Today, The Grandma has visited her old friend Henry Morgan.They have been talking about one of the most beautiful trainstations, GrandCentral Terminal in New York,the terminal that was opened on a day like today in 1913.
Grand Central Terminal, also referred to as Grand Central Station or simply as GrandCentral, is a commuter rail terminal located at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.
Grand Central
is the southern terminus of the Metro-North Railroad's Harlem, Hudson
and New Haven Lines, serving the northern parts of the New York
metropolitan area. It also contains a connection to the New York City
Subway at Grand Central-42nd Street station. The terminal is the second-busiest train station in North America, after New York Penn Station.
The
distinctive architecture and interior design of Grand Central
Terminal's station house have earned it several landmark designations, including as a National Historic Landmark. Its Beaux-Arts design incorporates numerous works of art.
Grand Central Terminal is one of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions,
with 21.6 million visitors in 2018, excluding train and subway
passengers. The terminal's Main Concourse is often used as a meeting
place, and is especially featured in films and television.
Grand Central Terminal
contains a variety of stores and food vendors, including upscale
restaurants and bars, two food halls, and a grocery marketplace.
Grand Central Terminal was built by and named for the New York Central Railroad; it also served the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and, later, successors to the New York Central.
Opened in 1913, the terminal was built on the site of two similarly-named predecessor stations, the first of which dates to 1871. Grand Central Terminal
served intercity trains until 1991, when Amtrak began routing its
trains through nearby Penn Station. The East Side Access project, which
will bring Long Island Rail Road service to a new station beneath the
terminal, is expected to be completed in late 2022.
Grand Central covers 19 ha and has 44 platforms,
more than any other railroad station in the world. Its platforms, all
below ground, serve 30 tracks on the upper level and 26 on the lower.
In
total, there are 67 tracks, including a rail yard and sidings; of
these, 43 tracks are in use for passenger service, while the remaining
two dozen are used to store trains. Another eight tracks and four
platforms are being built on two new levels deep underneath the existing
station as part of East Side Access.
Grand Central Terminal was named by and for the New York Central Railroad, which built the station and its two predecessors on the site. It has always been more colloquially and affectionately known as Grand Central Station, the name of its immediate predecessor that operated from 1900 to 1910.
The name Grand Central Station is also shared with the nearby U.S. Post Office station at 450 Lexington Avenue and, colloquially, with the Grand Central-42nd Street subway station next to the terminal.
Grand Central Terminal was designed and built with two main levels for passengers:
an upper for intercity trains and a lower for commuter trains. This
configuration, devised by New York Central vice president William J.
Wilgus, separated intercity and commuter-rail passengers, smoothing the
flow of people in and through the station. After intercity service ended
in 1991, the upper level was renamed the Main Concourse and the lower
the Dining Concourse.
The original plan for Grand Central's interior was designed by Reed and Stem, with some work by Whitney Warren of Warren and Wetmore.
Grand Central Terminal was designed in the Beaux-Arts style
by Reed and Stem, which was responsible for the overall design of the
terminal, and Warren and Wetmore, which mainly made cosmetic alterations
to the exterior and interior. Various elements inside the terminal were
designed by French architects and artists Jules-Félix Coutan, Sylvain
Salières, and Paul César Helleu.
Grand Central has both monumental spaces and meticulously crafted detail, especially on its facade. The facade is based on an overall exterior design by Whitney Warren.
The
terminal is widely recognized and favorably viewed by the American
public. In America's Favorite Architecture, a 2006-07 public survey by
the American Institute of Architects, respondents ranked it their
13th-favorite work of architecture in the country, and their
fourth-favorite in the city and state after the Empire State Building,
Chrysler Building, and St. Patrick's Cathedral.
In
2013, historian David Cannadine described it as one of the most
majestic buildings of the twentieth century. The terminal is also
recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers as a Historic
Civil Engineering Landmark, added in 2013.
As proposed in 1904, Grand Central Terminal
was bounded by Vanderbilt Avenue to the west, Lexington Avenue to the
east, 42nd Street to the south, and 45th Street to the north. It
included a post office on its east side. The east side of the station
house proper is an alley called Depew Place, which was built along with
the Grand Central Depot annex in the 1880s and mostly decommissioned in the 1900s when the new terminal was built.
The station house measures 240 m along Vanderbilt Avenue, 91 m on 42nd Street, and 32 m tall.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about Ellis Island, the island
in New York Harbor that was the busiest immigrant inspection station.
Ellis
Island is a federally-owned island in New York Harbor that was the
busiest immigrant inspection station in the United States.
From
1892 to 1954, nearly 12 million immigrants arriving at the Port of New
York and New Jersey were processed there under federal law.
Today, it is part of the Statue of LibertyNational Monument
and is accessible to the public only by ferry. The north side of the
island is the site of the main building, now a national museum of
immigration. The south side of the island, including the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital, is open to the public only through guided tours.
