Lower operating and maintenance costs

Internal combustion engines are relatively inefficient at converting on-board fuel energy to propulsion as most of the energy is wasted as heat, and the rest while the engine is idling. On the other hand, electric motors are more efficient in converting stored energy into driving a vehicle, and electric drive vehicles do not consume energy while at rest or coasting, and some of the energy lost when braking is captured and reused through regenerative braking, which captures as much as one fifth of the energy normally lost during braking. Typically, conventional gasoline engines effectively use only 15% of the fuel energy content to move the vehicle or to power accessories, and diesel engines can reach on-board efficiencies of 20%, while electric drive vehicles have on-board efficiency of around 80%.

In the United States, with a national average electricity rate of per Kwh as of early 2010, the cost per mile for a plug-in electric vehicle operating in all-electric mode is estimated between to , while the cost per mile of a standard automobile varies between to , considering a gasoline price of per gallon. As petroleum price is expected to increase in the future due to oil production decline and increases in global demand, the cost difference in favor of PEVs will be even more favorable.

The operating cost of a conventional automobile with a U.S. fuel economy of at per gallon (reached in mid 2008) would be per mile. In comparison, the all-electric Tesla Roadster has a cost of per mile, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid is estimated to have an operating cost of per mile, and the Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid cost is estimated at per mile considering an electricity rate of per Kwh.

All-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles also have lower maintenance costs as compared to internal combustion vehicles, since electronic systems break down much less often than the mechanical systems in conventional vehicles, and the fewer mechanical systems on board last longer due to the more optimal use of the electric engine. PEVs do not require oil changes and other routine maintenance checks.

Air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions

Electric cars and plug-in hybrids when operating on all-electric mode emit no harmful tailpipe pollutants from the onboard source of power, such as particulates (soot), volatile organic compounds, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, ozone, lead, and various oxides of nitrogen. The clean air benefit is usually local because depending on the source of the electricity used to recharge the batteries, air pollutant emissions are shifted to the location of the generation plants. In a similar manner, plug-in electric vehicles operating on all-electric mode do not emit greenhouse gases from the onboard source of power, but from the point of view of a well-to-wheel assessment, the extent of the benefit also depends on the fuel and technology used for electricity generation. From the perspective of a full life cycle analysis, the electricity used to recharge the batteries must be generated from renewable or clean sources such as wind, solar, hydroelectric , or nuclear power for PEVs to have almost none or zero well-to-wheel emissions. On the other hand, when PEVs are recharged from coal-fired plants, they usually produce slightly more greenhouse gas emissions than internal combustion engine vehicles. In the case of plug-in hybrid electric vehicle when operating in hybrid mode with assistance of the internal combustion engine, tailpipe and greenhouse emissions are lower in comparison to conventional cars because of their higher fuel economy.

The magnitude of this potential advantage depends on the mix of generation sources, and therefore it varies by country and by region. For example, France can obtain most of the emission benefits of electric and plug-in hybrids because most of its electricity is generated in nuclear power plants; California, where most energy comes from natural gas plants, hydroelectric and nuclear plants, can also secure most of the emission benefits; the U.K. also has a significant potential to benefit from PEVs as natural gas plants are dominant in the generation mix. On the other hand, the emission benefits in Germany, China, India, and the central regions of the United States are very limited or non-existent because most electricity is generated from coal. However, these countries and regions might still obtain some air quality benefits by reducing local air pollution, as well as cites with chronic air pollution problems, such as Los Angeles, México City, Santiago, Chile, São Paulo, Beijing, Bangkok and Katmandu may also gain local clean air benefits by shifting the harmful emission to electric generation plants located outside the cities, far from people, and produced at night, when most electric vehicles are expected to be recharged. Nevertheless, the location of the plants is not relevant for the purposes of of greenhouse gas emission since their effect is global.

Less dependence on imported oil

For many net oil importing countries the 2000s energy crisis brought back concerns first raised during the 1973 oil crisis. For the United States, the other developed countries and emerging countries such as India and China, their dependence on foreign oil has revived concerns about their vulnerability to price shocks and supply disruption; uncertainty about when oil production will peak and the higher cost of extracting unconventional oil; and the threat to national security due to the fact that most proven oil reserves are concentrated in relatively few geographic locations, including some countries with strong resource nationalism, unstable governments or hostile to U.S. interests. In addition, for many developing countries, and particularly for the poorest African countries, high oil prices have an adverse impact on the government budget and deteriorate their terms of trade thus jeopardizing their balance of payments, all leading to lower economic growth.

Through the gradual replacement of internal combustion engine vehicles for electric cars and plug-in hybrids, electric drive vehicles can contribute significantly to lessen the dependence of the transport sector on imported oil as well as contributing to the development of a more resilient energy supply.

Vehicle-to-grid

Plug-in electric vehicles offer the opportunity to sell electricity stored in their batteries back to the power grid thus assisting utilities to operate more efficiently in the management of their demand peaks. A vehicle-to-grid (V2G) system takes advantage of the fact that most vehicles are parked an average of 95 percent of the time, then their batteries could be used to let electricity flow from the car to the power lines and back to the grid, with a value to the utilities of up to $4,000 per year per car.

Noise reduction

Electric cars and plug-in hybrids when operating on all-electric mode at low speeds produce less roadway noise as compared to vehicles propelled by a internal combustion engine, then producing beneficial noise health effects. However, blind people or the visually impaired consider the noise of combustion engines a helpful aid while crossing streets, hence electric-drive cars and hybrids could pose an unexpected hazard when operating at low speeds. Several tests conducted in the U.S. have shown that this is a valid concern, as vehicles operating in electric mode can be particularly hard to hear below for all types of road users and not only the visually impaired. At higher speeds the sound created by tire friction and the air displaced by the vehicle start to make sufficient audible noise.

Even though no specific regulation has been enacted as of mid 2010, some carmakers announced they have decided to address this safety issue, and as a result, the upcoming Nissan Leaf electric car and Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, both due in late 2010, as well as the Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid due in 2011, will include electric warning sounds to alert pedestrians, the blind and others to their presence.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Plug-in electric vehicle, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Petroleum exploration

The largest end-use of nonradioactive caesium today is in caesium formate based drilling fluids for the oil industry. Aqueous solutions of caesium formate (HCOO-Cs+)—made by reacting caesium hydroxide with formic acid—were developed in the mid-1990s for use as oil well drilling and completion fluids. The function of caesium formate as a drilling fluid is to lubricate drill bits, to bring rock cuttings to the surface, and to maintain pressure on the formation during drilling of the well, and while as completion fluid (which refers to the emplacement of control hardware after drilling but prior to production) is to maintain the pressure.

The high density of the caesium formate brine (up to 2.3& g/cm3, or 19.2& pounds per gallon), coupled with the relatively benign nature of most caesium compounds, reduces the requirement for toxic high-density suspended solids in the drilling fluid—a significant technological, engineering and environmental advantage. Unlike the components of many other heavy liquids, caesium formate is relatively environment-friendly. The caesium formate brine can be blended with potassium and sodium formates to decrease the density of the fluids down to that of water (1.0& g/cm3). Furthermore, it is biodegradable and reclaimable, and may be recycled, which is important in view of its high cost (about $4,000& per barrel in 2001). Alkali formates are safe to handle and do not damage the producing formation or downhole metals as their corrosive alternative, high-density brines (such as zinc bromide solutions), sometimes do, and they require less cleanup and disposal costs.

Atomic clocks

Caesium is used in atomic clocks, which use an electronic transition of caesium-133 atoms as a reference point. Caesium clocks, which have been improved repeatedly over the past half-century, form the basis for standards-compliant time and frequency measurements. Caesium clocks measure frequency with an accuracy of 2 to 3& parts in 1014, which would correspond to a time measurement accuracy of 2& nanoseconds per day, or one second in 1.4& million& years. The latest versions in the United States and France are accurate to 1.7& parts in 1015, or 1 second in 17& million years, which has been regarded as “the most accurate realization of a unit that mankind has yet achieved.”

Caesium clocks are also used in networks that control the timing of cell phone transmissions and information flow on the Internet.

Electric power and electronics

Magnetohydrodynamic power-generating systems were researched but failed to gain acceptance for widespread use, and funding from the U.S. Department of Energy was stopped in the early 1990s. Caesium metal has also been considered as the working fluid in high-temperature Rankine cycleturboelectric generators. Caesium has been used in caesium vapor thermionic generators, which are low-power devices that convert heat energy to electrical energy. In the two-electrode vacuum tube converter, it neutralizes the space charge that builds up near the cathode and in so doing enhances current flow.

Caesium is also important for its photoemissive properties by which in which light energy is converted to electron flow. It is used in photoelectric cells because caesium-based cathodes such as intermetallic compound , have low threshold voltage for emission of electrons. The range of photoemissive devices using caesium include optical character recognition devices, photomultiplier tubes, and video camera tubes. Nevertheless, germanium, rubidium, selenium, silicon, tellurium, and several other elements can substitute caesium in photosensitive materials.

Caesium iodide (CsI) and bromide (CsBr) crystals are used in scintillation counters which are widely used in mineral exploration and particle physics research. They are well suited for the detection of gamma and x-ray radiation.

Caesium vapor is used in many common magnetometers. Caesium is also used as an internal standard in spectrophotometry. Like other alkali metals, caesium has a great affinity for oxygen and is used as a “getter” in vacuum tubes. Other uses of the metal include high-energy lasers, vapor glow lamps, and vapor rectifiers.

Chemical and medical use

Chemical applications are also another important use of caesium. Liquid caesium can be used as a catalyst in the hydrogenation of certain organic compounds. Doping with caesium compounds is used to enhance the effectiveness of several metal-ion catalysts used in the production of chemicals, such as acrylic acid, anthraquinone, ethylene oxide, methanol, phthalic anhydride, styrene, methyl methacrylate monomers, and various olefins. It is also used in the catalytic conversion of sulfur dioxide into sulfur trioxide in the production of sulfuric acid. Caesium metal is also used in ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy and in the purification of carbon dioxide as it absorbs gases and other impurities, while molten hydroxide (CsOH) has been used in the desulfurizing of heavy crude oil.

Caesium fluoride is widely used in organic chemistry as a base, or as a source of anhydrous fluoride ion. Caesium salts sometimes are used to replace potassium or sodium salts in many organic syntheses, such as cyclization, esterification, and polymerization. Because of their high density, caesium chloride (CsCl), sulfate , and trifluoroacetate solutions are commonly used in molecular biology for density gradient ultracentrifugation, primarily for the isolation of viral particles, sub-cellular organelles and fractions, and nucleic acids from biological samples.

Caesium salts have been evaluated as antishock reagents to be used following the administration of arsenical drugs. Because of their effect on heart rhythms, however, they are less likely to be used than potassium or rubidium salts. They have also been used to treat epilepsy.

Nuclear and isotope applications

Caesium-137 is a very common radioisotope used as a gamma-emitter in industrial applications. Its advantages include a half-life of roughly 30 years, its availability from the nuclear fuel cycle, and having 137Ba as stable end product. The high water solubility is a disadvantage making caesium-137 incompatible with irradiation of food and medical supplies. It has been used in agriculture, cancer treatment, and sterilization of food, sewage sludge, and surgical equipment. Radioactive isotopes of caesium in radiation devices were used in the medical field to treat certain types of cancer, but emergence of better alternatives and the use of water-soluble caesium chloride in the sources, which would create wide range contamination, gradually put some of these caesium sources out of use. Caesium-137 has been employed in a variety of industrial measurement gauges, including moisture, density, leveling, and thickness gauges. It has also been used in well logging devices for measuring the electron density of the rock formations, which is analogous to the bulk density of the formations.

Isotope 137 has also been used in hydrologic studies, analogous to the use of tritium. It is produced from detonation of nuclear weapons and emissions from nuclear power plants. With the commencement of nuclear testing around 1945, continuing through the mid-1980s, 137Cs was released into the atmosphere where it is absorbed readily into solution. Known year-to-year variation within that period allows correlation with soil and sediment layers. 134Cs, and to a lesser extent 134Cs and 135Cs, have also been used in hydrology as a measure of caesium output by the nuclear power industry. These isotopes are used because, while they are less prevalent than either 133Cs or 137Cs, they can be produced solely by anthropogenic sources.

Other uses

Caesium and mercury were used as a propellant in early ion engines for spacecraft propulsion on very long interplanetary or extraplanetary missions. It used a method of ionization to strip the outer electron from the propellant by simple contact with tungsten. Concerns about the corrosive action of caesium on spacecraft components, have pushed development in the direction of use of inert gas propellants, such as xenon, which is easier to handle in ground-based tests and has less potential to interfere with the spacecraft. Eventually, xenon was used in the experimental spacecraft Deep Space 1 launched in 1998. Nevertheless, field emission electric propulsion thrusters which use a simple system of accelerating liquid metal ions such as of caesium to create thrust have been built.

Caesium nitrate is used as an oxidizer and pyrotechnic colorant to burn silicon in infrared flares such as the LUU-19 flare, because it emits much of its light in the near infrared spectrum. Caesium has been used to reduce the radar signature of exhaust plumes in the SR-71 Blackbird military aircraft. Caesium, along with rubidium, has been added as carbonates to glass because it reduces electrical conductivity and improves stability and durability, thus used in fiber optics and night vision devices. Caesium fluoride or caesium aluminium fluoride are used in fluxes formulated for the brazing of aluminium alloys that contain magnesium.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Caesium, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Solid oxide electrolyser cells operate at temperatures for high-temperature electrolysis, typically between 500 and 850°C similar to SOFC. Advantages of this class of regenerative fuel cells include high efficiencies, long term stability, fuel flexibility, low emissions, and cost. The largest disadvantage is the high operating temperature which results in longer start up times and mechanical/chemical compatibility issues. Electrolysis of water is increasingly endothermic with temperature, electricity demand is reduced because the joule heat of an electrolysis cell is utilized in the water splitting process at high temperature. Research is ongoing to add heat from external heat sources such as concentrating solar thermal collectors, and geothermal sources.

By definition, the process of any fuel cell could be reversed. However, a given fuel cell is usually optimized for operating in one mode and may not be built in such a way that it can be operated backwards. Fuel cells operated backwards generally do not make very efficient systems unless they are purpose-built to do so as in solid oxide electrolyser cells, high pressure electrolyzers, unitized regenerative fuel cells and regenerative fuel cells.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Solid oxide electrolyser cell, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Spanish Era 1769–1821

In 1542, the first Europeans to visit the Los Angeles region were Captain Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and his crew. They were sailing up the coast looking for a new passage to Asia. In 1602, Captain Sebastián Vizcaíno dropped anchor at Santa Catalina Island and near San Pedro. It would be another 166 years before another European would visit the region.

