who wrote the music and lyrics for frozen

Robert Lopez (born February 23, 1975) is an American songwriter of musicals, best known for co-creating The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q, and for composing the songs featured in the Disney animated films Frozen and Coco. He is the youngest of only twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award, the quickest (10 years) to win all four, and, as of 2018, is the only person to have won all four awards more than once.[1]

Robert Lopez

Robert Lopez was born in Manhattan, to Katherine (Lowe) and Frank Lopez.[2][3] He is partly of Filipino descent through his father (born on a ship docked in Elliott Bay, Seattle); his paternal grandfather was Filipino, and his paternal grandmother was half Filipino and half Scottish-American (both originally resided in Manila).[4] His father was director of publications for NYU Langone Medical Center.[2]

Lopez spent much of his childhood in Greenwich Village, except for one year in Massachusetts while his father was working for Clark University.[2]  Upon their return to New York City when he was six years old, "it was a fluke" that he started piano lessons at Greenwich House Music School.[2] The apartment they were subletting at the time happened to have a piano; his mother asked if he was interested in taking lessons, and he said yes.[2] At age seven, his parents bought a piano for him,[2] he saw his first Broadway show,[5] and he wrote his first song.[6] At age 11, he wrote his first opening number.[5]  At around age 12, he briefly drifted away from the piano and tried playing the saxophone, as well as taking courses in musical composition at other music schools.[2]

Lopez went on to Hunter College High School and then to Yale University where he graduated in 1997 with a B.A. in English (the type of academic degree expressly discussed in the second song of Avenue Q).[2][5] While at Yale, he wrote three plays (of which two were musicals) and was a member of the Yale Spizzwinks(?) a cappella group, and was influenced by professors such as Vincent Scully, John Hollander and Harold Bloom.[7]  During his time at Yale, he vaguely hoped to make a living writing musicals and "had no [other] career options"; towards that end, he avoided courses that would prepare him for a career in something more secure like law or medicine.[2][5]

Upon graduating from Yale, Lopez moved back in with his parents and brother in Greenwich Village, where he lived for four years until he was able to earn enough money writing songs for Theatreworks USA to rent an apartment of his own.[2] During this period, he took temporary jobs at companies like Pfizer[8] and worked as a weekend receptionist for his old music school, Greenwich House.[2]

In 1998, while participating in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, he met another aspiring songwriter, Jeff Marx. Their first project together, Kermit, Prince of Denmark, a Muppet parody of Hamlet, won the Kleban Award for lyrics, though The Jim Henson Company rejected the script, saying it did not have enough "kid appeal."[6] The story was considered for the next Muppet film by Chris Curtin in 2004, until Curtin left the Disney Company. Highlights from the unproduced musical were performed by Rick Lyon, Rebecca Jones, and Susan Blackwell at the BMI Workshop.

In 1999, Lopez and Marx, who collaborated on both music and lyrics, began work on Avenue Q, a stage musical which, using puppet characters, similar to those on Sesame Street, dealt with adult themes and ideas. The show, for which Lopez also provided the animated segments, was his first professional experience.[9] After playing Off-Broadway, the show transferred in July 2003 to Broadway's John Golden Theatre, where it proved both a critical and popular success, winning the 2004 Tony Award for Best Musical, and earning Lopez and Marx the Tony Award for Best Original Score.  The Original Cast Recording was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2004.

In 2005, Lopez began working on a new musical project with his musical partner Jeff Marx, and with Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park,[9] a series which, in 2003, Lopez had mentioned as a partial inspiration for Avenue Q.[6] The Book of Mormon premiered on Broadway at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on March 24, 2011, following previews from February 24. The show received numerous theater accolades, including the 2011 Tony for Best Musical, as well as two more Tony Awards for Lopez: Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical.  The production's original cast recording also earned Lopez the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.

In early 2006, Lopez collaborated with his brother, Billy, on several episodes of the Nickelodeon series Wonder Pets, for which they shared a Daytime Emmy award with the series' other composers and Music Director, Jeffrey Lesser, in 2008.  In January 2007, a musical adaptation of the Disney/Pixar film Finding Nemo, which Lopez co-wrote with his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, opened at Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park.

On January 18, 2007, Lopez and Marx again collaborated to write four of the songs for the hit TV show Scrubs on the show's 123rd episode titled "My Musical." TV Guide named the episode one of the best 100 TV show episodes of all time in 2009. Lopez, along with Jeff Marx, was recognized with an Emmy nomination for the song "Everything Comes Down to Poo" from the above-mentioned episode.[10] Stephanie D'Abruzzo, who originated the roles of Kate Monster and Lucy the Slut in Avenue Q, guest-starred in the episode.

In 2010, Lopez wrote the song "Bet Against the American Dream" which was featured on the NPR program "This American Life". The song was written in the style of a Broadway show tune, and parodied a scene from the musical "The Producers" to illustrate the story of a real-life hedge fund called Magnetar that made millions of dollars when the housing market collapsed.

In 2011, Lopez again worked with Matt Stone and Trey Parker on the South Park episode "Broadway Bro Down".

Lopez also co-wrote two songs for the Disney Channel animated series Phineas and Ferb: "Aerial Area Rug" for the episode "Magic Carpet Ride" and "Fly On the Wall," for an episode of the same name.[11]

Lopez composed a song for The Simpsons episode "A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never Do Again" titled "Enjoy It While You Can" which aired on April 29, 2012.

Lopez and his wife Kristen also wrote seven songs for Winnie the Pooh, released in 2011 by Walt Disney Animation Studios.[12] They also wrote an original song for Wreck-It Ralph before it was cut out.[13]

In 2013, Lopez and his wife Kristen wrote songs for Disney Animation's feature film Frozen. The song "Let It Go" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, making Lopez the 12th person to achieve the EGOT.[14] On February 8, 2015, they won another Grammy for their work on Frozen for the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media for "Let It Go".[15]

In development for several years by Lopez and his wife, their romantic-comedy musical Up Here officially debuted August 9, 2015, at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.[16][17] Lopez describes Up Here as "It's kind of like Annie Hall meets Cirque du Soleil. It's a romantic comedy with a huge theatrical twist."

Lopez and his wife wrote the musical number "Moving Pictures" for the 87th Academy Awards.[18]

It was announced in late 2015 that Lopez would be writing original songs for the revival of the cult comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Lopez and his wife were attached to write the music for the Disney film Gigantic. The film is an animated retelling of "Jack and the Beanstalk". In October 2017, it was announced that the film had been shelved.[19]

The Disney/Pixar film Coco, released in November 2017, heavily features Lopez and his wife's song "Remember Me." The song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for Lopez and his wife (second time winning this category), making him the first ever double EGOT winner.

During his participation in the 1998 Lehman Engel's Workshop, Robert Lopez met and began dating lyricist Kristen Anderson. As described in a 2003 The New York Times profile, the pair, struggling in a cash-strapped post-college period that recalls the storyline of Avenue Q's Princeton and Kate Monster, "live[d] in Astoria, Queens, [drove] a 1989 Buick and survive[d] on fast food".[20]

The couple married in 2003 and they have two daughters; Katie and Annie, who both had voice parts in Frozen.[21] They currently reside in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn.[22]


who was one of the first pioneers of sound recording what did they invent and in what year

In 1857, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville invented the phonautograph, the first device that could record sound waves as they passed through the air. It was intended only for visual study of the recording and could not play back the sound. The recording medium was a sheet of soot-coated paper wrapped around a rotating cylinder carried on a threaded rod. A stylus, attached to a diaphragm through a series of levers, traced a line through the soot, creating a graphic record of the motions of the diaphragm as it was minutely propelled back and forth by the audio-frequency variations in air pressure.

History of sound recording

Experiments in capturing sound on a recording medium for preservation and reproduction began in earnest during the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s. Many pioneering attempts to record and reproduce sound were made during the latter half of the 19th century – notably Scott's Phonautograph of 1857 – and these efforts culminated in the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison in 1877. Digital recording emerged in the late 20th century, and has since flourished with the popularity of digital music and online streaming services.[1]

The history of sound recording - which has progressed in waves, driven by the invention and commercial introduction of new technologies — can be roughly divided into four main periods:

The earliest practical recording technologies were entirely mechanical devices. These recorders typically used a large conical horn to collect and focus the physical air pressure of the sound waves produced by the human voice or musical instruments. A sensitive membrane or diaphragm, located at the apex of the cone, was connected to an articulated scriber or stylus, and as the changing air pressure moved the diaphragm back and forth, the stylus scratched or incised an analogue of the sound waves onto a moving recording medium, such as a roll of coated paper, or a cylinder or disc coated with a soft material such as wax or a soft metal. These early recordings were necessarily of low fidelity and volume, and captured only a narrow segment of the audible sound spectrum — typically only from around 250 Hz up to about 2,500 Hz — so musicians and engineers were forced to adapt to these sonic limitations. Bands of the period often favored louder instruments such as trumpet, cornet and trombone, lower-register brass instruments (such as the tuba and the euphonium) replaced the string bass, and blocks of wood stood in for bass drums; performers also had to arrange themselves strategically around the horn to balance the sound, and to play as loudly as possible. The reproduction of domestic phonographs was similarly limited in both frequency-range and volume. By the end of the acoustic era, the disc had become the standard medium for sound recording, and its dominance in the domestic audio market lasted until the end of the 20th century.