In the 19th century, Ellis Island was the site of Fort Gibson and later became a naval magazine. The first inspection station opened in 1892 and was destroyed by fire in 1897. The second station opened in 1900 and housed facilities for medical quarantines and processing immigrants.
After 1924, Ellis Island was used primarily as a detention centre formigrants.
During both World War I and World War II, its facilities were also used
by the US military to detain prisoners of war. After the immigration station'sclosure,
the buildings languished for several years until they were partially
reopened in 1976. The main building and adjacent structures were
completely renovated in 1990.
The
11.1 ha island was greatly expanded by land reclamation between the
late 1890s and the 1930s. Jurisdictional disputes between New Jersey and
New York State persisted until the 1998 US Supreme Court ruling in New
Jersey v. New York.
Ellis Island is in Upper New York Bay, east of Liberty State Park and northof Liberty Island. While most of the island is in Jersey City, New Jersey, a small section is an exclave of New York City.
The
island has a land area of 11.1 ha, much of which is from land
reclamation. The natural island and contiguous areas comprise 1.89 ha
within New York, and are located on the northern portion of the present-day island. The artificial land is part of New Jersey.
The
island has been owned and administered by the federal government of the
United States since 1808 and operated by the National Park Service
since 1965.
Ellis Island was also used by the military for almost 80 years.
By the mid-1790s, as a result of the United States' increased military
tensions with Britain and France, a U.S. congressional committee drew a
map of possible locations for the First System of fortifications to
protect major American urban centres such as New York Harbor.
The Army had unsuccessfully attempted to use Ellis Island for the convalescence of immigrants as early as 1847.
The new immigration station opened on December 17, 1900, without ceremony. On that day, 2,251 immigrants were processed.
By 1947, shortly after the end of World War II, there were proposals to close EllisIsland due to the massive expenses needed for the upkeep of a relatively small detention centre.
The hospital was closed in 1950–1951 by the United States Public Health Service, and by the early 1950s, there were only 30 to 40 detainees left on the island.
The island's closure was announced in mid-1954, when the federal government announced that it would construct a replacement facility on Manhattan.
Ellis Island closed on November 12, 1954,
with the departure of its last detainee, Norwegian merchant seaman Arne
Peterssen. At the time, it was estimated that the government would save
$900,000 a year from closing the island. The ferryboat Ellis Island, which had operated since 1904, stopped operating two weeks later.
I always remember to go on the Staten Island Ferry because it's the most amazing view of New York. And it's free! You see Ellis Island, and it conjures up something of that great moment: you know, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. It's staggering.
Today, The Grangers and The Grandma havearrived at New York City, where they wanted to spend some days. The arrival has been a little difficult because their ferry has suffered an accident and they have lost Joan 'Johnny' Granger.
The family is very sad and worried and they offer a reward if anyone can offer news about Johnny.
New York City is a multicultural city and the best destination for a family where every member of it has a different nationality and was born in a different part of the planet.
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over 778.2 km2, New York City is the most densely populated major city in the United States and more than twice as populous as Los Angeles, the nation's second largest city.
New York City is located at the southern tip of New York State. It constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the U.S. by both population and urban landmass.
With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous megacities, and over 58 million people live within 400 km of the city.
New York City is a global cultural, financial, entertainment, and media center with a significant influence on commerce, health care and life sciences, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, dining, art, fashion, and sports. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and is sometimes described as the capital of the world.
Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors and extending into the Atlantic Ocean, New York City comprises five boroughs, each of which is coextensive with a respective county of the state of New York. The five boroughs, which were created in 1898 when local governments were consolidated into a single municipal entity, are: Brooklyn (in Kings County), Queens (in Queens County), Manhattan (in New York County), The Bronx (in Bronx County), and Staten Island (in Richmond County).
The city and its metropolitan area constitute the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. New York City is home to more than 3.2 million residents born outside the U.S., the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world as of 2016.
New York City traces its origins to a trading post founded on the southern tip of Manhattan Island by Dutch colonists in approximately 1624. The settlement was named New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw Amsterdam) in 1626 and was chartered as a city in 1653.
The city came under British control in 1664 and was renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. The city was regained by the Dutch in July 1673 and was renamed New Orange for one year and three months; the city has been continuously named New York since November 1674.
New York City was the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790, and has been the largest U.S. city since 1790.
The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the U.S. by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is a symbol of the U.S. and its ideals of liberty and peace.
In the 21st century, New York City has emerged as a global node of creativity, entrepreneurship, and as a symbol of freedom and cultural diversity.
And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about the Roxy Theatre, the popular theatre in New York that was opened by Samuel Roxy Rothafel on a day like today in 1927.
The Roxy Theatre was a 5,920 seat movie theater located at 153 West 50th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, just off Times Square in New York City.
It opened on March 11, 1927, with the silent film The Love of Sunya,produced by and starring Gloria Swanson. The huge movie palace was a leading Broadway film showcase through the 1950s and was also noted for its lavish stage shows. It closed and was demolished in 1960.
