others were defeated and still progressed to the next rounds.

Football.

The first football champions at the Olympics were the London amateurs of Upton Park F.C. A crowd of around 500 spectators saw them defeat their French rivals.

Golf.

Margaret Ives Abbott, a student of art from Chicago, played in and won a nine-hole golf tournament on an October Tuesday in Paris. She died in 1955 without being aware that the tournament was part of the Olympic Games and she had become America's first ever female Olympic champion.

Gymnastics.

135 gymnasts took part in a competition that involved elements from track and field and weightlifting as well as gymnastic disciplines

Polo.

Eight separate tournaments were held in 1900 as part of the 1900 World's Fair. Only the Grand Prix Internationale de l'Exposition is counted as an official medal event. Entries were from clubs rather than countries, and the winning Foxhunters club comprised English, Irish and American players.  Mexico won its first medal in this sport, a bronze won by Guillermo Hayden Wright, Marquez de Villavieja and three brothers: Eustaquio de Escandón y Barron, Pablo de Escandón y Barron and Manuel de Escandón y Barron.

Rowing.

Competitions were held on the River Seine. The coxed fours descended into farce when officials changed the qualifying criteria for the final several times. The first final was held without any of the original qualifiers, who had withdrawn as a protest against the decision to run six boats on a course laid out for only four. The officials then decided to run another "final" for the boycotting crews. Both events are considered official Olympic competitions. In a number of events crews saw the advantage of having ultra-lightweight coxswain and recruited local boys for the period of the Games. Most of these remain a mystery; some could have been under ten years old.

Rugby union.

Three teams competed in the Rugby tournament. A French representative team defeated a team from the German city of Frankfurt and Moseley Wanderers from England. The Moseley team had played a full game of rugby in England the day before they made the journey to Paris. They arrived in the morning, played the match in the afternoon and were back in their home country by the next morning. The proposed game between the British and German sides was cancelled, and both are credited as silver medalists. The Franco-Haitian centre Constantin Henriquez become the first black gold medalist.

Sailing.

The 1900 sailing regatta differs from every other Olympic regatta in a number of ways. In most classes there were two distinct "finals", boats were assigned time handicaps according to their weight within each class and cash prizes were handed out to the winner of each race. The IOC initially recognized the winner of the first race in each class as Olympic champion except in the case of the 10-20 ton class, which was decided on aggregate time over three races. However currently the participants of both first and second races in 3 classes (0-0.5t, 1-2t and 2-3t) are present in the IOC database as medalists, so the second races in these 3 classes were recognized by the IOC, as recommended by Olympic historian Bill Mallon. To support the IOC recognized total of 95 medal events, it appears that one more race in each of 2 other classes (0.5-1t and 3-10t) has been recognized by the IOC, per Mallon's suggestion. Thus, for five of the eight events, two gold, two silver and two bronze medals were retrospectively awarded. Races were held at both Meulan and Le Havre and medals shared among five nations. France and Great Britain were the most successful of the countries involved. A number of people named as members of medal-winning crews by the IOC have been proved not to have competed; others have their participation seriously questioned by historical research.

Shooting.

Switzerland's Konrad Stäheli was the outstanding marksman of the Games, taking a trio of titles and leading his country to the top of the shooting medal table. The medals were shared between six different nations. There is a debate as to whether the live pigeon shooting event was a full Olympic event, Belgian Leon Lunden shot twenty-one birds on his way to the championship. Up to thirty unofficial shooting events were also held, most involving professional marksmen. Research has shown that one of the medal events in the IOC database (25m rapid fire pistol, also called military pistol cat. 6) was contested by professionals.

Swimming.

The muddied waters of the Seine hosted the swimming events in 1900. Run with the current, the races produced very fast times by the standards of the day. John Arthur Jarvis of Great Britain, Frederick Lane of Australia and the German Ernst Hoppenberg each won two titles. Lane received a 50-pound bronze statue of a horse as a prize. A couple of unusual events were held. The obstacle race required both swimming underneath and climbing over rows of boats while Charles de Venville stayed submerged for over a minute to win the underwater swimming event.

Tennis.

A high quality men's tournament saw three past or future Wimbledon champions reach the semi-finals. Laurence Doherty reached the final when older brother Reggie stepped aside and let his sibling advance to the final. The two refused to play each other in what they considered a minor tournament. On the 11th of July a landmark was reached in the history of the Olympic Games. Charlotte Cooper, already three times Wimbledon champion, took the singles championship to become the first individual female Olympic champion, also winning the mixed doubles event.

Tug of war.

A combined Sweden/Denmark team, made up of three competitors from each country, defeated the French team to win the title. One of the members of the French team was born in Colombia. They were left as the only participating teams; the United States had entered but were forced to scratch as three of their team were involved in the final of the hammer. Edgar Aaybe was a journalist covering the Games for the Danish newspaper Politiken and was asked to join the team when another puller was taken ill.

Water polo.

Osborne Swimming Club, representing Great Britain were unchallenged in the tournament, scoring 29 goals and conceding only 3 in their 3 matches. In the final, they limited the number of shots on goal to avoid humiliating their opponents. One of its team members was from New Zealand. Thomas William Burgess of the bronze medal-winning Libellule de Paris team, represented Great Britain in the swimming events.

Olympic status of sports and events.

The 1900 games were not governed by a specific Olympic organizing committee, but instead held as an appendage to the 1900 World's Fair. An enormous number of events was held, though many fall short of the standards later required for Olympic championship status. Decisions as to which Olympic events are termed "official" and which have "unofficial" or "demonstration" status are usually left to the Olympic organizing committees and/or the IOC. In the absence of any overall authority capable of making an official distinction of this kind, no decision as to the official status of any event was made at the time of the Games. A document from 1912 exists, listing results from the 1900 Games, but the reliability and authenticity of this paper is questioned by Olympic historians. This document formed the original basis of the results of the Paris games in the IOC database. However, the IOC has never decided which events were "Olympic" and which were not.  All events satisfying all four of these retrospective selection criteria — restricted to amateurs, international participation, open to all competitors and without handicapping — are now regarded as Olympic events, except for those in one sport — ballooning. Croquet, motorboating and boules satisfied three criteria (all had only French players). Only croquet has been accorded Olympic status. (One of the ten croquet players, Marcel Haëntjens, had been thought to have been Belgian. Thus the croquet events were considered as international. Despite the Flemish name, Haëntjens was French.) Like all the Olympic events widely regarded as official, there were other events conducted during the 1900 World's Fair.  In addition to these, 71 scholastic and 92 military events were also held across a range of sports.

Participating nations.

According to an International Olympic Committee imprint, 24 nations sent competitors to the 1900 Olympic Games. Modern research shows that athletes from the following 28 countries participated in the Games:  Some sources also list athletes from the following nations as having competed at these Games. Other modern nations could be considered to have competed in some form in 1900. Algeria, Croatia, Ireland, Poland and Slovakia had athletes competing, but none of these were independent at the time. Algeria was part of France and sent four gymnasts who competed for France. What is now the Republic of Ireland was then part of Great Britain and had athletes who competed in athletics, polo, sailing and tennis. A Croatian fencer represented Austria, a Polish fencer for Russia and a pair of Slovaks competed for Hungary

Number of athletes by National Olympic Committees.

Medal count.

Gold medals were not given at the 1900 Games; instead, most of the winners were given cups or trophies. In some events, a silver medal was given for first place and a bronze medal was given for second. The International Olympic Committee has retrospectively assigned gold, silver and bronze medals to competitors who earned 1st, 2nd and 3rd-place finishes, respectively, in order to bring early Olympics in line with current awards. For Olympic Games before 1908 there is no universally accepted definition of nationality, and medal tables may vary depending on the chosen definition. For example, Australian Stanley Rowley competed as part of a team selected by the Amateur Athletic Association of England. The concept of "national teams" chosen by National Olympic Committees did not exist at this point in time.  These are the top ten nations that won medals at the 1900 Games.  Key

The 1900 Summer Olympics (), today officially known as the Games of the II Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event that took place in Paris, France, in 1900. No opening or closing ceremonies were held; competitions began on 14 May and ended on 28 October.

Die Olympischen Sommerspiele 1900 (offiziell "Spiele der II. Olympiade" genannt) wurden in der französischen Hauptstadt Paris im Rahmen der Weltausstellung "(Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Paris)" ausgetragen. Die Wettbewerbe verteilten sich über fünf Monate und fanden zwischen dem 14. Mai und dem 28. Oktober 1900 statt.