The Spanish expedition of Alta California

Los Angeles had its beginnings between 1765 and 1771 in the plans of a royal bureaucrat visiting New Spain, General José de Gálvez. He was in charge of implementing Bourbon administrative reforms. His reorganization included plans for the further exploration of Alta California and the settlement of a whole line of missions and ”presidios” (“military forts”). The military forts were not self-sustaining, and the missions would supply them with goods and food.

Galvez petitioned the king to approve these plans with these arguments: 1. It would provide new revenues for the Vice Royalty governing New Spain. 2. It would protect the Spanish Empire in North America, especially from the encroaching Russians. 3. It would provide a base for increasing trade with Asia. The plans also had the support of the Franciscans who wanted to open new missions in Alta California.

Galvez’s petition resulted in the formation of a joint land-and -sea expedition. Its primary purpose was to occupy Monterey (which had been visited by Vizcaíno in 1602) and establish new missions and presidios there and in San Diego.

To lead the expedition, Galvez appointed the new governor of California Lieutenant Colonel Gaspar de Portola and Father Junipero Serra, Franciscan head of the former Jesuit missions in Baja California.

During the land expedition from San Diego to Monterey, engineer Michael Costanso and Father Juan Crespi accompanied Portola. They kept careful notes of all they observed. Reaching the future site of Los Angeles, the party camped out along side a river. Portola named the river ”Porciuncula.”

The name came from an approaching Franciscan religious celebration that honored the mother church of the Franciscans, the ”Porziuncola” (“small piece of land”) in the Italian ”frazione” of Saint Mary of the Angels.

Father Crespi made these observations:

Thursday, 3, 1769. At half past six, we left the camp and forded the Porciuncula River, which runs down from the valley, flowing through it from the mountains to the plain. After crossing the river we entered a large vineyard of wild grapes and an infinity of rosebushes in full bloom. All the soil is black and loamy, and is capable of producing every kind of grain and fruit which may be planted. We went west, continually over good land well covered with grass. After traveling about half a league we came to the village of this region, the people of which, on seeing us, came out to the road.

Plans for the pueblo

The one person most responsible for the founding of Los Angeles was the new Governor of California, Felipe de Neve.

In 1777, Neve toured Alta California and decided to establish civic pueblos for the support of the military ”presidios”. Neve was a Renaissance person. The new pueblos would reduce the secular power of the missions by reducing the dependency of the military on them. At the same time, they would promote the development of industry and agriculture.

Neve identified Santa Barbara, San Jose, and Los Angeles as sites for his new pueblos. His plans for them closely followed a set of Spanish city-planning laws contained in the Laws of the Indies promulgated by King Philip II in 1513. Those laws were responsible for laying the foundations of the largest cities in the region, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tucson, and San Antonio—as well as Sonoma, Monterey, Santa Fe, San Jose, and Laredo.

The royal regulations were based on the ancient teachings of Vitruvius, who set down the rules for founding of new cities in the Roman Empire. Basically, the Spanish laws called for an open central plaza, surrounded by a fortified church, administrative buildings, and streets laid out in a grid, defining rectangles of limited size to be used for farming (”suertes”) and residences (”solares”).

It was in accordance with such precise planning—specified in the Law of the Indies—that Governor Neve founded the pueblo of San Jose de Guadalupe, California’s first municipality, on the great plain of Santa Clara on 29 November 1777.

The Los Angeles Pobladores

The Los Angeles Pobladores (“townspeople”) is the name given to the 44 original settlers, 22 adults and 22 children, who founded the town.

In December, 1777, Viceroy Antionio María de Bucareli y Urusa and Commandant General Teodoro de Croix gave approval for the founding of a civic municipality at Los Angeles and a new ”presidio” at Santa Barbara.

Croix put the California lieutenant governor Fernando Rivera y Moncada in charge of recruiting colonists for the new settlements. He was originally instructed to recruit 55 soldiers, 22 settlers with families and 1,000 head of livestock that included horses for the military. After an exhausting search that took him to Mazatlan, Rosario, and Durango, Rivera y Moncada only recruited 12 settlers and 45 soldiers. Like the people of most towns in New Spain, they were a mix of Indian, Spanish, and African backgrounds. Croix instructed Rivera y Moncada to delay no longer and proceed north. The soldiers, settlers, and livestock were assembled at Alamos, Sonora, before departure.

They were divided into two groups. One group, under Alfèrez Josè de Zúñiga and Alfèrez Ramon Laso de la Vega, set out for the coast. They crossed the Gulf of California on launches and then travelled overland to San Diego and up to San Gabriel.

The second group, under Rivera y Moncada, took an overland route over the desert, passing by the new missions on the Colorado River, La Purísima Concepción and Mission San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuñer. The group arrived at the Colorado River in June 1781. Rivera y Moncada sent most of his party ahead, but he stayed behind to rest the livestock before their drive across the desert. His party would never reach San Gabriel. The Quechan and Mojave Indians rose up against the party for encroaching on their farmlands and for other abuses inflicted by the soldiers. The Quechan Revolt was swift and killed 95 settlers and soldiers, including Rivera y Moncada.

Governor Neve had arrived in San Gabriel in April to finish his plans,” El Reglamento”, and select the exact location for Los Angeles. He carefully attended to every detail.

While waiting for the colonists to arrive, he visited Yaanga, the Indian village near his selected site. He selected several children for reception into the Church and baptized a young couple and had their marriage blessed. In his ”Reglamento”, the newly baptized Indians were no longer to reside in the mission but live in their traditional ”rancherias” (villages). Neve’s new plans for the Indians’ role in his new town drew instant disapproval from the mission priests.

Zúñiga’s party arrived at the mission on 18 July 1781. Because they had arrived with smallpox, they were immediately quarantined a short distance away from the mission. Members of the other party would arrive at different times by August. They made their way to Los Angeles and probably received their land before September.

The founding

The official date for the founding of the city is September 4, 1781. According to a written message sent by Governor Neve to report the pueblo’s juridical foundation, that was when 44 ” pobladores”, or settlers, gathered at San Gabriel Mission and, escorted by soldiers and two padres from the mission, set out for the chosen spot that Crespí had recorded twelve years earlier. According to historian Antonio Rios-Bustamente, however, the families had arrived from Mexico earlier in 1781, in two groups, and that some of them had most likely been working on their assigned plots of land since the early summer.

The name first given to the settlement is debated. Historian Doyce P. Nunis has said that the Spanish named it “El Pueblo de la Reyna de los Angeles” (“The Town of the Queen of the Angels”). For proof, he pointed to a map dated 1785, where that phrase was used. Frank Weber, the diocesan archivist, replied, however, that the name given by the founders was “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora de los Angeles de Porciuncula,” or “the town of Our Lady of the Angels of Porciuncula.” and that the map was in error.

The early pueblo

At the end of the first year, only 8 of the original founders were still in the pueblo. Three had been forced out “for being useless to themselves and the town.” But the town grew as soldiers and other settlers came into town and stayed. In 1784, a chapel was built on the Plaza. The ”pobladores” were given title to their land two years later. By 1800, there were 29 buildings that surrounded the Plaza, flat-roofed, one-story adobe buildings with thatched roofs made of tule.

By 1821, Los Angeles would grow into a self-sustaining farming community, the largest in Southern California. Its development conformed strictly to the Law of the Indies and the ”Reglamento” of Governor Neve. The pueblo itself included a square of 10,000 ”varas,” five and a quarter miles on each side. The central Plaza was in the middle, 75 ”varas” (208& ft.) wide and 100” varas” (277& ft.) long. On the west side of the Plaza facing east, space was reserved for a church and municipal buildings. Each ”vecino” (neighbor) received a ”solar” 20 ”varas” wide (55.5& ft.) and 40 ”varas” long (110& ft.).

Each settler also received four rectangles of land, ”suertes”, for farming, two irrigated plots and two dry ones. Each plot was 200 square ”varas”. The farm plots were separated from the pueblo by a tract of land 200 ”varas” wide. Some plots of land, ”propios”, were set aside for the pueblo’s general use and revenue. Other plots of land, ”realengas”, were set aside for future settlers. Land outside the city, ”baldios,” included mountains, rivers, lakes, and forests and belonged to the king.

When the settlers arrived, the Los Angeles floodplain was heavily wooded with willows and oaks. The Los Angeles river flowed all year. Wildlife was plentiful, including deer, antelope, and bear, even an occasional grizzly. There were abundant wetlands and swamps. Steelhead and salmon swam the rivers.

The first settlers built a ”zanja” water system consisting of ditches leading from the river through the middle of town and into the farmlands. Indians were employed to haul fresh drinking water from a special pool farther upstream. The city was first known as a producer of fine wine grapes. The raising of cattle and the commerce in tallow and hides would come later.

Because of the great economic potential for Los Angeles, the demand for Indian labor grew rapidly. Yaanga began attracting Indians from the islands and as far away as San Diego and San Luis Obispo. The village began to look like a refugee camp. Unlike the missions, the ”pobladores” paid Indians for their labor. In exchange for their work as farm workers, ”vaqueros”, ditch diggers, water haulers, and domestic help, the Indians were paid in clothing and other goods as well as cash and alcohol. The ”pobladores” bartered with them for prized sea-otter and seal pelts, sieves, trays, baskets, mats, and other woven goods. This commerce greatly contributed to the economic success of the town and the attraction of other Indians to the city.

During the 1780s, San Gabriel Mission became the object of an Indian revolt. The mission had expropriated all the suitable farming land. The Indians found themselves abused and forced to work on lands that they once owned. A young Indian healer, Toypurina began touring the area, preaching against the injustices suffered by her people. She won over four ”rancherias” and led them in an attack on the mission at San Gabriel. The soldiers were able to defend the mission and they arrested 17, including Toypurina.

Because the Indians were exploited, starved, beaten, and raped in the pueblo as often as anywhere else, the officials knew they had to protect them to assure a cheap supply of labor. In 1787, Governor Pedro Fages drew up his “Instructions for the Corporal Guard of the Pueblo of Los Angeles.” The Instructions included rules for employing Indians, not using corporal punishment, and protecting the Indian ”rancherias”. As a result, Indians found themselves with more freedom to choose between the benefits of the missions and the pueblo-associated ”rancherias”.

In 1784, California’s first three ”ranchos” were granted to soldiers, all in Los Angeles County. Rancho San Pedro was given to Juan José Dominguez, Rancho San Rafael to José María Verdugo, and Rancho Los Nietos to Mañuel Nieto. The grants stipulated that Indian employees stay clear of San Gabriel, further drawing them away from the missions and closer to the life of the pueblo.

In 1795, Sergeant Pablo Cota led an expedition from the Simi Valley through the Conejo-Calabasas region and into the San Fernando Valley. His party visited the” rancho” of Francisco Reyes. They found the local Indians hard at work as ”vaqueros” and caring for crops. Padre Vincente de Santa Maria was traveling with the party and gave us these observations:

The whole pagandom (Indians) is fond of the pueblo of Los Angeles, of the rancho of Reyes, and of the Zanja (water system). Here we see nothing but pagans, clad in shoes, with sombreros and blankets, and serving as muleteers to the settlers and rancheros, so that if it were not for the gentiles there would be neither pueblos nor ranches. These pagan Indians care neither for the missions nor for the missonaries.

Not only economic ties but also marriage drew many Indians into the life of the pueblo. In 1784—only three years after the founding—the first recorded marriages in Los Angeles took place. The two sons of settler Basilio Rosas, Maximo and José Carlos, married two young Indian women, María Antonia and María Dolores.

The construction on the Plaza of La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles took place between 1818 and 1822, much of it with Indian labor. The new church completed Governor Neve’s planned transition of authority from mission to pueblo. No longer would ”angelinos” have to endure the bumpy 11-mile ride to Sunday Mass at Mission San Gabriel.

As much as many Indians benefited from assimilation into the life of the pueblo, traditional Indians remained at the bottom of the social ladder and were exploited as workers.

The Mexican Era 1821–1848

Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821 was celebrated with great festivity throughout Alta California. No longer subjects of the king, people were now ”ciudadanos”, citizens with rights under the law. In the plazas of Monterey, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and other settlements, people swore allegiance to the new government, the Spanish flag was lowered, and the flag of independent Mexico raised.

The new winds of democracy brought other advantages, including economic growth. There was a corresponding increase in population as more Indians were assimilated and others arrived from America, Europe, and other parts of Mexico. Before 1820, there were just 650 people in the pueblo. By 1841, the population nearly tripled to 1,680.

Secularization of the Missions

During the rest of the 20s, the agriculture and cattle ranching expanded as did the trade in hides and tallow. The new church was completed, and the political life of the city developed. Los Angeles was separated from Santa Barbara administration. The system of ditches, the ”Zanja”—which provided water from the river—was rebuilt. Trade and commerce further increased with the secularization of the California missions by the Mexican Congress in 1833. Extensive mission lands suddenly became available to government officials, ranchers, and land speculators. The governor made more than 800 land grants during this period.

Much of this progress, however, bypassed the Indians of the traditional villages who were not assimilated into the ”mestizo” culture. Being regarded as minors who could not think for themselves, they were increasingly marginalized and relieved of their land titles, often by being drawn into debt or alcohol.

In 1834, Governor Pico was married to Maria Ignacio Alvarado in the Plaza church. It was attended by the entire population of the pueblo, 800 people, plus hundreds from elsewhere in Alta California. In 1835, the Mexican Congress declared Los Angeles a city, making it the official capital of Alta California. It was now the region’s leading city.

The same period also saw the arrival of many foreigners from the United States and Europe. They would play a pivotal role in the U.S. takeover. Early California settler John Bidwell included several historical figures in his recollection of people he knew in March, 1845.

It then had probably two hundred and fifty people, of whom I recall Don Abel Stearns, John Temple, Captain Alexander Bell, William Wolfskill, Lemuel Carpenter, David W. Alexander; also of Mexicans, Pio Pico (governor), Don Juan Bandini, and others.

The Battle of Los Angeles

In May, 1846, the Mexican American War broke out. Because of Mexico’s inability to defend its northern territories, California was exposed to invasion. On August 6, 1846, Commodore Robert F. Stockton anchored off San Pedro and proceeded to march inland to occupy Los Angeles. On August 13, accompanied by John C. Frémont, Stockton marched into the Los Angeles Plaza with his brass band playing “Yankee Doodle” and “Hail Columbia.” Stockton’s troops occupied the headquarters and home of Governor Pico, who had fled to Mexico. After three weeks of occupation, Stockton left, leaving Lieutenant Archibald H. Gillespie in charge.

