why did raffles establish a settlement in singapore

In 1818, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles was appointed Lieutenant Governor of the British colony at Bencoolen. Raffles believed that the British should find a way to challenge the dominance of the Dutch in the area. The trade route between China and British India passed through the Malacca Strait, and with the growing trade with China, that route would become increasingly important. However, the Dutch had tight control over the trade in the region and intended to enforce the exclusive rights of its company ships to trade, and that trade should be conducted at its entrepot Batavia. British trading ships were heavily taxed at Dutch ports, stifling British trade in the region.[6][7]

Founding of modern Singapore

The establishment of a British trading post in Singapore in 1819 by Sir Stamford Raffles led to its founding as a British colony in 1824. This event has generally been understood to mark the founding of colonial Singapore,[1] a break from its status as a port in ancient times during the Srivijaya and Majapahit eras, and later, as part of Melaka and Johor.

A significant port and settlement, known as Temasek, later renamed Singapura, existed on the island of Singapore in the 14th century. Vietnamese records indicate possible diplomatic relationship between Temasek and Vietnam in the 13th century,[2]:181–182 and Chinese documents describe settlements there in the 14th century.[3] It was likely a vassal state of both the Majapahit Empire and the Siamese at different times in the 14th century.[2]:183–185 Around the end of the 14th century, its ruler Parameswara was attacked by either the Majapahit or the Siamese, forcing him to move on to Melaka where he founded the Sultanate of Malacca,[2]:155–163 Archaeological evidence suggests that the main settlement on Fort Canning was abandoned around this time, although a small-scale trading settlement continued in Singapore for some time afterwards.[4]:21–22 Between the 16th and 19th centuries, the Malay archipelago was gradually taken over by the European colonial powers, beginning with the Portuguese conquest of Malacca Sultanate in 1511. In 1613, the Portuguese burnt down a trading settlement at the mouth of the Singapore River, after which Singapore lapsed into insignificance in the history of the region for two hundred years.[5]

The early dominance of the Portuguese was challenged during the 17th century by the Dutch, who came to control most of the region's ports. The Dutch established a monopoly over trade within the archipelago, particularly in spices, then the region's most important product. Other colonial powers, including the British, were limited to a relatively minor presence in that period.

Raffles reasoned that the way to challenge the Dutch was to establish a new port in the region. Existing British ports were not in a strategic enough position to becoming major trading centres. Penang was too far north of the southern narrow part of Straits of Malacca controlled by the Dutch, whereas Bencoolen faced the Indian Ocean near the Sunda Strait, a much less important area as it is too far away from the main trading route.[8] Many other possible sites were either controlled by the Dutch, or had other problems.

In 1818, Raffles managed to convince Lord Hastings, the then governor-general of India and his superior in the British East India Company, to fund an expedition to establish a new British base in the region, but with the proviso that it should not antagonise the Dutch.[7] Raffles then searched for several weeks. He found several islands that seemed promising, but were either already occupied by the Dutch, or lacked a suitable harbor.

Eventually Raffles settled on the island of Singapore, because of its position at the southern tip of the Malay peninsula, near the Straits of Malacca, and possessed an excellent natural harbor, fresh water supplies, and timber for repairing ships. Most importantly, it was unoccupied by the Dutch.[7]

Raffles' expedition arrived in Singapore on 29 January 1819 (although they landed on Saint John's Island the previous day).[9] He found a Malay settlement at the mouth of the Singapore River, headed by a Temenggong (governor) for the Sultan of Joho. The Temenggong had originally moved to Singapore from Johor in 1811 with a group of Malays, and when Raffles arrived, there were an estimated 150 people governed by the Temenggong, mostly of them Malays, with around 30 Chinese.[10] Although the island was nominally ruled by Johor, the political situation was precarious for the Sultan of Johor at the time. The incumbent Sultan of Johor, Tengku Abdul Rahman, was controlled by the Dutch and the Bugis, and would never agree to a British base in Singapore. However, Abdul Rahman was Sultan only because his older brother, Tengku Hussein, also known as Tengku Long, had been away in Pahang getting married when their father died. Hussein was then living in exile in the Riau Islands.[11]

With the Temenggong's help, Raffles smuggled Tengku Hussein to Singapore. He offered to recognize Hussein as the rightful Sultan of Johor, and provide him with a yearly payment; in return, Hussein would grant the British East India Company the right to establish a trading post on Singapore.[7] In the agreement, Sultan Husain would receive a yearly sum of 5,000 Spanish dollars, with the Temenggong receiving a yearly sum of 3,000 Spanish dollars.[12] This agreement was ratified with a formal treaty signed on 6 February 1819.[13][14]

Raffles returned to British Bencoolen (Sumatra) the day after the signing of the treaty, leaving Major William Farquhar as the Resident and Commandant of the new settlement,[12] supported initially consisted of some artillery and a single regiment of Indian soldiers. Establishing a trading port from scratch was in itself a daunting prospect, but Farquhar's administration was, in addition, practically unfunded, as Raffles did not wish his superiors to view Singapore as a liability. In addition, it was forbidden from earning revenue by imposing port duties, Raffles having decided from the outset that Singapore would be a free port.[7]

In spite of these difficulties, the new colony rapidly proved to be a spectacular success. As news of the free port spread across the archipelago, Bugis, Peranakan Chinese, and Arab traders flocked to the island, seeking to circumvent the Dutch trading restrictions. During the first year of operation, $400,000 (Spanish dollars) worth of trade passed through Singapore. It has been estimate that when Raffles arrived in 1819, the total population of the whole of Singapore was around a thousand, mostly of various local tribes.[15] By 1821, the island's population had increased to around five thousand, and the trade volume was $8 million. By 1825, the population had passed the ten thousand mark, with a trade volume of $22 million. (By comparison, the trade volume for the long-established port of Penang was $8.5 million during the same year.)[7]

Raffles returned to Singapore in 1822. Although Farquhar had successfully led the settlement through its difficult early years, Raffles was critical of many of the decisions he had made. For instance, in order to generate much-needed revenue for the government, Farquhar had resorted to selling licenses for gambling and the sale of opium, which Raffles saw as social evils. Raffles was also appalled by the slave trade tolerated by Farquhar.[4]:41 Raffles arranged for the dismissal of Farquhar, who was replaced by John Crawfurd. Raffles took over the administration himself, and set about drafting a set of new policies for the settlement.[4]:39â€“41

Raffles banned slavery, closed all gambling dens, prohibited the carrying of weapons, and imposed heavy taxation to discourage what he considered vices such as drunkenness and opium smoking.[4]:39â€“41 Raffles, dismayed at the disarray of the colony, also arranged to organise Singapore into functional and ethnic subdivisions under the drafted Raffles Plan of Singapore.[7] Today, the remnants of this organisation can be found in the ethnic neighbourhoods.