Early life.

Ernest Orlando Lawrence was born in Canton, South Dakota on August 8, 1901. His parents, Carl Gustavus and Gunda (née Jacobson) Lawrence, were both the offspring of Norwegian immigrants who had met while teaching at the high school in Canton, where his father was also the superintendent of schools. He had a younger brother, John H. Lawrence, who would become a physician, and was a pioneer in the field of nuclear medicine. Growing up, his best friend was Merle Tuve, who would also go on to become a highly accomplished physicist.  Lawrence attended the public schools of Canton and Pierre, then enrolled at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, but transferred after a year to the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. He completed his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1922, and his Master of Arts (M.A.) degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1923 under the supervision of William Francis Gray Swann. For his master's thesis, Lawrence built an experimental apparatus that rotated an ellipsoid through a magnetic field.  Lawrence followed Swann to the University of Chicago, and then to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where Lawrence completed his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in physics in 1925 as a Sloane Fellow, writing his doctoral thesis on the photoelectric effect in potassium vapor. He was elected a member of Sigma Xi, and, on Swann's recommendation, received a National Research Council fellowship. Instead of using it to travel to Europe, as was customary at the time, he remained at Yale University with Swann as a researcher.  With Jesse Beams from the University of Virginia, Lawrence continued to research the photoelectric effect. They showed that photoelectrons appeared within 2 x 10 seconds of the photons striking the photoelectric surface—close to the limit of measurement at the time. Reducing the emission time by switching the light source on and off rapidly made the spectrum of energy emitted broader, in conformance with Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

Early career.

In 1926 and 1927, Lawrence received offers of assistant professorships from the University of Washington in Seattle and the University of California at a salary of $3,500 per annum. Yale promptly matched the offer of the assistant professorship, but at a salary of $3,000. Lawrence chose to stay at the more prestigious Yale, but because he had never been an instructor, the appointment was resented by some of his fellow faculty, and in the eyes of many it still did not compensate for his South Dakota immigrant background.  Lawrence was hired as an associate professor of physics at the University of California in 1928, and two years later became a full professor, becoming the university's youngest professor. Robert Gordon Sproul, who became university president the day after Lawrence became a professor, was a member of the Bohemian Club, and he sponsored Lawrence's membership in 1932. Through this club, Lawrence met William Henry Crocker, Edwin Pauley, and John Francis Neylan. They were influential men who helped him obtain money for his energetic nuclear particle investigations. There was great hope for medical uses to come from the development of particle physics, and this led to much of the early funding for advances Lawrence was able to obtain.  While at Yale, Lawrence met Mary Kimberly (Molly) Blumer, the eldest of four daughters of George Blumer, the dean of the Yale School of Medicine. They first met in 1926 and became engaged in 1931, and were married on May 14, 1932, at Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven, Connecticut. They had six children: Eric, Margaret, Mary, Robert, Barbara, and Susan. Lawrence named his son Robert after theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer, his closest friend in Berkeley. In 1941, Molly's sister Elsie married Edwin McMillan, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951.

The development of the cyclotron.

Invention.

The invention that brought Lawrence to international fame started out as a sketch on a scrap of a paper napkin. While sitting in the library one evening in 1929, Lawrence glanced over a journal article by Rolf Widerøe, and was intrigued by one of the diagrams. This depicted a device that produced high-energy particles by means of a succession of small "pushes". The device depicted was laid out in a straight line using increasingly longer electrodes. At the time, physicists were beginning to explore the atomic nucleus. In 1919, the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford had fired alpha particles into nitrogen and had succeeded in knocking protons out of some of the nuclei. But nuclei have a positive charge that repels other positively charged nuclei, and they are bound together tightly by a force that physicists were only just beginning to understand. To break them up, to disintegrate them, would require much higher energies, of the order of millions of volts. Lawrence saw that such a particle accelerator would soon become too long and unwieldy for his university laboratory. In pondering a way to make the accelerator more compact, Lawrence decided to set a circular accelerating chamber between the poles of an electromagnet. The magnetic field would hold the charged protons in a spiral path as they were accelerated between just two semicircular electrodes connected to an alternating potential. After a hundred turns or so, the protons would impact the target as a beam of high-energy particles. Lawrence excitedly told his colleagues that he had discovered a method for obtaining particles of very high energy without the use of any high voltage. He initially worked with Niels Edlefsen. Their first cyclotron was made out of brass, wire, and sealing wax and was only four inches (10 cm) in diameter—it could literally be held in one hand, and probably cost $25 in all.  What Lawrence needed to develop the idea was capable graduate students to do the work. Edlefsen left to take up an assistant professorship in September 1930, and Lawrence replaced him with David H. Sloan and M. Stanley Livingston, who he set to work on developing Widerøe's accelerator and Edlefsen's cyclotron, respectively. Both had their own financial support. Both designs proved practical, and by May 1931, Sloan's linear accelerator was able to accelerate ions to 1 MeV. Livingston had a greater technical challenge, but when he applied 1,800 V to his 11-inch cyclotron on January 2, 1931, he got 80,000-electron volt protons spinning around. A week later, he had 1.22 MeV with 3,000 V, more than enough for his PhD thesis on its construction.

Development.

In what would become a recurring pattern, as soon as there was the first sign of success, Lawrence started planning a new, bigger machine. Lawrence and Livingston drew up a design for a cyclotron in early 1932. The magnet for the $800 11-inch cyclotron weighed 2 tons, but Lawrence found a massive 80-ton magnet rusting in a junkyard in Palo Alto for the 27-inch that had originally been built during World War I to power a transatlantic radio link. In the cyclotron, he had a powerful scientific instrument, but this did not translate into scientific discovery. In April 1932, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton at the Cavendish Laboratory in England announced that they had bombarded lithium with protons and succeeded in transmuting it into helium. The energy required turned out to be quite low—well within the capability of the 11-inch cyclotron. On learning about it, Lawrence sent a wire to Berkeley and asked for Cockcroft and Walton's results to be verified. It took the team until September to do so, mainly due to lack of adequate detection apparatus.  Although important discoveries continued to elude Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory, mainly due to its focus on the development of the cyclotron rather than its scientific use, through his increasingly larger machines, Lawrence was able to provide crucial equipment needed for experiments in high energy physics. Around this device, he built what became the world's foremost laboratory for the new field of nuclear physics research in the 1930s. He received a patent for the cyclotron in 1934, which he assigned to the Research Corporation, a private foundation that funded much of Lawrence's early work.  In February 1936, Harvard University's president, James B. Conant, made attractive offers to Lawrence and Oppenheimer. The University of California's president, Robert Gordon Sproul, responded by improving conditions. The Radiation Laboratory became an official department of the University of California on July 1, 1936, with Lawrence formally appointed its director, with a full-time assistant director, and the University agreed to make $20,000 a year available for its research activities. Lawrence employed a simple business model: "He staffed his laboratory with graduate students and junior faculty of the physics department, with fresh Ph.D.s willing to work for anything, and with fellowship holders and wealthy guests able to serve for nothing."

Reception.