The'second wave' of sound recording history was ushered in by the introduction of Western Electric's integrated system of electrical microphones, electronic signal amplifiers and electromechanical recorders, which was adopted by major US record labels in 1925. Sound recording now became a hybrid process — sound could now be captured, amplified, filtered and balanced electronically, and the disc-cutting head was now electrically powered, but the actual recording process remained essentially mechanical – the signal was still physically inscribed into a wax'master' disc, and consumer discs were mass-produced mechanically by stamping a metal electroform made from the wax master into a suitable substance, originally a shellac-based compound and later polyvinyl plastic. The Western Electric system greatly improved the fidelity of sound recording, increasing the reproducible frequency range to a much wider band (between 60 Hz and 6000 Hz) and allowing a new class of professional – the audio engineer – to capture a fuller, richer and more detailed and balanced sound on record, using multiple microphones connected to multi-channel electronic amplifiers, compressors, filters and mixers. Electrical microphones led to a dramatic change in the performance style of singers, ushering in the age of the "crooner", while electronic amplification had a wide-ranging impact in many areas, enabling the development of broadcast radio, public address systems, and electronically-amplified home record players. In addition, the development of electronic amplifiers for musical instruments now enabled quieter instruments such as the guitar and the string bass to compete on equal terms with the naturally louder wind and horn instruments, and musicians and composers also began to experiment with entirely new electronic musical instruments such as the Theremin, the Ondes Martenot, the electronic organ, and the Hammond Novachord, the world's first analogue polyphonic synthesiser.

Contemporaneous with these developments, several inventors were engaged in a race to develop practical methods of providing synchronised sound with films. Some early sound films — such as the landmark 1927 film The Jazz Singer – used large soundtrack records which were played on a turntable mechanically interlocked with the projector. By the early 1930s the movie industry had almost universally adopted sound-on-film technology, in which the audio signal to be recorded was used to modulate a light source that was imaged onto the moving film through a narrow slit, allowing it to be photographed as variations in the density or width of a "sound track" running along a dedicated area of the film. The projector used a steady light and a photoelectric cell to convert the variations back into an electrical signal, which was amplified and sent to loudspeakers behind the screen. The adoption of sound-on-film also helped movie-industry audio engineers to make rapid advances in the process we now know as "multi-tracking", by which multiple separately-recorded audio sources (such as voices, sound effects and background music) can be replayed simultaneously, mixed together, and synchronised with the action on film to create new 'blended' audio tracks of great sophistication and complexity. One of the best-known examples of a 'constructed' composite sound from that era is the famous "Tarzan yell" created for the series of Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller.

Among the vast and often rapid changes that have taken place over the last century of audio recording, it is notable that there is one crucial audio device, invented at the start of the "Electrical Era", which has survived virtually unchanged since its introduction in the 1920s: the electro-acoustic transducer, or loudspeaker. The most common form is the dynamic loudspeaker – effectively a dynamic microphone in reverse. This device typically consists of a shallow conical diaphragm, usually of a stiff paper-like material concentrically pleated to make it more flexible, firmly fastened at its perimeter, with the coil of a moving-coil electromagnetic driver attached around its apex. When an audio signal from a recording, a microphone, or an electrified instrument is fed through an amplifier to the loudspeaker, the varying electromagnetic field created in the coil causes it and the attached cone to move backward and forward, and this movement generates the audio-frequency pressure waves that travel through the air to our ears, which hear them as sound. Although there have been numerous refinements to the technology, and other related technologies have been introduced (e.g. the electrostatic loudspeaker), the basic design and function of the dynamic loudspeaker has not changed substantially in 90 years, and it remains overwhelmingly the most common, sonically accurate and reliable means of converting electronic audio signals back into audible sound.

The third wave of development in audio recording began in 1945, when the allied nations gained access to a new German invention - magnetic tape recording. The technology was invented in the 1930s, but remained restricted to Germany (where it was widely used in broadcasting) until the end of World War II. Magnetic tape provided another dramatic leap in audio fidelity — indeed, Allied observers first became aware of the existence of the new technology because they noticed that the audio quality of obviously pre-recorded programs was practically indistinguishable from live broadcasts. From 1950 onwards, magnetic tape quickly became the standard medium of audio master recording in the radio and music industries, and led to the development of the first hi-fi stereo recordings for the domestic market, the development of multi-track tape recording for music, and the demise of the disc as the primary mastering medium for sound. Magnetic tape also brought about a radical reshaping of the recording process — it made possible recordings of far longer duration and much higher fidelity than ever before, and it offered recording engineers the same exceptional plasticity that film gave to cinema editors — sounds captured on tape could now easily be manipulated sonically, edited, and combined in ways that were simply impossible with disc recordings. These experiments reached an early peak in the 1950s with the recordings of Les Paul and Mary Ford, who pioneered the use of tape editing and "multi-tracking" to create large 'virtual' ensembles of voices and instruments, constructed entirely from multiple taped recordings of their own voices and instruments. Magnetic tape fueled a rapid and radical expansion in the sophistication of popular music and other genres, allowing composers, producers, engineers and performers to realize previously unattainable levels of complexity. Other concurrent advances in audio technology led to the introduction of a range of new consumer audio formats and devices, on both disc and tape, including the development full-frequency-range disc reproduction, the change from shellac to polyvinyl plastic for disc manufacture, the invention of the 33rpm, 12-inch long-playing (LP) disc and the 45rpm 7-inch "single", the introduction of domestic and professional portable tape recorders (which enabled high-fidelity recordings of live performances), the popular 4-track cartridge and compact cassette formats, and even the world's first "sampling keyboards" - the pioneering tape-based keyboard instrument the Chamberlin, and its more famous successor, the Mellotron.

The fourth and current "phase", the "digital" era, has seen the most rapid, dramatic and far-reaching series of changes in the history of audio recording. In a period of less than 20 years, all previous recording technologies were rapidly superseded by digital sound encoding, which was perfected by the Japanese electronics corporation Sony in the 1970s. Unlike all previous technologies, which captured a continuous analogue of the sounds being recorded, digital recording captured sound by means of a very dense and rapid series of discrete samples of the sound[2]. When played back through a digital-to-analogue converter, these audio samples are recombined to form a continuous flow of sound. The first all-digitally-recorded popular music album, Ry Cooder's Bop 'Til You Drop, was released in 1979, and from that point, digital sound recording and reproduction quickly became the new standard at every level, from the professional recording studio to the home hi-fi.

Although a number of short-lived "hybrid" studio and consumer technologies appeared in this period (e.g. Digital Audio Tape or DAT, which recorded digital signal samples onto standard magnetic tape), Sony assured the preeminence of its new digital recording system by introducing, together with Philips, the most advanced consumer audio format to date — the digital compact disc (CD). The Compact disc rapidly replaced both the 12" album and the 7" single as the new standard consumer format, and ushered in a new era of high-fidelity consumer audio — CDs were small, portable and durable, and they could reproduce the entire audible sound spectrum, with unrestricted dynamic range, perfect clarity and no distortion. Because CDs were encoded and read optically, using a laser beam, there was no physical contact between the disc and the playback mechanism, so a well-cared-for CD could be played over and over, with absolutely no degradation or loss of fidelity. CDs also represented a considerable advance in both the physical size of the medium, and its storage capacity — LPs could only practically hold about 50 minutes of audio, because they were physically limited by the size of the disc itself and the density of the grooves that could be cut into it — the longer the recording, the closer together the grooves and thus the lower the overall fidelity; CDs, on the other hand they were less than half the overall size of the old 12" LP format, but offered about double the duration of the average LP, with up to 80 minutes of audio[3].

The Compact Disc almost totally dominated the consumer audio market by the end of the 20th century, but within another decade, rapid developments in computing technology saw it rendered virtually redundant in just a few years by the most significant new invention in the history of audio recording — the digital audio file (.wav,.mp3 and other formats). When combined with newly developed digital signal compression algorithms, which greatly reduced file sizes, digital audio files rapidly came to dominate the domestic market, thanks to commercial innovations such as Apple's iTunes media application, and their hugely popular iPod portable media player.

However, the introduction of digital audio files, in concert with the rapid developments in home computing, soon led to an unforeseen consequence — the widespread unlicensed distribution of audio and other digital media files. The uploading and downloading of large volumes of digital media files at high speed was facilitated by freeware file sharing technologies such as Napster and BitTorrent. The concurrent development of high-volume private data storage networks, combined with rapidly increasing internet signal speeds and continuous improvements in data storage devices, fuelled an explosion in the illegal sharing of copyrighted digital media. This has caused great consternation among record labels and copyright owners such as ASCAP, who have strongly pressured government agencies to make trans-national efforts to shut down data-storage and file-sharing networks, and to prosecute site operators, and even individual downloaders.

Although infringement remains a significant issue for copyright owners, the development of digital audio has had considerable benefits for consumers. In addition to facilitating the high-volume, low-cost transfer and storage of digital audio files, this new technology has also powered an explosion in the availability of so-called "back-catalogue" titles stored in the archives of recording labels, thanks to the fact that labels can now convert old recordings and distribute them digitally at a fraction of the cost of physically reissuing albums on LP or CD. Digital audio has also enabled dramatic improvements in the restoration and remastering of acoustic and pre-digital electric recordings, and even freeware consumer-level digital software can very effectively eliminate scratches, surface noise and other unwanted sonic artefacts from old 78rpm and vinyl recordings and greatly enhance the sound quality of all but the most badly damaged records. In the field of consumer-level digital data storage, the continuing trend towards increasing capacity and falling costs means that consumers can now acquire and store vast quantities of high-quality digital media (audio, video, games and other applications), and build up media libraries consisting of tens or even hundreds of thousands of songs, albums, or videos — collections which, for all but the wealthiest, would have been both physically and financially impossible to amass in such quantities if they were on 78 or LP, yet which can now be contained on storage devices no larger than the average hardcover book.