The Roxy Theatre was originally conceived by film producer Herbert Lubin in mid-1925 as the world's largest and finest motion picture palace.
To realize his dream, Lubin brought in the successful and innovative theater operator Samuel L. Rothafel, aka Roxy, to bring it to fruition, enticing him with a large salary, percentage of the profits, stock options and offering to name the theatre after him. It was intended to be the first of six planned Roxy Theatres in the New York area.
Roxy determined to make his theater the summit of his career and in it realize all of his theatrical design and production ideas. He worked with Chicago architect Walter W. Ahlschlager and decorator Harold Rambusch of Rambusch Decorating Company on every aspect of the theater's design and furnishings.
Roxy's lavish ideas and his many changes ran up costs dramatically. Lubin, who was $2.5 million over budget and near bankruptcy, sold his controlling interest a week before the theater opened to movie mogul and theater owner William Fox for $5 million. The final cost of the theater was $12 million. With Lubin's exit, Roxy's dreams of his own theater circuit also ended. Only one of the projected Roxy chain was built, the planned Roxy Midway Theatre on Broadway on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, also designed by Ahlschlager. The nearly complete theater was sold to Warner Bros. who opened it as Warner's Beacon in 1929.
The Roxy closed on March 29, 1960. The final movie was The Wind CannotRead, a British film with Dirk Bogarde which opened March 9.
The Roxy had been acquired by Rockefeller Center in 1956, and then sold to developer William Zeckendorf. It was initially purchased to obtain air rights for the Time-Life Building, built to its east, and was finally demolished by Zeckendorf for an expansion of the Taft Hotel and for an office building that is now connected to the Time-Life building.
Eliot Elisofon's photograph of Gloria Swanson amidst the ruins of the theater's demolition appeared in the November 7, 1960 issue of LIFE.
The theater can briefly be seen from the air during its demolition in the opening prologue of the film West Side Story, across 7th Avenue from the back of the Winter Garden Theatre.
The spectacular stage and screen programming ideas of the Roxy's founder continued at Radio City Music Hall into the 1970s. Radio City's lavish Christmas stage show, created in 1933 by the Roxy's former producer and choreographer, Leon Leonidoff and Russell Markert, continues to this day as the Radio City Christmas Spectacular.
The Music Hall itself was saved from demolition by a consortium of preservation and commercial interests in 1979 and it remains one of New York'sentertainment landmarks. Its restored interior includes the lavish art deco offices created for Roxy Rothafel, preserved partly as a tribute to the visionary showman.
I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about one of the most beautiful trainstations, GrandCentral Terminal in New York,the terminal that was opened on a day like today in 1913.
Grand Central Terminal, also referred to as Grand Central Station or simply as GrandCentral, is a commuter rail terminal located at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.
Grand Central is the southern terminus of the Metro-North Railroad's Harlem, Hudson and New Haven Lines, serving the northern parts of the New York metropolitan area. It also contains a connection to the New York City Subway at Grand Central-42nd Street station. The terminal is the second-busiest train station in North America, after New York Penn Station.
The distinctive architecture and interior design of Grand Central Terminal's station house have earned it several landmark designations, including as a National Historic Landmark. Its Beaux-Arts design incorporates numerous works of art.
Grand Central Terminal is one of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions, with 21.6 million visitors in 2018, excluding train and subway passengers. The terminal's Main Concourse is often used as a meeting place, and is especially featured in films and television.
Grand Central Terminal contains a variety of stores and food vendors, including upscale restaurants and bars, two food halls, and a grocery marketplace.
Grand Central Terminal was built by and named for the New York Central Railroad; it also served the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and, later, successors to the New York Central.
More information:
Opened in 1913, the terminal was built on the site of two similarly-named predecessor stations, the first of which dates to 1871. Grand Central Terminal served intercity trains until 1991, when Amtrak began routing its trains through nearby Penn Station. The East Side Access project, which will bring Long Island Rail Road service to a new station beneath the terminal, is expected to be completed in late 2022.
Grand Central covers 19 ha and has 44 platforms, more than any other railroad station in the world. Its platforms, all below ground, serve 30 tracks on the upper level and 26 on the lower.
In total, there are 67 tracks, including a rail yard and sidings; of these, 43 tracks are in use for passenger service, while the remaining two dozen are used to store trains. Another eight tracks and four platforms are being built on two new levels deep underneath the existing station as part of East Side Access.
Grand Central Terminal was named by and for the New York Central Railroad, which built the station and its two predecessors on the site. It has always been more colloquially and affectionately known as Grand Central Station, the name of its immediate predecessor that operated from 1900 to 1910.
The name Grand Central Station is also shared with the nearby U.S. Post Office station at 450 Lexington Avenue and, colloquially, with the Grand Central-42nd Street subway station next to the terminal.
Grand Central Terminal was designed and built with two main levels for passengers: an upper for intercity trains and a lower for commuter trains. This configuration, devised by New York Central vice president William J. Wilgus, separated intercity and commuter-rail passengers, smoothing the flow of people in and through the station. After intercity service ended in 1991, the upper level was renamed the Main Concourse and the lower the Dining Concourse.