Using the new 27-inch cyclotron, the team at Berkeley discovered that every element that they bombarded with recently discovered deuterium emitted energy, and in the same range. They, therefore, postulated the existence of a new and hitherto unknown particle that was a possible source of limitless energy. William Laurence of "The New York Times" described Lawrence as "a new miracle worker of science". At Cockcroft's invitation, Lawrence attended the 1933 Solvay Conference in Belgium. This was a regular gathering of the world's top physicists. Nearly all were from Europe, but occasionally an outstanding American scientist like Robert A. Millikan or Arthur Compton would be invited to attend. Lawrence was asked to give a presentation on the cyclotron. Lawrence's claims of limitless energy met a very different reception in Solvay. He ran into withering skepticism from the Cavendish Laboratory's James Chadwick, the physicist who had discovered the neutron in 1932, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1935. In a British accent that sounded condescending to American ears, Chadwick suggested that what Lawrence's team was observing was contamination of their apparatus. When he returned to Berkeley, Lawrence mobilized his team to go painstakingly over the results to gather enough evidence to convince Chadwick. Meanwhile, at the Cavendish laboratory, Rutherford and Mark Oliphant found that deuterium fuses to form helium-3, which causes the effect that the cyclotroneers had observed. Not only was Chadwick correct in that they had been observing contamination, but they had overlooked yet another important discovery, that of nuclear fusion. Lawrence's response was to press on with the creation of still larger cyclotrons. The 27-inch cyclotron was superseded by a 37-inch cyclotron in June 1937, which in turn was superseded by a 60-inch cyclotron in May 1939. It was used to bombard iron and produced its first radioactive isotopes in June.  As it was easier to raise money for medical purposes, particularly cancer treatment, than for nuclear physics, Lawrence encouraged the use of the cyclotron for medical research. Working with his brother John and Israel Lyon Chaikoff from the University of California's Physiology Department, Lawrence supported research into the use of radioactive isotopes for therapeutic purposes. Phosphorus-32 was easily produced in the cyclotron, and John used it to cure a woman afflicted with polycythemia vera, a blood disease. John used phosphorus-32 created in the 37-inch cyclotron in 1938 in tests on mice with leukemia. He found that the radioactive phosphorus concentrated in the fast-growing cancer cells. This then led to clinical trials on human patients. A 1948 evaluation of the therapy showed that remissions occurred under certain circumstances. Lawrence also had hoped for the medical use of neutrons. The first cancer patient received neutron therapy from the 60-inch cyclotron on November 20. Chaikoff conducted trials on the use of radioactive isotopes as radioactive tracers to explore the mechanism of biochemical reactions.  Lawrence was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in November 1939 "for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements". He was the first at Berkeley as well as the first South Dakotan to become a Nobel Laureate, and the first to be so honored while at a state-supported university. The Nobel award ceremony was held on February 29, 1940, in Berkeley, California, due to World War II, in the auditorium of Wheeler Hall on the campus of the university. Lawrence received his medal from Carl E. Wallerstedt, Sweden's Consul General in San Francisco. Robert W. Wood wrote to Lawrence and presciently noted "As you are laying the foundations for the cataclysmic explosion of uranium... I'm sure old Nobel would approve."  In March 1940, Arthur Compton, Vannevar Bush, James B. Conant, Karl T. Compton, and Alfred Lee Loomis traveled to Berkeley to discuss Lawrence's proposal for a 184-inch cyclotron with a 4,500-ton magnet that was estimated to cost $2.65 million. The Rockefeller Foundation put up $1.15 million to get the project started.

World War II and the Manhattan Project.

Radiation Laboratory.

After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Lawrence became drawn into military projects. He helped recruit staff for the MIT Radiation Laboratory, where American physicists developed the cavity magnetron invented by Oliphant's team in Britain. The name of the new laboratory was deliberately copied from Lawrence's laboratory in Berkeley for security reasons. He also became involved in recruiting staff for underwater sound laboratories to develop techniques for detecting German submarines. Meanwhile, work continued at Berkeley with cyclotrons. In December 1940, Glenn T. Seaborg and Emilio Segrè used the cyclotron to bombard uranium-238 with deuterons producing a new element, neptunium-238, which decayed by beta emission to form plutonium-238. One of its isotopes, plutonium-239, could undergo nuclear fission which provided another way to make an atomic bomb.  Lawrence offered Segrè a job as a research assistant—a relatively lowly position for someone who had discovered an element—for US$300 a month for six months. However, when Lawrence learned that Segrè was legally trapped in California, he reduced Segrè's salary to US$116 a month. When the regents of the University of California wanted to terminate Segrè's employment owing to his foreign nationality, Lawrence managed to retain Segrè by hiring him as a part-time lecturer paid by the Rockefeller Foundation. Similar arrangements were made to retain his doctoral students Chien-Shiung Wu (a Chinese national) and Kenneth Ross MacKenzie (a Canadian national) when they graduated. In September 1941, Oliphant met with Lawrence and Oppenheimer at Berkeley, where they showed him the site for the new cyclotron. Oliphant, in turn, took the Americans to task for not following up the recommendations of the British MAUD Committee, which advocated a program to develop an atomic bomb. Lawrence had already thought about the problem of separating the fissile isotope uranium-235 from uranium-238, a process known today as uranium enrichment. Separating uranium isotopes was difficult because the two isotopes have very nearly identical chemical properties, and could only be separated gradually using their small mass differences. Separating isotopes with a mass spectrometer was a technique Oliphant had pioneered with lithium in 1934.  Lawrence began converting his old 37-inch cyclotron into a giant mass spectrometer. On his recommendation, the director of the Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., appointed Oppenheimer as head of its Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico. While the Radiation laboratory developed the electromagnetic uranium enrichment process, the Los Alamos Laboratory designed and constructed the atomic bombs. Like the Radiation Laboratory, it was run by the University of California.  Electromagnetic isotope separation used devices known as calutrons, a hybrid of two laboratory instruments, the mass spectrometer and cyclotron. The name was derived from "California university cyclotrons". In November 1943, Lawrence's team at Berkeley was bolstered by 29 British scientists, including Oliphant.  In the electromagnetic process, a magnetic field deflected charged particles according to mass. The process was neither scientifically elegant nor industrially efficient. Compared with a gaseous diffusion plant or a nuclear reactor, an electromagnetic separation plant would consume more scarce materials, require more manpower to operate, and cost more to build. Nonetheless, the process was approved because it was based on proven technology and therefore represented less risk. Moreover, it could be built in stages, and would rapidly reach industrial capacity.

Oak Ridge.

Responsibility for the design and construction of the electromagnetic separation plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which came to be called Y-12, was assigned to Stone & Webster. The calutrons, using 14,700 tons of silver, were manufactured by Allis-Chalmers in Milwaukee and shipped to Oak Ridge. The design called for five first-stage processing units, known as Alpha racetracks, and two units for final processing, known as Beta racetracks. In September 1943 Groves authorized construction of four more racetracks, known as Alpha II. When the plant was started up for testing on schedule in October 1943, the 14-ton vacuum tanks crept out of alignment because of the power of the magnets and had to be fastened more securely. A more serious problem arose when the magnetic coils started shorting out. In December Groves ordered a magnet to be broken open, and handfuls of rust were found inside. Groves then ordered the racetracks to be torn down and the magnets sent back to the factory to be cleaned. A pickling plant was established on-site to clean the pipes and fittings. Tennessee Eastman was hired to manage Y-12. Y-12 initially enriched the uranium-235 content to between 13% and 15%, and shipped the first few hundred grams of this to Los Alamos laboratory in March 1944. Only 1 part in 5,825 of the uranium feed emerged as final product. The rest was splattered over equipment in the process. Strenuous recovery efforts helped raise production to 10% of the uranium-235 feed by January 1945. In February the Alpha racetracks began receiving slightly enriched (1.4%) feed from the new S-50 thermal diffusion plant. The next month it received enhanced (5%) feed from the K-25 gaseous diffusion plant. By April 1945 K-25 was producing uranium sufficiently enriched to feed directly into the Beta tracks.  On July 16, 1945, Lawrence observed the Trinity nuclear test of the first atomic bomb with Chadwick and Charles A. Thomas. Few were more excited at its success than Lawrence. The question of how to use the now functional weapon on Japan became an issue for the scientists. While Oppenheimer favored no demonstration of the power of the new weapon to Japanese leaders, Lawrence felt strongly that a demonstration would be wise. When a uranium bomb was used without warning in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Lawrence felt great pride in his accomplishment.  Lawrence hoped that the Manhattan Project would develop improved calutrons and construct Alpha III racetracks, but they were judged to be uneconomical. The Alpha tracks were closed down in September 1945. Although performing better than ever, they could not compete with K-25 and the new K-27, which commenced operation in January 1946. In December, the Y-12 plant was closed, thereby cutting the Tennessee Eastman payroll from 8,600 to 1,500 and saving $2 million a month. Staff numbers at the Radiation laboratory fell from 1,086 in May 1945 to 424 by the end of the year.

Post-war career.

Big Science.