The Digital Audio File marked the end of one era in recording and the beginning of another. Digital files effectively eliminated the need to create or use a discrete, purpose-made physical recording medium (a disc, or a reel of tape, etc.) as the primary means of capturing, manufacturing and distributing commercial sound recordings. Concurrent with the development of these digital file formats, dramatic advances in home computing and the rapid expansion of the Internet mean that digital sound recordings can now be captured, processed, reproduced, distributed and stored entirely electronically, on a range of magnetic and optical recording media, and these can be distributed almost anywhere in the world, with no loss of fidelity, and crucially, without the need to first transfer these files to some form of permanent recording medium for shipment and sale.

Music streaming services have gained popularity since the late 2000s.[4] Streaming audio does not require the listener to download or own the audio files, but instead they listen over the internet.[5] Streaming services offer an alternate method of consuming music and some follow a freemium business model. The freemium model many music streaming services use, such as Spotify and Apple Music, provide a limited amount of content for free, and then premium services for payment.[6] There are two categories in which streaming services are categorized, radio or on-demand. Streaming services such as Pandora use the radio model, allowing users to select playlists but not specific songs to listen to, while services such as Apple Music allow users to listen to both individual songs and pre-made playlists.[7]

The earliest method of sound recording and reproduction involved the live recording of a performance directly to a recording medium by an entirely mechanical process, often called "acoustical recording". In the standard procedure used until the mid-1920s, the sounds generated by the performance vibrated a diaphragm with a recording stylus connected to it while the stylus cut a groove into a soft recording medium rotating beneath it. To make this process as efficient as possible, the diaphragm was located at the apex of a hollow cone that served to collect and focus the acoustical energy, with the performers crowded around the other end. Recording balance was achieved empirically. A performer who recorded too strongly or not strongly enough would be moved away from or nearer to the mouth of the cone. The number and kind of instruments that could be recorded were limited. Brass instruments, which recorded well, were often substituted for instruments such as cellos and bass fiddles, which did not. In some early jazz recordings, a block of wood was used in place of the bass drum, which could easily overload the recording diaphragm.

In the spring of 1877 another inventor, Charles Cros, suggested that the process could be reversed by using photoengraving to convert the traced line into a groove that would guide the stylus, causing the original stylus vibrations to be recreated, passed on to the linked diaphragm, and sent back into the air as sound. An inventor from America[who?] soon eclipsed this idea, and it was not until 1887 that yet another inventor, Emile Berliner, actually photoengraved a phonautograph recording into metal and played it back.

Scott's early recordings languished in French archives until 2008, when scholars keen to resurrect the sounds captured in these and other types of early experimental recordings tracked them down. Rather than using rough 19th century technology to create playable versions, they were scanned into a computer and software was used to convert their sound-modulated traces into digital audio files. Brief excerpts from two French songs and a recitation in Italian, all recorded in 1860, are the most substantial results.[8]

The phonograph, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877,[9] could both record sound and play it back. The earliest type of phonograph sold recorded on a thin sheet of tinfoil wrapped around a grooved metal cylinder. A stylus connected to a sound-vibrated diaphragm indented the foil into the groove as the cylinder rotated. The stylus vibration was at a right angle to the recording surface, so the depth of the indentation varied with the audio-frequency changes in air pressure that carried the sound. This arrangement is known as vertical or "hill-and-dale" recording. The sound could be played back by tracing the stylus along the recorded groove and acoustically coupling its resulting vibrations to the surrounding air through the diaphragm and a so-called "amplifying" horn.

The crude tinfoil phonograph proved to be of little use except as a novelty. It was not until the late 1880s that an improved and much more useful form of phonograph was marketed. The new machines recorded on easily removable hollow wax cylinders and the groove was engraved into the surface rather than indented. The targeted use was business communication, and in that context the cylinder format had some advantages. When entertainment use proved to be the real source of profits, one seemingly negligible disadvantage became a major problem: the difficulty of making copies of a recorded cylinder in large quantities.

At first, cylinders were copied by acoustically connecting a playback machine to one or more recording machines through flexible tubing, an arrangement that degraded the audio quality of the copies. Later, a pantograph mechanism was used, but it could only produce about 25 fair copies before the original was too worn down. During a recording session, as many as a dozen machines could be arrayed in front of the performers to record multiple originals. Still, a single "take" would ultimately yield only a few hundred copies at best, so performers were booked for marathon recording sessions in which they had to repeat their most popular numbers over and over again. By 1902, successful molding processes for manufacturing prerecorded cylinders had been developed.

The wax cylinder got a competitor with the advent of the Gramophone, which was patented by Emile Berliner in 1887. The vibration of the Gramophone's recording stylus was horizontal, parallel to the recording surface, resulting in a zig-zag groove of constant depth. This is known as lateral recording. Berliner's original patent showed a lateral recording etched around the surface of a cylinder, but in practice he opted for the disc format. The Gramophones he soon began to market were intended solely for playing prerecorded entertainment discs and could not be used to record. The spiral groove on the flat surface of a disc was relatively easy to replicate: a negative metal electrotype of the original record could be used to stamp out hundreds or thousands of copies before it wore out. Early on, the copies were made of hard rubber, and sometimes of celluloid, but soon a shellac-based compound was adopted.

"Gramophone", Berliner's trademark name, was abandoned in the US in 1900 because of legal complications, with the result that in American English Gramophones and Gramophone records, along with disc records and players made by other manufacturers, were long ago brought under the umbrella term "phonograph", a word which Edison's competitors avoided using but which was never his trademark, simply a generic term he introduced and applied to cylinders, discs, tapes and any other formats capable of carrying a sound-modulated groove. In the UK, proprietary use of the name Gramophone continued for another decade until, in a court case, it was adjudged to have become genericized and so could be used freely by competing disc record makers, with the result that in British English a disc record is called a "gramophone record" and "phonograph record" is traditionally assumed to mean a cylinder.

Not all cylinder records are alike. They were made of various soft or hard waxy formulations or early plastics, sometimes in unusual sizes; did not all use the same groove pitch; and were not all recorded at the same speed. Early brown wax cylinders were usually cut at about 120 rpm, whereas later cylinders ran at 160 rpm for clearer and louder sound at the cost of reduced maximum playing time. As a medium for entertainment, the cylinder was already losing the format war with the disc by 1910, but the production of entertainment cylinders did not entirely cease until 1929 and use of the format for business dictation purposes persisted into the 1950s.

Disc records, too, were sometimes made in unusual sizes, or from unusual materials, or otherwise deviated from the format norms of their eras in some substantial way. The speed at which disc records were rotated was eventually standardized at about 78 rpm, but other speeds were sometimes used. Around 1950, slower speeds became standard: 45, 33⅓, and the rarely used 16⅔ rpm. The standard material for discs changed from shellac to vinyl, although vinyl had been used for some special-purpose records since the early 1930s and some 78 rpm shellac records were still being made in the late 1950s.

Until the mid-1920s records were played on purely mechanical record players usually powered by a wind-up spring motor. The sound was "amplified" by an external or internal horn that was coupled to the diaphragm and stylus, although there was no real amplification: the horn simply improved the efficiency with which the diaphragm's vibrations were transmitted into the open air. The recording process was in essence the same non-electronic setup operating in reverse, but with a recording stylus engraving a groove into a soft waxy master disc and carried slowly inward across it by a feed mechanism.

The advent of electrical recording in 1925 made it possible to use sensitive microphones to capture the sound and greatly improved the audio quality of records. A much wider range of frequencies could be recorded, the balance of high and low frequencies could be controlled by elementary electronic filters, and the signal could be amplified to the optimum level for driving the recording stylus. The leading record labels switched to the electrical process in 1925 and the rest soon followed, although one straggler in the US held out until 1929.

There was a period of nearly five years, from 1925 to 1930, when the top "audiophile" technology for home sound reproduction consisted of a combination of electrically recorded records with the specially-developed Victor Orthophonic Victrola, an acoustic phonograph that used waveguide engineering and a folded horn to provide a reasonably flat frequency response. The first electronically amplified record players reached the market only a few months later, around the start of 1926, but at first they were much more expensive and their audio quality was impaired by their primitive loudspeakers; they did not become common until the late 1930s.

Electrical recording increased the flexibility of the process, but the performance was still cut directly to the recording medium, so if a mistake was made the whole recording was spoiled. Disc-to-disc editing was possible, by using multiple turntables to play parts of different "takes" and recording them to a new master disc, but switching sources with split-second accuracy was difficult and lower sound quality was inevitable, so except for use in editing some early sound films and radio recordings it was rarely done.

Electrical recording made it more feasible to record one part to disc and then play that back while playing another part, recording both parts to a second disc. This and conceptually related techniques, known as overdubbing, enabled studios to create recorded "performances" that feature one or more artists each singing multiple parts or playing multiple instrument parts and that therefore could not be duplicated by the same artist or artists performing live. The first commercially issued records using overdubbing were released by the Victor Talking Machine Company in the late 1920s. However overdubbing was of limited use until the advent of audio tape. Use of tape overdubbing was pioneered by Les Paul in the 1940s.

Wire recording or magnetic wire recording is an analog type of audio storage in which a magnetic recording is made on thin steel or stainless steel wire.