Subsequent maltreatment by Gillespie and his troops caused a local force of 300 locals to rise up in protest, led by Captain José María Flores, José Antonio Carrillo, and Andrés Pico. Flores demanded the Americans surrender and promised safe passage to San Pedro. Gillespie accepted and departed, ending the first phase of the Battle of Los Angeles.

Full-scale warfare came to the area when Los Angeles residents dug up a colonial cannon that had been used for ceremonial purposes. They had buried it for safe-keeping when Stockton approached the city. They used it to fire on American Navy troops on 8 October 1846, in the Battle of Dominguez Rancho. The victorious locals named the cannon ”el piedrero de la vieja” (the old woman’s gun). In December, the Mexicans were again victorious at the Battle of San Pascual near present-day Escondido.

Determined to take Los Angeles, Stockton regrouped his men in San Diego and marched north with six hundred troops, along with U.S. Army General Stephen Watts Kearny and his guide Kit Carson. Captain Frémont marched south from Monterey with 400 troops. After a few skirmishes outside the city, the two forces entered Los Angeles, this time without bloodshed.

Confronted with overwhelming force, Andrés Pico, who had succeeded Flores as military commander and acting as chief administrative officer, met with Fremont. At a ranch in what is now Studio City, they signed the Treaty of Cahuenga on 13 January 1847. That formally ended the California phase of the Mexican-American War. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on 2 February 1848, ended the war and ceded California to the U.S.

The Transitional Era 1848–1870

According to historian Mary P. Ryan, “The U.S. army swept into California with the surveyor as well as the sword and quickly translated Spanish and Mexican practices into cartographic representations.” Under colonial law, land held by grantees was not disposable. It reverted to the government. It was determined that under U.S. property law, lands owned by the city were disposable. Also, the ”diseños” (property sketches) held by residents did not secure title in an American court.

California’s new military governor Bennett C. Riley ruled that land could not be sold that was not on a city map. In 1849, Lieutenant Edward Ord surveyed Los Angeles to confirm and extend the streets of the city. His survey put the city into the real-estate business, creating its first real-estate boom and filling its treasury. Street names were changed from Spanish to English. Further surveys and street plans quickly replaced the original plan for the pueblo with a new civic center south of the Plaza and a new use of space.

The fragmentation of Los Angeles real estate on the Anglo-Mexican axis had begun. Under the Spanish system, the residences of the power-elite clustered around the Plaza in the center of town. In the new American system, the power elite would reside in the outskirts. The emerging minorities, including the Chinese, Italians, French, and Russians, joined with the Mexicans near the Plaza.

The gangs of Los Angeles

In 1848, the gold discovered in Coloma first brought thousands of miners from Sonora northern Mexico on the way to the gold fields. So many of them settled in the area north of the Plaza that it came to be known as Sonoratown.

During the Gold Rush years in northern California, Los Angeles became known as the “Queen of the Cow Counties” for its role in supplying beef and other foodstuffs to hungry miners in the north. Among the cow counties, Los Angeles County had the largest herds in the state followed closely by Santa Barbara and Monterey Counties.

With the temporary absence of a legal system, the city was quickly submerged in lawlessness. Many of the New York regiment disbanded at the end of the war and charged with maintaining order were thugs and brawlers. They roamed the streets joined by gamblers, outlaws, and prostitutes driven out of San Francisco and mining towns of the north by Vigilance Committees or lynch mobs. Los Angeles came to be known as the “toughest and most lawless city west of Santa Fe.”

Some of the residents resisted the new Anglo powers by resorting to social banditry against the gringos. In 1856, Juan Flores threatened Southern California with a full-scale revolt. He was hanged in Los Angeles in front of 3,000 spectators. Tiburcio Vasquez, a legend in his own time among the Mexican-born population for his daring feats against the Anglos, was captured in present-day Santa Clarita, California on May 14, 1874. He was found guilty of two counts of murder by a San Jose jury in 1874, and was hanged there in 1875.

Los Angeles had several active Vigilance Committees during that era. Between 1850 and 1870, mobs carried out approximately 35 lynchings of Mexicans—more than four times the number that occurred in San Francisco. Los Angeles was described as “undoubtedly the toughest town of the entire nation.” The homicide rate between 1847 and 1870 averaged 158 per 100,000 (13 murders per year), which was 10 to 20 times the annual murder rates for New York City during the same period.

The fear of Mexican violence and the racially motivated violence inflicted on them further marginalized the Mexicans, greatly reducing their economic and political opportunities.

The plight of the Indians

In 1836, the Indian village of Yaanga was relocated near the future corner of Commercial and Alameda Streets. In 1845, it was relocated again to present-day Boyle Heights. With the coming of the Americans, disease took a great toll among Indians. Between 1848 and 1880, the total population of Los Angeles went from 75,050 to 12,500. Self-employed Indians were not allowed to sleep over in the city. They faced increasing competition for jobs as more Mexicans moved into the area and took over the labor force. Those who loitered or were drunk or unemployed were arrested and auctioned off as laborers to those who paid their fines. They were often paid for work with liquor, which only increased their problems.

Los Angeles was incorporated as an American city on April 4, 1850. Five months later, California was admitted into the Union. Although the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo required the U.S. to grant citizenship to the Indians of former Mexican territories, the U.S. did not get around to doing that for another 80 years. The Constitution of California deprived Indians of any protection under the law, considering them as non-persons. As a result, it was impossible to bring an Anglo to trial for killing an Indian or forcing them off their property. Anglos concluded that the “quickest and best way to get rid of (their) troublesome presence was to kill them off, (and) this procedure was adopted as a standard for many years.”

When New England author and Indian-rights activist Helen Hunt Jackson toured the Indian villages of Southern California in 1883, she was appalled by the racism of the Anglos living there. She found they treated Indians worse than animals, hunted them for sport, robbed them of their farmlands, and brought them to the edge of extermination. While Indians were depicted by whites as lazy and shiftless, she found most of them to be hard-working craftsmen and farmers. Jackson’s tour inspired her to write her 1884 novel, ”Ramona”, which she hoped would give a human face to the atrocities and indignities suffered by the Indians in California. And it did. The novel was enormously successful, inspiring four movies and a yearly pageant in Hemet, California. Many of the Indian villages of Southern California survived because of her efforts, including Morongo, Cahuilla, Soboba, Temecula, Pechanga, and Warner Hot Springs.

Remarkably, the Gabrielino Indians, now called Tongva, also survived. in 2006, the ”Los Angeles Times” reported that there were 2,000 of them still living in Southern California. Some were organizing to protect burial and cultural sites. Others were trying to win federal recognition as a tribe to operate a casino.

Industrial Expansion and Growth 1870—1913

In the 1870s, Los Angeles was still little more than a village of 5,000. By 1900, there were over 100,000 occupants of the city. Several men actively promoted Los Angeles, working to develop it into a great city and to make themselves rich. Angelenos set out to remake their geography to challenge San Francisco with its port facilities, railway terminal, banks and factories. The Farmers and Merchants Bank of Los Angeles was the first incorporated bank in Los Angeles, founded in 1871 by John G. Downey and Isaias W. Hellman.

The Chinese Massacre of 1871

The first Chinese arrived in Los Angeles in 1850. The great majority came from Guangdong Province in southeastern China, seeking a fortune in ”Gum Saan”, (“Gold Mountain”) the Chinese name for America. Instead of finding fortunes, they were exploited for their labor in the gold mines and in building the first railroad into California. Henry Huntington came to value their expertise as engineers. He later said he would not have been able to build his portion of the transcontinental railroad without them.

After the transcontinental railroad was completed, the Chinese sought jobs in the burgeoning California cities, where they faced massive discrimination on the part of organized labor. As a result, they filled in where there was less competition, running laundries, restaurants, and vegetable stands.

In a time of great exploitation and monopoly by the railroad barons, the unions blamed Chinese for lowering the wages and living standards of Anglo workers. The newspapers of both Los Angeles and San Francisco were filled with anti-Chinese propaganda.

The thriving Chinatown, on the eastern edge of the Plaza, was the site of terrible violence on October 24, 1871. A gunfight between rival Chinese factions over the abduction of a woman resulted in the accidental death of a white man. This enraged the bystanders, and a mob of about 500 Anglos and Latinos descended on Chinatown. They randomly lynched 19 Chinese men and boys, only one of whom may have been involved in the original killing. Homes and businesses were looted. Only ten rioters were tried. Eight were convicted of manslaughter, but their convictions were overturned the following year on a legal technicality. This was later referred to as the Chinese Massacre of 1871.

The massacre was the first time that Los Angeles was reported on the front pages of newspapers all over the world, even crowding out reports of the terrible Chicago fire that happened two weeks before. While the racist ”Los Angeles Star” went so far to call the massacre “a glorious victory,” others fretted about the city’s racist and violent image. With the coming economic opportunities of the railroads, city fathers set themselves to wipe out mob violence.

Their efforts, however, led to more restrictive measures against the Chinese. In 1878-79, the City Council passed several measures aversely affecting Chinese vegetable merchants. The merchants went on strike. Los Angeles went without vegetables for several weeks, finally bringing the city to the bargaining table. Historian William Estrada wrote: “This little-known event may have helped the Chinese to better understand their role in the community as well as the power of organization as a means for community self-defense. The strike was a sign that Los Angeles was undergoing dramatic social, economic, and technological change and that the Chinese were a part of that change.”

The coming of the railroads

Historian Blake Gumprecht wrote, “The completion of a transcontinental railroad to Los Angeles in 1876 changed Southern California forever.”

The first railroad, San Pedro Railroad, was inaugurated in October, 1869 by John G. Downey and Phineas Banning. It ran 21 miles between San Pedro and Los Angeles.

The town continued to grow at a moderate pace until its connection with the Central Pacific and San Francisco in 1876, and more directly with the East by the Santa Fe system (through its subsidiary California Southern Railroad) in 1885.

The Central Pacific Railroad had a significant impact in the immediate growth of the City of Los Angeles. The Central Pacific Railroad owners could have chosen San Diego over Los Angeles to be their final freight destination but the owners and the City of San Francisco feared that San Diego would become a rival importing power with its large natural bay. Instead, Central Pacific picked Los Angeles to be their southern hub and prompted the rapid expansion of the city’s economic growth and expansion. The completion of the latter line precipitated one of the most extraordinary of American railway wars and land booms, which resulted in giving southern California a great stimulus.

Phineas Banning excavated a channel out of the mud flats of San Pedro Bay leading to Wilmington in 1871. Banning had already laid track and shipped in locomotives to connect the port to the city. Harrison Gray Otis, founder and owner of the ”Los Angeles Times”, and a number of business colleagues embarked on reshaping southern California by expanding that into a harbor at San Pedro using federal dollars.

This put them at loggerheads with Collis P. Huntington, president of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company and one of California’s “Big Four” investors in the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific. (The “Big Four” are sometimes numbered among the “robber barons” of the Gilded Age). The line reached Los Angeles in 1876 and Huntington directed it to a port at Santa Monica, where the ”Long Wharf” was built.

April 1872, John G. Downey went to San Francisco and was successful in representing Los Angeles in discussions with Collis Huntington concerning Los Angeles’s efforts to bring the Southern Pacific Railroad through Los Angeles.

The San Pedro forces eventually prevailed (though it required Banning and Downey to turn their railroad over to the Southern Pacific). Work on the San Pedro breakwater began in 1899 and was finished in 1910. Otis Chandler and his allies secured a change in state law in 1909 that allowed Los Angeles to absorb San Pedro and Wilmington, using a long, narrow corridor of land to connect them with the rest of the city.

In 1898, Henry Huntington purchased the Los Angeles Railway. Two years later, he founded the Pacific Electric Railway. These two systems, one with yellow cars serving the city and the other with red cars serving the rest of the county, came to be known as best public transportation system in the world. At its peak, the Pacific Electric was the largest electrically operated interurban railway in the world. Over 1,000 miles of tracks connected Los Angeles with Hollywood, Pasadena, San Pedro, Venice Beach, Santa Monica, Pomona, San Bernardino, Long Beach, Santa Ana, Huntington Beach, and other points.

Oil discovery

Oil was discovered by Edward L. Doheny in 1892, near the present location of Dodger Stadium. The Los Angeles City Oil Field was the first of many fields in the basin to be exploited, and in 1900 and 1902, respectively, the Beverly Hills Oil Field and Salt Lake Oil Field were discovered just a few miles west of the original find. Los Angeles became a center of oil production in the early 20th century, and by 1923 the region was producing one-quarter of the world’s total supply; it is still a significant producer, with the Wilmington Oil Field having the fourth-largest reserves of any field in California.

Winds of revolution

The immigrants arriving in the city to find jobs often brought the revolutionary zeal and idealism of their homelands. These often included anarchists such as Russian Emma Goldman and Ricardo Flores Magón and his brother Enrique of the ”Partido Liberal Mexicano”. They were later joined by the socialist candidate for mayor Job Harriman, Chinese revolutionaries, the novelist Upton Sinclair, “Wobblies” (members of the Industrial Workers of the World, the IWW), and Socialist and Communist labor organizers such as the Japanese-American Karl Yoneda and the Russian-born New Yorker Meyer Baylin. The Socialists were the first to set up a soapbox in the Plaza, which would serve as the location of union rallies and protests and riots as the police attempted to break up meetings.

Chinatown in Los Angeles became the center of a world movement that would lead to the Chinese Revolution and the overturning of the empire in 1911. Homer Lea, an Anglo graduate of Occidental College and Stanford, was sympathetic to the Chinese cause. At the turn of the century, he opened a military school near the Plaza called the Armory. Ostensibly for training young Chinese men to be good U.S. citizens and leaders, what it really did was train them for leading the revolution in China.

In June, 1904, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, the leader of the revolution came to Los Angeles to raise money and support for his cause. He came again in September, when he met with Lea and together they plotted the final stages of the revolution. On September 30, before giving a speech at a Chinatown restaurant, Sun was attacked by two imperial assassins who tried to kill him with knives. Escaping unharmed, Sun delivered his speech, winning over the crowd of 600. As a result, Dr. Lea, several of his cadets, and other members of the community followed Sun back to China to take part in the revolution that changed world history.