After the war, Lawrence campaigned extensively for government sponsorship of large scientific programs. He was a forceful advocate of Big Science with its requirements for big machines and big money, and in 1946 he asked the Manhattan Project for over $2 million for research at the Radiation Laboratory. Groves approved the money, but cut a number of programs, including Seaborg's proposal for a "hot" radiation laboratory in densely populated Berkeley, and John Lawrence's for production of medical isotopes, because this need could now be better met from nuclear reactors. One obstacle was the University of California, which was eager to divest its wartime military obligations. Lawrence and Groves managed to persuade Sproul to accept a contract extension. In 1946, the Manhattan Project spent $7 on physics at the University of California for every dollar spent by the University. The 184-inch cyclotron was completed with wartime dollars from the Manhattan Project. It incorporated new ideas by Ed McMillan, and was completed as a synchrocyclotron. It commenced operation on November 13, 1946. For the first time since 1935, Lawrence actively participated in the experiments, working with Eugene Gardner in an unsuccessful attempt to create recently discovered pi mesons with the synchrotron. César Lattes then used the apparatus they had created to find negative pi mesons in 1948.  Responsibility for the national laboratories passed to the newly created Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on January 1, 1947. That year, Lawrence asked for $15 million for his projects, which included a new linear accelerator and a new gigaelectronvolt synchrotron which became known as the bevatron. The University of California's contract to run the Los Alamos laboratory was due to expire on July 1, 1948, and some board members wished to divest the university of the responsibility for running a site outside California. After some negotiation, the university agreed to extend the contract for what was now the Los Alamos National Laboratory for four more years and to appoint Norris Bradbury, who had replaced Oppenheimer as its director in October 1945, as a professor. Soon after, Lawrence received all the funds he had requested. Notwithstanding the fact that he voted for Franklin Roosevelt, Lawrence was a Republican, who had strongly disapproved of Oppenheimer's efforts before the war to unionize the Radiation Laboratory workers, which Lawrence considered "leftwandering activities". Lawrence considered political activity to be a waste of time better spent in scientific research, and preferred that it be kept out of the Radiation Laboratory. In the chilly Cold War climate of the post-war University of California, Lawrence accepted the House Un-American Activities Committee's actions as legitimate, and did not see them as indicative of a systemic problem involving academic freedom or human rights. He was protective of individuals in his laboratory, but even more protective of the reputation of the laboratory. He was forced to defend Radiation Laboratory staff members like Robert Serber who were investigated by the University's Personnel Security Board. In several cases, he issued character references in support of staff. However, Lawrence barred Robert Oppenheimer's brother Frank from the Radiation Laboratory, damaging his relationship with Robert. An acrimonious loyalty oath campaign at the University of California also drove away faculty members. When hearings were held to revoke Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance, Lawrence declined to attend on account of illness, but a transcript in which he was critical of Oppenheimer was presented in his absence. Lawrence's success in building a creative, collaborative laboratory was undermined by the ill-feeling and distrust resulting from political tensions.

Thermonuclear weapons.

Lawrence was alarmed by the Soviet Union's first nuclear test in August 1949. The proper response, he concluded, was an all-out effort to build a bigger nuclear weapon: the hydrogen bomb. Lawrence proposed to use accelerators instead of nuclear reactors to produce the neutrons needed to create the tritium the bomb required, as well as plutonium, which was more difficult, as much higher energies would be required. He first proposed the construction of Mark I, a prototype $7 million, 25 MeV linear accelerator, codenamed Materials Test Accelerator (MTA). He was soon talking about a new, even larger MTA known as the Mark II, which could produce tritium or plutonium from depleted uranium-238. Serber and Segrè attempted in vain to explain the technical problems that made it impractical, but Lawrence felt that they were being unpatriotic.  Lawrence strongly backed Edward Teller's campaign for a second nuclear weapons laboratory, which Lawrence proposed to locate with the MTA Mark I at Livermore, California. Lawrence and Teller had to argue their case not only with the Atomic Energy Commission, which did not want it, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which was implacably opposed but with proponents who felt that Chicago was the more obvious site for it. The new laboratory at Livermore was finally approved on July 17, 1952, but the Mark II MTA was canceled. By this time, the Atomic Energy Commission had spent $45 million on the Mark I, which had commenced operation, but was mainly used to produce polonium for the nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Cosmotron had generated a 1 GeV beam.

Death and legacy.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Lawrence received the Elliott Cresson Medal and the Hughes Medal in 1937, the Comstock Prize in Physics in 1938, the Duddell Medal and Prize in 1940, the Holley Medal in 1942, the Medal for Merit in 1946, the William Procter Prize in 1951, Faraday Medal in 1952, and the Enrico Fermi Award from the Atomic Energy Commission in 1957. He was made an Officer of the Legion d'Honneur in 1948, and was the first recipient of the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the US Military Academy in 1958.  In July 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower asked Lawrence to travel to Geneva, Switzerland, to help negotiate a proposed Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union. AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss had pressed for Lawrence's inclusion. The two men had argued the case for the development of the hydrogen bomb, and Strauss had helped raise funds for Lawrence's cyclotron in 1939. Strauss was keen to have Lawrence as part of the Geneva delegation because Lawrence was known to favor continued nuclear testing. Despite suffering from a serious flare-up of his chronic ulcerative colitis, Lawrence decided to go, but he became ill while in Geneva, and was rushed back to the hospital at Stanford University. Surgeons removed much of his large intestine, but found other problems, including severe atherosclerosis in one of his arteries. He died in Palo Alto Hospital on August 27, 1958, nineteen days after his 57th birthday. Molly did not want a public funeral but agreed to a memorial service at the First Congregationalist Church in Berkeley. University of California President Clark Kerr delivered the eulogy.  Just 23 days after his death, the Regents of the University of California voted to rename two of the university's nuclear research sites after Lawrence: the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award was established in his memory in 1959. Chemical element number 103, discovered at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1961, was named lawrencium after him. In 1968 the Lawrence Hall of Science public science education center was established in his honor. His papers are in the Bancroft Library at the University of California in Berkeley.  In the 1980s, Lawrence's widow petitioned the University of California Board of Regents on several occasions to remove her husband's name from the Livermore Laboratory, due to its focus on nuclear weapons Lawrence helped build, but was denied each time. She outlived her husband by more than 44 years and died in Walnut Creek, California, at the age of 92 on January 6, 2003.  George B. Kauffman wrote that:

Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 – August 27, 1958) was a pioneering American nuclear scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. He is known for his work on uranium-isotope separation for the Manhattan Project, as well as for founding the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Ernest Orlando Lawrence (* 8. August 1901 in Canton, South Dakota; † 27. August 1958 in Palo Alto, Kalifornien) war ein US-amerikanischer Atomphysiker und Nobelpreisträger.


Classification.

"Shigella" species are classified by three serogroups and one serotype:  Groups "A"–"C" are physiologically similar; "S. sonnei" (group "D") can be differentiated on the basis of biochemical metabolism assays. Three "Shigella" groups are the major disease-causing species: "S. flexneri" is the most frequently isolated species worldwide, and accounts for 60% of cases in the developing world; "S. sonnei" causes 77% of cases in the developed world, compared to only 15% of cases in the developing world; and "S. dysenteriae" is usually the cause of epidemics of dysentery, particularly in confined populations such as refugee camps.  Each of the "Shigella" genomes includes a virulence plasmid that encodes conserved primary virulence determinants. The "Shigella" chromosomes share most of their genes with those of "E. coli" K12 strain MG1655. Phylogenetic studies indicate "Shigella" is more appropriately treated as subgenus of "Escherichia", and that certain strains generally considered "E. coli"—such as —are better placed in "Shigella" (see "Escherichia coli#Diversity" for details).

Pathogenesis.

"Shigella" infection is typically by ingestion. Depending on the health of the host, fewer than 100 bacterial cells can be enough to cause an infection. "Shigella" species generally invade the epithelial lining of the colon, causing severe inflammation and death of the cells lining the colon. This inflammation results in the diarrhea and even dysentery that are the hallmarks of "Shigella" infection. Some strains of "Shigella" produce toxins which contribute to disease during infection. "S. flexneri" strains produce ShET1 and ShET2, which may contribute to diarrhea. "S. dysenteriae" strains produce Shiga toxin, which is hemolytic similar to the verotoxin produced by enterohemorrhagic "E. coli". Both Shiga toxin and verotoxin are associated with causing potentially fatal hemolytic-uremic syndrome.  "Shigella" species invade the host through the M-cells interspersed in the gut epithelia of the small intestine, as they do not interact with the apical surface of epithelial cells, preferring the basolateral side. "Shigella" uses a type-III secretion system, which acts as a biological syringe to translocate toxic effector proteins to the target human cell. The effector proteins can alter the metabolism of the target cell, for instance leading to the lysis of vacuolar membranes or reorganization of actin polymerization to facilitate intracellular motility of "Shigella" bacteria inside the host cell. For instance, the IcsA effector (which is an autotransporter instead of type III secretion system effector) protein triggers actin reorganization by N-WASP recruitment of Arp2/3 complexes, helping cell-to-cell spread.  After invasion, "Shigella" cells multiply intracellularly and spread to neighboring epithelial cells, resulting in tissue destruction and characteristic pathology of shigellosis.  The most common symptoms are diarrhea, fever, nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps, and flatulence. It is also commonly known to cause large and painful bowel movements. The stool may contain blood, mucus, or pus. Hence, "Shigella" cells may cause dysentery. In rare cases, young children may have seizures. Symptoms can take as long as a week to appear, but most often begin two to four days after ingestion. Symptoms usually last for several days, but can last for weeks. "Shigella" is implicated as one of the pathogenic causes of reactive arthritis worldwide.