The wire is pulled rapidly across a recording head, which magnetizes each point along the wire in accordance with the intensity and polarity of the electrical audio signal being supplied to the recording head at that instant. By later drawing the wire across the same or a similar head while the head is not being supplied with an electrical signal, the varying magnetic field presented by the passing wire induces a similarly varying electric current in the head, recreating the original signal at a reduced level.

Magnetic wire recording was replaced by magnetic tape recording, but devices employing one or the other of these media had been more or less simultaneously under development for many years before either came into widespread use. The principles and electronics involved are nearly identical. Wire recording initially had the advantage that the recording medium itself was already fully developed, while tape recording was held back by the need to improve the materials and methods used to manufacture the tape.

Magnetic recording was demonstrated in principle as early as 1898 by Valdemar Poulsen in his telegraphone. Magnetic wire recording, and its successor, magnetic tape recording, involve the use of a magnetized medium which moves with a constant speed past a recording head. An electrical signal, which is analogous to the sound that is to be recorded, is fed to the recording head, inducing a pattern of magnetization similar to the signal. A playback head can then pick up the changes in magnetic field from the tape and convert it into an electrical signal.

With the addition of electronic amplification developed by Curt Stille in the 1920s, the telegraphone evolved into wire recorders which were popular for voice recording and dictation during the 1940s and into the 1950s. The reproduction quality of wire recorders was significantly lower than that achievable with phonograph disk recording technology. There were also practical difficulties, such as the tendency of the wire to become tangled or snarled. Splicing could be performed by knotting together the cut wire ends, but the results were not very satisfactory.

On Christmas Day, 1932 the British Broadcasting Corporation first used a steel tape recorder for their broadcasts. The device used was a Marconi-Stille recorder,[10] a huge and dangerous machine which used steel tape that had sharp edges. The tape was 0.1 inches (2.5 mm) wide and 0.003 inches (0.076 mm) thick running at 5 feet per second (1.5 m/s) past the recording and reproducing heads. This meant that the length of tape required for a half-hour programme was nearly 1.8 miles (2.9 km) and a full reel weighed 55 pounds (25 kg).

Engineers at AEG, working with the chemical giant IG Farben, created the world's first practical magnetic tape recorder, the 'K1', which was first demonstrated in 1935. During World War II, an engineer at the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft discovered the AC biasing technique. With this technique, an inaudible high-frequency signal, typically in the range of 50 to 150Â kHz, is added to the audio signal before being applied to the recording head. Biasing radically improved the sound quality of magnetic tape recordings. By 1943 AEG had developed stereo tape recorders.

During the war, the Allies became aware of radio broadcasts that seemed to be transcriptions (much of this due to the work of Richard H. Ranger), but their audio quality was indistinguishable from that of a live broadcast and their duration was far longer than was possible with 78 rpm discs. At the end of the war, the Allies captured a number of German Magnetophon recorders from Radio Luxembourg that aroused great interest. These recorders incorporated all of the key technological features of analogue magnetic recording, particularly the use of high-frequency bias.

Development of magnetic tape recorders in the late 1940s and early 1950s is associated with the Brush Development Company and its licensee, Ampex; the equally important development of magnetic tape media itself was led by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing corporation (now known as 3M).

American audio engineer John T. Mullin and entertainer Bing Crosby were key players in the commercial development of magnetic tape. Mullin served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and was posted to Paris in the final months of World War II; his unit was assigned to find out everything they could about German radio and electronics, including the investigation of claims that the Germans had been experimenting with high-energy directed radio beams as a means of disabling the electrical systems of aircraft. Mullin's unit soon amassed a collection of hundreds of low-quality magnetic dictating machines, but it was a chance visit to a studio at Bad Neuheim near Frankfurt while investigating radio beam rumours that yielded the real prize.

Mullin was given two suitcase-sized AEG 'Magnetophon' high-fidelity recorders and fifty reels of recording tape. He had them shipped home and over the next two years he worked on the machines constantly, modifying them and improving their performance. His major aim was to interest Hollywood studios in using magnetic tape for movie soundtrack recording.

Mullin gave two public demonstrations of his machines, and they caused a sensation among American audio professionalsâ€”many listeners could not believe that what they were hearing was not a live performance. By luck, Mullin's second demonstration was held at MGM studios in Hollywood and in the audience that day was Bing Crosby's technical director, Murdo Mackenzie. He arranged for Mullin to meet Crosby and in June 1947 he gave Crosby a private demonstration of his magnetic tape recorders.

Crosby was stunned by the amazing sound quality and instantly saw the huge commercial potential of the new machines. Live music was the standard for American radio at the time and the major radio networks did not permit the use of disc recording in many programs because of their comparatively poor sound quality. But Crosby disliked the regimentation of live broadcasts, preferring the relaxed atmosphere of the recording studio. He had asked NBC to let him pre-record his 1944–45 series on transcription discs, but the network refused, so Crosby had withdrawn from live radio for a year, returning for the 1946–47 season only reluctantly.

Mullin's tape recorder came along at precisely the right moment. Crosby realized that the new technology would enable him to pre-record his radio show with a sound quality that equaled live broadcasts, and that these tapes could be replayed many times with no appreciable loss of quality. Mullin was asked to tape one show as a test and was immediately hired as Crosby's chief engineer to pre-record the rest of the series.

Crosby became the first major American music star to use tape to pre-record radio broadcasts, and the first to master commercial recordings on tape. The taped Crosby radio shows were painstakingly edited through tape-splicing to give them a pace and flow that was wholly unprecedented in radio. Mullin even claims to have been the first to use "canned laughter"; at the insistence of Crosby's head writer, Bill Morrow, he inserted a segment of raucous laughter from an earlier show into a joke in a later show that had not worked well.

Keen to make use of the new recorders as soon as possible, Crosby invested $50,000 of his own money into Ampex, and the tiny six-man concern soon became the world leader in the development of tape recording, revolutionizing radio and recording with its famous Ampex Model 200 tape deck, issued in 1948 and developed directly from Mullin's modified Magnetophones.

The next major development in magnetic tape was multitrack recording, in which the tape is divided into multiple tracks parallel with each other. Because they are carried on the same medium, the tracks stay in perfect synchronization. The first development in multitracking was stereo sound, which divided the recording head into two tracks. First developed by German audio engineers ca. 1943, 2-track recording was rapidly adopted for modern music in the 1950s because it enabled signals from two or more separate microphones to be recorded simultaneously, enabling stereophonic recordings to be made and edited conveniently. (The first stereo recordings, on disks, had been made in the 1930s, but were never issued commercially.) Stereo (either true, two-microphone stereo or multimixed) quickly became the norm for commercial classical recordings and radio broadcasts, although many pop music and jazz recordings continued to be issued in monophonic sound until the mid-1960s.

Much of the credit for the development of multitrack recording goes to guitarist, composer and technician Les Paul, who also helped design the famous electric guitar that bears his name. His experiments with tapes and recorders in the early 1950s led him to order the first custom-built eight-track recorder from Ampex, and his pioneering recordings with his then wife, singer Mary Ford, were the first to make use of the technique of multitracking to record separate elements of a musical piece asynchronously — that is, separate elements could be recorded at different times. Paul's technique enabled him to listen to the tracks he had already taped and record new parts in time alongside them.

Multitrack recording was immediately taken up in a limited way by Ampex, who soon produced a commercial 3-track recorder. These proved extremely useful for popular music, since they enabled backing music to be recorded on two tracks (either to allow the overdubbing of separate parts, or to create a full stereo backing track) while the third track was reserved for the lead vocalist. Three-track recorders remained in widespread commercial use until the mid-1960s and many famous pop recordings — including many of Phil Spector's so-called "Wall of Sound" productions and early Motown hits — were taped on Ampex 3-track recorders. Engineer Tom Dowd was among the first to use multitrack recording for popular music production while working for Atlantic Records during the 1950s.

The next important development was 4-track recording. The advent of this improved system gave recording engineers and musicians vastly greater flexibility for recording and overdubbing, and 4-track was the studio standard for most of the later 1960s. Many of the most famous recordings by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were recorded on 4-track, and the engineers at London's Abbey Road Studios became particularly adept at a technique called "reduction mixes" in the UK and "bouncing down" in the United States, in which several tracks were recorded onto one 4-track machine and then mixed together and transferred (bounced down) to one track of a second 4-track machine. In this way, it was possible to record literally dozens of separate tracks and combine them into finished recordings of great complexity.

All of the Beatles classic mid-1960s recordings, including the albums Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, were recorded in this way. There were limitations, however, because of the build-up of noise during the bouncing-down process, and the Abbey Road engineers are still famed for their ability to create dense multitrack recordings while keeping background noise to a minimum.

4-track tape also enabled the development of quadraphonic sound, in which each of the four tracks was used to simulate a complete 360-degree surround sound. A number of albums were released both in stereo and quadrophonic format in the 1970s, but 'quad' failed to gain wide commercial acceptance. Although it is now considered a gimmick, it was the direct precursor of the surround sound technology that has become standard in many modern home theatre systems.

In a professional setting today, such as a studio, audio engineers may use 24 tracks or more for their recordings, using one or more tracks for each instrument played.

The combination of the ability to edit via tape splicing and the ability to record multiple tracks revolutionized studio recording. It became common studio recording practice to record on multiple tracks, and bounce down afterward. The convenience of tape editing and multitrack recording led to the rapid adoption of magnetic tape as the primary technology for commercial musical recordings. Although 33â…“ rpm and 45 rpm vinyl records were the dominant consumer format, recordings were customarily made first on tape, then transferred to disc, with Bing Crosby leading the way in the adoption of this method in the United States.