The original plan for Grand Central's interior was designed by Reed and Stem, with some work by Whitney Warren of Warren and Wetmore.
Grand Central Terminal was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Reed and Stem, which was responsible for the overall design of the terminal, and Warren and Wetmore, which mainly made cosmetic alterations to the exterior and interior. Various elements inside the terminal were designed by French architects and artists Jules-Félix Coutan, Sylvain Salières, and Paul César Helleu.
Grand Central has both monumental spaces and meticulously crafted detail, especially on its facade. The facade is based on an overall exterior design by Whitney Warren.
The terminal is widely recognized and favorably viewed by the American public. In America's Favorite Architecture, a 2006-07 public survey by the American Institute of Architects, respondents ranked it their 13th-favorite work of architecture in the country, and their fourth-favorite in the city and state after the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and St. Patrick's Cathedral.
In 2013, historian David Cannadine described it as one of the most majestic buildings of the twentieth century. The terminal is also recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers as a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, added in 2013.
As proposed in 1904, Grand Central Terminal was bounded by Vanderbilt Avenue to the west, Lexington Avenue to the east, 42nd Street to the south, and 45th Street to the north. It included a post office on its east side. The east side of the station house proper is an alley called Depew Place, which was built along with the Grand Central Depot annex in the 1880s and mostly decommissioned in the 1900s when the new terminal was built.
The station house measures 240 m along Vanderbilt Avenue, 91 m on 42nd Street, and 32 m tall.
The zodiac is painted upside down on the ceiling of Grand Central. They said it was to give the perspective of God, but they'd simply hired a bunch of drunks.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about Ellis Island, the island in New York Harbor that was the busiest immigrant inspection station until it ceased operations on a day like today in 1954.
Ellis Island is a federally-owned island in New York Harbor that was the busiest immigrant inspection station in the United States.
From 1892 to 1954, nearly 12 million immigrants arriving at the Port of New York and New Jersey were processed there under federal law.
Today, it is part of the Statue of LibertyNational Monument and is accessible to the public only by ferry. The north side of the island is the site of the main building, now a national museum of immigration. The south side of the island, including the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital, is open to the public only through guided tours.
In the 19th century, Ellis Island was the site of Fort Gibson and later became a naval magazine. The first inspection station opened in 1892 and was destroyed by fire in 1897. The second station opened in 1900 and housed facilities for medical quarantines and processing immigrants.
After 1924, Ellis Island was used primarily as a detention centre formigrants. During both World War I and World War II, its facilities were also used by the US military to detain prisoners of war. After the immigration station'sclosure, the buildings languished for several years until they were partially reopened in 1976. The main building and adjacent structures were completely renovated in 1990.
The 11.1 ha island was greatly expanded by land reclamation between the late 1890s and the 1930s. Jurisdictional disputes between New Jersey and New York State persisted until the 1998 US Supreme Court ruling in New Jersey v. New York.
Ellis Island is in Upper New York Bay, east of Liberty State Park and northof Liberty Island. While most of the island is in Jersey City, New Jersey, a small section is an exclave of New York City.
The island has a land area of 11.1 ha, much of which is from land reclamation. The natural island and contiguous areas comprise 1.89 ha within New York, and are located on the northern portion of the present-day island. The artificial land is part of New Jersey.
The island has been owned and administered by the federal government of the United States since 1808 and operated by the National Park Service since 1965.
Ellis Island was also used by the military for almost 80 years. By the mid-1790s, as a result of the United States' increased military tensions with Britain and France, a U.S. congressional committee drew a map of possible locations for the First System of fortifications to protect major American urban centres such as New York Harbor.
The Army had unsuccessfully attempted to use Ellis Island for the convalescence of immigrants as early as 1847.
The new immigration station opened on December 17, 1900, without ceremony. On that day, 2,251 immigrants were processed.
By 1947, shortly after the end of World War II, there were proposals to close EllisIsland due to the massive expenses needed for the upkeep of a relatively small detention centre.
The hospital was closed in 1950–1951 by the United States Public Health Service, and by the early 1950s, there were only 30 to 40 detainees left on the island.
The island's closure was announced in mid-1954, when the federal government announced that it would construct a replacement facility on Manhattan.
Ellis Island closed on November 12, 1954, with the departure of its last detainee, Norwegian merchant seaman Arne Peterssen. At the time, it was estimated that the government would save $900,000 a year from closing the island. The ferryboat Ellis Island, which had operated since 1904, stopped operating two weeks later.
I always remember to go on the Staten Island Ferry because it's the most amazing view of New York. And it's free! You see Ellis Island, and it conjures up something of that great moment: you know, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. It's staggering.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about one of the most interesting andamazing trains, the TranscontinentalExpress,that arrived in San Francisco on a day like today in 1876.