Shigella is a genus of bacteria that is Gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, non-spore-forming, nonmotile, rod-shaped and genetically closely related to "E. coli". The genus is named after Kiyoshi Shiga, who first discovered it in 1897.

Bei den Bakterien der Gattung "Shigella" (auch bekannt als Shigellen) handelt es sich um eine Gruppe gramnegativer Stäbchenbakterien der Familie der Enterobakterien (Enterobacteriaceae). Sie rufen die teilweise sehr schwere Bakterienruhr mit Durchfällen hervor. Benannt wurden sie von Aldo Castellani und A. J. Chalmers nach dem japanischen Bakteriologen Kiyoshi Shiga, dem Entdecker des Erregers der Bakterienruhr (Nachweispublikation 1898). Die Bakterien sind unbeweglich und können auch ohne Anwesenheit von Sauerstoff leben (fakultativ anaerob). Shigellosen sind meldepflichtig.


Life.

Born in 1604 in Karlstadt am Main, the son of a barber, he was one of a large family and did not finish school, but is thought to have studied pharmacy and visited laboratories. He said that he was glad that he had not suffered the grind of high school but had instead learned by experience. He lived in Vienna (1625), Salzburg, Giessen, Wertheim (1649–1651), Kitzingen (1651–1655), Basel, Paris, Frankfurt am Main, Cologne and Amsterdam (1640–1644, 1646–1649, 1656-death). He worked first manufacturing mirrors and later for two periods as Apothecary to the court in Giessen, the second time as the Chief Apothecary, leaving because of the Thirty Years War. In Amsterdam he built up a business manufacturing pharmaceuticals (including chemicals such as Glauber's salt). This led to both great financial success and in 1649 bankruptcy, which is the reason for his move from Amsterdam to Wertheim.  He married twice, and with his second wife Helena Cornelius (married 1641) had eight children. His son Johannes Glauber probably helped him with his engraved illustrations.  In 1660 he became seriously ill, which has been attributed to poisoning from the various heavy metals used in his work, and in 1666 was crippled by a fall from a wagon and was confined to bed for the rest of his life. As a result, he had to sell off books and equipment to provide for his family. He died on 16 March 1670 in Amsterdam.

Work.

Glauber carried out studies on the chemistry of wine production and had commercial success by licensing improvements. He was also an apothecary, supplying medicines, and known for providing free medical treatment to the poor. He is known for his contributions to inorganic chemistry and the fact that he was able to live from the proceeds of chemical production based upon his discoveries, and was thus an industrial chemist. His improvements to chemical processes and equipment (notably furnaces and distillation devices) make him an early chemical engineer.  He was first to produce concentrated hydrochloric acid in 1625 by combining sulfuric acid and table salt. He also made an improved process for the manufacture of nitric acid in 1648, by heating potassium nitrate with concentrated sulphuric acid. His production of sodium sulfate, which he called "sal mirabilis" or "wonderful salt", brought him fame and the honour of being named "Glauber's salt". It was an effective but relatively safe laxative at a time when purging (emptying the digestive tract) was a popular treatment for many diseases.  The chemical garden (or silica garden) was first observed by Glauber and described by him in 1646. In its original form, the chemical garden involved the introduction of ferrous chloride (FeCl) crystals into a solution of potassium silicate (KSiO, water glass).  He was the first to synthesize and isolate antimony trichloride, arsenic trichloride, tin tetrachloride and zinc chloride.  In addition he wrote about 40 books. A visionary one is "Dess Teutschlands Wohlfahrt" (Germany's Prosperity) in which he proposed the chemical industries as a means for Germany's economic recovery after the Thirty Years War.

Johann Rudolf Glauber (10 March 1604 – 16 March 1670) was a German-Dutch alchemist and chemist. Some historians of science have described him as one of the first chemical engineers. His discovery of sodium sulfate in 1625 led to the compound being named after him: "Glauber's salt".

Johann Rudolph Glauber (* 10. März 1604 in Karlstadt; † 16. März 1670 in Amsterdam) war ein Apotheker und Alchemist, der viele neue technische Verfahren zur Chemikalienherstellung (Gewinnung von Salpetersäure, Schwefelsäure, Salzsäure, Natriumsulfat (Glaubersalz)) entwickelte und als ein Begründer der frühen Chemieindustrie gilt.


Temperature.

The United States Department of Agriculture recommends an internal temperature of at least for cuts of beef, veal, and lamb in order to prevent foodborne illness, and warns that color and texture indicators are not reliable. The same meats should be thoroughly cooked to when ground or tenderized by cutting, since these processes distribute bacteria throughout the meat.  The table below is from an American reference book and pertains to beef and lamb. The interior of a cut of meat will still increase in temperature 3–5 °C (5–10 °F) after it is removed from an oven or other heat source. The meat should be allowed to "rest" for a suitable amount of time (depending on the size of the cut or steak) before being served, which makes the meat easier to carve and its structure firmer and more resistant to deformation; its water-holding capacity also increases and less liquid is lost from the meat during carving. The whole meat and the center will also continue to cook slightly as the hot exterior continues to warm the comparatively cooler interior. The exception is if the meat has been prepared in a sous-vide process, as it will already be at temperature equilibrium. The temperatures indicated above are the peak temperature in the cooking process, so the meat should be removed from the heat source a few degrees cooler.

Color.

As meat is cooked, it turns from red to pink to gray to brown to black (if burnt), and the amount of red liquid, myoglobin (not blood), and other juices decreases. The color change is due to changes in the oxidation of the iron atom of the heme group in the myoglobin protein: raw meat is red due to myoglobin protein in the muscles, not hemoglobin from blood (which also contains a heme group, hence the color). Prior to cooking, the iron atom is in a +2 oxidation state, and bound to a dioxygen molecule (O), with a red color. As cooking proceeds, it loses an electron, moving to a +3 oxidation state, and coordinating with a water molecule (HO), turning brown in the process.  Searing raises the meat’s surface temperature to, yielding browning via different reactions: caramelization of sugars, and the Maillard reaction of amino acids. Raised to a high enough temperature, meat blackens from burning.

Drying.

Well done cuts, in addition to being brown, are drier and contain few or no juices. Note that searing (cooking the exterior at a high temperature) in no way "seals in the juices" – water evaporates at the same or higher rates as unseared meat. Searing does play an important role, however, in browning, a crucial contributor to flavor and texture.

Doneness is a gauge of how thoroughly cooked a cut of meat is based on the colour, juiciness, and internal temperature when cooked. The gradations of cooking are most often used in reference to beef (especially steak and roasts) but are also applicable to lamb, pork, poultry, veal, and seafood (especially fish).

Das Garen bezeichnet die Behandlung von Lebensmitteln mit Wärme, um deren Konsistenz, Geschmack, Verdaulichkeit und/oder gesundheitliche Wirkung zu verändern. Nach ausreichendem Garen wird das Lebensmittel „gar“ genannt. Während des Garvorgangs nennt man es auch das „Gargut“. Es gibt verschiedene Garmethoden. Umgangssprachlich wird Garen und auch die generelle Zubereitung von Lebensmitteln mit Kochen synonym verwendet.


Description.

"Sinosauropteryx" was a small bipedal theropod, noted for its short arms, large first finger (thumbs), and long tail. The taxon includes some of the smallest known adult non-avian theropod specimens, with the holotype specimen measuring only in length, including the tail. However, this individual was relatively young. The longest known specimen reaches up to in length, with an estimated weight of.  "Sinosauropteryx" was anatomically similar to "Compsognathus", differing from its European relatives in its proportions. The skull of "Sinosauropteryx" was 15% longer than its thigh bones, unlike in "Compsognathus", where the skull and thigh bones are approximately equivalent in length. The arms of "Sinosauropteryx" (humerus and radius) were only 30% the length of its legs (thigh bone and shin), compared to 40% in "Compsognathus". Additionally, "Sinosauropteryx" had several features unique among all other theropods. It had 64 vertebrae in its tail. This high number made its tail the longest relative to body length of any theropod. Its hands were long compared to its arms, about 84% to 91% of the length of the rest of the arm (humerus and radius), and half the length of the foot. The first and second digits were about the same length, with a large claw on the first digit. The first fingers were large, being both longer and thicker than either of the bones of the forearm. The teeth differed slightly (they were heterodont) based on position: those near the tips of the upper jaws (on the premaxillae) were slender and lacked serrations, while those behind them (on the maxillae) were serrated and laterally compressed. The teeth of the lower jaws were similarly differentiated.  A pigmented area in the abdomen of the holotype has been suggested as possible traces of organs, and was interpreted as the liver by John Ruben and colleagues, which they described as part of a crocodilian-like "hepatic piston" respiratory system. A later study, while agreeing that the pigmented area represented something originally inside the body, found no defined structure and noted that any organs would have been distorted by the processes that flattened the skeleton into an essentially two-dimensional form. Dark pigment is also present in the eye region of the holotype and another specimen.