Analog magnetic tape recording introduces noise, usually called "tape hiss", caused by the finite size of the magnetic particles in the tape. There is a direct tradeoff between noise and economics. Signal-to-noise ratio is increased at higher speeds and with wider tracks, and decreased at lower speeds and with narrower tracks.

By the late 1960s, disk reproducing equipment became so good that audiophiles soon became aware that some of the noise audible on recordings was not surface noise or deficiencies in their equipment, but reproduced tape hiss. A few specialist companies started making "direct to disc recordings", made by feeding microphone signals directly to a disk cutter (after amplification and mixing), in essence reverting to the pre-War direct method of recording. These recordings never became popular, but they dramatically demonstrated the magnitude and importance of the tape hiss problem.

Before 1963, when Philips introduced the Compact audio cassette, almost all tape recording had used the reel-to-reel (also called "open reel") format. Previous attempts to package the tape in a convenient cassette that required no threading met with limited success; the most successful was 8-track cartridge used primarily in automobiles for playback only. The Philips Compact audio cassette added much needed convenience to the tape recording format and a decade or so later had begun to dominate the consumer market, although it was to remain lower in quality than open reel formats.

In the 1970s, advances in solid-state electronics made the design and marketing of more sophisticated analog circuitry economically feasible. This led to a number of attempts to reduce tape hiss through the use of various forms of volume compression and expansion, the most notable and commercially successful being several systems developed by Dolby Laboratories. These systems divided the frequency spectrum into several bands and applied volume compression/expansion independently to each band (Engineers now often use the term "compansion" to refer to this process). The Dolby systems were very successful at increasing the effective dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio of analog audio recording; to all intents and purposes, audible tape hiss could be eliminated. The original Dolby A was only used in professional recording. Successors found use in both professional and consumer formats; Dolby B became almost universal for prerecorded music on cassette. Subsequent forms, including Dolby C, (and the short-lived Dolby S) were developed for home use.

In the 1980s, digital recording methods were introduced, and analog tape recording was gradually displaced, although it has not disappeared by any means. (Many professional studios, particularly those catering to big-budget clients, use analog recorders for multitracking and/or mixdown.) Digital audio tape never became important as a consumer recording medium partially due to legal complications arising from "piracy" fears on the part of the record companies. They had opposed magnetic tape recording when it first became available to consumers, but the technical difficulty of juggling recording levels, overload distortion, and residual tape hiss was sufficiently high that unlicensed reproduction of magnetic tape never became an insurmountable commercial problem. With digital methods, copies of recordings could be exact, and copyright infringement might have become a serious commercial problem. Digital tape is still used in professional situations and the DAT variant has found a home in computer data backup applications. Many professional and home recordists now use hard-disk-based systems for recording, burning the final mixes to recordable CDs (CD-R's).

Most Police forces in the United Kingdom (and elsewhere) still use analogue compact cassette systems to record Police Interviews as it provides a medium less prone to accusations of tampering.[citation needed]

The first attempts to record sound to an optical medium occurred around 1900. Prior to the use of recorded sound in film, theaters would have live orchestras present during silent films. The musicians would sit in the pit below the screen and would provide the background noise and set the mood for whatever was occurring in the movie.[11] In 1906, Eugene Augustin Lauste applied for a patent to record Sound-on-film, but was ahead of his time. In 1923, Lee de Forest applied for a patent to record to film; he also made a number of short experimental films, mostly of vaudeville performers. William Fox began releasing sound-on-film newsreels in 1926, the same year that Warner Bros. released Don Juan with music and sound effects recorded on discs, as well as a series of short films with fully-synchronized sound on discs. In 1927, the sound film The Jazz Singer was released; while not the first sound film, it made a tremendous hit and made the public and the film industry realize that sound film was more than a mere novelty.

The Jazz Singer used a process called Vitaphone that involved synchronizing the projected film to sound recorded on disc. It essentially amounted to playing a phonograph record, but one that was recorded with the best electrical technology of the time. Audiences used to acoustic phonographs and recordings would, in the theatre, have heard something resembling 1950s "high fidelity".

However, in the days of analog technology, no process involving a separate disk could hold synchronization precisely or reliably. Vitaphone was quickly supplanted by technologies which recorded an optical soundtrack directly onto the side of the strip of motion picture film. This was the dominant technology from the 1930s through the 1960s and is still in use as of 2013[update] although the analog soundtrack is being replaced by digital sound on film formats.

There are two types of synchronised film soundtrack, optical and magnetic. Optical sound tracks are visual renditions of sound wave forms and provide sound through a light beam and optical sensor within the projector. Magnetic sound tracks are essentially the same as used in conventional analog tape recording.

Magnetic soundtracks can be joined with the moving image but it creates an abrupt discontinuity because of the offset of the audio track relative to the picture. Whether optical or magnetic, the audio pickup must be located several inches ahead of the projection lamp, shutter and drive sprockets. There is usually a flywheel as well to smooth out the film motion to eliminate the flutter that would otherwise result from the negative pulldown mechanism. If you have films with a magnetic track, you should keep them away from strong magnetic sources, such as televisions. These can weaken or wipe the magnetic sound signal. Magnetic sound on a cellulose acetate film base is also more prone to vinegar syndrome than a film with just the image.[why?][citation needed]

For optical recording on film there are two methods utilized. Variable density recording uses changes in the darkness of the soundtrack side of the film to represent the soundwave. Variable area recording uses changes in the width of a dark strip to represent the soundwave.

In both cases, light that is sent through the part of the film that corresponds to the soundtrack changes in intensity, proportional to the original sound, and that light is not projected on the screen but converted into an electrical signal by a light sensitive device.

Optical soundtracks are prone to the same sorts of degradation that affect the picture, such as scratching and copying.

Unlike the film image that creates the illusion of continuity, soundtracks are continuous. This means that if film with a combined soundtrack is cut and spliced, the image will cut cleanly but the sound track will most likely produce a cracking sound. Fingerprints on the film may also produce cracking or interference.

In the late 1950s, the cinema industry, desperate to provide a theatre experience that would be overwhelmingly superior to television, introduced widescreen processes such as Cinerama, Todd-AO and CinemaScope. These processes at the same time introduced technical improvements in sound, generally involving the use of multitrack magnetic sound, recorded on an oxide stripe laminated onto the film. In subsequent decades, a gradual evolution occurred with more and more theatres installing various forms of magnetic-sound equipment.

In the 1990s, digital audio systems were introduced and began to prevail. In some of them the sound recording is again recorded on a separate disk, as in Vitaphone; others use a digital, optical sound track on the film itself. Digital processes can now achieve reliable and perfect synchronization.

The first digital audio recorders were reel-to-reel decks introduced by companies such as Denon (1972), Soundstream (1979) and Mitsubishi. They used a digital technology known as PCM recording. Within a few years, however, many studios were using devices that encoded the digital audio data into a standard video signal, which was then recorded on a U-matic or other videotape recorder, using the rotating-head technology that was standard for video. A similar technology was used for a consumer format, Digital Audio Tape (DAT) which used rotating heads on a narrow tape contained in a cassette. DAT records at sampling rates of 48 kHz or 44.1 kHz, the latter being the same rate used on compact discs. Bit depth is 16 bits, also the same as compact discs. DAT was a failure in the consumer-audio field (too expensive, too finicky, and crippled by anti-copying regulations), but it became popular in studios (particularly home studios) and radio stations. A failed digital tape recording system was the Digital Compact Cassette (DCC).

Within a few years after the introduction of digital recording, multitrack recorders (using stationary heads) were being produced for use in professional studios. In the early 1990s, relatively low-priced multitrack digital recorders were introduced for use in home studios; they returned to recording on videotape. The most notable of this type of recorder is the ADAT. Developed by Alesis and first released in 1991, the ADAT machine is capable of recording 8 tracks of digital audio onto a single S-VHS video cassette. The ADAT machine is still a very common fixture in professional and home studios around the world.

In the consumer market, tapes and gramophones were largely displaced by the compact disc (CD) and a lesser extent the minidisc. These recording media are fully digital and require complex electronics to play back.

Digital sound files can be stored on any computer storage medium. The development of the MP3 audio file format, and legal issues involved in copying such files, has driven most of the innovation in music distribution since their introduction in the late 1990s.

As hard disk capacities and computer CPU speeds increased at the end of the 1990s, hard disk recording became more popular. As of early 2005 hard disk recording takes two forms. One is the use of standard desktop or laptop computers, with adapters for encoding audio into two or many tracks of digital audio. These adapters can either be in-the-box soundcards or external devices, either connecting to in-box interface cards or connecting to the computer via USB or Firewire cables. The other common form of hard disk recording uses a dedicated recorder which contains analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters as well as one or two removable hard drives for data storage. Such recorders, packing 24 tracks in a few units of rack space, are actually single-purpose computers, which can in turn be connected to standard computers for editing.

Vinyl records, or long playing (LP) records, have become popular again as a way to consume music despite the rise of digital media. Over 15 million units were sold between 2008 and 2012[12], their sales reaching the highest level in 2012 since 1993. Popular artists have begun releasing their albums on vinyl, and stores such as Urban Outfitters and Whole Foods have started selling them. [13] Popular music corporations, such as Sony, have started manufacturing LP for the first time since 1989 as this medium becomes more popular. However, some companies are facing production problems as there are only 16 record plants currently functioning in the United States. [14]

The analog tape recorder made it possible to erase or record over a previous recording so that mistakes could be fixed. Another advantage of recording on tape is the ability to cut the tape and join it back together. This allows the recording to be edited. Pieces of the recording can be removed, or rearranged. See also audio editing, audio mixing, multitrack recording.