Further agreements of the Malay chiefs would gradually erode their influence and control over Singapore. In December 1822, the Malay chiefs' claim to Singapore's revenue was changed to a monthly payment. On 7 June 1823, Raffles arranged for another agreement with the Sultan and Temenggong to buy out their judicial power and rights to the lands except for the areas reserved for the Sultan and Temenggong.[4]:39–41 They would gave up their rights to numerous functions on the island, including the collection of port taxes, in return for lifelong monthly payments of $1500 and $800 respectively.[16] This agreement brought the island squarely under British law, with the proviso that it would take into account Malay customs, traditions and religious practices, "where they shall not be contrary to reason, justice or humanity."[4]:39–41

A further treaty, the Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, was arranged by the second Resident John Crawfurd with the Malay chiefs and signed on 2 August 1824 to replace the Singapore Treaty. Singapore, including its nearby islands, was officially fully ceded to the East India Company, and in return, the chiefs would have their debts cancelled and receive an allowance for life, with each given an additional lump sum of 20,000 Spanish dollars.[17]

After installing John Crawfurd, an efficient and frugal administrator, as the new governor, Raffles departed for Britain in October 1823.[18] He would never return to Singapore. Most of his personal possessions were lost after his ship, the Fame, caught fire and sank, and he died only a few years later, in 1826, at the age of 44.[19]

The status of Singapore as a British possession was cemented by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, which carved up the Malay archipelago between the two colonial powers. The area north of the Straits of Malacca, including Penang, Malacca, and Singapore, was designated as the British sphere of influence, while the area south of the Straits was assigned to the Dutch.[20]

This division had far-reaching consequences for the region: modern-day Malaysia and Singapore correspond to the British area established in the treaty, and modern-day Indonesia to the Dutch. In 1826, Singapore was grouped together with Penang and Malacca into a single administrative unit, the Straits Settlements, under the British East India Company.[20]


who was considered to be the first industrial spy

Economic and industrial espionage has a long history. The work of Father Francois Xavier d'Entrecolles in Jingdezhen, China to reveal to Europe the manufacturing methods of Chinese porcelain in 1712 is sometimes considered an early case of industrial espionage.[28]

Industrial espionage

Industrial espionage, economic espionage, corporate spying or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security.[1] Economic espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governments and is international in scope, while industrial or corporate espionage is more often national and occurs between companies or corporations.[2]

"Competitive intelligence" describes the legal and ethical activity of systematically gathering, analyzing and managing information on industrial competitors.[3] It may include activities such as examining newspaper articles, corporate publications, websites, patent filings, specialised databases, information at trade shows and the like to determine information on a corporation.[4] The compilation of these crucial elements is sometimes termed CIS or CRS, a Competitive Intelligence Solution or Competitive Response Solution. With its roots in market research, "competitive intelligence" has been described as the "application of principles and practices from military and national intelligence to the domain of global business";[5] it is the business equivalent of open-source intelligence.

The difference between competitive intelligence and economic or industrial espionage is not clear; one needs to understand the legal basics to recognize how to draw the line between the two.[6][7] Others maintain it is sometimes quite difficult to tell the difference between legal and illegal methods, especially if considering the ethical side of information gathering, making the definition even more elusive.

Economic or industrial espionage takes place in two main forms. In short, the purpose of espionage is to gather knowledge about (an) organization(s). It may include the acquisition of intellectual property, such as information on industrial manufacture, ideas, techniques and processes, recipes and formulas. Or it could include sequestration of proprietary or operational information, such as that on customer datasets, pricing, sales, marketing, research and development, policies, prospective bids, planning or marketing strategies or the changing compositions and locations of production.[8] It may describe activities such as theft of trade secrets, bribery, blackmail and technological surveillance. As well as orchestrating espionage on commercial organizations, governments can also be targets â€” for example, to determine the terms of a tender for a government contract so that another tenderer can underbid.

Economic and industrial espionage is most commonly associated with technology-heavy industries, including computer software and hardware, biotechnology, aerospace, telecommunications, transportation and engine technology, automobiles, machine tools, energy, materials and coatings and so on. Silicon Valley is known to be one of the world's most targeted areas for espionage, though any industry with information of use to competitors may be a target.[9]

Information can make the difference between success and failure; if a trade secret is stolen, the competitive playing field is leveled or even tipped in favor of a competitor. Although a lot of information-gathering is accomplished legally through competitive intelligence, at times corporations feel the best way to get information is to take it.[10] Economic or industrial espionage is a threat to any business whose livelihood depends on information.

In recent years, economic or industrial espionage has taken on an expanded definition. For instance, attempts to sabotage a corporation may be considered industrial espionage; in this sense, the term takes on the wider connotations of its parent word. That espionage and sabotage (corporate or otherwise) have become more clearly associated with each other is also demonstrated by a number of profiling studies, some government, some corporate. The United States government currently has a polygraph examination entitled the "Test of Espionage and Sabotage" (TES), contributing to the increasingly popular, though not consensus, notion, by those studying espionage and sabotage countermeasures, of the interrelationship between the two.[11] In practice, particularly by "trusted insiders," they are generally considered functionally identical for the purpose of informing countermeasures.

Economic or industrial espionage commonly occurs in one of two ways. Firstly, a dissatisfied employee appropriates information to advance interests or to damage the company. Secondly, a competitor or foreign government seeks information to advance its own technological or financial interest.[12] "Moles", or trusted insiders, are generally considered the best sources for economic or industrial espionage.[13] Historically known as a "patsy", an insider can be induced, willingly or under duress, to provide information. A patsy may be initially asked to hand over inconsequential information and, once compromised by committing a crime, bribed into handing over more sensitive material.[14] Individuals may leave one company to take up employment with another and take sensitive information with them.[15] Such apparent behavior has been the focus of numerous industrial espionage cases that have resulted in legal battles.[15] Some countries hire individuals to do spying rather than use of their own intelligence agencies.[16] Academics, business delegates, and students are often thought to be used by governments in gathering information.[17] Some countries, such as Japan, have been reported to expect students be debriefed on returning home.[17] A spy may follow a guided tour of a factory and then get "lost".[14] A spy could be an engineer, a maintenance man, a cleaner, an insurance salesman, or an inspector: anyone who has legitimate access to the premises.[14]

A spy may break into the premises to steal data and may search through waste paper and refuse, known as "dumpster diving".[18] Information may be compromised via unsolicited requests for information, marketing surveys or use of technical support or research or software facilities. Outsourced industrial producers may ask for information outside the agreed-upon contract.[19]

Computers have facilitated the process of collecting information because of the ease of access to large amounts of information through physical contact or the Internet.