Class conflict surges

At the same time that the ”L.A. Times” was whipping up enthusiasm for the expansion of Los Angeles it was also trying to turn it into a union-free or open shop town. Fruit growers and local merchants who had opposed the Pullman strike in 1894 subsequently formed the Merchants and Manufacturers Association (M & M) to support the ”L.A. Times” anti-union campaign.

The California labor movement, with its strength concentrated in San Francisco, had largely ignored Los Angeles for years. It changed, in 1907, however, when the American Federation of Labor decided to challenge the open shop of “Otis Town.”

In 1909, the city fathers placed a ban on free speech from public streets and private property except for the Plaza. Locals had claimed that it had been an Open Forum forever. The area was of particular concern to the owners of the” L.A. Times”, Harrison Grey Otis and his son-in-law Harry Chandler.

At the turn of the century, Otis and Chandler as part of a syndicate had acquired thousands of acres of farmland in Baja California that stretched across the border into Imperial County. It was called the California-Mexican Land and Cattle Company, or the C-M Ranch.

In exchange for favorable reports about the presidency of Porfirio Diaz in Mexico, Otis and his associates enjoyed unfettered business freedom in Baja California. Under Diaz,

American capitalists bought millions of acres of Mexican land, mines, factories, banks, oil rights (Doheny), public utilities, and most of the nation’s railroads. The Diaz regime was marked with increasing poverty, violent political repression, and the support of President Wilson.

The Otis-Chandler plans for both their Mexican holdings and the city required a steady supply of cheap labor and keeping the unions from succeeding as they had done in San Francisco.

In 1910, the century’s first full-scale revolution took place in Baja California, led by two factions, wealthy landowner Francisco Madero and the Partido Liberal

Mexicano (PLM). The PLM was based in the L.A. Plaza and led by anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón, a talented journalist and charismatic speaker who occupies a special place in the

story of Los Angeles. He is the prototype of the 20th-century Mexican-American political and social activist.

Publishing the popular bi-lingual ”Regeneracion” newspaper in Los Angeles, Magon’s movement posed a direct challenge to Otis and Chandler’s hold on the border

region. The paper not only reported on the revolution in Mexico, but also social and political conditions in the U.S. It examined the U.S. penal system, the

plight of agricultural workers, child labor, Margaret Sanger’s crusade for women, and most of all the battle against the open shop in Los Angeles. The

paper also connected readers with the social services and cultural happenings available in the expanding Plaza area.

Magon wrote: “We do not struggle for abstractions, but for materialities. We want land for all, bread for all. Inevitably blood must run, so that conquests obtain benefits for all and not for a specific social class.”

The insurgents of the Baja Revolution consisted of no more than 200 anarchists,

socialists, and Wobblies. Their basic goal was the redistribution back to Mexican peasants of Baja California land, of which 78

percent was owned by foreign interests.

The owners of the ”Times” drew the conclusion that the Mexican rebels and union organizers in L.A. were connected. This conflict came to a head with the bombing of the Times in 1910, which killed 10 people, and injured 17. Two months later, the Llewellyin Iron Works near the plaza was bombed. A meeting was hastily called of the Chamber of Commerce and Manufacturers Association. The L.A. Times wrote: “radical and practical matters (were) considered, and steps taken for the adaption of such as are adequate to cope with a situation tardily recognized as the gravest that Los Angeles has ever been called upon to face.”

The authorities indicted John and James McNamara, both associated with the Iron Workers Union, for the bombing; Clarence Darrow, who had successfully defended Big Bill Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone in Idaho, represented them.

At the same time the McNamara brothers were awaiting trial, Los Angeles was preparing for a city election. Job Harriman, running on the socialist ticket, was challenging the establishment’s candidate.

Harriman’s campaign, however, was tied to the asserted innocence of the McNamaras. But the defense was in trouble: the prosecution not only had evidence of the McNamaras’ complicity, but had trapped Darrow in a clumsy attempt to bribe one of the jurors. On December 1, 1911, four days before the final election, the McNamaras entered a plea of guilty in return for prison terms. The ”L.A. Times” accompanied its report of the guilty plea with a faked photograph of Samuel Gompers trampling an American flag. Harriman lost badly.

The Otis-Chandler interests were further challenged when Madero became President of Mexico in 1911. Commercial interests in L.A. felt radical measures had to be

taken. Mexican and labor organizers were scapegoated.

In June 1911, the police raided the offices of ”Regeneracion”. Magon and his younger brother Enrique were arrested with two others and charged with

conspiracy to lead an armed expedition against a “friendly nation.” The trial was a great media event and drew great crowds. Among those who showed up to

speak in behalf of the brothers were socialist labor organizer Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, American anarchist Emma Goldman, and Eugene V. Debs.

The four were convicted and sentenced to 23 months at the federal prison in Macneil Island, Washington.

On Christmas Day, 1913, police attempted to break up an IWW rally of 500 taking

place in the Plaza. Encountering resistance, the police waded into the crowd

attacking them with their clubs. One citizen was killed. In the aftermath, the

authorities attempted to impose martial law in the wake of growing protests.

Seventy-three were arrested in connection with the riots. The City Council

introduced new measures to control public speaking. The ”Times” scapegoated all

foreign elements even calling onlookers and taco venders as “cultural

subversives.”

In 1916, the Magón brothers were arrested on charges of defamation and sending indecent materials through the mail. Ricardo was able to get released on bail.

He gave a rousing speech at Italian Hall to 700 of the International Workers

Defense League. He called Mexican President Carranza a “lackey of President Wilson” and Wilson “the bandit of Wall Street.” The speech was given wide

circulation in the press throughout the Southwest and in Mexico.

Ricardo was convicted and sent to Leavenworth. In 1922, he died in his cell,

maybe murdered by a guard. His body was returned by train to Mexico City, where he was given a hero’s welcome by a crowd of thousands consisting of workers,

labor organizers, and government officials singing ”La Marsellaise” and the ”Internationale”.

The open shop campaign continued from strength to strength, although not without meeting opposition from workers. By 1923, the Industrial Workers of the World had made considerable progress in organizing the longshoremen in San Pedro and led approximately 3,000 men to walk off the job. With the support of the ”L.A. Times”, a special “Red Squad” was formed within the Los Angeles Police Department and arrested so many strikers that the city’s jails were soon filled.

Some 1,200 dock workers were corralled in a special stockade in Griffith Park. The ”L.A. Times” wrote approvingly that “stockades and forced labor were a good remedy for IWW terrorism.” Public meetings were outlawed in San Pedro, Upton Sinclair was arrested at Liberty Hill in San Pedro for reading the United States Bill of Rights on the private property of a strike supporter (the arresting officer told him “we’ll have none of ‘that Constitution stuff’”) and blanket arrests were made at union gatherings. The strike ended after members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Legion raided the IWW Hall and attacked the men, women and children meeting there. The strike was defeated.

Los Angeles developed another industry in the early 20th century when movie producers from the East Coast relocated there. These new employers were likewise afraid of unions and other social movements: during Upton Sinclair’s campaign for Governor of California under the banner of his “End Poverty In California” (EPIC) movement, Louis B. Mayer turned MGM’s Culver City studio into the unofficial headquarters of the organized campaign against EPIC. MGM produced fake newsreel interviews with whiskered actors with Russian accents voicing their enthusiasm for EPIC, along with footage focusing on central casting hobos huddled on the borders of California waiting to enter and live off the bounty of its taxpayers once Sinclair was elected. Sinclair lost.

Los Angeles also acquired another industry in the years just before World War II: the garment industry. At first devoted to regional merchandise, such as sportswear, the industry eventually grew to be the second largest center of garment production in the United States.

Unions began to make progress in organizing these workers as the New Deal arrived in the 1930s. They made even greater gains in the war years, as Los Angeles grew even further.

Today, the ethnic makeup of the city and the politically progressive views of surrounding West Hollywood and Hollywood have made Los Angeles a strong union town. Still, many garment workers in central LA, most of whom are Mexican immigrants work in sweat shop conditions.

The battle of the Los Angeles River

The Los Angeles River flowed clear and fresh all year, supporting 45 Gabrielino villages in the area. The source of the river was the aquifer under the San Fernando Valley, supplied with water from the surrounding mountains. The rising of the underground bedrock at the Glendale Narrows (near today’s Griffith Park) squeezed the water to the surface at that point. Then, through much of the year, the river emerged from the valley to flow across the floodplain 20 miles to the sea. The area also provided other streams, lakes, and artesian wells.

The problem with the river was not too little water but, occasionally, way too much..

Early settlers were more than a little discouraged by the region’s diverse and unpredictable weather. They watched helplessly as long droughts weakened and starved their livestock, only to be drowned and carried off by ferocious storms. During the years of little rain, people would build too close to the riverbed, only to see their homes and barns later swept out to sea during a flood. The location of the Los Angeles Plaza had to be moved twice because of previously having been built too close to the riverbed.

Worse, floods would change the river’s course. When the settlers arrived, the river joined Ballona Creek to discharge in Santa Monica Bay. A fierce storm in 1835 diverted its course to Long Beach, where it stays today.

Early citizens could not even maintain a footbridge over the river from one side of the city to the other. After the American takeover, the city council authorized spending of $20,000 for a contractor to build a substantial wooden bridge across the river. The first storm to come along dislodged the bridge, used it as a battering ram to break through the embankment, and scattered its timbers all the way to the sea.

Some of the most concentrated rainfall in the history of the United States has occurred in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Los Angeles and Orange Counties. On April 5, 1926, a rain gauge in the San Gabriels collected one inch in one minute. In January, 1969, more water fell on the San Gabriels in nine days than New York City sees in a year. In February 1978, almost a foot of rain fell in 24 hours, and, in one blast, an inch and a half in five minutes. This storm caused massive debris flows throughout the region, one of them unearthing the corpses in the Verdugo Hills Cemetery and depositing them in the town below. Another wiped out the small town of Hidden Springs in a tributary of the Big Tujunga River, killing 13 people.

The greatest daily rainfall recorded in California was 26.12& inches on January 23, 1943 at Hoegees near Mt. Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains. Fifteen other stations reported over 20& inches in two days from the same storm. Forty-five others reported 70 percent of the average annual rainfall in two days.

Quibbling between city and county governments delayed any response to the flooding until a massive storm in 1938 flooded Los Angeles and Orange Counties. The federal government stepped in. To transfer floodwater to the sea as quickly as possible, the Army Corps of Engineers paved the beds of the river and its tributaries. The Corps also built several dams and catchment basins in the canyons along the San Gabriel Mountains to reduce the debris flows. It was an enormous project, taking years to complete.

Today, the Los Angeles River functions mainly as a flood control. A drop of rain falling in the San Gabriel Mountains will reach the sea faster than an auto can drive. During today’s rainstorms, the volume of the Los Angeles River at Long Beach can be as large as the Mississippi River at St. Louis.

The drilling of wells and pumping of water from the San Fernando Valley aquifer dried up the river by the 1920s. By 1980, the aquifer was supplying drinking water for 800,000 people. In that year, it was discovered that the aquifer had been contaminated. Many wells were shut down, as the area qualified as a [http://yosemite.epa.gov/R9/SFUND/R9SFDOCW.NSF/db29676ab46e80818825742600743734/33e2071f3f682bf988257007005e9429!OpenDocument Superfund site]

Water from a distance

For its first 120 years, the Los Angeles River supplied the town with ample water for homes and farms. It was estimated that the annual flow could have support a town of 250,000 people—if the water had been managed right. But Angelinos were among the most profligate users of water in the world. In the semi-arid climate, they were forever watering their lawns, gardens, orchards, and vineyards. Later on, they would need more to support the growth of commerce and manufacturing. By the beginning of the 20th century, the town realized it would quickly outgrow its river and need new sources of water.

Legitimate concerns about water supply were exploited to gain backing for a huge engineering and legal effort to bring more water to the city and allow more development. The city fathers had their eyes on the Owens River, about 250 miles (400& km) northeast of Los Angeles in Inyo County, near the Nevada state line. It was a permanent stream of fresh water fed by the melted snows of the eastern Sierra Nevada. It flowed through the Owens River Valley before emptying into the shallow, saline Owens Lake, where it evaporated.

The City of Los Angeles mostly remained within its original 28 square-mile (73& km²) landgrant until the 1890s. The original city limits are visible even today in the layout of streets that changes from a north-south pattern outside of the original land grant to a pattern that is shifted roughly 15 degrees east of the longitude in and closely around the area now known as Downtown. The first large additions to the city were the districts of Highland Park and Garvanza to the north, and the South Los Angeles area. In 1906, the approval of the Port of Los Angeles and a change in state law allowed the city to annex the ”Shoestring,” or Harbor Gateway, a narrow and crooked strip of land leading from Los Angeles south towards the port. The port cities of San Pedro and Wilmington were added in 1909 and the city of Hollywood was added in 1910, bringing the city up to 90 square miles (233& km²) and giving it a vertical “barbell” shape. Also added that year was Colegrove, a suburb west northwest of the city near Hollywood; Cahuenga, a township northwest of the former city limits; and a part of Los Feliz were annexed to the city.

The opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct provided the city with four times as much water as it required, and the offer of water service became a powerful lure for neighboring communities. The city, saddled with a large bond and excess water, locked in customers through annexation by refusing to supply other communities. Harry Chandler, a major investor in San Fernando Valley real estate, used his ”Los Angeles Times” to promote development near the aqueduct’s outlet. By referendum of the residents, 170 square miles (440& km²) of the San Fernando Valley, along with the Palms district, were added to the city in 1915, almost tripling its area, mostly towards the northwest. Over the next seventeen years dozens of additional annexations brought the city’s area to 450 square miles (1,165& km²) in 1932. (Numerous small annexations brought the total area of the city up to 469 square miles (1,215& km²) as of 2004.)

Most of the annexed communities were unincorporated towns but ten incorporated cities were consolidated into Los Angeles: Wilmington (1909), San Pedro (1909), Hollywood (1910), Sawtelle (1922), Hyde Park (1923), Eagle Rock (1923), Venice (1925), Watts (1926), Barnes City (1927), and Tujunga (1932).

Annexation references: ”Municipal Secession Fiscal Analysis Scoping Study [http://www.valleyvote.net/lafco/lafcostudy.htm www.valleyvote.net], Annexation and Detachment Map (PDF) [http://navigatela.lacity.org/common/mapgallery/pdf/annex34x44.pdf lacity.org].”