The advent of electronic instruments (especially keyboards and synthesizers), effects and other instruments has led to the importance of MIDI in recording. For example, using MIDI timecode, it is possible to have different equipment 'trigger' without direct human intervention at the time of recording.

In more recent times, computers (digital audio workstations) have found an increasing role in the recording studio, as their use eases the tasks of cutting and looping, as well as allowing for instantaneous changes, such as duplication of parts, the addition of effects and the rearranging of parts of the recording.


what was the hotel in some like it hot

The hotel was first featured in a film when it was used as a backdrop for The Flying Fleet (1927). Since then, it has been featured in at least 12 other films, including: Some Like It Hot (1959), starring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, and Tony Curtis, where it represented the "Seminole Ritz" in southern Florida; Wicked, Wicked (1973), which was completely filmed on location there; The Stunt Man (1980), starring Peter O'Toole; and My Blue Heaven (1990), starring Steve Martin and Rick Moranis.[38]

Hotel del Coronado

Hotel del Coronado (also known as The Del and Hotel Del) is a historic beachfront hotel in the city of Coronado, just across the San Diego Bay from San Diego, California. It is one of the few surviving examples of an American architectural genre: the wooden Victorian beach resort. It is the second largest wooden structure in the United States (after the Tillamook Air Museum in Tillamook, Oregon) and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977[3][5] and a California Historical Landmark in 1970.[4]

When it opened in 1888, it was the largest resort hotel in the world. It has hosted presidents, royalty, and celebrities through the years.[6] The hotel has been featured in numerous movies and books.

The hotel received a Four Diamond rating from the American Automobile Association[7] and was once listed by USA Today as one of the top ten resorts in the world.[8]

In the mid-1880s, the San Diego region was in the midst of one of its first real estate booms. At that time, it was common for a developer to build a grand hotel as a draw for what would otherwise be a barren landscape. The Hollywood Hotel in Hollywood, California, the Raymond Hotel in Pasadena, the Hotel Del Monte in Monterey, and the Hotel Redondo in Redondo Beach, California, were similar grand hotels built as development enticements during this era.[9]

In November 1885, five investors went together to buy all of Coronado and North Island, approximately 4,000 acres, for $110,000.[10] Those people were E. S. Babcock, retired railroad executive from Evansville, Indiana; Hampton L. Story, of the Story & Clark Piano Company of Chicago; Jacob Gruendike, president of the First National Bank of San Diego; Heber Ingle and Joseph Collett.

In April 1886, Babcock and Story created the Coronado Beach Company, after which they established a number of additional enterprises to support the development of Coronado. The Coronado Ferry Company built wharves and storage facilities and developed ferryboat service between Coronado and San Diego; The Coronado Water Company piped fresh water under San Diego Bay from the San Diego River; The Coronado Railroad Company provided rail lines in Coronado and eventually a "Belt Line" connected Coronado to San Diego via the Strand. Hotel del Coronado also boasted one of the largest electrical power plants in the state, providing service to the entire community of Coronado until the 1920s.

The men hired architect James W. Reid, a native of New Brunswick, Canada, who first practiced in Evansville and Terre Haute. His younger brother Merritt Reid, a partner in Reid Brothers, the Evansville firm, stayed in Indiana, but brother Watson Reid helped supervise the 2,000 laborers needed.[9]

Babcock's visions for the hotel were grand:

"It would be built around a court...a garden of tropical trees, shrubs and flowers,.... From the south end, the foyer should open to Glorietta Bay with verandas for rest and promenade. On the ocean corner, there should be a pavilion tower, and northward along the ocean, a colonnade, terraced in grass to the beach. The dining wing should project at an angle from the southeast corner of the court and be almost detached, to give full value to the view of the ocean, bay and city."[11]

Construction of the hotel began in March 1887, "on a sandspit populated by jack rabbits and coyotes".[12] If the hotel were ever to be built, one of numerous problems to overcome was the absence of lumber and labor in the San Diego area. The lumber problem was solved with contracts for exclusive rights to all raw lumber production of the Dolbeer & Carson Lumber Company of Eureka, California, which was one of the West's largest. Planing mills were built on site to finish raw lumber shipped directly from the Dolbeer & Carson lumber yards, located on the shores of Humboldt Bay.[9] To obtain brick and concrete, Reid built his own kilns. He also constructed a metal shop and iron works.[13]

Labor was provided largely by Chinese immigrants from San Francisco and Oakland.[9]

The Crown Room was Reid's masterpiece. Its wooden ceiling was installed with pegs and glue. Not a single nail was used.[14]

Landscaping for the hotel was completed by Kate Sessions.[10]

Reid's plans were being revised and added to constantly. To deal with fire hazards, a freshwater pipeline was run under San Diego Bay. Water tanks and gravity flow sprinklers were installed. He also built two giant cisterns with concrete walls a foot thick in the basement to store rainwater. Although these cisterns were never used for rainwater, they were reputedly very handy for storing alcoholic beverages during Prohibition. Reid also installed the world's first oil furnace in the new hotel, prompting a Los Angeles oil company to build tankers to carry the oil to Coronado.[13] Electric lighting in a hotel was also a world first. The electric wires were installed inside the gas lines, so if the "new-fangled" electricity didn't work, they could always pipe gas in to illuminate the rooms.[9] Contrary to popular rumor, Thomas Edison was not involved in the installation of The Del's electrical system. The electricity was installed by the Mather Electric Company out of Chicago (sometimes referred to as Mather-Perkins Company). An early Del brochure touted its "Mather incandescent electric lamps, of which there are 2,500." Electricity was still new to San Diego, having been first introduced in 1886.

In 1904, Hotel del Coronado introduced the world's first electrically lit, outdoor living Christmas tree. From the San Diego Union, December 25, 1904: "The tree selected for the honor is one of the three splendid Norfolk Island pines on the plaza [grassy area in front of the hotel]. It has attained a height of fifty feet and its branches stand proudly forth. All day yesterday electricians were busy fitting it up and by night 250 lights of many colors gave beauty to the fine old pine. Lanterns, great and small, hung from its boughs. And now that an open-air Christmas tree had been introduced, it is likely that another Christmas Eve will find many California gardens aglow with light scattered from living foliage."

When the 399-room hotel opened for business in February 1888,[10][15] 1,440 San Diegans traveled across the bay. Reports of the new grand hotel were wired across the country, but just as the hotel was nearing completion, the Southern California land boom collapsed. Babcock and Story needed additional funds at a time when many people were deserting San Diego. Babcock turned to Captain Charles T. Hinde and sugar magnate John D. Spreckels, who lent them $100,000 to finish the hotel. The Coronado Beach Company was then capitalized with three million United States dollars. The company directors at this time were E.S. Babcock, John Diedrich Spreckels, Captain Charles T. Hinde, H.W. Mallett, and Giles Kellogg.[16] By 1890 Spreckels bought out both Babcock and Story. The Spreckels family retained ownership of the hotel until 1948.[9]

The original grounds had many amenities, including an Olympic-sized salt water pool, tennis courts, and a yacht club with architecture resembling the hotel's grand tower. A Japanese tea garden, an ostrich farm, billiards, bowling alleys, hunting expeditions, and deep sea fishing were some of the many features offered to its guests.[9]

On April 7, 1920, Edward, Prince of Wales was honored with a grand banquet in the Crown Room. There has been speculation that it was at this event that he first met his future wife Wallis Spencer, later known as Wallis Simpson, who lived in Coronado at the time.[14] However, most historians believe they did not meet at that time,[17] and both Edward and Wallis wrote in their memoirs that they met much later.[18]

The popularity of the hotel was established before the 1920s. It already had hosted Presidents Harrison, McKinley, Taft, and Wilson.[19] By the 1920s Hollywood's stars and starlets discovered that 'the Del' was the 'in place' to stay and many celebrities made their way south to party during the era of Prohibition. Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn and Mae West were a few of the many actors who stayed at the hotel.[20]

On New Year's Day 1937, during the Great Depression, the gambling ship SS Monte Carlo, known for "drinks, dice, and dolls", was shipwrecked on the beach about a quarter mile south of the Hotel del Coronado.[21]

During World War II, many West Coast resorts and hotels were taken over by the U.S. government for use as housing and hospitals. The Hotel del Coronado housed many pilots, who were being trained at nearby North Island Naval Air Station on a contract basis, but it was never commandeered. General manager Steven Royce convinced the Navy to abstain from taking over the hotel, because most of the additional rooms were being used to house the families of officers. He pointed out that "the fathers, mothers and wives were given priority to the rooms because it may be the last time they will see their sons and husbands." Ultimately the Navy agreed, and the hotel never was appropriated.[22]

The hotel was designated as a "wartime casualty station". It began a victory garden program, planting vegetables on all spare grounds around the hotel.[23]

Barney Goodman purchased the hotel from the Spreckels in 1948.[24] From the end of World War II until 1960, the hotel began to age. While still outwardly beautiful, neglect was evident. In 1960, local millionaire John Alessio purchased the hotel and spent $2 million on refurbishment and redecorating.[25]

Alessio sold the hotel to M. Larry Lawrence in 1963. Lawrence's initial plan was to develop the land around the hotel and ultimately, to demolish it.[26] Lawrence later changed his mind. During his tenure, Lawrence invested $150 million to refurbish and expand much of the hotel. He doubled its capacity to 700 rooms. He added the Grande Hall Convention Center and two seven-story Ocean Towers just south of the hotel.