Computers have become key in exercising industrial espionage due to the enormous amount of information they contain and its ease of being copied and transmitted. The use of computers for espionage increased rapidly in the 1990s. Information has been commonly stolen by being copied from unattended computers in offices, those gaining unsupervised access doing so through subsidiary jobs, such as cleaners or repairmen. Laptops were, and still are, a prime target, with those traveling abroad on business being warned not to leave them for any period of time. Perpetrators of espionage have been known to find many ways of conning unsuspecting individuals into parting, often only temporarily, from their possessions, enabling others to access and steal information.[20] A "bag-op" refers to the use of hotel staff to access data, such as through laptops, in hotel rooms. Information may be stolen in transit, in taxis, at airport baggage counters, baggage carousels, on trains and so on.[18]

The rise of the internet and computer networks has expanded the range and detail of information available and the ease of access for the purpose of industrial espionage.[21] Worldwide, around 50,000 companies a day are thought to come under cyberattack with the rate estimated as doubling each year.[22] This type of operation is generally identified as state backed or sponsored, because the "access to personal, financial or analytic resources" identified exceed that which could be accessed by cybercriminals or individual hackers. Sensitive military or defense engineering or other industrial information may not have immediate monetary value to criminals, compared with, say, bank details. Analysis of cyberattacks suggests deep knowledge of networks, with targeted attacks, obtained by numerous individuals operating in a sustained organized way.[23]

The rising use of the internet has also extended opportunities for industrial espionage with the aim of sabotage. In the early 2000s, it was noticed that energy companies were increasingly coming under attack from hackers. Energy power systems, doing jobs like monitoring power grids or water flow, once isolated from the other computer networks, were now being connected to the internet, leaving them more vulnerable, having historically few built-in security features.[24] The use of these methods of industrial espionage have increasingly become a concern for governments, due to potential attacks by terrorist groups or hostile foreign governments.

One of the means of perpetrators conducting industrial espionage is by exploiting vulnerabilities in computer software. Malware and spyware as "a tool for industrial espionage", in "transmitting digital copies of trade secrets, customer plans, future plans and contacts". Newer forms of malware include devices which surreptitiously switch on mobile phones camera and recording devices. In attempts to tackle such attacks on their intellectual property, companies are increasingly keeping important information off network, leaving an "air gap", with some companies building "Faraday cages" to shield from electromagnetic or cellphone transmissions.[25]

The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack uses compromised computer systems to orchestrate a flood of requests on the target system, causing it to shut down and deny service to other users.[26] It could potentially be used for economic or industrial espionage with the purpose of sabotage. This method was allegedly utilized by Russian secret services, over a period of two weeks on a cyberattack on Estonia in May 2007, in response to the removal of a Soviet era war memorial.[27]

Historical accounts have been written of industrial espionage between Britain and France.[29] Attributed to Britain's emergence as an "industrial creditor", the second decade of the 18th century saw the emergence of a large-scale state-sponsored effort to surreptitiously take British industrial technology to France.[29] Witnesses confirmed both the inveigling of tradespersons abroad and the placing of apprentices in England.[30] Protests by those such as iron workers in Sheffield and steel workers in Newcastle,[clarification needed] about skilled industrial workers being enticed abroad, led to the first English legislation aimed at preventing this method of economic and industrial espionage.[31][30]

East-West commercial development opportunities after World War I saw a rise in Soviet interest in American and European manufacturing know-how, exploited by Amtorg Corporation.[32] Later, with Western restrictions on the export of items thought likely to increase military capabilities to the USSR, Soviet industrial espionage was a well known adjunct to other spying activities up until the 1980s.[33] BYTE reported in April 1984, for example, that although the Soviets sought to develop their own microelectronics, their technology appeared to be several years behind the West's. Soviet CPUs required multiple chips and appeared to be close or exact copies of American products such as the Intel 3000 and DEC LSI-11/2.[34]

Some of these activities were directed via the East German Stasi (Ministry for State Security). One such operation, known as "Operation Brunnhilde" operated from the mid-1950s until early 1966 and made use of spies from many Communist Bloc countries. Through at least 20 forays, many western European industrial secrets were compromised.[35] One member of the "Brunnhilde" ring was a Swiss chemical engineer, Dr. Jean Paul Soupert (also known as "Air Bubble"), living in Brussels. He was described by Peter Wright in Spycatcher as having been "doubled" by the Belgian Sûreté de l'État.[35][36] He revealed information about industrial espionage conducted by the ring, including the fact that Russian agents had obtained details of Concorde's advanced electronics system.[37] He testified against two Kodak employees, living and working in Britain, during a trial in which they were accused of passing information on industrial processes to him, though they were eventually acquitted.[35]

A secret report from the Military-Industrial Commission of the USSR (VPK), from 1979–80, detailed how spetsinformatsiya (Russian: специнформация i.e. "special records") could be utilised in twelve different military industrial areas. Writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Philip Hanson detailed a spetsinformatsiya system in which 12 industrial branch ministries formulated requests for information to aid technological development in their military programs. Acquisition plans were described as operating on 2 year and 5 year cycles with about 3000 tasks under way each year. Efforts were aimed at civilian as well as military industrial targets, such as in the petrochemical industries. Some information was garnered so as to compare levels of competitor to Soviet technological advancement. Much unclassified information was also gathered, blurring the boundary with "competitive intelligence".[33]

The Soviet military was recognised as making much better use of acquired information, compared to civilian industry, where their record in replicating and developing industrial technology was poor.[33]

Following the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, commentators, including the US Congressional Intelligence Committee, noted a redirection amongst the espionage community from military to industrial targets, with Western and former communist countries making use of "underemployed" spies and expanding programs directed at stealing such information.[38][39]

The legacy of Cold War spying included not just the redirection of personnel but the use of spying apparatus such as computer databases, scanners for eavesdropping, spy satellites, bugs and wires.[40]