The TranscontinentalExpress arrived in San Francisco, California, via the FirstTranscontinentalRailroadon 4 June 1876,only 83 hours and 39 minutes after having left New York City. The feat was reported widely in U.S. newspapers.
North America's first transcontinental railroad, known originally as the Pacific Railroad and later as the Overland Route, was a 3,077 km continuous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay.
The rail line was built by three private companies over public lands provided by extensive US land grants. Construction was financed by both state and US government subsidy bonds as well as by company issued mortgage bonds.
The Western Pacific Railroad Company built 212 km of track from the road's western terminus at Alameda/Oakland to Sacramento, California.
The Central Pacific Railroad Company of California (CPRR) constructed 1,110 km eastward from Sacramento to Promontory Summit, Utah Territory.
The Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) built 1,746 km from the road's eastern terminus at the Missouri River settlements of Council Bluffs and Omaha, Nebraska westward to Promontory Summit.
The railroad opened for through traffic between Sacramento and Omaha on May 10, 1869, when CPRR President Leland Stanford, ceremonially tapped the gold Last Spike, later often referred to as the Golden Spike, with a silver hammer at Promontory Summit.
In the following six months, the last leg from Sacramento to San Francisco Bay was completed. The resulting coast-to-coast railroad connection revolutionized the settlement and economy of the American West.
It brought the western states and territories into alignment with the northern Union states and made transporting passengers and goods coast-to-coast considerably quicker, safer and less expensive.
The first transcontinental rail passengers arrived at the Pacific Railroad's original western terminus at the Alameda Terminal on September 6, 1869, where they transferred to the steamer Alameda for transport across the Bay to San Francisco. The road's rail terminus was moved two months later to the Oakland Long Wharf, about a mile to the north, when its expansion was completed and opened for passengers on November 8, 1869. Service between San Francisco and Oakland Pier continued to be provided by ferry.
The CPRR eventually purchased 85 km of UPRR-built grade from Promontory Summit (MP 828) to Ogden, Utah Territory (MP 881), which became the interchange point between trains of the two roads. The transcontinental line became popularly known as the Overland Route after the name of principal passenger rail service to Chicago that operated over the length of the line until 1962.
Congress agreed to support the idea. Under the direction of the Department of War, the Pacific Railroad Surveys were conducted from 1853 through 1855. These included an extensive series of expeditions of the American West seeking possible routes. A report on the explorations described alternative routes and included an immense amount of information about the American West, covering at least 1,000,000 km2. It included the region's natural history and illustrations of reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals.
The report failed however to include detailed topographic maps of potential routes needed to estimate the feasibility, cost and select the best route. The survey was detailed enough to determine that the best southern route lay south of the Gila River boundary with Mexico in mostly vacant desert, through the future territories of Arizona and New Mexico. This in part motivated the United States to complete the Gadsden Purchase.
The U.S. Congress was strongly divided on where the eastern terminus of the railroad should be -in a southern or northern city. Three routes were considered:
-A northern route roughly along the Missouri River through present-day northern Montana to Oregon Territory. This was considered impractical due to the rough terrain and extensive winter snows.
-A central route following the Platte River in Nebraska through to the South Pass in Wyoming, following most of the Oregon Trail. Snow on this route remained a concern.
-A southern route across Texas, New Mexico Territory, the Sonora desert, connecting to Los Angeles, California. Surveyors found during an 1848 survey that the best route lay south of the border between the United States and Mexico. This was resolved by the Gadsden Purchase in 1853.
Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has been watching some sports on TV. She likes the most part of them, especially volleyball that was created by WilliamG. Morgan on a day like today in 1895.
William George Morgan (January 23, 1870-December 27, 1942) was the inventor of volleyball, originally called Mintonette, a name derived from the game of badminton which he later agreed to change to better reflect the nature of the sport. He was born in Lockport, New York.
He met James Naismith, inventor of basketball, while Morgan was studying at Springfield College in 1892. Like Naismith, Morgan pursued a career in Physical Education at the YMCA. Influenced by Naismith and basketball, in 1895, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Morgan invented Mintonette a less vigorous team sport more suitable for older members of the YMCA but one that still required athletic skill. Later Alfred S. Halstead watched it being played and renamed it Volleyball, because the point of the game is to volley the ball back and forth over the net.
In 1985, he was inducted into the Volleyball Hall of Fame as the inaugural member.
William George Morgan
graduated from high school at Northfield Mount Hermon School and moved
on to attend the YMCA International Training School, later renamed
Springfield College, in Massachusetts with James Naismith, the inventor
of basketball.
Both Morgan
and Naismith pursued careers in Physical Education at the YMCA (Young
Men’s Christian Association). Auburn, Maine, at the YMCA, was where
Morgan spent one year working prior to graduating from Springfield
College.
During the summer of 1895, Morgan moved to Holyoke, Massachusetts, where he continued to work for the YMCA, becoming the Director of Physical Education. With Morgan being the Director, it allowed him to devise workout plans and teach sports in depth to the young male adults.