Olvera Street—an idealized Mexican past

In 1926, socialite Christine Sterling became alarmed when the City Council posted a condemn sign on the old Francisco Avila Adobe near the Los Angeles Plaza. She became very dedicated to the preservation of the area and developed the idea of creating a tourist site with a romantic theme of Old Mexico.

Her efforts finally won the attention of Harry Chandler of the ”Los Angeles Times” who staged a $1000-a-plate luncheon on her behalf. Chandler also set up a for-profit business, the Plaza de Los Angeles Corporation, with himself and Sterling in charge.

Chandler’s interest in developing the idealized Mexican marketplace was twofold: 1. It would give him a way to control the level of free-speech activities on the Plaza and 2. it would present an image of “good Mexicans” who did not include union organizers and angry workers protesting their exploitation. Ceramic figures of a Mexican sleeping at the foot of a cactus with a sombrero over his head would symbolize the stereotype Chandler wanted to project.

Sterling and Chandler’s efforts finally paid off with the opening of Olvera Street in 1930. Sterling spent the rest of her life managing the tourist attraction as a profitable business.

Civic corruption and police brutality

The downtown business interests, always eager to attract business and investment to Los Angeles, were also eager to distance their town from the syndicated crime and violence that defined the stories of Chicago and New York. In spite of their concerns, massive corruption in City Hall and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)—and the fight against it—were dominant themes in the city’s story from early 20th-century to the 1950s.

In the 1920s, for example, it was common practice for the city’s mayor, councilmen, and attorneys to take contributions from madams, bootleggers, and gamblers. The top aide of the mayor was involved with a protection racket. Thugs with eastern-Mafia connections were involved in often violent conflicts over bootlegging and horse-racing turf. The mayor’s brother was selling jobs in the LAPD.

In 1933, the new mayor Frank Shaw started giving out contracts without competitive bids and paying city employees to favor crony contractors. The city’s Vice Squad functioned city-wide as the enforcer and collector of the city’s organized crime, with revenues going to the pockets of city officials right up to the mayor.

In 1937, the owner of downtown’s Clifton’s Cafeteria, Clifford Clinton led a citizen’s campaign to clean up city hall. He and other reformers served on a Grand Jury investigating the charges of corruption. In a minority report, the reformers wrote:

A portion of the underworld profits have been used in financing campaigns [of] … city and county officials in vital positions … [While] the district attorney’s office, sheriff’s office, and Los Angeles Police Department work in complete harmony and never interfere with … important figures in the underworld.

The police Intelligence Squad spied on anyone even suspected of criticizing the police. They included journalist Carey Williams, the district attorney, Judge Bowron, and two of the County Supervisors.

The persistent courage of Clinton, Superior Court Judge, later Mayor, Fletcher Bowron, and former L.A.P.D. detective Harry Raymond turned the tide. The police became so nervous that the Intelligence Squad blew up Raymond’s car and nearly killed him. The public was so enraged by the bombing that it quickly voted Shaw out of office, one of the first big-city recalls in the country’s history. The head of the intelligence squad was convicted and sentenced to two years to life. Police Chief James Davis and 23 other officers were forced to resign.

Fletcher Bowron replaced Shaw as mayor in 1938 to preside over one of the most dynamic periods in the history of the city. His Los Angeles Urban Reform Revival” would bring major changes to the government of Los Angeles.

In 1950, he appointed William H. Parker was sworn in as Chief of Police. Parker pushed for more independence from political pressures that would enable him to create a more professionalized police force. The public supported him and voted in charter changes that isolated the police department from the rest of government.

Through the 1960s, the LAPD was promoted as one of the most efficient departments in the world. But Parker’s administration would be increasingly charged with police brutality—resulting from his recruiting of officers from the South with strong anti-black and anti-Mexican attitudes.

Reaction to police brutality resulted in the Watts riots of 1965 and again, after the Rodney King beating, in the Los Angeles riots of 1992. Charges of police brutality dogged the Department through the end of the century. In the late 1990s, as a result of the Rampart scandal involving misconduct of 70 officers, the federal government was forced to intervene and assumed jurisdiction of the Department with a consent decree. Police reform has since been a major issue confronted by L.A.’s recent mayors.

Social critic Mike Davis has recently argued that attempts to “revitalize” downtown Los Angeles decreases public space and further alienates poor and minority populations. This enforced geographical separation of diverse populations goes back to the city’s earliest days.

World War II and postwar 1941 – 1950

Adapted from the Wikipedia article History of Los Angeles, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article Helium-3 propulsion, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Childhood and education

Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England on 12 February 1809 at his family home, the Mount. He was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin, and Susannah Darwin (”née” Wedgwood). He was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin on his father’s side, and of Josiah Wedgwood on his mother’s side. Both families were largely Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism. Robert Darwin, himself quietly a freethinker, had baby Charles baptised in the Anglican Church, but Charles and his siblings attended the Unitarian chapel with their mother. The eight year old Charles already had a taste for natural history and collecting when he joined the day school run by its preacher in 1817. That July, his mother died. From September 1818, he joined his older brother Erasmus attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder.

Darwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, helping his father treat the poor of Shropshire, before going to the University of Edinburgh Medical School with his brother Erasmus in October 1825. He found lectures dull and surgery distressing, so neglected his studies. He learned taxidermy from John Edmonstone, a freed black slave who had accompanied Charles Waterton in the South American rainforest, and often sat with this “very pleasant and intelligent man”.

In Darwin’s second year he joined the Plinian Society, a student natural history group whose debates strayed into radical materialism. He assisted Robert Edmund Grant’s investigations of the anatomy and life cycle of marine invertebrates in the Firth of Forth, and in March 1827 presented at the Plinian his own discovery that black spores found in oyster shells were the eggs of a skate leech. One day, Grant praised Lamarck’s evolutionary ideas. Darwin was astonished, but had recently read the similar ideas of his grandfather Erasmus and remained indifferent. Darwin was rather bored by Robert Jameson’s natural history course which covered geology including the debate between Neptunism and Plutonism. He learned classification of plants, and assisted with work on the collections of the University Museum, one of the largest museums in Europe at the time.

This neglect of medical studies annoyed his father, who shrewdly sent him to Christ’s College, Cambridge, for a Bachelor of Arts degree as the first step towards becoming an Anglican parson. As Darwin was unqualified for the ”Tripos”, he joined the ”ordinary” degree course in January 1828. He preferred riding and shooting to studying. His cousin William Darwin Fox introduced him to the popular craze for beetle collecting which Darwin pursued zealously, getting some of his finds published in Stevens’ ”Illustrations of British entomology”. He became a close friend and follower of botany professor John Stevens Henslow and met other leading naturalists who saw scientific work as religious natural theology, becoming known to these dons as “the man who walks with Henslow”. When his own exams drew near, Darwin focused on his studies and was delighted by the language and logic of William Paley’s ”Evidences of Christianity”. In his final examination in January 1831 Darwin did well, coming tenth out of 178 candidates for the ”ordinary” degree.

Darwin had to stay at Cambridge until June. He studied Paley’s ”Natural Theology” which made an argument for divine design in nature, explaining adaptation as God acting through laws of nature. He read John Herschel’s new book which described the highest aim of natural philosophy as understanding such laws through inductive reasoning based on observation, and Alexander von Humboldt’s ”Personal Narrative” of scientific travels. Inspired with “a burning zeal” to contribute, Darwin planned to visit Tenerife with some classmates after graduation to study natural history in the tropics. In preparation, he joined Adam Sedgwick’s geology course, then went with him in the summer for a fortnight to map strata in Wales. After a week with student friends at Barmouth, he returned home to find a letter from Henslow proposing Darwin as a suitable (if unfinished) gentleman naturalist for a self-funded place with captain Robert FitzRoy, more as a companion than a mere collector, on which was to leave in four weeks on an expedition to chart the coastline of South America. His father objected to the planned two-year voyage, regarding it as a waste of time, but was persuaded by his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood, to agree to his son’s participation.

Journey of the ”Beagle”

On 11 November, he returned to Maer and proposed to Emma, once more telling her his ideas. She accepted, then in exchanges of loving letters she showed how she valued his openness in sharing their differences, also expressing her strong Unitarian beliefs and concerns that his honest doubts might separate them in the afterlife. While he was house-hunting in London, bouts of illness continued and Emma wrote urging him to get some rest, almost prophetically remarking “So don’t be ill any more my dear Charley till I can be with you to nurse you.” He found what they called “Macaw Cottage” (because of its gaudy interiors) in Gower Street, then moved his “museum” in over Christmas. On 24 January 1839 Darwin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

On 29 January Darwin and Emma Wedgwood were married at Maer in an Anglican ceremony arranged to suit the Unitarians, then immediately caught the train to London and their new home.

Preparing the theory of natural selection for publication

Darwin now had the framework of his theory of natural selection “by which to work”, as his “prime hobby”. His research included animal husbandry and extensive experiments with plants, finding evidence that species were not fixed and investigating many detailed ideas to refine and substantiate his theory. For fifteen years this work was in the background to his main occupation of writing on geology and publishing expert reports on the ”Beagle” collections.

When FitzRoy’s ”Narrative” was published in May 1839, Darwin’s ”Journal and Remarks” was such a success as the third volume that later that year it was published on its own. Early in 1842, Darwin wrote about his ideas to Charles Lyell, who noted that his ally “denies seeing a beginning to each crop of species”.

Darwin’s book ”The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs” on his theory of atoll formation was published in May 1842 after more than three years of work, and he then wrote his first “pencil sketch” of his theory of natural selection. To escape the pressures of London, the family moved to rural Down House in September. On 11 January 1844 Darwin mentioned his theorising to the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, writing with melodramatic humour “it is like confessing a murder”. Hooker replied “There may in my opinion have been a series of productions on different spots, & also a gradual change of species. I shall be delighted to hear how you think that this change may have taken place, as no presently conceived opinions satisfy me on the subject.”

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Charles Darwin, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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The Draka take over Egypt and Ceylon from the French during the Napoleonic Wars, and over the course of the 19th century, the Draka gradually conquer and enslave the entire continent of Africa. The last areas to be conquered were the jungles of the Congo, due to the danger of tropical diseases. Technological development is faster than in our own history, as the Draka put the wealth derived from their vast gold and diamond deposits to effective use by offering large grants to scientists and inventors who settle in their territory and develop new inventions. These include Richard Trevithick, inventor of the steam locomotive, who settles in Virconium (equivalent to our own world’s Durban) in 1796, RJ Gatling, who settles in Diskarapur in 1850, and Louis Pasteur, who discovers malaria’s mosquito vector in the 1860s while working for the Shahnapur Institute of Tropical Medicine.

The United States is also much more expansionistic than in our own timeline – it annexes Canada after the War of 1812 (a conquest presumably made easier in this timeline by the absence of Loyalist American settlers to enlarge the Canadian population) and Mexico after the Mexican–American War (since, it is implied, the addition of numerous Northern, Free-Soil states following the conquest of Canada strengthened Southern demands for a reciprocal campaign to increase the number of slave-holding states with representation in Congress). William Walker’s Southern adventurers conquer Central America; while Cuba, Hispaniola, Hawaii and the Philippines are annexed in 1854.

During the American Civil War, the Draka supply massive amounts of aid to the Confederacy, including steam-powered armored cars. However, the Union still wins the Civil War (with the help of large numbers of Mexican conscripts), and annexes Walker’s Central American empire. Cuba, Hispaniola, Hawaii, and the Philippines are granted statehood in 1898, with the Central American territories following later. The United States eventually has 62 states in total.

The Empire of Brazil seizes control of Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and the Guyanas in the 1870s, the same decade which sees Britain uniting Australia and New Zealand as the Dominion of Australasia. In addition, the Republic of Gran Colombia never breaks up into the nations of Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, as in our world. This exemplifies the trend in the series of fewer and fewer nations achieving sovereign independent status.

In China, the Taiping Rebellion is successful, resulting in a China which is even more incapable of successful modernization than in our own history. The Japanese victory in the First Sino-Japanese War (which in the Draka timeline occurs in 1899) is even more decisive, with Japan not only annexing Formosa, but also Korea, Hainan, and several Chinese coastal cities. After victory in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, Japan annexes Manchuria and establishes a protectorate over the weak Taiping Dynasty.

The Great War (World War I) and its aftermath

The Dominion of Draka joins the Allied side in the Great War, and conquers the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. It subsequently declares its independence from Britain and renames itself the Domination of the Draka.

The Domination of Draka then takes advantage of the Russian Civil War and seizes the rest of the Middle East, much of Central Asia, and China west of Xian and Wuhan. Up to 500,000 Janissaries die in pacification campaigns during this time in the Domination’s new territories. Sixty-five percent of the population of Afghanistan is exterminated in retaliation for the fierce resistance of that nation’s “Badmash” rebels. In 1921 the Empire of Japan deposes the Taiping Emperor and annexes all Chinese territory not in Draka hands. After the death of Lenin, a second civil war further weakened the Soviet Union, which is won by a faction led by Joseph Stalin—who subsequently orders a “hermit kingdom” (isolationist) policy.

Draka development of world domination ideology

Under the influence of Draka philosophers such as Elvira Naldorssen, the traditional Draka white-supremacism is replaced by Draka-supremacism, with the Draka viewing all of non-Drakan humanity as their cattle. Elvira explains the ideology of the Domination, the utter amorality of which will lead enemies of the Draka to refer to them as ‘Snakes’:

: “…so the Draka are not different from other peoples because they violate the Golden Rule or Bentham’s derivative idolatry ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’. Everyone does. We do not violate them, we reject them.

: “Others have conquered and ruled; we alone conquer for conquest’s sake and Dominate for no other purpose than Domination itself; the name we half-consciously chose for our state is no accident. We and we alone have spoken aloud the Great Secret; that the root function of all human society is the production and reproduction of power—and that power is the ability to compel others to do your will against theirs. It is end, not means. The purpose of Power is Power.

: “The Draka will conquer the world for two reasons; because we must and because we can. And yet of the two forces the second is the greater; we do this because we choose to do it. By the sovereign Will and force of arms the Draka will rule the Earth, and in so doing remake themselves. We shall conquer and beat the Nations of the Earth into the dust and reforge them in our self wrought Image; the Final Society without weakness or mercy, hard and pure. Our descendants will walk the hillside of that future, innocent beneath the stars, with no more between them and their naked will than a wolf has. THEN there will be Gods in the Earth.”