Feathers.

All described specimens of "Sinosauropteryx" preserve integumentary structures (filaments arising from the skin) which most palaeontologists interpret as very primitive type of feathers. These short, down-like filaments are preserved along the back half of the skull, the arms, neck, back, and top and bottom of the tail. Additional patches of feathers have been identified on the sides of the body, and palaeontologists Chen, Dong and Zheng proposed that the density of the feathers on the back and the randomness of the patches elsewhere on the body indicated the animals would have been fully feathered in life, with the ventral feathers having been removed by decomposition.  The filaments are preserved with a gap between the bones, which several authors have noted corresponds closely to the expected amount of skin and muscle tissue that would have been present in life. The feathers are closest to the bone on the skull and end of the tail, where little to no muscle was present, and the gap increases over the back vertebrae, where more musculature would be expected, indicating that the filaments were external to the skin and do not correspond with subcutaneous structures. The filaments exhibit random orientations and are often wavy, which has been interpreted as evidence that they were soft and pliable in life. Microscopic examination shows that individual filaments appear dark along the edges and light internally, suggesting that they were hollow, like modern feathers. Compared to modern mammals the filaments were quite coarse, with each individual strand much larger and thicker than the corresponding hairs of similarly sized mammals.  The length of the filaments varies across the body. On the type specimen, they are shortest just in front of the eyes, with a length of. Going further along the body, the filaments rapidly increase in length until reaching lengths of over the shoulder blades. The length remains uniform over the back, until beyond the hips, when the filaments lengthen again and reach their maximum length midway down the tail at. The filaments on the underside of the tail are shorter overall and decrease in length more rapidly than those on the dorsal surface. By the 25th tail vertebrae, the filaments on the underside reach a length of only. The longest feathers present on the forearm measured.  Though the feathers are too dense to isolate a single structure for examination, several studies have suggested the presence of two distinct filament types (thick and thin) interspersed with each other. The thick filaments tend to appear'stiffer' than thin filaments, and the thin filaments tend to lie parallel to each other but at angles to nearby thick filaments. These properties suggest that the individual feathers consisted of a central quill ("rachis") with thinner "barbs" branching off from it, similar to but more primitive in structure than modern bird feathers. Overall, the filaments most closely resemble the "plumules" or down-like feathers of some modern birds, with a thick central quill and long, thin barbs. The same structures are seen in other fossils from the Yixian Formation, including "Confuciusornis".  However, a 2018 study considered that the thick filaments could simply be bundles of thin filaments overlapping each other. This possibility is supported by the observation that thin filaments tend to run parallel to both each other "and" thick filaments, rather than branching out as earlier authors identified. Some of the thick filaments are quite long yet end in small tufts of thin filaments. Plumaceous, down-like feathering typically has an opposite appearance, with a short central quill and long tufts. In addition, the thick filaments preserve no evidence of Calcium phosphate, the mineral which modern feather quills are made of. The large amount of curvature present in the filaments also makes a strong central quill unlikely. Thus, the idea that thick filaments are simply bundles of thin filaments is less unusual than the idea that they were a variant of quilled plumaceous feathers which developed a morphology opposite that of birds and other feathered theropods. As a whole, the study preferred the hypothesis that "Sinosauropteryx" feathers were simple single-branch filaments, although it is conceivable that they were occasionally joined at the base into tufts as predecessors to down-like plumaceous feathers.  While "Sinosauropteryx" had feather-like structures, it was not very closely related to the previous "first bird" "Archaeopteryx". There are many dinosaur clades that were more closely related to "Archaeopteryx" than "Sinosauropteryx" was, including the deinonychosaurians, the oviraptorosaurians, and the therizinosauroids. This indicates that feathers may have been a characteristic of many theropod dinosaurs, not just the obviously bird-like ones, making it quite likely that equally distant animals such as "Compsognathus" had feathers as well.

Colouration.

"Sinosauropteryx" was the first dinosaur to have its life colouration described by scientists based on physical evidence. Some fossils of "Sinosauropteryx" show an alternation of lighter and darker bands preserved on the tail. Chen and colleagues initially interpreted this banding pattern as an artifact of the splitting between the main slab and counter-slab in which the original specimen was preserved. However, Longrich suggested in his 2002 presentation for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology that these specimens actually preserve remnants of the colouration pattern the animal would have exhibited in life. He argued that the dark, banded areas on the tail were too evenly spaced to have been caused by random separation of the fossil slabs, and that they represent fossilized pigments present in the feathers. Additionally, rather than an artifact of preservation or decomposition, the presence of dark feathers along only the top of the body may also reflect the colour pattern in life, indicating that "Sinosauropteryx prima" was countershaded with dark colouration on its back and lighter colouration on its underside, with bands or stripes on the tail for camouflage.  Longrich's conclusions were supported in a paper first published online in the journal "Nature" in January 2010. Fucheng Zhang and colleagues examined the fossilized feathers of several dinosaurs and early birds, and found evidence that they preserved melanosomes, the cells that give the feathers of modern birds their colour. Among the specimens studied was a previously undescribed specimen of "Sinosauropteryx", IVPP V14202. By examining melanosome structure and distribution, Zhang and colleagues were able to confirm the presence of light and dark bands of colour in the tail feathers of "Sinosauropteryx". Furthermore, the team was able to compare melanosome types to those of modern birds to determine a general range of colour. From the presence of phaeomelanosomes, spherical melanosomes that make and store red pigment, they concluded that the darker feathers of "Sinosauropteryx" were chestnut or reddish brown in colour. More research on the coloration of "Sinosauropteryx" reveals that it had a raccoon-like bandit mask and countershading patterns most likely associated with an open habitat, indicating that the Jehol likely had a range of habitat types.

History of discovery.

The first fossil specimen of the dinosaur later named "Sinosauropteryx prima" was uncovered in August 1996 by Li Yumin. Yumin was a farmer and part-time fossil hunter who often prospected around Liaoning Province to acquire fossils to sell to individuals and museums. Yumin recognized the unique quality of the specimen, which was separated into two slabs, and sold the slabs to two separate museums in China: the National Geological Museum in Beijing, and the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology. The director of the Beijing museum, Ji Qiang, recognized the importance of the find, as did visiting Canadian palaeontologist Phil Currie and artist Michael Skrepnick, who became aware of the fossil by chance as they explored the Beijing museum's collections after leading a fossil tour of the area during the first week of October, 1996. Currie recognized the significance of the fossil immediately. As "The New York Times" quoted him, "When I saw this slab of siltstone mixed with volcanic ash in which the creature is embedded, I was bowled over." When originally described, the authors named "Sinosauropteryx", meaning "Chinese Reptilian Wing".  Chinese authorities initially barred photographs of the specimen from publication. However, Currie brought a photograph to the 1996 meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, causing crowds of palaeontologists to gather and discuss the new discovery. The news reportedly left palaeontologist John Ostrom, who in the 1970s had pioneered the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs, "in a state of shock." Ostrom later joined an international team of researchers who gathered in Beijing to examine the fossils; other team members included feather expert Alan Brush, fossil bird expert Larry Martin, and Peter Wellnhofer, an expert on the early bird "Archaeopteryx".  Three specimens have been assigned to "Sinosauropteryx prima": the holotype GMV 2123 (and its counter slab [opposite face], NIGP 127586), NIGP 127587, and D 2141. Another specimen, IVPP V14202, was assigned to the genus but not to the only species by Zhang and colleagues. The assignment of an additional larger specimen to "S. prima", GMV 2124, was later found to be in error. All of the fossils were found in the Jianshangou or Dawangzhangzi Beds of the Yixian Formation in the Beipiao and Lingyuan regions of Liaoning, China. These fossil beds have been dated to 124.6–122 million years ago, during the early Aptian stage of the Early Cretaceous.