As
he worked as the Director of Physical Education at the YMCA in Holyoke,
he noticed that the game of basketball was not meant for everyone to
play. The weaker young men, non-athletic adults, and the older adults
were not able to keep up with running up and down the court, along with
the amount of contact they would occasionally run into.
Morgan
then had to think of a game in which everyone would have an equal
amount of participation but also had similar objectives to basketball.
He wanted to create a game which everyone could play, no matter their
age or physical ability.
Between trying to run classes at the YMCA and creating a new sport suitable for all, Morgan decided it was best that he use ideas from various sports such as handball, tennis, and badminton, and his own knowledge from sports training methods and experience, to create this new sport. He decided that the game would involve a six-foot, six-inch net in the middle dividing the 2 separate playing areas, and that it would be played on a 30 ft. × 60 ft. court, so that it could be played in gyms anywhere across the nation.
After creating some ground rules, William Morgan had to experiment with his game. First, he had to decide which ball to use. A basketball was too heavy while the basketball bladder was too light. After testing all the balls he had available, he had come to the conclusion that his best option was to ask A.G. Spalding & Bros. to make him a ball.
A young A.G. Spalding & Bros. equipment designer and master marine cloth tailor, Dale Callaghan, developed and produced the first prototype volleyball. Morgan was very pleased with Spalding & Bros. work. They created Morgan the perfect ball for his sport, which was covered in leather, with the circumference of 25–27 inches. The ball was also the perfect weight for Morgan's sport. The ball weighed 9–12 ounces. This new ball that had been made for Morgan's sport was the perfect finishing touch to the basics of the sport. The last thing that had to be done by Morgan was to create a name. Morgan came up with Mintonette as the new name for his game.
The first time Morgan
revealed his sport to the other Directors of Physical was at the YMCA
located in Springfield, in 1896. He presented his new, creative idea to
Dr. Luther Halsey Gulick, director of the professional physical
education training school, and the rest of the YMCA Directors of
Physical Education. Dr. Gulick was so pleased that he asked Morgan to present his sport at the school's new stadium.
In preparation for his big debut, Morgan created 2 teams of 5 men, who would help in demonstrating Mintonette in front of the conference delegates in the East Gymnasium at Springfield College.
On February 9, 1895, William Morgan presented his new sport to the world. When Morgan was explaining the game before the demonstration, he named a few key guidelines in the game of Mintonette such as that the game was created so that it could be played in open air and in gyms as well as the objective of the game was to keep the ball in action as it goes from one side of the high net, to the other.
One of the conference delegates, Professor Alfred T. Halsted, loved the game of Mintonette, but he felt like something was just not right. Professor Halsted suggested that the name of the game should be Volleyball, since the main point of the game was to volley the ball to a player or over the net. Morgan agreed with Halsted's idea and since then the original game of Mintonette has been referred to as Volleyball.
Morgan continued to tweak the rules of the game until July 1896, where his sport was added into the first official handbook of the North American YMCA Athletic League.
William Morgan left his job at the YMCA in 1897 to start a new career with General Electric and Westinghouse. He stayed in touch with Springfield College and stated that he was content in the knowledge that the game brought a richer life to millions of people throughout the world.
Today, The Grandma is consulting her American investments, and she has been reading about the NASDAQ, the American stock exchange.
The Nasdaq Stock Market or NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange based in New York City.
It is ranked second on the list of stock exchanges by market capitalization of shares traded, behind the New York Stock Exchange. The exchange platform is owned by Nasdaq, Inc., which also owns the Nasdaq Nordic stock market network and several U.S. stock and options exchanges.
Nasdaq was initially an acronym for the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations.
It was founded in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), now known as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
On February 8, 1971, the Nasdaq stock market began operations as the world's first electronic stock market. At first, it was merely a quotation system and did not provide a way to perform electronic trades.
The Nasdaq Stock Market helped lower the bid–ask spread, the price difference between sellers and buyers, but was unpopular among brokers as it reduced their profits.
The NASDAQ Stock Market eventually assumed the majority of major trades that had been executed by the over-the-counter (OTC) system of trading, but there are still many securities traded in this fashion. As late as 1987, the Nasdaqexchange was still commonly referred to as OTC in media reports and also in the monthly Stock Guides, stock guides and procedures, issued by Standard & Poor's Corporation.
Over the years, the Nasdaq Stock Market became more of a stock market by adding trade and volume reporting and automated trading systems.
In 1981, Nasdaq traded 37% of the U.S. securities markets' total of 21 billion shares. By 1991, Nasdaq's share had grown to 46%.
In 1998, it was the first stock market in the United States to trade online, using the slogan the stock market for the next hundred years. The Nasdaq StockMarket attracted many companies during the dot-com bubble.
Its main index is the NASDAQ Composite, which has been published since its inception. The QQQ exchange-traded fund tracks the large-cap NASDAQ-100index, which was introduced in 1985 alongside the NASDAQ Financial-100 Index, which tracks the largest 100 companies in terms of market capitalization.