The Eurasian War

The first book of the series ”Marching Through Georgia” is a war story set during the Eurasian War, the Domination timeline’s equivalent of World War II. In this war, the Nazis utterly crushed the Soviet Union, with only a Siberian rump state beyond the Urals surviving under a junta led by Marshal Timoshenko. The Nazi success derives from the Soviets suffering two recent, devastating civil wars, and needing to defend a long southern border with the Domination. Additionally, the Lend-Lease between the United States and the Soviets was rendered ineffective by Nazi U-boats effecting a powerful blockade in the Atlantic, Japanese naval hegemony in the Pacific, and the Domination’s refusal to allow lend-lease supplies through its territory.

The Domination entered the war just before the Nazi invasion of Russia and conquered Italy with the Nazis’ tacit consent. The Draka then attacked the Third Reich in the Caucasus region, attempting to cut off a large part of the German army.

The German Wehrmacht is somewhat more advanced than historically, with a fully mechanized supply train. The Waffen-SS units facing the Draka Citizen Airborne unit the novel centers around are also in possession of numerous ‘hybrid’ armoured vehicles made from German and captured Soviet parts, but they are still no match for the Draka army. The Draka citizen soldiers, female as well as male, are honed killing machines, each equal to several of their enemy on the battlefield. The Draka also have superb weaponry, including 14,000 Hond III tanks with armor, engine size and gun caliber approaching those of modern MBTs, and powerful air force which includes high-performance single and twin piston engine fighters, airborne early warning systems mounted on dirigibles and a twin-engine armored ground attack aircraft. By 1944, all sides are widely using nerve gas, jet- and rocket-powered fighter aircraft and ballistic missiles.

The United States is forced into the war when the entire Pacific Fleet is wiped out at Pearl Harbor. Japanese forces occupy the U.S. states of Hawaii, the Philippines and the Panama Canal Zone. Additionally, Japan occupies northern Australia, raids California, and the Imperial Japanese Navy shells Acapulco. Consequently, the United States cannot open a second front in Europe. Alliance with the Nazis against the Draka is also impossible, due to the influence of the Jewish lobby and a Draka threat to supply Japan with nuclear weapons-related materials in the event of U.S.-German peace.

In 1943, the Alliance for Democracy is formed—comprising the military alliance, free trade area and monetary union. This Alliance includes the Americas, the United Kingdom, India and unoccupied Australia. The United States turned the tide against Japan with victory in the Battle of the Sea of Cortez, in which jet fighter-bombers armed with guided bombs played a crucial role. Hawaii was liberated in late 1943, and half of the surviving Imperial Japanese Navy was destroyed in a nuclear cruise missile attack on the Truk naval base. In late 1944, Tokyo was destroyed by a nuclear cruise missile—killing over 150,000 people including the Imperial Family. A fanatical military government takes over Japan. The Draka overrun Europe as far as the Pyrenees, with the decisive blow made with five atomic bombs against the industrial areas of the Ruhr. Adolf Hitler himself, it is revealed in later flashbacks, was assassinated by a cadre of generals in 1942. Without his meddling, the German Wehrmacht puts up much more stubborn and effective resistance than it did historically against the Soviet Union, but the memory of Hitler means that the rest of Europe is loath to unite behind the Germans to halt the Draka. Numerous Draka characters credit Hitler’s memory as a key factor in ensuring Draka victory in Europe.

In 1945, the Draka completed its conquest of Europe by using its remaining stockpile of 12 atomic bombs to force the Pyrenees—finally defeating a communist Spain (following a different outcome to reality’s Spanish Civil War). The United Kingdom remained free and was inundated with refugees. The Draka then turned its attention to the Far East, attacking Japanese-occupied China. Despite the rapid Draka conquest of Eastern China and Korea, the loss of the remaining Japanese naval units in the Battle of the Philippines, the nuclear destruction of Osaka, and the Alliance invasion of Kyushu, Japan continues a bitter resistance, only surrendering to the Alliance in July in fear of a Draka invasion of the Home Islands.

The Eurasian War claimed some 200 million lives, over three times the death toll of our own World War II. The liberated South-East Asian Federation and Indochinese Republic become members of the Alliance for Democracy, as does a reconstructed Japan in 1954. The United Kingdom – minus the Channel Islands – is the only remaining free nation left in Europe, and is heavily defended and fortified against potential Draka attack. The Domination and the Alliance thus control the entire world between them.

Europe under Draka rule

The second book, ”Under the Yoke”, shows Europe under Draka rule. The Draka ruthlessly crush all resistance in Europe. European institutions are remorselessly removed, obliterated, and forbidden, although religions, albeit heavily modified by the Draka overlords, are tolerated as means of further controlling the enserfed population. Schools, universities and all seats of learning are similarly eradicated. Any serfs caught in possession of radios or literature are summarily executed. Languages are encouraged to die out, except for a few remaining mutually unintelligible local dialects, and are replaced amongst serfs by the slurred Drakan version of English. Finland is almost completely depopulated and, in 1952, when a rebellion takes over the city of Barcelona, the Draka respond with a thermonuclear bomb. ”Under the Yoke” contains a deliberately horrific description of the impalement of several French Maquis guerrilla soldiers, disgusting even the Draka who ordered it, who nevertheless considers it a necessary means of impressing upon the slaves that resistance is futile. Thus, they will obey more willingly, making it possible for the Draka to be less harsh, giving rise to even further willingness to obey. The Draka have been slavemasters for two hundred years, and have applied modern science to the problem of breaking human wills; they are extremely good at it. Indeed, this feeds further into their ideology of the Draka as a master race, with individuals capable of enforcing their will over many serfs with no other tool than raw willpower.

In this book, mention is made, from both the conquered peoples and the Draka themselves, of the Western Allies refusal to join forces with Nazi Germany, even though Adolf Hitler was dead by late 1942 (officially by heart attack, but in reality assassinated by German Military Intelligence), to fight the Draka once the full horror of the Drakan onslaught’s threat to European civilisation is apparent. Widespread disgust and revulsion at Germany’s genocidal policies towards political, ideological and racial enemies, and utter hatred by former occupied countries are cited as the cause of this reluctance even though the Draka treatment to defeated enemies is, by that stage, universally known. Both Nazi Germany and the Allies foolishly thought they could defeat the Draka without uniting.

The protracted struggle

The third book, ”The Stone Dogs”, tells the story of the Protracted Struggle—the Cold War between the Domination of the Draka and the Alliance for Democracy. There is a far more intense space race in this world, with pulse-drive interplanetary spaceships and colonies and military bases established on the Moon, on Mars and in the asteroid belt. Over a period of several decades, the Alliance secretly constructs an antimatter-driven starship for transporting 100,000 people to Alpha Centauri. The Draka employ the policy of “No peace beyond Luna,” leading to frequent skirmishes in the inner solar system.

The conquest of India

In the 1970s, there is a major setback for the Free World. An OSS covert operation, designed to discredit a Hindu nationalist party and keep India in the Alliance, backfires as a suicide note is found implicating the OSS in the scandal. As a result India secedes from the Alliance—and is conquered and enslaved by the Draka within weeks (except Burma, which counter-seceded back to the Alliance). After the ‘Indian Incident’ the Alliance for Democracy is formally converted into a single superstate.

Technology

The much larger free population of the Alliance gives it an edge in physics and computer technology, while the Domination gains the upper hand in the biological sciences allowing them to perfect their genetic engineering techniques by using their slave population as test subjects. They finish the Human Genome Project and are performing significant genetic alteration on mammalian organisms, including humans, by the mid-1970s. Both sides develop super-weapons with which to launch the first strike of the inevitable final war. However, both sides recognize that the long-term trends are in the Alliance’s favor. Due to its much-larger economy and free population the Alliance’s lead in overall scientific progress slowly grows, with the stagnant Draka increasingly dependent on espionage and Alliance defectors for new innovations, who defect for the rewards of citizenship and wealth.

It is not unknown, although extremely rare, for Draka citizens to defect to the Alliance. Citizens due to personal convictions, and serfs just to escape their bondage, although any Draka, citizen or serf, caught attempting to defect would be summarily executed, though the serf would no doubt meet a more hideous death – probably by impalement or breaking on the wheel. These defectors prove valuable to the OSS because of the unique opportunity it offers regarding gathering vital information on Drakan society, the Drakan dialect, which is notoriously difficult to acquire and master, and the Drakan fighting style which is unmatched anywhere in the Alliance.

Draka victorious

The war finally breaks out in 1998 when the Draka, about to lose the secrecy of their superweapon, decide to use it preemptively instead. Draka advantages in bioscience allowed it to create a bio-psychological virus, “The Stone Dogs”. This virus lies dormant but causes the host to go violently insane when activated by precisely modulated radio waves. The Alliance counterpart, a computer virus designed to disable Draka systems, works well but is not as effective at disabling whole military hierarchies.

Due to the Stone Dogs virus, Draka forces ultimately succeed—if barely—in wiping out all significant Alliance populations and military forces in the Earth-Luna sphere, suffering approximately 15 percent total casualties. The Alliance, though, wins in trans-Lunar space, including the Belt. A truce is declared, allowing the Alliance remnants in the Belt to launch the starship, while giving other Alliance remnants in space limited Draka citizenship (the new Draka will not be able to vote, though their children will be). The war itself proves to be devastating to Earth. Ultimately, the Solar System belongs to the Draka. The planet’s ecosystems were pushed nearly to the breaking point, with a nuclear winter lasting for several years (there are references to ice forming in the Adriatic Sea)—despite the near exclusive use of ‘clean’ fusion weapons.

The struggle continues

”Drakon” takes place in an alternate universe version of our 1995-2000. It begins in the year 2442 (aka 442 FS, or the 442nd Year of the Final Society) of the Draka history. The Domination is pitted against the Post-American world of Samothrace in the Alpha Centauri system, which is a colony of Alliance refugees from the Final War. A failed experiment intended to research wormholes (called “moleholes”) for FTL travel causes a single Drakensis (the genetically-engineered posthuman species of Draka), Gwendolyn Ingolfsson, to be sent to the 1995 of an alternate universe very similar to our own. The only notable difference is that Kenneth Branagh played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel, (though his casting occurs after Ingolfsson’s incursion in 1995, indicating that the introduction of “holo-projectors” by IngolfTech might have attracted a higher-quality lead in the 1999 film of our universe). The Samothracians send one of their own agents, cyborg soldier Kenneth Lafarge, to stop her. Lefarge arrives in the alternate 1998, due to the crude nature of the time travel technology. Both Lefarge and Ingolfsson create organizations of native humans to aid their fight against each other, Lefarge’s team being led by NYPD Detective Henry Caramaggio.

Both Lefarge and Ingolfsson are killed in an epic battle in New York City when the Drakensis attempts to activate a beacon to allow the Draka scientists of 445 FS (several years having elapsed) to lock a transit wormhole to the alternate 1996. In the time between 2442 and 2445 in the Domination’s home timeline, the Samothracians attack the Domination’s Earth via a series of wormholes laid between Alpha Centauri and Sol. These attacks apparently were not successful. Thanks to perfectly faked documents provided by Lefarge, Ingolfsson’s estates, laboratories and archives of and advanced technologies fall into Caramaggio’s hands, who according to the frame story of ”The Domination” becomes “the richest man in the world” within twenty years. Caramaggio releases Ingolfsson’s technologies at a rapid rate, attempting to prepare his Earth for another Draka attack. Since, unknown to Caramaggio, Ingofsson transferred her knowledge into her infant daughter, the struggle will no doubt resume at some point.

Near-extinction of “”Homo sapiens”” on Earth

At some intervening period, before the next book in the series, the Draka produce a genetically altered new serf race, ”Homo servus”, which is incapable of rebelling. This is accomplished by making ”servus” vulnerable to dominance and sexual arousal pheromones, as well as changing their genetic temperaments toward the emotional and nonaggressive. Thus they can dispense with the brutal repression needed earlier, and entrust serfs with sensitive positions such as theoretical physics. Because of additional chromosomes added to the ”drakenis” genome, ”drakensis” and ”servus” cannot interbreed, precluding any “half breed” versions of the ”drakensis” “Master Race.”

A ‘paravirus’ is mentioned as the method of converting ”Homo sapiens” serfs to ”Homo servus”, the sex cells being transformed with the result that infected human parents give birth to servus children. However, it is not clear that this advanced method was the one used for the initial changes to human serfs in the early 21st century.

Of ”Homo sapiens”, only a few scattered “feral humans” survive precariously on Earth, mainly in North America, having been quite literally bombed back into the Stone Age, nearly wiped out with “biobombs,” and being hunted “for sport” by the Draka. The Pygmies of Central Africa are also allowed to survive on special lands reserved for their use.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article The Domination, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Advantages

Like the Davis quadrant (also called backstaff), the sextant allows celestial objects to be measured relative to the horizon, rather than relative to the instrument. This allows excellent precision. However, unlike the backstaff, the sextant allows direct observations of stars. This permits the use of the sextant at night when a backstaff is difficult to use. For solar observations, filters allow direct observation of the sun.

Since the measurement is relative to the horizon, the measuring pointer is a beam of light that reaches to the horizon. The measurement is thus limited by the angular accuracy of the instrument and not the sine error of the length of an alidade, as it is in a mariner’s astrolabe or similar older instrument.

A sextant does not require a completely steady aim, because it measures a relative angle. For example, when a sextant is used on a moving ship, the image of both horizon and celestial object will move around in the field of view. However the relative position of the two images will remain steady, and as long as the user can determine when the celestial object touches the horizon the accuracy of the measurement will remain high compared to the magnitude of the movement.

The sextant is not dependent upon electricity (unlike many forms of modern navigation) or anything human-controlled (like GPS satellites). For these reasons, it is considered an eminently practical back-up navigation tool for ships.

Anatomy of a sextant

The ”index arm” moves the ”index mirror”. The ”indicator” points at the ”arc” to show the measurement. The body ties everything together.

There are two types of sextants. Both types can give good results, and the choice between them is personal.

Traditional sextants have a half-horizon mirror. It divides the field of view in two. On one side, there is a view of the horizon; on the other side, a view of the celestial object. The advantage of this type is that both the horizon and celestial object are bright and as clear as possible. This is superior at night and in haze, when the horizon can be difficult to see. However, one has to sweep the celestial object to ensure that the lowest limb of the celestial object touches the horizon.

Whole-horizon sextants use a half-silvered horizon mirror to provide a full view of the horizon. This makes it easy to see when the bottom limb of a celestial object touches the horizon. Since most sights are of the sun or moon, and haze is rare without overcast, the low-light advantages of the half-horizon mirror are rarely important in practice.