The Lawrence family sold the hotel to the Travelers Group after Lawrence's death in 1996.[27] The Travelers Group completed a $55 million upgrade of the hotel in 2001, which included seismic retrofitting.[28]

While retaining its classic Victorian look, the hotel continues to upgrade its facilities. In July 2005, the hotel obtained approval to construct up to 37 limited-term occupancy cottages and villas on the property. They also received approval to add up to 205 additional rooms.[28]

The hotel has been sold in several transactions between financial institutions. In 2003, Travelers sold the property to CNL Hospitality Properties Inc. and KSL Recreation Corp (CNL/KSL). This ownership group completed a $10 million upgrade of 381 rooms in June, 2005. The hotel was then owned by the Blackstone Group LP (60%), Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc. (34.5%), and KSL Resorts (5.5%). When Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc. bought its stake in 2006, the hotel was valued at $745 million; as of 2011, the hotel was valued at roughly $590 million.[29] In 2014, Strategic Hotels & Resorts became full owners of the hotel.[30] In December 2015, Blackstone purchased Strategic Hotels & Resorts.

In March 2016, Blackstone sold Strategic Hotels & Resorts to Anbang Insurance Group, a Beijing-based Chinese insurance company, in a $6.5 billion deal involving multiple resorts. Anbang thus bought 16 luxury American hotel properties including the Hotel del Coronado.[31] Fifteen of the 16 were immediately transferred to Anbang. However, the sale of the Hotel del Coronado was held up because of concerns expressed by the federal inter-agency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews acquisitions of U.S. businesses by foreign investors for possible national security risks. The agency was concerned about the hotel's proximity to major Navy bases.[32] In October 2016 it was reported that the deal had fallen through and the hotel would remain in Blackstone's ownership.[33]

In August 2017, Hilton Hotels and Resorts took over the management of Hotel del Coronado as part of their Curio Collection. The resort is still owned by Blackstone and the name Hotel del Coronado has not changed.[34]

Notable guests have included Thomas Edison, L. Frank Baum, Charlie Chaplin, King Kalakaua of Hawaii,[35] Vincent Price, Babe Ruth, James Stewart, Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn. More recently, guests have included Kevin Costner, Whoopi Goldberg, Gene Hackman, George Harrison, Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, Madonna, Barbra Streisand, and Oprah Winfrey.[36]

The following presidents have stayed at the hotel: Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.[19]

Another famous resident of the hotel is the purported ghost of Kate Morgan. On November 24, 1892, she checked into room 302 (then 3312, now 3327). She told staff she was awaiting the arrival of her brother who was a doctor. She said he was going to treat her stomach cancer, but he never arrived. She was found dead on the steps leading to the beach three days later. The case was declared a suicide; she had shot herself.[37] Another tragedy took place on the beach at the hotel in 1904 when actress Isadore Rush drowned.

The science historian James Burke filmed his special The Neuron Suite at the Coronado.[39]

The Hotel del Coronado was the primary location for the filming of the fantasy-comedy feature film Daydream Hotel, which had its world premiere at the 1st Annual Coronado Island Film Festival in January 2016.[40]

The hotel is featured on a US Postage Stamp honoring director Billy Wilder, with images of Marilyn Monroe and the hotel from Some Like It Hot.[49]

Each December since 1994, Lamb's Players Theatre and the hotel have presented An American Christmas, a 3-hour "Feast & Celebration" set 100 years earlier, in the hotel's ballroom.

The hotel stood in for the fictional Mansfield House during host segments of the NBC anthology series Ghost Story in 1972. The storylines of Baywatch season 4, episodes 14 and 15, called "Coronado del Soul" Parts 1 and 2, evolve in and around the hotel.

Front of the Hotel del Coronado

Dragon Tree located at the Hotel del Coronado

Old building of the Hotel del Coronado

The entrance sign at The Del

A full view of The Hotel del Coronado


who founded the red cross to relieve the suffering of the war wounded

Henry Dunant (born Jean-Henri Dunant; 8 May 1828 – 30 October 1910), also known as Henri Dunant, was a Swiss businessman and social activist, the founder of the Red Cross, and the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The 1864 Geneva Convention was based on Dunant's ideas. In 1901 he received the first Nobel Peace Prize together with Frédéric Passy, making Dunant the first Swiss Nobel laureate.

Henry Dunant

During a business trip in 1859, Dunant was witness to the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino in modern-day Italy. He recorded his memories and experiences in the book A Memory of Solferino which inspired the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1863.

Dunant was born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1828 as the first son of businessman Jean-Jacques Dunant and Antoinette Dunant-Colladon. His family was devoutly Calvinist and had significant influence in Geneva society. His parents stressed the value of social work, and his father was active helping orphans and parolees, while his mother worked with the sick and poor. His father worked in a prison and an orphanage.

Dunant grew up during the period of religious awakening known as the Réveil, and at age 18 he joined the Geneva Society for Alms giving. In the following year, together with friends, he founded the so-called "Thursday Association", a loose band of young men that met to study the Bible and help the poor, and he spent much of his free time engaged in prison visits and social work. On 30 November 1852, he founded the Geneva chapter of the YMCA and three years later he took part in the Paris meeting devoted to the founding of its international organization.

In 1849, at age 21, Dunant was forced to leave the Collège Calvin due to poor grades, and he began an apprenticeship with the money-changing firm Lullin et Sautter. After its successful conclusion, he remained as an employee of the bank.

In 1853, Dunant visited Algeria, Tunisia, and Sicily, on assignment with a company devoted to the "colonies of Setif" (Compagnie genevoise des Colonies de Sétif). Despite little experience, he successfully fulfilled the assignment. Inspired by the trip, he wrote his first book with the title An Account of the Regency in Tunis (Notice sur la Régence de Tunis), published in 1858.

In 1856, he created a business to operate in foreign colonies, and, after being granted a land concession by French-occupied Algeria, a corn-growing and trading company called the Financial and Industrial Company of Mons-Djémila Mills (Société financière et industrielle des Moulins des Mons-Djémila). However, the land and water rights were not clearly assigned, and the colonial authorities were not especially cooperative. As a result, Dunant decided to appeal directly to French emperor Napoléon III, who was with his army in Lombardy at the time. France was fighting on the side of Piedmont-Sardinia against Austria, who had occupied much of today's Italy. Napoleon's headquarters were located in the small city of Solferino. Dunant wrote a flattering book full of praise for Napoleon III with the intention to present it to the emperor, and then traveled to Solferino to meet with him personally.

Dunant arrived in Solferino on the evening of 24 June 1859, on the same day a battle between the two sides had occurred nearby. Twenty-three thousand wounded, dying and dead remained on the battlefield, and there appeared to be little attempt to provide care. Shocked, Dunant himself took the initiative to organize the civilian population, especially the women and girls, to provide assistance to the injured and sick soldiers. They lacked sufficient materials and supplies, and Dunant himself organized the purchase of needed materials and helped erect makeshift hospitals. He convinced the population to service the wounded without regard to their side in the conflict as per the slogan "Tutti fratelli" (All are brothers) coined by the women of nearby city Castiglione delle Stiviere. He also succeeded in gaining the release of Austrian doctors captured by the French.

After returning to Geneva early in July, Dunant decided to write a book about his experiences, which he titled Un Souvenir de Solferino (A Memory of Solferino). It was published in 1862 in an edition of 1,600 copies and was printed at Dunant's own expense. Within the book, he described the battle, its costs, and the chaotic circumstances afterwards. He also developed the idea that in the future a neutral organization should exist to provide care to wounded soldiers. He distributed the book to many leading political and military figures in Europe.

Dunant also began to travel through Europe to promote his ideas. His book was largely positively received, and the President of the Geneva Society for Public Welfare, jurist Gustave Moynier, made the book and its suggestions the topic of the 9 February 1863 meeting of the organization. Dunant's recommendations were examined and positively assessed by the members. They created a five-person Committee to further pursue the possibility of their implementation and made Dunant one of the members. The others were Moynier, the Swiss army general Henri Dufour, and doctors Louis Appia and Théodore Maunoir. Their first meeting on 17 February 1863 is now considered the founding date of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

From early on, Moynier and Dunant had increasing disagreements and conflicts regarding their respective visions and plans. Moynier considered Dunant's idea to establish neutrality protections for care providers unfeasible and advised Dunant not to insist upon this concept. However, Dunant continued to advocate this position in his travels and conversations with high-ranking political and military figures. This intensified the personal conflict between Moynier, who took a rather pragmatic approach to the project, and Dunant, who was the visionary idealist among the five, and led to efforts by Moynier to attack Dunant and his bid for leadership.

In October 1863, 14 states took part in a meeting in Geneva organized by the committee to discuss the improvement of care for wounded soldiers. Dunant himself, however, was only a protocol leader because of Moynier's efforts to diminish his role. A year later on 22 August 1864, a diplomatic conference organized by the Swiss Parliament led to the signing of the First Geneva Convention by 12 states. Dunant, again, was only in charge of organizing accommodation for the attendees.

Dunant's businesses in Algeria had suffered, partially because of his devotion to his humanistic ideals. In April 1867, the bankruptcy of the financial firm CrÃ©dit Genevois led to a scandal involving Dunant. He was forced to declare bankruptcy and was condemned by the Geneva Trade Court on 17 August 1868 for deceptive practices in the bankruptcies. Due to their investments in the firm, his family and many of his friends were also heavily affected by the downfall of the company. The social outcry in Geneva, a city deeply rooted in Calvinist traditions, also led to calls for him to separate himself from the International Committee. On 25 August 1868, he resigned as Secretary and, on 8 September, he was fully removed from the Committee. Moynier, who had become President of the Committee in 1864, played a major role in his expulsion.