In 1992, the Nasdaq Stock Market joined with the London Stock Exchange to form the first intercontinental linkage of capital markets.
In 2000, the National Association of Securities Dealers spun off the NasdaqStock Market to form a public company.
On July 2, 2002, Nasdaq Inc. became a public company via an initial public offering.
In 2006, the status of the Nasdaq Stock Market was changed from a stock market to a licensed national securities exchange.
In 2007, Nasdaq merged with OMX, a leading exchange operator in the Nordic countries, expanded its global footprint, and changed its name to the NASDAQOMX Group.
On June 18, 2012, Nasdaq OMX became a founding member of the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative on the eve of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).
In November 2016, chief operating officer Adena Friedman was promoted to chief executive officer, becoming the first woman to run a major exchange in the U.S.
In 2016, Nasdaq earned $272 million in listings-related revenues.
In October 2018, the SEC ruled that the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq did not justify the continued price increases when selling market data.
In December 2020, NASDAQ announced that it would strip its indexes of four Chinese companies in response to Executive Order 13959.
Nasdaq quotes are available at three levels:
-Level 1. Shows the highest bid and lowest ask -inside quote.
-Level 2. Shows all public quotes of market makers together with information of market dealers wishing to buy or sell stock and recently executed orders.
-Level 3. Is used by the market makers and allows them to enter their quotes and execute orders.
Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of Claire Fontaine, one of her best and closest friends. Claire is a great photographer and designer.
They love photography and they like talking about photography and take photos. They have been talking about the EastmanKodakCompany, the American public company, a trademark that was registered by GeorgeEastman who received a patent for his camera that uses roll film on a day like today in 1888.
The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak, is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography.
The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated in New Jersey. Kodak provides packaging, functional printing, graphic communications, and professional services for businesses around the world. Its main business segments are Print Systems, Enterprise Inkjet Systems, Micro 3D Printing and Packaging, Software and Solutions, and Consumer and Film. It is best known for photographic film products.
Kodak was founded by George Eastman and Henry A. Strong on September 4, 1888. During most of the 20th century, Kodak held a dominant position in photographic film. The company's ubiquity was such that its Kodak momenttagline entered the common lexicon to describe a personal event that deserved to be recorded for posterity.
Kodak began to struggle financially in the late 1990s, as a result of the decline in sales of photographic film and its slowness in moving to digital photography, despite developing the first self-contained digital camera. As a part of a turnaround strategy, Kodak began to focus on digital photography and digital printing, and attempted to generate revenues through aggressive patent litigation.
In January 2012, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Shortly thereafter Kodak announced that it would stop making digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames and focus on the corporate digital imaging market.
Digital cameras are still sold under the Kodak brand by JK Imaging Ltd under an agreement with Kodak. In August 2012, Kodak announced its intention to sell its photographic film, commercial scanners and kiosk operations, as a measure to emerge from bankruptcy, but not its motion picture film operations.
In January 2013, the Court approved financing for Kodak to emerge from bankruptcy by mid 2013.
Kodak sold many of its patents for approximately $525,000,000 to a group of
companies including Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft,
Samsung, Adobe Systems, and HTC under the names Intellectual Ventures
and RPX Corporation.
Kodak
On September 3, 2013, the company emerged from bankruptcy having shed its large legacy liabilities and exited several businesses. Personalized Imaging and Document Imaging are now part of KodakAlaris, a separate company owned by the UK-based Kodak PensionPlan.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020 Kodak announced it would begin production of pharmaceutical materials.
The letter k was a favorite of Eastman's; he is quoted as saying, it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter. He and his mother devised the name Kodak using an Anagrams set. Eastman said that there were three principal concepts he used in creating the name: it should be short, easy to pronounce, and not resemble any other name or be associated with anything else.
According to a 1920 ad, the name was simply invented -made up from letters of the alphabet to meet our trade-mark requirements. It was short and euphonious and likely to stick in the public mind.
From the company's founding by George Eastman in 1888, Kodak followed the razor and blades business model of selling inexpensive cameras and making large margins from consumables -film, chemicals, and paper. As late as 1976, Kodak commanded 90% of film sales and 85% of camera sales in the U.S.
Kodak developed and patented the first handheld digital camera in 1975.
George Eastman (July 12, 1854-March 14, 1932) was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream.
Roll film was also the basis for the invention of motion picture film stock in 1888 by the world's first filmmakers Eadweard Muybridge and Louis Le Prince, and a few years later by their followers Léon Bouly, William Kennedy Dickson, Thomas Edison, the Lumière Brothers, and Georges Méliès.
He was a major philanthropist, establishing the Eastman School of Music,and schools of dentistry and medicine at the University of Rochester and in London Eastman Dental Hospital; contributing to the RochesterInstitute of Technology (RIT) and the construction of several buildings at the second campus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the Charles River.
George Eastman (left)
In addition, he made
major donations to TuskegeeUniversity and HamptonUniversity,historically black universities in the South. With interests in
improving health, he provided funds forclinics in London and other
European cities to serve low-income residents.