Identity of filaments.

Controversy regarding the identity of the filaments preserved in the first "Sinosauropteryx" specimen began almost immediately, as the team of scientists spent three days in Beijing examining the specimen under a microscope. The results of their studies (reported during a press conference at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences on Thursday, April 24, 1997) were inconclusive; the team agreed that the structures preserved on "Sinosauropteryx" were not modern feathers, but suggested further research was required to discover their exact nature. Palaeontologist Alan Feduccia, who had not yet examined the specimen, wrote in "Audubon Magazine" that the structures of "Sinosauropteryx" (which he considered at the time to be a synonym of "Compsognathus", as "Compsognathus prima") were stiffening structures from a frill running along the back, and that dinosaur palaeontologists were engaging in wishful thinking when equating the structures with feathers. Subsequent publications saw some of the team members disagreeing over the identity of the structures.  Feduccia's frill argument was followed up in several other publications, in which researchers interpreted the filamentous impressions around "Sinosauropteryx" fossils as remains of collagen fibres rather than primitive feathers. Since the structures are clearly external to the body, these researchers have proposed that the fibres formed a frill on the back of the animal and underside of its tail, similar to some modern aquatic lizards. The absence of feathers would refute the proposal that "Sinosauropteryx" is the most basal known theropod genus with feathers, and also raise questions about the current theory of feather origins itself. It calls into question the idea that the first feathers evolved not for flight but for insulation, and that they made their first appearance in relatively basal dinosaur lineages that later evolved into modern birds.  Most researchers have disagreed with the identification of the structures as collagen or other structural fibres. Notably, the team of scientists that reported the presence of pigmentation cells in the structures argued that their presence proved the structures were feathers, not collagen, because collagen does not contain pigment. Gregory S. Paul reidentified what the collagen hypothesis's proponents consider a body outline outside of the fibres as an artefact of preparation: breakage and brushed-on sealant have been misidentified as the outline of the body.  The hypothesis that the structures were collagen fibers was closely analyzed and disproven by a 2017 paper published by Smithwick "et al". The integument of "Sinosauropteryx" was closely compared to less controversial evidence of collagen fibers preserved in the ichthyosaur "Stenopterygius". Although the collagen hypothesis claimed that the central shafts (rachises) of purported theropod feathers were actually misidentified examples of shaft-like collagen fibers, higher quality imagery showed that these similarities were artificial. The supposed shafts in ichthyosaur collagen were actually scratch marks, cracks, and crevasses created during preparation of one of the ichthyosaur specimens. On the other hand, the shafts in the "Sinosauropteryx" specimens were legitimate examples of fossilized structures. The collagen hypothesis also claims that "Sinosauropteryx" integument includes beaded structures similar to structures occasionally found in decaying collagen of modern sea mammals. However, this claim was also unsupported, with Smithwick "et al." finding no evidence of the beaded structures which collagen hypothesis proponents identified on the specimens. The study proposes that some areas of the fossil preserved in three dimensions cast shadows which would have resembled beaded structures in low quality photographs.  Other examples of purported collagen fibers in the tail area were revealed to be scratches, similar to those on the rest of the specimen. An area of the bone with an irregular surface was considered evidence that some collagen fibers were less decayed than others. However, Smithwick "et al.'s" study noted that, after further preparation, this irregular surface was simply a layer of sediment with a different color than the rest of the slab. The 'frill' or 'halo' of collagen identified by Feduccia was also determined to be misidentified sediment surrounding one of the specimens. Smithwick "et al".'s study concluded by stating that the integument preserved on "Sinosauropteryx" closely resembled that of birds preserved in the same formation. Purported features of collagen fibers were in fact misidentified shadows formed by scratches or irregular sediment, a misidentification perpetuated by the low quality of early "Sinosauropteryx" photographs.

Classification.

Despite its feathers, most palaeontologists do not consider "Sinosauropteryx" to be a bird. Phylogenetically, the genus is only distantly related to the clade Aves, usually defined as "Archaeopteryx lithographica" plus modern birds. The scientists who described "Sinosauropteryx", however, used a character-based, or apomorphic, definition of the Class Aves, in which any animal with feathers is considered to be a bird. They argued that the filamentous plumes of "Sinosauropteryx" represent true feathers with a rachis and barbs, and thus that "Sinosauropteryx" should be considered a true bird. They classified the genus as belonging to a new biological order, Sinosauropterygiformes, family Sinosauropterygidae, within the subclass Sauriurae. These proposals have not been accepted, and "Sinosauropteryx" is generally classified in the family Compsognathidae, a group of small-bodied long-tailed coelurosaurian theropods known from the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous of Asia, Europe, and South America.  Below is a cladogram showing the placement of "Sinosauropteryx" within Coelurosauria by Senter "et al." in 2012. There is only one named species of "Sinosauropteryx", "S. prima". A possible second species is represented by the specimen GMV 2124 (aka NGMC 2124), which was described as a third, larger specimen of "S. prima" by Ji and Ji in 1997. However, in a 2002 presentation and abstract for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Nick Longrich showed that this specimen differs in several anatomical aspects from the others, including its relatively large size, proportionally longer shins, and shorter tail. Longrich suggested that GMV 2124 was a compsognathid coelurosaurian, while "Sinosauropteryx" proper was a more primitive kind of coelurosaurian or even a basal carnosaurian. In 2007, Gishlick and Gauthier concurred that this specimen was probably a new taxon, and tentatively re-classified it as "Sinosauropteryx?" sp., though they suggested it may belong in a new genus. Also in 2007, Ji, Ji and colleagues wrote that GMV 2124 is probably a new genus, noting the differences in tail length and hindlimb proportions.

Distinguishing anatomical features.

Ji and Ji (1996) identified many features that set "Sinosauropteryx" apart from other birds and dinosaurs. They found that it was a small primitive bird with a relatively high skull, blunt rostrum and a slightly high premaxilla; that the antorbital fenestra was elliptical but not enlarged, the dentary was robust, the surangular was narrow and elongated, and the dentition is extremely well developed and acute; that there are over 50 extremely elongated caudals, constituting 60% of the body length, and the forelimb is extremely short with a short and thick humerus; the pubis was elongated and extremely inflated at its distal end and the ischium is broad; the hind limb was long and robust, the tibia is only slightly longer than the femur, the tarsals are separated, and the metatarsals are relatively robust with unfused proximal ends; the feathers are short, small, and uniform; many ornament the top of the skull, cervical, and dorsal regions, in addition to the dorsal and ventral caudal region.

Palaeobiology.

Diet.

The specimen NIGP 127587 was preserved with the remains of a lizard in its gut region, indicating that small, fast-moving animals made up part of the diet of "Sinosauropteryx prima". Numerous lizards of this type have been found in the same rocks as "Sinosauropteryx". These lizards have been interpreted as most likely belonging to the genus "Dalinghosaurus". "Dalinghosaurus" was probably a fast-running lizard adapted to living in open habitats, much like "Sinosauropteryx" itself.  The possible "Sinosauropteryx" specimen GMV 2124 ("Sinosauropteryx?" sp.) was found with three mammal jaws in its gut region. Hurum, Luo, and Kielan-Jaworowska (2006) identified two of these jaws as belonging to "Zhangheotherium" and the third to "Sinobaatar", showing that these two mammals were part of the animal's diet. "Zhangheotherium" is known to have had a spur on the ankle, like the modern platypus, which would indicate that "Sinosauropteryx" fed on possibly venomous mammals.

Reproduction.

The same specimen of "S. prima" which had preserve a lizard in its stomach contents (NIGP 127587) also had several small eggs in its abdomen. Two eggs were preserved just in front of and above the pubic boot, and several more may lie underneath them on the slab. It is unlikely that they were eaten by the animal, as they are in the wrong part of the body cavity for the egg shells to have remained intact. It is more likely that they are unlaid eggs produced by the animal itself, proving the specimen to be a female. Each egg measured long by wide. The presence of two developed eggs suggests that "Sinosauropteryx" had dual oviducts and laid eggs in pairs, like other theropods.

Palaeoecology.