In February 1868, Dunant's mother died. Later that year he was also expelled from the YMCA.[why?] In March 1867, he left his home city Geneva and would not return for the rest of his life. In the following years, Moynier likely used his influence to attempt to ensure that Dunant would not receive assistance and support from his friends. For example, the gold medal prize of Sciences Morales at the Paris World's Fair did not go to Dunant as originally planned but to Moynier, Dufour, and Dunant together so that the prize money would only go to the Committee as a whole. NapolÃ©on III's offer to take over half of Dunant's debts if Dunant's friends would secure the other half was also thwarted by Moynier's efforts.

Dunant moved to Paris, where he lived in meager conditions. However, he continued to pursue his humanitarian ideas and plans. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), he founded the Common Relief Society (Allgemeine Fürsorgegesellschaft) and soon after the Common Alliance for Order and Civilization (Allgemeine Allianz für Ordnung und Zivilisation). He argued for disarmament negotiations and for the erection of an international court to mediate international conflicts. Later he worked for the creation of a world library, an idea which had echoes in future projects such as UNESCO.

In his continued pursuit and advocacy of his ideas, he further neglected his personal situation and income, falling further in debt and being shunned by his acquaintances. Despite being appointed an honorary member of the national Red Cross societies of Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, Prussia and Spain, he was nearly forgotten in the official discourse of the Red Cross Movement, even as it was rapidly expanding to new countries. He lived in poverty, moving to various places between 1874 and 1886, including Stuttgart, Rome, Corfu, Basel, and Karlsruhe. In Stuttgart he met the Tübingen University student Rudolf Müller with whom he would have a close friendship. In 1881, together with friends from Stuttgart, he went to the small Swiss resort village Heiden for the first time. In 1887 while living in London, he began to receive some monthly financial support from some distant family members. This enabled him to live a somewhat more secure existence, and he moved to Heiden in July. He spent the rest of his life there, and after 30 April 1892 he lived in a hospital and nursing home led by Dr. Hermann Altherr.

In Heiden, he met the young teacher Wilhelm Sonderegger and his wife Susanna; they encouraged him to record his life experiences. Sonderegger's wife founded a branch of the Red Cross in Heiden and in 1890 Dunant became its honorary president. With Sonderegger, Dunant hoped to further promote his ideas, including publishing a new edition of his book. However, their friendship later was strained by Dunant's unjustified accusations that Sonderegger, with Moynier in Geneva, was somehow conspiring against Dunant. Sonderegger died in 1904 at the age of only forty-two. Despite their strained relationship, Dunant was deeply moved by the unexpected death. Wilhelm and Susanna Sonderegger's admiration for Dunant, felt by both even after Dunant's allegations, was passed on to their children. In 1935, their son RenÃ© published a compilation of letters from Dunant to his father.

In September 1895, Georg Baumberger, the chief editor of the St. Gall newspaper Die Ostschweiz, wrote an article about the Red Cross founder, whom he had met and conversed with during a walk in Heiden a month earlier. The article entitled "Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross", appeared in the German Illustrated Magazine Ãœber Land und Meer, and the article was soon reprinted in other publications throughout Europe. The article struck a chord, and he received renewed attention and support. He received the Swiss Binet-Fendt Prize and a note from Pope Leo XIII. Because of support from Russian tsarist widow Maria Feodorovna and other donations, his financial situation improved remarkably.

In 1897, Rudolf MÃ¼ller, who was now working as a teacher in Stuttgart, wrote a book about the origins of the Red Cross, altering the official history to stress Dunant's role. The book also contained the text of A Memory of Solferino. Dunant began an exchange of correspondence with Bertha von Suttner and wrote numerous articles and writings. He was especially active in writing about women's rights, and in 1897 facilitated the founding of a "Green Cross" women's organization whose only section was briefly active in Brussels.

In 1901, Dunant was awarded the first-ever Nobel Peace Prize for his role in founding the International Red Cross Movement and initiating the Geneva Convention. By public and private means, Müller, and later Norwegian military physician Hans Daae (who had received a copy of Müller's book), advocated Dunant's case to the Nobel committee over the course of 4 years.[4][5] The award was jointly given to French pacifist Frédéric Passy, founder of the Peace League and active with Dunant in the Alliance for Order and Civilization. The official congratulations which he received from the International Committee finally represented the rehabilitation of Dunant's reputation:

"There is no man who more deserves this honour, for it was you, forty years ago, who set on foot the international organization for the relief of the wounded on the battlefield. Without you, the Red Cross, the supreme humanitarian achievement of the nineteenth century would probably have never been undertaken."

Moynier and the International Committee as a whole had also been nominated for the prize. Although Dunant was supported by a broad spectrum in the selection process, he was still a controversial candidate. Some argued that the Red Cross and the Geneva Convention had made war more attractive and imaginable by eliminating some of its suffering. Therefore, Müller, in a letter to the committee, argued that the prize should be divided between Dunant and Passy, who for some time in the debate had been the leading candidate to be the sole recipient of the prize. Müller also suggested that if a prize were to be warranted for Dunant, it should be given immediately because of his advanced age and ill health.

By dividing the prize between Passy, a pacifist, and Dunant, a humanitarian, the Nobel Committee set a precedent for the conditions of the Nobel Peace Prize selection which would have significant consequences in later years. A section of Nobel's will had indicated that the prize should go to an individual who had worked to reduce or eliminate standing armies, or directly to promote peace conferences, which made Passy a natural choice for his peace work. On the other hand, the arguably distinct bestowal for humanitarian effort alone was seen by some as a wide interpretation of Nobel's will. However, another part of Nobel's testament marked the prize for the individual who had best enhanced the "brotherhood of people," which could be interpreted more generally as seeing humanitarian work like Dunant's as connected to peacemaking as well. Many recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize in later years can be assigned to either of these two categories first roughly established by the Nobel committee's decision in 1901.

Hans Daae succeeded in placing Dunant's part of the prize money, 104,000 Swiss Francs, in a Norwegian Bank and preventing access by his creditors. Dunant himself never spent any of the money during his lifetime, continuing to live simply and reserving it for bequests in his will to those who cared for him and charitable causes.[4]

Among several other awards in the following years, in 1903 Dunant was given an honorary doctorate by the medical faculty of the University of Heidelberg. He lived in the nursing home in Heiden until his death. In the final years of his life, he suffered from depression and paranoia about pursuit by his creditors and Moynier. There were even days when Dunant insisted that the cook of the nursing home first taste his food before his eyes to protect him against possible poisoning. In his final years, he spurned and attacked Calvinism and organized religion generally. He was said to be agnostic.[6]

According to his nurses, the final act of his life was to send a copy of MÃ¼ller's book to the Italian queen with a personal dedication. He died on 30 October 1910, and his final words were "Where has humanity gone?" He outlived his nemesis Moynier by just two months. Despite the ICRC's congratulations at the bestowal of the Nobel prize, the two rivals never reached a reconciliation.

According to his wishes, he was buried without ceremony in the Sihlfeld Cemetery in Zurich. In his will, he donated funds to secure a "free bed" in the Heiden nursing home always to be available for a poor citizen of the region and deeded some money to friends and charitable organizations in Norway and Switzerland. The remaining funds went to his creditors partially relieving his debt; his inability to fully erase his debts was a major burden to him until his death.

His birthday, 8 May, is celebrated as the World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day. The former nursing home in Heiden now houses the Henry Dunant Museum. In Geneva and other places there are numerous streets, squares, and schools named after him. The Henry Dunant Medal, awarded every two years by the standing commission of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is its highest decoration.

His life is represented, with some fictional elements, in the film D'homme à hommes (1948), starring Jean-Louis Barrault, and the period of his life when the Red Cross was founded in the international film coproduction Henry Dunant: Red on the Cross (2006). In 2010 the Takarazuka Revue staged a musical based on his time in Solferino and the founding of the Red Cross entitled Dawn at Solferino, or Where has Humanity Gone?.

In honour of Henry Dunant, the second highest peak in Switzerland was renamed to Dunantspitze (Peak Dunant[7]) by Swiss Federal President Didier Burkhalter on 6 October 2014.[8]

Henry Dunant Hospital is a general hospital in Athens, Greece.[9]


minister for housing planning and local government ireland

The current Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government is Eoghan Murphy, TD. He is assisted by:

The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government (Irish: An tAire Tithíochta, Pleanála agus Rialtais Áitiúil) is the senior minister at the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government in the Government of Ireland.

The Minister is responsible for, among other matters:


drug controller general of india under which ministry

Drug Controller General of India under the gamut of Central Drugs Standard Control Organization is responsible for approval of licenses of specified categories of drugs such as blood and blood products, IV fluids, vaccines and sera in India.[1]

Drug Controller General of India

The current DCGI is Dr. G.N.Singh.[2]

Former DCGIs include Dr. Surinder Singh.

DCGI lay down the standard and quality of manufacturing, selling, import and distribution of drugs in India.

Acting as appellate authority in case of any dispute regarding the quality of drugs.

Preparation and maintenance of national reference standard.

To bring about the uniformity in the enforcement of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act.

Training of Drug Analysts deputed by State Drug Control Laboratories and other Institutions

Analysis of Cosmetics received as survey samples from CDSCO (central drug standard control organisation)

the central government have established 4 zonal offices of CDSCO at Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, and Ghaziabad, which works in close collaboration with the state control administration and assist them in securing uniform enforcement of the Drug Act.