Between 1987 and 1989, IBM and Texas Instruments were thought to have been targeted by French spies with the intention of helping France's Groupe Bull.[41] In 1993, U.S. aerospace companies were also thought to have been targeted by French interests.[42] During the early 1990s, France was described as one of the most aggressive pursuers of espionage to garner foreign industrial and technological secrets.[41] France accused the U.S. of attempting to sabotage its high tech industrial base.[41] The government of France has been alleged to have conducted ongoing industrial espionage against American aerodynamics and satellite companies.[43]

In 1993, car manufacturer Opel, the German division of General Motors, accused Volkswagen of industrial espionage after Opel's chief of production, Jose Ignacio Lopez, and seven other executives moved to Volkswagen.[15] Volkswagen subsequently threatened to sue for defamation, resulting in a four-year legal battle.[15] The case, which was finally settled in 1997, resulted in one of the largest settlements in the history of industrial espionage, with Volkswagen agreeing to pay General Motors $100 million and to buy at least $1 billion of car parts from the company over 7 years, although it did not explicitly apologize for Lopez's behavior.[44]

In April 2009 the US based hospitality company Starwood accused its rival Hilton of a "massive" case of industrial espionage. After being purchased by private equity group Blackstone, Hilton employed 10 managers and executives from Starwood. Under intense pressure to improve profits,[clarification needed] Starwood accused Hilton of stealing corporate information relating to its luxury brand concepts, used in setting up its own Denizen hotels. Specifically, former head of its luxury brands group, Ron Klein, was accused of downloading "truckloads of documents" from a laptop to his personal email account.[45]

GhostNet was a "vast surveillance system" reported by Canadian researchers based at the University of Toronto in March 2009. Using targeted emails it compromised thousands of computers in governmental organisations, enabling attackers to scan for information and transfer this back to a "digital storage facility in China".[46]

On 13 January 2010, Google Inc. announced that operators, from within China, had hacked into their Google China operation, stealing intellectual property and, in particular, accessing the email accounts of human rights activists.[47][48] The attack was thought to have been part of a more widespread cyber attack on companies within China which has become known as Operation Aurora.[48] Intruders were thought to have launched a zero-day attack, exploiting a weakness in the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser, the malware used being a modification of the trojan "Hydraq".[25] Concerned about the possibility of hackers taking advantage of this previously unknown weakness in Internet Explorer, the governments of Germany and, subsequently France, issued warnings not to use the browser.[49]

There was speculation that "insiders" had been involved in the attack, with some Google China employees being denied access to the company's internal networks after the company's announcement.[50][51] In February 2010, computer experts from the U.S. National Security Agency claimed that the attacks on Google probably originated from two Chinese universities associated with expertise in computer science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Shandong Lanxiang Vocational School, the latter having close links to the Chinese military.[46]

Google claimed at least 20 other companies had also been targeted in the cyber attack, said by the London Times, to have been part of an "ambitious and sophisticated attempt to steal secrets from unwitting corporate victims" including "defence contractors, finance and technology companies".[48][47][49] Rather than being the work of individuals or organised criminals, the level of sophistication of the attack was thought to have been "more typical of a nation state".[47] Some commentators speculated as to whether the attack was part of what is thought to be a concerted Chinese industrial espionage operation aimed at getting "high-tech information to jump-start China's economy".[52] Critics pointed to what was alleged to be a lax attitude to the intellectual property of foreign businesses in China, letting them operate but then seeking to copy or reverse engineer their technology for the benefit of Chinese "national champions".[53] In Google's case, they may have (also) been concerned about the possible misappropriation of source code or other technology for the benefit of Chinese rival Baidu. In March 2010 Google subsequently decided to cease offering censored results in China, leading to the closing of its Chinese operation.

The US based firm CyberSitter announced in January 2010 that it was suing the Chinese government, and other US companies, for stealing its anti pornography software, with the accusation that it had been incorporated into China's Green Dam program, used by the state to censor children's internet access. CyberSitter accused Green Dam creators as having copied around 3000 lines of code. They were described as having done 'a sloppy job of copying,' with some lines of the copied code continuing to direct people to the CyberSitter website. The attorney acting for CyberSitter maintained "I don't think I have ever seen such clear-cut stealing".[54]

The United States charged two former NetLogic Inc. engineers, Lan Lee and Yuefei Ge, of committing economic espionage against TSMC and NetLogic, Inc. A jury acquitted the defendants of the charges with regard to TSMC and deadlocked on the charges with regard to NetLogic. In May 2010, a federal judge dismissed all the espionage charges against the two defendants. The judge ruled that the U.S. Government presented no evidence of espionage.[55]

In May 2010, the federal jury convicted Chordiant Software, Inc., a U.S. corporation, of stealing Dongxiao Yue's JRPC technologies and used them in a product called Chordiant Marketing Director. Yue previously filed lawsuits against Symantec Corporation for a similar theft.[56]

Revelations from the Snowden documents have provided information to the effect that the United States, notably vis-Ã -vis the NSA, has been conducting aggressive economic espionage against Brazil.[57] Canadian intelligence has apparently supported U.S. economic espionage efforts.[58]

According to Edward Snowden, The National Security Agency spies on foreign companies.[59] A recent report to the US government, by aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman, describes Chinese economic espionage as comprising "the single greatest threat to U.S. technology".[23] Joe Stewart, of SecureWorks, blogging on the 2009 cyber attack on Google, referred to a "persistent campaign of 'espionage-by-malware' emanating from the Peopleâ€™s Republic of China (PRC)" with both corporate and state secrets being "Shanghaied" over the past 5 or 6 years.[60] The Northrop Grumann report states that the collection of US defense engineering data through cyberattack is regarded as having "saved the recipient of the information years of R&D and significant amounts of funding".[23] Concerns about the extent of cyberattacks on the US emanating from China has led to the situation being described as the dawn of a "new cold cyberwar".[61] In response to these and other reports, Amitai Etzioni of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies has suggested that China and the United States should agree to a policy of mutually assured restraint with respect to cyberspace. This would involve allowing both states to take the measures they deem necessary for their self-defense while simultaneously agreeing to refrain from taking offensive steps; it would also entail vetting these commitments.[62] In June 2015 Wikileaks published documents over National Security Agency spied French companies.[63]