"Sinosauropteryx", as a Yixian Formation dinosaur, is a member of the Jehol Biota, the assemblage of organisms found in the Yixian Formation and overlying Jiufotang Formation. The Yixian Formation is composed largely of volcanic rocks such as andesite and basalt. Between the volcanic layers are several beds of sedimentary rocks representing deposition in a lake. The freshwater lake strata of the Yixian Formation have preserved a wide variety of plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates. Gymnosperm forests were extensive, with a few early flowering plants as well. Ostracods and insects were diverse, and bivalves and gastropods were abundant. Mammals and birds are also well known from the formation. The setting was subject to periodic mortality events including volcanic eruptions, wildfires, and noxious gases erupting from the lakes. The climate has been interpreted as temperate, with distinct wet and dry seasons. The yearly temperature during this time period averaged about, indicating a temperate climate with unusually cold winters for the generally warm Mesozoic era, possibly due to northern China's high latitude during this time.

Sinosauropteryx (meaning "Chinese reptilian wing", ) is a compsognathid dinosaur. Described in 1996, it was the first dinosaur taxon outside of Avialae (birds and their immediate relatives) to be found with evidence of feathers. It was covered with a coat of very simple filament-like feathers. Structures that indicate colouration have also been preserved in some of its feathers, which makes "Sinosauropteryx" the first non-avialian dinosaurs where colouration has been determined. The colouration includes a reddish and light banded tail. Some contention has arisen with an alternative interpretation of the filamentous impression as remains of collagen fibres, but this has not been widely accepted.

"Sinosauropteryx" lebte vor etwa 126 bis 113 Millionen Jahren zur Zeit der Unterkreide (Aptium). Zwei Fossilien wurden 1996 in der Yixian-Formation bei Sihetun in der Provinz Liaoning, einer Provinz im Nordosten Chinas, entdeckt. "Sinosauropteryx" demonstriert, wie viele andere gefiederte Dinosaurier, eine große verwandtschaftliche Nähe zu Vögeln, die nach gegenwärtigem Kenntnisstand von fleischfressenden Dinosauriern abstammen.


Merchant navies by country.

British Merchant Navy.

The British Merchant Navy comprises the British merchant ships that transport cargo and people during times of peace and war.  For much of its history, the merchant navy was the largest merchant fleet in the world, but with the decline of the British Empire in the mid-20th century it slipped down the rankings. In 1939, the merchant navy was the largest in the world with 33% of total tonnage. By 2012, the merchant navy—still remaining one of the largest in the world—held only 3% of total tonnage. As of the year ending 2012, British Merchant Marine interests consists of 1,504 ships of or over. This includes ships either UK directly owned, parent owned or managed by a British company. This amounts to: or alternatively. This is according to the annual maritime shipping statistics provided by the British government and the Department for Transport. British shipping is represented nationally and globally by the UK Chamber of Shipping.

Canadian Merchant Navy.

Canada, like several other Commonwealth nations, created its own merchant navy in a large-scale effort in World War II. Established in 1939, the Canadian Merchant Navy played a major role in the Battle of the Atlantic bolstering the Allies' merchant fleet due to high losses in the British Merchant Navy.  Eventually thousands of Canadians served in the merchant navy aboard hundreds of Canadian merchant ships, notably the "Park Ship", the Canadian equivalent of the American "Liberty Ship". A school at St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia, trained Canadian merchant mariners. "Manning pools", merchant navy barracks, were built in Canadian ports.

Greek Merchant Navy.

The Greek maritime fleet is today engaged in commerce and transportation of goods and services universally. It consists of the merchant vessels owned by Greek civilians, flying either the Greek flag or a flag of convenience.  Greece is a maritime nation by tradition, as shipping is arguably the oldest form of occupation of the Greeks and a key element of Greek economic activity since ancient times. In 2015, the Greek Merchant Navy controlled the world's largest merchant fleet in terms of tonnage with a total DWT of 334,649,089 tons and a fleet of 5,226 Greek owned vessels, according to Lloyd's List. Greece is also ranked highly regarding all types of ships, including first for tankers and bulk carriers.

Indian Merchant Navy.

The birth of the modern Indian Merchant Navy occurred before independence from the United Kingdom, when in 1919 "SS Loyalty" sailed from India to Britain. Today, India ranks 15th in the world in terms of total DWT. India currently supplies around 12.8% of officers and around 14.5% of ratings to the world seafaring community. This is one of the highest of any country.

New Zealand Merchant Navy.

In December 1939, 3,000 seafarers were employed and 186 merchant vessels were on the New Zealand Registry (many larger New Zealand vessels were however registered in London for insurance purposes). Some foreign vessels were impressed, including the four-masted barque, "Pamir".  New Zealand, like several other Commonwealth nations, created a merchant navy. However, the "wartime Merchant Navy was neither a military force nor a single coherent body", instead it was "a diverse collection of private companies and ships".  Although some ships were involved in the Atlantic and North Pacific trade, mostly this involved domestic and South Pacific cargos. New Zealand-owned ships were involved in trade with the United Kingdom (84% of all New Zealand exports in 1939) and the majority of New Zealand seamen had served with the British Merchant Navy.  Over the course of the war, 64 ships were sunk by enemy action on the New Zealand–UK route, and 140 merchant seafarers lost their lives (a similar number were also taken prisoner).

Pakistani Merchant Navy.

The Pakistan Merchant Navy was formed in 1947. The Ministry of Port and Shipping, Mercantile Marine Department and Shipping Office established by the Government of Pakistan were authorized to flag the ships and also ensured that the vessels were sea worthy. All of the private shipping companies merged and formed the National Shipping Corporation (NSC) and the Pakistan Shipping Corporation (PSC) and as a result they had a common flag. Among these companies were the Muhammadi Steamship Company Limited and the East & West Steamship Company.  In the Indo-Pak war of 1971 Pakistan suffered a great loss of its merchant vessels at the hands of Indians. On 1 January 1974, President of Pakistan Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto nationalized the National Shipping Corporation and Pakistan Shipping Corporation, and formed the Pakistan National Shipping Corporation (PNSC) with the intent of reestablishing the Pakistan Merchant Navy. Later, the company was incorporated under the provisions of the Pakistan National Shipping Corporation Ordinance of 1979 and the Companies Ordinance of 1984.  Today, the Pakistan National Shipping Corporation is the national flag carrier. The corporation's head office is located in Karachi. A regional office based in Lahore caters for upcountry shipping requirements. The corporation also has an extensive overseas network of agents looking after its worldwide shipping business. The Pakistan National Shipping Corporation also has several subsidiary companies.

Polish Merchant Navy.

The Polish Merchant Navy (, PMH) was created in the interwar period when the Second Polish Republic regained independence. During World War II, many ships of the Polish Navy joined the Allied merchant navy and its convoys as part of the Polish contribution to World War II.  After the war, the Polish Merchant Navy was controlled by the People's Republic of Poland and, after 1989, by modern Poland., the PMH controlled 57 ships (of 1,000 GT or over) totaling / including 50 bulk carriers, two general cargo ships, two chemical tankers, one roll-on/roll-off ship and two short-sea passenger ships.

Swiss Merchant Marine.

Switzerland, despite being a landlocked country, has a civilian high seas fleet of merchant vessels, whose home port is Basel, on the Rhine. The first ships were purchased and operated by the government in order to ensure the supply of critical resources during World War II. After the war, a privately owned merchant fleet emerged, spurred in part by government subsidies that paid for the fleet's operation up until 1953. As of 2006, 26 ships (mostly container carriers) totalling 479,624 tons, operated by five shipping companies, flew the Swiss flag.

U.S. Merchant Marine.

The United States Merchant Marine is made up of the nation's civilian-owner merchant ships and the men and women who crew them. The merchant marine transports cargo and passengers during peacetime. In time of war, the merchant marine is an auxiliary to the navy and can be called upon to deliver troops and supplies for the military.  The people of the merchant marine are called "merchant mariners", and are civilians except in times of war, when, in accordance with the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, they are considered military personnel. As of 2009, the U.S. merchant fleet numbered 422 ships and approximately 69,000 people.  Not included in these numbers are the over 700 ships which are owned by American interests but are registered, or flagged, in other countries.

A merchant navy or merchant marine or mercantile marine is the fleet of merchant vessels that are registered in a specific country. On merchant vessels, seafarers of various ranks and sometimes members of are required by the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW) to carry Merchant Mariner's Documents.

Eine Handelsmarine oder Handelsflotte umfasst alle Seeschiffe, die in das Schiffsregister des jeweiligen Staates eingetragen sind und der Seeschifffahrt zum Zweck der Beförderung von Gütern (Handelsschiffe) und Personen dienen.