In both types, larger mirrors give a larger field of view, and thus make it easier to find a celestial object. Modern sextants often have 5& cm or larger mirrors, while 19th century sextants rarely had a mirror larger than 2.5& cm (one inch). In large part, this is because precision flat mirrors have grown less expensive to manufacture and to silver.

An artificial horizon is useful when the horizon is invisible. This occurs in fog, on moonless nights, in a calm, when sighting through a window or on land surrounded by trees or buildings. Professional sextants can mount an artificial horizon in place of the horizon-mirror assembly. An artificial horizon is usually a mirror that views a fluid-filled tube with a bubble.

Most sextants also have filters for use when viewing the sun and reducing the effects of haze.

Most sextants mount a 1 or 3 power monocular for viewing. Many users prefer a simple sighting tube, which has a wider, brighter field of view and is easier to use at night. Some navigators mount a light-amplifying monocular to help see the horizon on moonless nights. Others prefer to use a lit artificial horizon.

Professional sextants use a click-stop degree measure and a worm adjustment that reads to a minute, 1/60 of a degree. Most sextants also include a vernier on the worm dial that reads to 0.2 minute. Since 1 minute of error is about a nautical mile, the best possible accuracy of celestial navigation is about . At sea, results within several nautical miles, well within visual range, are acceptable. A highly-skilled and experienced navigator can determine position to an accuracy of about .

A change in temperature can warp the arc, creating inaccuracies. Many navigators purchase weatherproof cases so that their sextant can be placed outside the cabin to come to equilibrium with outside temperatures. The standard frame designs (see illustration) are supposed to equalise differential angular error from temperature changes. The handle is separated from the arc and frame so that body heat does not warp the frame. Sextants for tropical use are often painted white to reflect sunlight and remain relatively cool. High-precision sextants have an invar (a special low-expansion steel) frame and arc. Some scientific sextants have been constructed of quartz or ceramics with even lower expansions. Many commercial sextants use low expansion brass or aluminium. Brass is lower-expansion than aluminium, but aluminium sextants are lighter and less tiring to use. Some say they are more accurate because one’s hand trembles less.

Aircraft sextants are now out of production, but had special features. Most had artificial horizons to permit taking a sight through a flush overhead window. Some also had mechanical averagers to make hundreds of measurements per sight for compensation of random accelerations in the artificial horizon’s fluid. Older aircraft sextants had two visual paths, one standard and the other designed for use in open-cockpit aircraft that let one view from directly over the sextant in one’s lap. More modern aircraft sextants were periscopic with only a small projection above the fuselage. With these, the navigator pre-computed his sight and then noted the difference in observed versus predicted height of the body to determine his position.

After a sight is taken, it is reduced to a position by following any of several mathematical procedures. The simplest sight reduction is to draw the equal-elevation circle of the sighted celestial object on a globe. The intersection of that circle with a dead-reckoning track, or another sighting gives a more precise location.

Taking a sight

To ”sight” (or ”measure”) the angle between the sun, a star, or a planet, and the horizon the ‘star telescope’ should be fitted to the sextant. The horizon should also be visible. On a vessel at sea, this is usually no problem; on misty days, sighting from a low height above the water may give a more definite, better horizon. The sextant is removed from its box and held by the handle in the right hand, without ever touching the arc with the fingers.

For a sun sight, the shades of the sextant overcome glare. One method of starting is to use both index mirror and horizon mirror shades, of sufficient darkness that the sun appears through either as a solid disk and does not hurt the eyes. By setting the index bar to zero, the sun can be viewed through the telescope. Releasing the index bar (either by releasing a clamping screw, or on modern instruments, using the quick-release button), the image of the sun can be brought down to about the level of the horizon. It is necessary to flip back the horizon mirror shade to be able to see the horizon, and then the fine adjustment screw on the end of the index bar is turned until the bottom curve (the ”lower limb”) of the sun just touches the horizon. ‘Swinging’ the sextant about the axis of the telescope ensures that the reading is being taken with the instrument held vertically. The angle of the sight is then read from the scale on the arc, making use of the micrometer or vernier scale provided. The exact time of the sight must also be noted simultaneously, and the height of the eye above sea-level recorded.

An alternative method is to estimate the current altitude (angle) of the sun from navigation tables, then set the index bar to that angle on the arc, apply suitable shades only to the index mirror, and point the instrument directly at the horizon, sweeping it from side to side until a flash of the sun’s rays are seen in the telescope. Fine adjustments are then made as above. This method is less likely to be successful for sighting stars and planets.

Star and planet sights are normally taken during twilight at dawn or dusk, while both the heavenly bodies and the sea horizon are both visible. There is no need to use shades or to distinguish the lower limb as the body appears as a mere point in the telescope. The moon can be sighted, but it appears to move very fast, appears to have different sizes at different times, and sometimes only the lower or upper limb can be distinguished due to its phase.

Sextants can be used very accurately to measure other visible angles, for example between one heavenly body and another and between landmarks ashore. Used horizontally, a sextant can measure the apparent angle between two landmarks such as a lighthouse and a church spire, which can then be used to find the distance ”off” or out to sea. Used vertically, a measurement of the angle between the lantern of a lighthouse and the sea level at its base can also be used for distance off.

Care

A sextant is a delicate instrument. If dropped, the arc might bend. After one has been dropped, its accuracy is suspect. Recertification is possible with surveying instruments and a large field, or with precision optical instruments. Repair of a bent arc is generally impractical.

Many navigators refuse to share their sextants, to ensure that their integrity is traceable.

Most sextants come with a neck-lanyard; all but the cheapest come with a case. Traditional care is to put on the neck lanyard before removing the sextant from its case, and to always case the sextant between sights. A used sextant lacking a case is very likely to be damaged.

To avoid worries about bent arcs, serious navigators traditionally buy their sextants new. Common wisdom is that a used sextant is probably bent. Bauer disagrees:

I don’t subscribe to the old maxim of maritime philosophers about never buying a used sextant. The implication is that using them ruins them. This is untrue. Sextants wear out very slowly and they usually get treated with utmost gentleness and even reverence. Damage is not hard to detect if the instrument is examined intelligently. I think I would modify that old rule to read: Don’t buy a used sextant for more than half the retail cost of the least expensive, new, full-sized instrument—unless the money saved is critical to your budget…. There are many good used instruments around and by exercising caution and avoiding hasty deals, one can end up with a sound instrument for a lot less money.

Adjustment

Due to the sensitivity of the instrument it is easy to knock the mirrors out of adjustment. For this reason a sextant should be checked frequently for errors and adjusted accordingly.

There are four errors that can be adjusted by the navigator and they should be removed in the following order.

;Perpendicularity error:This is when the index mirror is not perpendicular to the frame of the sextant. To test for this, place the index arm at about 60° on the arc and hold the sextant horizontally with the arc away from you at arms length and look into the index mirror. The arc of the sextant should appear to continue unbroken into the mirror. If there is an error then the two views will appear to be broken. Adjust the mirror until the reflection and direct view of the arc appear to be continuous.

;Side error:This occurs when the horizon glass/mirror is not perpendicular to the plane of the instrument. To test for this, first zero the index arm then observe a star through the sextant. Then rotate the tangent screw back and forth so that the reflected image passes alternately above and below the direct view. If in changing from one position to another the reflected image passes directly over the unreflected image, no side error exists. If it passes to one side, side error exists. The user can hold the sextant on its side and observe the horizon to check the sextant during the day. If there are two horizons there is side error; adjust the horizon glass/mirror until the stars merge into one image or the horizons are merged into one.

;Collimation error:This is when the telescope or monocular is not parallel to the plane of the sextant. To check for this you need to observe two stars 90° or more apart. Bring the two stars into coincidence either to the left or the right of the field of view. Move the sextant slightly so that the stars move to the other side of the field of view. If they separate there is collimation error.

;Index error:This occurs when the index and horizon mirrors are not parallel to each other when the index arm is set to zero. To test for index error, zero the index arm and observe the horizon. If the reflected and direct image of the horizon are in line there is no index error. If one is above the other adjust the index mirror until the two horizons merge. This can be done at night with a star or with the moon.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Sextant, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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The first Delta was a five-door hatchback designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro and released in 1979. For a period of time, it was also sold in Sweden by Saab Automobile, badged as the Saab 600. For a few years after its launch, the Delta was one of the most contemporarily styled cars of its class in Europe and was voted 1980 European Car of the Year.

While the majority of Delta models were ordinary small family cars, the most famous model was the Delta HF Integrale, a four-wheel drive hot hatch with a powerful turbocharged petrol engine. A tweaked version of the HF dominated the World Rally Championship, scoring 46 WRC victories overall and winning the Constructors Championship a record six times in a row from 1987 to 1992, in addition to Drivers’ Championship titles for Juha Kankkunen (1987 and 1991) and Miki Biasion (1988 and 1989).

The Lancia Delta S4, which the works team ran immediately prior to the HF 4WD and Integrale models’ world championship careers from the season-ending 1985 RAC Rally until the end of the 1986 season, while sharing the same name and appearance, was a Group B race car designed specifically for rallying, and was entirely different from the commercial Delta in terms of construction and performance.

HF 4WD

In 1986, the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile, the World Rally Championship governing body, decided to scrap plans for a proposed Group S as well as cancelling Group B. It ruled that Group B cars were too fast and, as a consequence, too dangerous. It is arguable that Lancia was one of the more far-sighted manufacturers at the time, as it was already developing the Delta HF 4X4 production car using experience gained from the development of the S4 rally car.

Superseding the Delta HF Turbo as the flagship of the Delta range — S4 excepted — the HF 4WD had a lot to live up to. The HF Turbo was no slouch and its handling was praiseworthy for a front-wheel drive car.

The Delta range was first introduced to the United Kingdom in 1980 and remained virtually unchanged until 1986, when small changes were made to the cars’ body shape, the engines updated and the four-wheel drive model introduced.

One of the features of the Delta HF 4WD is the under-statement of the body styling. There is very little to distinguish the car from the earlier ‘Turbo i.e.’ apart from the four-headlight system, fog lamps mounted in the front spoiler, discreet 4WD badging on the rear hatch, small side skirts and two raised air intakes on the bonnet (hood). The later car is therefore virtually indistinguishable from the 1600 cc HF Turbo i.e.

In the Delta HF 4X4, Lancia opted for a four-wheel drive system with an in-built torque-splitting action to ensure that the available power was going to the wheels with the most traction at any given time, thus ensuring the most efficient use of the available power and torque.

Three differentials are at the heart of the system. Drive to the front wheels is linked through a free-floating differential; drive to the rear wheels is transmitted via a 56/44 front/rear torque-splitting Ferguson viscous-coupling-controlled epicyclic central differential. At the rear wheels is a Torsen (torque sensing) rear differential.

The Torsen differential is a true ‘intelligent’ differential in the way it distributes torque. It divides the torque between the wheels according to the available grip, and does so without ever locking fully: maximum lockup is 70%.

Standard differentials are either free-floating or self-locking. Free-floating systems are good at differentiating between wheel speeds on bends, but always supply the same amount of torque to both wheels. In this situation, however, there is a risk that the wheel with the lighter load (on an incline, for example) or less grip, will lose traction. To counteract this possibility, totally self-locking differentials ensure that both wheels rotate at the same speed but in doing this, prevent free differentiation in cornering, to the detriment of handling and stability.

The basic suspension layout of the Delta 4WD remains the same as in the rest of the two-wheel drive Delta range: MacPherson strut–type independent suspension with dual-rate dampers and helicoidal springs, with the struts and springs set slightly off-centre.

There are a few more subtle changes, though, with the suspension mounting points to the body shell, now better insulated by incorporating flexible rubber links to provide improved isolation. Progressive rebound bumpers have also been adopted, while the damper rates, front and rear toe-in and the relative angle between springs and dampers have all been altered. The steering retains the rack and pinion mechanism of the rest of the Delta range, but in this application it is power-assisted. Steering effort has been reduced further by fitting thrust bearings of the ball, rather than roller type. Additional steering sensitivity has also been obtained by adjusting the angle of incidence of the steering rack.

Integrale 8v

Lancia designed the HF Integrale to incorporate the advanced technical features of the Delta HF 4WD. The result is a stylish, luxurious yet utterly practical five door hatchback with impeccable road manners, but capable of a blistering 0–100& km/h (0–62& mph) acceleration in just 6.6 seconds and a maximum speed of 133& mph (214& km/h).

At the heart of the 8-valve HF Integrale is a 2-litre 4-cylinder fuel injected twin cam engine, fitted with contra-rotating balancing shafts. This version incorporated the following improvements over the HF 4WD: New valves, valve seats and water pump, larger water and oil radiators, more powerful cooling fan and bigger air cleaner. A larger capacity Garrett T3 turbocharger with improved air flow and bigger inter-cooler to aid volumetric efficiency, together with revised settings for the electronic injection/ignition control unit and a knock sensor, boost power output to 185& bhp (136& kW) at 5300& rpm and maximum torque of 31& m·kgf (304& N·m, 224& lbf·ft) at 3500& rpm.

The HF Integrale transmission systems incorporates permanent 4-wheel drive, a front transversely mounted engine and five-speed gearbox. An epicyclic centre differential normally splits the torque 56 per cent to the front axle, 44 per cent to the rear. However a noiseless, fully automatic Ferguson viscous coupling balances the torque split to give the optimal division between front and rear axles depending on road conditions and tyre grip. The Torsen rear differential further divides the torque delivered to each rear wheel according to grip available. By using the interaction between a worm screw and helical gear (movement is transmitted from screw to gear only) the Torsen system ensures that the wheel with less weight or grip receives less torque and therefore maintains traction. A free floating front differential completes the system to ensure maximum traction even at speed on adverse road surfaces. A shorter final drive ratio (3.111 instead of 2.944 on the HF 4WD) is used to match the larger 6.5×15 wheels to give 24& mph/1000& rpm (39& km/h per 1000& rpm) in fifth gear.

Both braking and suspension were uprated to match the HF Integrale’s increased performance. The ventilated front discs were increased in diameter to , improved friction coefficient pads were fitted to the rear brakes. A larger brake master cylinder and servo lessened pedal effort for quicker response and reduced the risk of overheating in even the most demanding situations. The all round independent suspension features new front springs, dampers and front struts.