In December 2007, it was revealed that Jonathan Evans, head of the United Kingdom's MI5, had sent out confidential letters to 300 chief executives and security chiefs at the country's banks, accountants and legal firms warning of attacks from Chinese'state organisations'.[64] A summary was also posted on the secure website of the Centre for the Protection of the National Infrastructure, accessed by some of the nation's 'critical infrastructure' companies, including 'telecoms firms, banks and water and electricity companies'.[65] One security expert warned about the use of 'custom trojans,' software specifically designed to hack into a particular firm and feed back data.[65] Whilst China was identified as the country most active in the use of internet spying, up to 120 other countries were said to be using similar techniques.[65] The Chinese government responded to UK accusations of economic espionage by saying that the report of such activities was'slanderous' and that the government opposed hacking which is prohibited by law.[66]

German counter-intelligence experts have maintained the German economy is losing around â‚¬53 billion or the equivalent of 30,000 jobs to economic espionage yearly.[67]

In Operation Eikonal German BND agents received "selector lists" from the NSA â€“ search terms for their dragnet surveillance. They contain IP addresses, mobile phone numbers and email accounts with the BND surveillance system containing hundreds of thousands and possibly more than a million such targets.[68] These lists have been subject of controversy as in 2008 it was revealed that they contained some terms targeting the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), the Eurocopter project[69] as well as French administration,[70][68] which were first noticed by BND employees in 2005.[69] After the revelations made by whistleblower Edward Snowden the BND decided to investigate the issue whose October 2013 conclusion was that at least 2,000 of these selectors were aimed at Western European or even German interests which has been a violation of the Memorandum of Agreement that the US and Germany signed in 2002 in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.[68] After reports emerged in 2014 that EADS and Eurocopter had been surveillance targets the Left Party and the Greens filed an official request to obtain evidence of the violations.[68][71]

The BND's project group charged with supporting the NSA investigative committee in German parliament set up in spring 2014, reviewed the selectors and discovered 40,000 suspicious search parameters, including espionage targets in Western European governments and numerous companies. The group also confirmed suspicions that the NSA had systematically violated German interests and concluded that the Americans could have perpetrated economic espionage directly under the Germans' noses.[68][72] The investigative parliamentary committee was not granted access to the NSA's selectors list as an appeal led by opposition politicians failed at Germany's top court - instead the ruling coalition appointed an administrative judge, Kurt Graulich, as a "person of trust" who was granted access to the list and briefed the investigative commission on its contents after analyzing the 40,000 parameters.[73][74] In his almost 300-paged report[75] Graulich concluded that European government agencies were targeted massively and that Americans hence broke contractual agreements. He also found that German targets which received special protection from surveillance of domestic intelligence agencies by Germany's Basic Law (Grundgesetz) − including numerous enterprises based in Germany – were featured in the NSA's wishlist in a surprising plenitude.[76]


who does the voice of fairy godmother shrek 2

She most notably appeared in the internationally successful DreamWorks animated movie Shrek 2 in 2004, providing the character voice of Princess Fiona's evil Fairy Godmother and singing the songs "The Fairy Godmother Song" and "Holding Out For a Hero." Her part took only four days to record.[4] The sequel broke the first Shrek's own box office record in the U.S in just a fortnight,[4] and it proceeded to make $353 million in just three weeks in the U.S.[22] Her role won the American People's Choice Award for the best movie villain in 2005.[23] She also voiced Miss Spink in the animated film Coraline, in which Dawn French also voiced a character called Miss Forcible. In 2015, she voiced Queen Elizabeth II in the animated film Minions,[24][25] and in 2016, she voiced Miss Nana Noodleman in the animated film Sing.

Jennifer Saunders

Jennifer Jane Saunders (born 6 July 1958) is an English comedian, screenwriter, and actress. She has won three BAFTAs (including the BAFTA Fellowship), an International Emmy Award, a British Comedy Award, a Rose d'Or Light Entertainment Festival Award, two Writers' Guild of Great Britain Awards, and a People's Choice Award.

She first found widespread attention in the 1980s when she became a member of The Comic Strip after graduating from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. With her comedy partner Dawn French, she wrote and starred in their eponymous sketch show, French and Saunders, for which she and French received a BAFTA fellowship in 2009. She received worldwide acclaim through the early to mid-1990s for writing and playing the lead role of Edina Monsoon in the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.

She has guest-starred in the American sitcoms Roseanne and Friends and won the People's Choice Awards for voicing the evil Fairy Godmother in DreamWorks' animated Shrek 2. In 2015, she voiced Queen Elizabeth II in the animated comedy film Minions, and in 2016 she voiced Nana Noodleman in the animated musical film Sing.

Jennifer Saunders was born on 6 July 1958 in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, England.[2][3] Her mother, Jane, was a biology teacher, and her father, Robert Thomas Saunders, served as a pilot in the Royal Air Force (RAF), reached the rank of Air Marshal and later worked for British Aerospace. She has three brothers.[4][5] Because her father was in the armed forces, Saunders moved to different schools many times.[5] She was educated from the age of five to 18 in boarding schools and then at St Paul's Girls' School, an independent school in west London.[6] After school, she worked for a year in Italy as an au pair.[7]

She later received a place at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London on a drama teachers' course in 1977,[5] where she met her future comedy partner, Dawn French.[8] Both came from RAF backgrounds. They had grown up on the same base, even having had the same best friend, without ever meeting.[4] The comic duo originally did not get on well, and as far as Saunders was concerned, French was a "cocky little upstart". The distrust was mutual: French considered Saunders snooty and uptight.[4] French actually wanted to become a drama teacher,[2] whereas Saunders loathed the idea and had not fully understood what the course was about; thus, she disliked French for being enthusiastic and confident about the course.[5] Saunders was shocked to find that she was actually taking courses to become a teacher, as her mother had filled out the application form.[5] Her mother, however, was saddened when Saunders chose not to apply for an Oxbridge university education.[5]

After the initial friction while at college, Saunders and French shared a flat together. French has remarked on Saunders's messy habits when sharing the house, stating, "When we lived together in Chalk Farm, she had a room at the top of the house. We got broken into and the police said, 'Well, it is quite bad, but the worst is that room at the top.' And, of course, nobody had been in there."[5] The two performed together after graduation, working the festival, cabaret,[5] and stand-up circuits. They formed a double-act called The Menopause Sisters. Saunders described the act, which involved wearing tampons in their ears, as "cringeworthy."[4] The manager of the club where they performed recalled, "They didn't seem to give a damn. There was no star quality about them at all."[4]