In his final two years, Eastman was in intense pain caused by a disorder affecting his spine. On March 14, 1932, Eastman shot himself in the heart, leaving a note which read, To my friends: my work is done. Why wait? GE.
The George Eastman Museum has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
Eastman is the only person represented by two stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame recognizing the same achievement, for his invention of roll film.
Eastman was born in Waterville, New York as the youngest child of George Washington Eastman and Maria Eastman (née Kilbourn), at the 10-acre farm which his parents had bought in 1849. He had two older sisters, Ellen Maria and Katie. He was largely self-educated, although he attended a private school in Rochester after the age of eight.
In the early 1840s his father had started a business school, the EastmanCommercial College in Rochester, New York. The city became one of the first boomtowns in the United States, based on rapid industrialization. As his father's health started deteriorating, the family gave up the farm and moved to Rochester in 1860. His father died of a brain disorder in May 1862. To survive and afford George's schooling, his mother took in boarders.
The second daughter, Katie, had contracted polio when young and died in late 1870 when George was 15 years old. The young George left school early and started working to help support the family. As Eastman began to have success with his photography business, he vowed to repay his mother for the hardships she had endured in raising him.
In 1884, Eastman patented the first film in roll form to provepracticable; he had been tinkering at home to develop it.
George Eastman
In 1888, he developed the Kodak camera -Kodakbeing a word Eastman created-,which was the first camera designed to use roll film. He coined the advertising slogan, You pressthe button, we do the rest which quickly became popular among customers.
In 1889 he first offered film stock, and by 1896 became the leading supplier of film stock internationally. He incorporated his company under the name Eastman Kodak, in 1892.
As film stock became standardized, Eastman continued to lead in innovations. Refinements in colored film stock continued after his death.
In an era of growing trade union activities, Eastman sought to counter the union movement by devising worker benefit programs, including, in 1910, the establishment of a profit-sharing program for all employees. Considered to be a progressive leader for the times, Eastman promoted Florence McAnaney to be head of the personnel department. She was one of the first women to hold an executive position in a major U.S. company.
Eastman was associated with the Kodak company in an administrative and a business executive capacity until his death; he contributed much to the development of its notable research facilities. In 1911 he founded the EastmanTrust and Savings Bank.
In his final two years, Eastman was in intense pain caused by a disorder affecting his spine. He had trouble standing, and his walk became a slow shuffle. Today, it might be diagnosed as a form of degenerative disease such as disc herniations from trauma or age causing either painful nerve root compressions, or perhaps a type of lumbar spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal canal caused by calcification in the vertebrae.
Eastman suffered from depression due to his pain, reduced ability to function, and also since he had witnessed his mother's suffering from pain. On March 14, 1932, Eastman died by suicide with a single gunshot through the heart. His suicide note read, To my friends, my work is done-Why wait? GE.
Raymond Granger, an insurance salesman in Rochester, was visiting to collect insurance payments from several members of the staff. He arrived at the scene to find the workforce in a dither. At least one chronicler said that fear of senility or other debilitating diseases of old age was a contributing factor.
Eastman's funeral was held at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Rochester; his coffin was carried out to Charles Gounod's Marche Romaine and buried in the grounds of the company he founded, at what is now known as EastmanBusiness Park.
The Grandma visited Kodak
Being an astute business man, Eastman focused his company on making film when competition heated up in the camera industry. By providing quality and affordable film to every camera manufacturer, Kodak managed to turn its competitors into de facto business partners.
In 1915, Eastman founded a bureau of municipal research in Rochester to get things done for the community and to serve as an independent, non-partisan agency for keeping citizens informed. Called the Center forGovernmentalResearch, the agency continues to carry out that mission.
During his lifetime, Eastman donated $100 million to various organizations, with most of his money going to the University ofRochester and to the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology to build their programs and facilities, under the alias "Mr. Smith". He was one of the major philanthropists in the United States during his lifetime.
The Rochester Institute of Technology has a building dedicated to Eastman, in recognition of his support and substantial donations. MITinstalled a plaque of Eastman on one of the buildings he funded. Students rub the nose of Eastman's image on the plaque for good luck.
Eastman also made substantial gifts to the Tuskegee Institute and the Hampton Institute in Alabama and Virginia, respectively.
Security Trust Company of Rochester was the executor of Eastman'sestate. His entire estate was bequeathed to the University of Rochester. The EastmanQuadrangle of the River Campus of the University of Rochesterwas named for him.
Eastman had built a mansion at 900 East Avenue in Rochester. Here he entertained friends to dinner and held private music concerts. The University of Rochester used the mansion for various purposes for decades after his death.
In 1949, it re-opened after having been adapted for use as the GeorgeEastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark, and is now known as the GeorgeEastman Museum.
Eastman's boyhood home was saved from destruction. It was restored to its state during his childhood and is displayed at the Genesee Country VillageandMuseum.
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