To match the mechanical improvements and higher performance, Lancia gave the HF Integrale a new, more purposeful look while retaining all the practical advantages of the five door body shell. Immediately noticeable are the rounded, bulged wheel arches housing the wider section 195/55 VR tyres on 15-inch 6J alloy wheels. A new bonnet incorporated air louvres while the restyled bumpers wrapped around to meet the wheel arches at front and rear. The front bumper, now wider, incorporates air intakes to assist engine cooling, and houses rectangular auxiliary driving lights, that complement the twin circular headlights. The side skirts are faired into the wheel arches at front and rear and carry “Delta HF Integrale” badges to complement those on grille and rear hatch. The twin rear view mirrors are finished in body colour.

Integrale 16v

In 1988, Lancia gained 10 victories out of 11 rallies and the world title, won well before the end of the season. The 8 valve Delta had won, ahead of every rival in every continent, demonstrating its unrivalled performance, reliability and durability. But Lancia did not let this lull them into complacency, the 16 valve HF Integrale was being developed and was to run alongside its stablemate during the 1989 season. The new car was identifiable from its predecessor by the raised centre of the bonnet to accommodate the new 16 valve engine. The other exterior changes visible were; wider wheels and tyres and new identity badges front and rear.

The 16 valve integrale was published in 1989 Geneva Motorshow.

The torque split was changed to 47% front and 53% rear, this gave the car better handling characteristics, on tarmac, where the Ford Cosworths were beginning to show their potential. Both the 8 and 16 valve cars were in use by the Works Team during the 1989 season, the 16 valve made its successful debut on the Sanremo Rally with Miki Biasion, at this time the new livery of the 16 valve cars was red; however, the colour reverted to white for the 1990 season as red was found to be less incisive than white in photographs and on television.

The turbocharged 2-litre Lancia 16v engine is already a powerful, refined performer, but was further developed for the Integrale 16v. Generating 200& bhp (149& kW) at 5500& rpm, it can take the car to a maximum speed of 137& mph (220& km/h) and get it from 0–100& km/h (0-62& mph) in 5.5& seconds. Larger injectors provide higher power output and efficient exploitation of the fuel feed at high engine speeds. The response of a Garrett T3 turbocharger is immediate, thanks to the reduced inertia of the turbine. A highly efficient intercooler provides the driver with more power and greater reliability. The new over-boost system uses a proportional electrovalve, to give a lift to engine torque: 220& lbf·ft (298& N·m) at 3000& rpm. All these improvements make the road-going version of the Integrale 16v a spirited, reliable and inherently safe car. The exuberant 16-valve engine, however, retains commendable refinement, thanks to the inclusion of two counter-rotating balancer shafts, eliminating vibration to give superb smoothness. The engine can also run on unleaded fuel without modification.

The Lancia Delta HF Integrale 16v uses a dual circuit braking system with each axle separate, which is safer because directional stability is maintained by each axle. The optional four-channel, second generation ABS system is mounted on this circuit. Designed specifically for four-wheel drive, it ensures safe braking on all surfaces and in any situation, in the minimum distance, to maintain directional stability. In emergency braking, the electronic control unit uses two sensors, detecting transverse and longditudinal accelerations to deliver braking pulses appropriate to each side of the vehicle. Loss of control over ground with uneven grip can thus be prevented. The sensors are situated at the car’s centre of gravity, near the gear lever. System efficiency is assured by electronic self diagnosis carried out automatically after starting the engine

Integrale Evoluzione

The first Evoluzione cars were built at the end of 1991 and through 1992. These were to be the final homologation cars for the Lancia Rally Team; the Catalytic Evoluzione II (below) was never rallied by the factory.

In order to improve the handling, the Evoluzione I had a wider track front and rear than earlier Deltas. In order to enclose this track in the bodywork, the wide arches were extended even further and in the process also became more rounded. The wings were now made in a single pressing, whereas previously they had been fabricated. The front strut top mounts were also raised in height in the quest for more grip: this then necessitated a front strut brace to control the forces thus generated.

External changes included: new grilles in the front bumper to improve the air intake for engine compartment cooling; a redesigned bonnet (hood) with new lateral air slats to further assist underbonnet ventilation; an adjustable roof spoiler above the tailgate to assist in competition and to emphasise the cars sporty lines; new five-bolt (stud) wheels derived from the rally cars (stronger than the previous design); and finally, the rear of the car was changed with only one exhaust pipe now showing.

* No changes to the tried and trusted chassis configuration: MacPherson-type independent suspension at front with lower wishbones;

* anti-roll bar;

* segmented dampers with a brace between the strut tops;

* MacPherson-type independent suspension at rear with transverse rods;

* longitudinal transversal reaction struts;

* disc brakes on all wheels, with double piston calipers at the front;

* floating calipers at the rear;

* split crossover hydraulic circuit with power brake and brake power modulator on rear wheels;

* Bosch ABS as standard;

* rack and pinion steering with servo assistance;

The new Integrale retained the four wheel drive layout: an epicyclic centre diff with torque splitter (47% to front, 53% to rear), Ferguson viscous coupling and Torsen rear differential.

The engine, although technically the same as the earlier 16V cars, was remapped to give 210& bhp (157& kW) at 5750& rpm in order to compensate for the slight increase in weight and increased frontal area. This kept the performance figures virtually unchanged.

The above improvements were aimed at, and did change, the cars’ handling potential, with the new car being able to travel 5–6% faster over rally sections both tarmac and gravel. The result was even greater driver confidence when driving in normal road conditions.

Interior trim was now Grey Alcantara as standard, covering the same Recaro seats as fitted to the earlier 16V cars; leather and air conditioning were offered as options. The interior was finished with a new anotomic grip gear lever and leather-covered Momo steering wheel.

A number of Evoluzione I cars and 16V Integrale were built to meet Swiss regulations and were consequently equipped with an 8-valve engine complete with catalytic converter, producing 177& PS (185PS with overboost). The Swiss Lancia dealer network offered an upgrade of 200Ps with full warranty for the 8-valve engine, up to 260PS with a reduced warranty.

Integrale Evoluzione II

The 1993 edition of the Delta HF integrale featured an updated version of the 2-litre 16-valve turbo engine to produce more power, as well as a three-way catalyst and Lambda probe. The addition of the catalyst did not penalise performance. Indeed, the Evoluzione II produced more power and torque than its predecessor, the Evoluzione I. That’s because Lancia added a series of technical improvements that may be summed up as follows:

A Marelli integrated engine control system with an 8& MHz clock frequency which incorporates:

* timed sequential multipoint injection;

* self-adapting injection times;

* automatic idling control;

* engine protection strategies depending on the temperature of intaken air;

* Mapped ignition with two double outlet coils;

* Three-way catalyst and pre-catalyst with lambda probe (oxygen sensor) on the turbine outlet link;

* Anti-evaporation system with air line for canister flushing optimised for the turboengine;

* New Garrett turbocharger: water-cooled with boost-drive management i.e. boost controlled by feedback from the central control unit on the basis of revs/throttle angle, mapping designed for ultra-progressive response to acceleration;

* Knock control by engine block sensor and new signal handling software that acted simultaneously on spark advance, fuel quantity injected and turbocharging;

The basic engine structure remained unchanged:

* twin counter-rotating balancer shafts;

* light alloy cylinder heads;

* twin overhead camshafts driven by toothed belt;

* four valves per cylinder;

The engine developed a maximum power output of DIN (158& kW) (against 210& bhp on the earlier uncatalysed version) and maximum torque of 32& kgf·m (310& N·m) (formerly 31& kgf·m or 300& N·m).

In order to underline the even more advanced engineering and performance of the 1993 version, the new Integrale was also given a cosmetic and functional facelift.

Briefly:

* new 16″ light alloy rims with 205/45 ZR 16 tyres for better brake cooling and enhanced dynamic vehicle behaviour especially in lateral roadholding terms;

* body colour roof moulding to underline the connection between the roof and the Solar control windows;

* red-painted cylinder head;

Inside:

* new leather-covered three-spoke MOMO steering wheel;

* standard Recaro seats upholstered in beige Alcantara with diagonal stitching;

The sporty look of the new Delta was highlighted by an aluminium fuel cap and air-intake grilles on the front mudguards designed to increase airflow.

Performance

Performance of the first generation models:,

Tuning

As of 2007, Delta HF Integrales continue to race competitively, with modified versions producing between 300 and 500& bhp (224 and 373& kW). It is possible to tune the car to produce extremely high outputs, even exceeding 700& bhp (522& kW).

Image:Markku Alén – 1987 RAC Rally.jpg|Markku Alén – 1987 RAC Rally

Image:Lancia Delta Integrale – 2007 Rallye Deutschland.jpg|Lancia Delta Integrale – 2007 Rallye Deutschland

Image:Delta_gruppo_A.jpg|Lancia Delta HF Integrale Evoluzione

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Lancia Delta, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Although the Sega Master System was a success in Europe, and later also Brazil, it failed to ignite much interest in the North American or Japanese markets, which, by the mid-to-late 1980s, were both dominated by Nintendo’s large market shares. Meanwhile in the arcades, the Sega System 16 had become a success. Hayao Nakayama, Sega’s CEO at the time, decided to make its new home system utilize a similar 16-bit architecture. The final design was eventually also used in the Mega-Tech, Mega-Play and System-C arcade machines. Any game made for the Mega Drive hardware could easily be ported to these systems.

The first name Sega considered for its console was the MK-1601, but it ultimately decided to call it the “Mega Drive”. The name was said to represent superiority and speed, with the then powerful Motorola 68000 processor in mind. Sega used the name Mega Drive for the Japanese, European, Asian, Australian and Brazilian versions of the console. The North American version went by the name “Genesis” due to a trademark dispute. Sega chose to market the system completely independently in all three major regions (Japan, North America and PAL), which lead to each region having distinct logos, branding and box art for both hardware and software.

Launch

The Mega Drive was released in Japan on October 29, 1988. Sega announced a North American release date for the system (under the name of Sega Genesis) on January 9, 1989. Sega initially attempted to partner with Atari Corporation for distribution of the console in the US, but the two could not agree to terms and Sega decided to do it themselves. Sega was not able to meet the initial release date and US sales began on August 14, 1989 in New York City and Los Angeles. The Genesis was released in the rest of North America later that year on September 15, 1989 with the suggested retail price of $190, $10 less than originally planned.

The European release was on November 30, 1990. Following on from the European success of the Sega Master System, the Mega Drive became a very popular console in Europe. Unlike in other regions where the NES had been the dominant platform, the Sega Master System was the most popular console in Europe at the time. In the United Kingdom the most well known of Sega’s advertising slogans was “To be this good takes AGES, to be this good takes SEGA”. Some of these adverts employed adult humour and innuendo with sentences like “The more you play with it, the harder it gets” displayed with an illustration of the waggling of a joystick. A prominent figure in the European marketing was the “Sega Pirate”, a talking one-eyed skull that starred in many TV adverts with a generally edgy and humorous attitude. Since the Mega Drive was already two years old at the release in Europe, the many games available at launch were naturally more in numbers compared to the launches in other regions. The ports of arcade titles like ”Altered Beast”, ”Golden Axe” and ”Ghouls ‘n Ghosts”, available in stores at launch, provided a strong image of the console’s power to deliver an arcade-like experience. The arrival of ”Sonic the Hedgehog” in 1991 was just as successful as in North America, with the new Sega mascot becoming popular throughout the continent.

In Brazil, the Mega Drive was released by Tec Toy in 1990, only a year after the Brazilian release of the Sega Master System. Tec Toy also ran the Internet service Sega Meganet in Brazil as well as producing games exclusively for the Brazilian market. On December 5, 2007, Tec Toy released a portable version of Mega Drive with 20 built-in games.

In India, distribution of the Mega Drive was handled by Shaw Wallace, while Samsung handled it in Korea. Samsung renamed the console “Super Aladdin Boy”, while retaining the Mega Drive logo on the system in addition to their own.

Console wars

At June 1994′s Consumer Electronics Show, Sega presented the 32X as the “poor man’s entry into ‘next generation’ games.” The 32X was originally conceived by Sega of Japan as a fully compatible Mega Drive based console with enhanced color capabilities. Sega of America R&D head Joe Miller convinced Sega of Japan to convert it into an add-on to the existing Genesis. Although this add-on contained two 32-bit CPUs, it failed to attract either developers or consumers as the superior Saturn had already been announced for release the next year. Originally released in November 1994 (after the release of the Sega Saturn in Japan) for US$159, Sega dropped the price to $99 after only a few months and ultimately cleared the remaining inventory at $19.95. Although initial sales were good, thanks mostly to ”Doom” and ”Star Wars Arcade”, Sega was only able to move 665,000 units worldwide by the end of 1994.

32-bit era and beyond

By the end of 1995, Sega was supporting five different consoles and two add-ons: Saturn, Genesis/Mega Drive, Game Gear, Pico, Sega CD/Mega CD, 32X and Master System in PAL and some South American (predominantly Brazilian) markets. In Japan the Mega Drive had never been successful and the Saturn was beating Sony’s PlayStation, causing Sega of Japan CEO Hayao Nakayama to decide to discontinue the Mega Drive. While this made perfect sense for the Japanese market, it was disastrous in North America: the market for Genesis games was much larger than for the Saturn but Sega was left without the inventory or software to meet demand. In comparison, Nintendo concentrated on the 16-bit market and reported the most lucrative holiday season in the industry. It also undercut the Sega of America executives; CEO Tom Kalinske, who oversaw the rise of the Genesis in 1991, grew uninterested in the business and resigned in mid 1996.

In 1998, Sega licensed the Mega Drive to Majesco so that it could re-release the console. Majesco began re-selling millions of formerly unsold cartridges at a budget price together with the second model of the Genesis, until it later released a third version of it. In 1998 ”Frogger” became the last commercially licensed game to be released in North America.

The Mega Drive was supported until 1998 in Europe, when Sega announced it was dropping support for it. It was discontinued along with its predecessor, the long-lived Sega Master System, to allow Sega to concentrate on its newer console, the Saturn. The Mega Drive’s add-ons, the Mega CD and 32X, were also both discontinued at this point, having been the same general failures they were in the other regions.

On May 22, 2006, Super Fighter Team released ”Beggar Prince”, a game translated from a 1996 Chinese original. It released worldwide and was the first commercial Genesis game release in North America since 1998.

On September 1, 2008, a group of homebrew enthusiasts released a demo of their upcoming game ”Pier Solar and the Great Architects”. It is the first commercial role-playing game specifically developed for the console since 1996.

On December 3, 2008, Super Fighter Team released ”Legend of Wukong”, another translation of a 1996 Chinese game. Like ”Beggar Prince”, it released worldwide and was the second North American commercial release since 1998.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Mega Drive, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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