French and Saunders would eventually come to public attention as members of the informal comedy collective The Comic Strip, part of the alternative comedy scene in the early 1980s. They answered a 1980 advert in The Stage newspaper looking for female comedians to perform at The Comic Strip, which had, until that point, only had male performers.[2][4] When they walked into the audition, they were immediately told, "You're booked. When can you start?"[5]

Both Saunders and French became continuing members of The Comic Strip, which included Peter Richardson, Rik Mayall, and Robbie Coltrane, as well as Saunders' future husband Adrian Edmondson.[2][4] The group performed at the Boulevard Theatre, above Soho's Raymond Revuebar, and gained a cult following, with visiting audience members including Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, and Robin Williams, who once joined in the performance.[9] By the time French and Saunders became members of The Comic Strip, French was already working as a drama teacher, whilst Saunders was on the dole and spending a lot of her time sleeping in bed after the dole office closed for the day.[4]

The comedy group appeared on Channel 4's first night on air, in the first episode of The Comic Strip Presents: Five Go Mad In Dorset, broadcast on 2 November 1982.[2][10] In the episodes "Bad News" and "More Bad News", Saunders plays a trashy rock journalist touring with the fictional heavy metal band Bad News. In 1985, Saunders starred in and co-wrote Girls on Top with French, Tracey Ullman, and Ruby Wax, which portrayed four eccentric women sharing a flat in London.[2] Saunders also appeared in Ben Elton's Happy Families where she played various members of the same family, including all four Fuddle sisters in the six-episode BBC situation comedy.[2] Saunders starred in a Comic Strip film called The Supergrass, a little-known parody of slick 1980s police dramas directed by Peter Richardson. Saunders also played Meryl Streep playing Arthur Scargill's wife in Strike, a Comic Strip spoof on the 1984 miners' strike. Saunders also appeared twice as a guest on The Young Ones.[2]

In 1987, she and French created French and Saunders, a popular sketch comedy series for the BBC, which aired until 2007.[11] By the end of the 1980s, the show was an established comedy programme and became a staple in BBC viewing.[4] Saunders has appeared in Amnesty International's The Secret Policeman's Biggest Ball live benefit in 1989, along with Dawn French and others.

Saunders and French followed separate careers as well as maintaining their comedy sketch show. Saunders' biggest solo success has been Absolutely Fabulous. The comedy was, in fact, based largely on a fourteen-minute French & Saunders sketch called "Modern Mother and Daughter".[5] Saunders and French were going to star in the comedy together, but just as the studio had been booked, French received a long-awaited phone call confirming that an adoption agency had a new baby for her to adopt.[5] Saunders proceeded to star in the comedy. The series, which she wrote and starred in as the irresponsible fashion PR agent Edina Monsoon alongside Joanna Lumley, who played Patsy Stone, brought her international acclaim and attention.[2] The show ran for five full series, two telemovies, three special episodes, and a feature film over the course of twenty-four years from 1992 to 2016.[2] The series is also known as Ab Fab[4] and was broadcast in the United States on Comedy Central and BBC America, becoming cult viewing.[12]

Saunders has appeared on the American sitcoms Roseanne, playing Edina Monsoon in the episode "Satan, Darling", and Friends as Andrea Waltham, the step-mother of Emily, Ross Geller's fiancÃ©e, in the episodes "The One After Ross Says Rachel" and "The One with Ross's Wedding". In 1999, she appeared alongside French in Let Them Eat Cake.[2]

Saunders wrote and starred in a comedy drama about a Women's Institute entitled Jam & Jerusalem, also known as Clatterford in the United States. The first series aired in 2006, the second in 2008, and the third in 2009 on BBC One.[14] The show starred David Mitchell, Sally Phillips, and Sue Johnston, as well as Dawn French and Joanna Lumley.

In 2007, Saunders and psychologist Tanya Byron[5] wrote BBC Two's The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle about a neurotic daytime talk show host. The show ran for one series. Saunders played the eponymous character whose programme features crude headlines such as "Wife a slapper? Lie detector reveals all".[15]

Also in 2007, the final series of French & Saunders aired. A Bucket o' French & Saunders featured a compilation of old and new sketches and aired on BBC One in September 2007. It was the third show she had written in a year.[5] In 2008 and 2009, French & Saunders completed their final live tour, French & Saunders: Still Alive.[16]

Saunders appeared on the "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car" segment of BBC Two's motoring show Top Gear, posting a lap time of 1:46.1s, making her the fifth-fastest guest ever in the car that was used at that time. A self-confessed petrolhead, she has a passion for Alfa Romeos and has so far owned four.[17]

In 2011, Saunders wrote and appeared in "Uptown Downstairs Abbey", the Comic Relief parody of the critically acclaimed historical television dramas Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs. Playing the Dowager Countess, she starred alongside Kim Cattrall, Joanna Lumley, Victoria Wood, Harry Enfield, Patrick Barlow, Dale Winton, Olivia Colman, Tim Vine, Simon Callow, Michael Gambon, and Harry Hill.

In 2012, Saunders guest-starred in Dead Boss, a BBC Three comedy set in the fictional Broadmarsh prison where she plays the cruel and work-shy governor, Margaret.[18] The show's creator, Sharon Horgan, stated that she 'begged' Saunders to take the role, having been a fan of Saunders' previous comedy work.[19]

She also wrote the script for the Spice Girls-based jukebox musical Viva Forever!, which received some of the worst reviews of 2012 (and "arguably of all time"[20]).

In 2013, Saunders starred as Connie in the BBC adaptation of Blandings by P. G. Wodehouse.

In 2017, Saunders appeared on the Simpsons episode "Looking for Mr. Goodbart" as an elderly woman accompanied around by Bart.

Saunders has also appeared in several films, such as In the Bleak Midwinter (1995), Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Fanny & Elvis (1999), and also made cameo appearances in the Spice Girls's film Spice World (1997) and Absolument fabuleux (2001), a French film based on Absolutely Fabulous.[2][21]

Saunders married Adrian Edmondson on 11 May 1985, in Cheshire. They have three daughters: Eleanor "Ella" Rose (born 22 January 1986, Hammersmith, London), Beatrice "Beattie" Louise (born 19 June 1987), and Freya (born 1990).

In July 2010, she stated that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer the previous October[26] and was in remission following a lumpectomy, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy.[27]

On 27 August 2012, Saunders and Edmondson became grandparents when their daughter Ella gave birth to a boy, Fred.[28] They became grandparents for the second time in February 2014 when Ella gave birth to another son, Albert Rafferty.[29] Ella gave birth to their first granddaughter, Ivy, in August 2016.

Saunders published her autobiography, Bonkers: My Life in Laughs, in October 2013.[30]

She has volunteered for Dress for Success, a non-profit organisation which gives free clothes and advice about job interviews to women who are unemployed.[31]

Along with Dawn French, Saunders declined an OBE in 2001.[32][33] In 2003, she was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.[34] Saunders was placed 93rd out of E!'s 100 Sexiest British Stars. She also came 18th for Best British Role Models for teenage girls in Britain according to Good Housekeeping magazine.[citation needed] Saunders was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Exeter in July 2007.[35] In July 2011, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Edge Hill University.[36] In 2005, she was named the fourth funniest woman in Britain in a poll of 4,000 women.[37] To date, she has been nominated for and received many awards, including:


what is the default type for a floating point constant

Double-precision floating-point format usually refers to binary64, as specified by the IEEE 754 standard, not to the 64-bit decimal format decimal64. In older computers, different floating-point formats of 8 bytes were used, e.g., GW-BASIC's double-precision data type was the 64-bit MBF floating-point format.

Double-precision floating-point format

Double-precision floating-point format is a computer number format that occupies 8 bytes (64 bits) in computer memory and represents a wide, dynamic range of values by using a floating point.

Double-precision binary floating-point is a commonly used format on PCs, due to its wider range over single-precision floating point, in spite of its performance and bandwidth cost. As with single-precision floating-point format, it lacks precision on integer numbers when compared with an integer format of the same size. It is commonly known simply as double. The IEEE 754 standard specifies a binary64 as having:

This gives from 15 to 17 significant decimal digits precision. If a decimal string with at most 15 significant digits is converted to IEEE 754 double-precision representation, and then converted back to a decimal string with the same number of digits, the final result should match the original string. If an IEEE 754 double-precision number is converted to a decimal string with at least 17 significant digits, and then converted back to double-precision representation, the final result must match the original number.[1]

The format is written with the significand having an implicit integer bit of value 1 (except for special data, see the exponent encoding below). With the 52 bits of the fraction significand appearing in the memory format, the total precision is therefore 53 bits (approximately 16 decimal digits, 53 log10(2) â‰ˆ 15.955). The bits are laid out as follows:

The real value assumed by a given 64-bit double-precision datum with a given biased exponent

e

{\displaystyle e}

 and a 52-bit fraction is

Between 252=4,503,599,627,370,496 and 253=9,007,199,254,740,992 the representable numbers are exactly the integers. For the next range, from 253 to 254, everything is multiplied by 2, so the representable numbers are the even ones, etc. Conversely, for the previous range from 251 to 252, the spacing is 0.5, etc.

The spacing as a fraction of the numbers in the range from 2n to 2n+1 is 2n−52. The maximum relative rounding error when rounding a number to the nearest representable one (the machine epsilon) is therefore 2−53.

The 11 bit width of the exponent allows the representation of numbers between 10−308 and 10308, with full 15–17 decimal digits precision. By compromising precision, the subnormal representation allows even smaller values up to about 5 × 10−324.

The double-precision binary floating-point exponent is encoded using an offset-binary representation, with the zero offset being 1023; also known as exponent bias in the IEEE 754 standard. Examples of such representations would be:

The exponents 00016 and 7ff16 have a special meaning:

where F is the fractional part of the significand. All bit patterns are valid encoding.

Except for the above exceptions, the entire double-precision number is described by:

(
−
1

)

sign

×

2

e
−
1023

×
1.

fraction

{\displaystyle (-1)^{\text{sign}}\times 2^{e-1023}\times 1.{\text{fraction}}}

In the case of subnormals (e=0) the double-precision number is described by:

(
−
1

)

sign

×

2

1
−
1023

×
0.

fraction

=
(
−
1

)

sign

×

2

−
1022

×
0.

fraction

{\displaystyle (-1)^{\text{sign}}\times 2^{1-1023}\times 0.{\text{fraction}}=(-1)^{\text{sign}}\times 2^{-1022}\times 0.{\text{fraction}}}

Although the ubiquitous x86 processors of today use little-endian storage for all types of data (integer, floating point, BCD), there are a few historical machines where floating-point numbers are represented in big-endian form while integers are represented in little-endian form.[2] There are old ARM processors that have half little-endian, half big-endian floating-point representation for double-precision numbers: both 32-bit words are stored in little-endian like integer registers, but the most significant one first. Because there have been many floating-point formats with no "network" standard representation for them, the XDR standard uses big-endian IEEE 754 as its representation. It may therefore appear strange that the widespread IEEE 754 floating-point standard does not specify endianness.[3] Theoretically, this means that even standard IEEE floating-point data written by one machine might not be readable by another. However, on modern standard computers (i.e., implementing IEEE 754), one may in practice safely assume that the endianness is the same for floating-point numbers as for integers, making the conversion straightforward regardless of data type. (Small embedded systems using special floating-point formats may be another matter however.)

By default, 1/3 rounds down, instead of up like single precision, because of the odd number of bits in the significand.

In more detail:

Using double-precision floating-point variables and mathematical functions (e.g., sin, cos, atan2, log, exp and sqrt) are slower than working with their single precision counterparts. One area of computing where this is a particular issue is for parallel code running on GPUs. For example, when using NVIDIA's CUDA platform, on video cards designed for gaming, calculations with double precision take 3 to 24 times longer to complete than calculations using single precision.[4]

Doubles are implemented in many programming languages in different ways such as the following. On processors with only dynamic precision, such as x86 without SSE2 (or when SSE2 is not used, for compatibility purpose) and with extended precision used by default, software may have difficulties to fulfill some requirements.

C and C++ offer a wide variety of arithmetic types. Double precision is not required by the standards (except by the optional annex F of C99, covering IEEE 754 arithmetic), but on most systems, the double type corresponds to double precision. However, on 32-bit x86 with extended precision by default, some compilers may not conform to the C standard and/or the arithmetic may suffer from double-rounding issues.[5]

Common Lisp provides the types SHORT-FLOAT, SINGLE-FLOAT, DOUBLE-FLOAT and LONG-FLOAT. Most implementations provide SINGLE-FLOATs and DOUBLE-FLOATs with the other types appropriate synonyms. Common Lisp provides exceptions for catching floating-point underflows and overflows, and the inexact floating-point exception, as per IEEE 754. No infinities and NaNs are described in the ANSI standard, however, several implementations do provide these as extensions.

As specified by the ECMAScript standard, all arithmetic in JavaScript shall be done using double-precision floating-point arithmetic.[6]

In Lua version 5.2[7] and earlier, all arithmetic is done using double-precision floating-point arithmetic (explicit support for single-precision was added in version 5.3). Also, automatic type conversions between doubles and strings are provided (and also between floating-point values and integers since version 5.3).


is london st pancras international the same as kings cross

St Pancras railway station (/ˈpæŋkrəs/), also known as London St Pancras and officially since 2007 as St Pancras International, is a central London railway terminus located on Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden. It is the terminal station for Eurostar continental services from London via High Speed 1 and the Channel Tunnel to Belgium, France and the Netherlands. It also handles East Midlands Trains and Thameslink services to Corby, Sheffield and Nottingham on the Midland Main Line  and Southeastern high-speed trains to Kent via Ebbsfleet International and Ashford International, and local Thameslink cross-London services. It stands between the British Library, Regent's Canal and King's Cross railway station, sharing a London Underground station named King's Cross St. Pancras with the latter.

St Pancras railway station

The station was constructed by the Midland Railway (MR), which had an extensive network across the Midlands and the North of England, but no dedicated line into London. After rail traffic problems following the 1862 International Exhibition, the MR decided to build a connection from Bedford to London with their own terminus. The station was designed by William Henry Barlow and constructed with a single-span iron roof. Following the station's opening on 1 October 1868, the MR constructed the Midland Grand Hotel on the station's facade, which has been widely praised for its architecture and is now a GradeÂ I listed building along with the rest of the station.

By the 1960s, St Pancras was seen as redundant, with services being diverted to King's Cross and Euston. However, there was fierce opposition against proposed closures of the station and hotel and its demolition. It was reinvented in the late 20th century as the terminal of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link as part of an urban regeneration plan across East London. The complex underwent a £800 million refurbishment which was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in November 2007. A security-sealed terminal area was constructed for Eurostar services to continental Europe via High Speed 1 and the Channel Tunnel, with platforms for domestic trains to the north and south-east of England. The restored station has 15 platforms, a shopping centre, and a coach facility. St Pancras is owned by London and Continental Railways (LCR) and is managed by Network Rail (High Speed), a subsidiary of Network Rail.

St Pancras is at the southern end of the London Borough of Camden. It occupies a site orientated north/south, deeper than it is wide. The south is bounded by Euston Road (part of the London Inner Ring Road), with the frontage provided by the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, while the west is bounded by Midland Road and the east by Pancras Road, with King's Cross station on the other side.[8] The British Library sits to the west of the station on the site of a former goods yard.[9]

Behind the hotel, the train shed is elevated 5 m (17 ft) above street level, with the area below forming the station undercroft. To the west, the original station is bounded by Midland Road with the British Library on the other side of the road. To the east, it is bounded by Pancras Road and is opposite King's Cross. The northern half of the station is mainly bounded to the east by Camley Street, with Camley Street Natural Park across the road. To the north-east is King's Cross Central, formerly known as the Railway Lands, a complex of intersecting railway lines crossed by several roads and the Regent's Canal.[10][11]

Several London bus routes serve St Pancras, including 10, 59, 73, 205 and 390.[12]

The station's name comes from the St. Pancras neighbourhood, which originates from the fourth-century Christian boy martyr Pancras of Rome. The station was commissioned by the Midland Railway (MR), who had a network of routes in the Midlands, and in south and west Yorkshire and Lancashire but no route of its own to London. Before 1857 the MR used the lines of the L&NWR for trains into the capital; subsequently the company's Leicester and Hitchin Railway gave access to London via the Great Northern Railway (GNR).[13]

In 1862, traffic for the second International Exhibition suffered extensive delays over the stretch of line into London over the GNR's track; the route into the city via the L&NWR was also at capacity, with coal trains causing the network at Rugby and elsewhere to reach effective gridlock.[14] This was the stimulus for the MR to build its own line to London from Bedford,[15] which would be just under 50 miles (80 km) long.[16] Samuel Carter was solicitor for the parliamentary bill, which was sanctioned in 1863.[17]

The station was designed by William Henry Barlow and constructed on a site that had previously been a slum called Agar Town.[18][19] Though coal and goods were the main motivation to build the station, the Midland realised the prestige of having a central London terminus, and decided it must have a front on Euston Road. The company purchased the eastern section of land on the road's north side owned by Earl Somers.[16]

The approaching line to the station crossed the Regent's Canal at height allowing the line reasonable gradients; this resulted in the level of the line at St Pancras being 20 ft (6.1 m) above the ground level.[16] Initial plans were for a two or three span roof with the void between station and ground level filled with spoil from tunnelling to join the Midland Main Line to the St. Pancras branch.[20] Instead, due to the value of the land in such a location the lower area was used for freight, in particular beer from Burton.[21][a] As a result the undercroft was built with columns and girders, maximising space, set out to the same plans as those used for beer warehouses, and with a basic unit of length that of a beer barrel.[23]

The contract for the construction of the station substructure and connecting lines was given to Messrs. Waring, with Barlow's assistant Campion as supervisor.[24] The lower floor for beer warehousing contained interior columns 15 ft (4.57 m) wide, and 48 ft (14.63 m) deep carrying girders supporting the main station and track.[25] The connection to the Widened Lines (St. Pancras branch) ran below the station's bottom level, in an east-to-west direction.[24]

To avoid the foundations of the roof interfering with the space beneath, and to simplify the design, and minimise cost, it was decided to construct a single span roof, with cross ties for the arch at the station level. The arch was sprung directly from the station level, with no piers.[26][21] Additional advice on the design of the roof was given to Barlow by Rowland Mason Ordish.[24] The arches' ribs had a web depth of 6 ft (1.8 m), mostly open ironwork. The span width, from wall to wall was 245 ft 6 in (74.83 m), with a rib every 29 ft 4 in (8.94 m) The arch was a slightly pointed design, with a reduced radius of curvature at the springing points. The Butterley Company was contracted to construct the arches.[27] The total cost of the 24 rib roof and glazing was over £53,000, of which over half was for the main ribs. The cost of the gable end was a further £8,500.[28]

The single-span overall roof was the largest such structure in the world at the time of its completion.[19] The materials used were wrought iron framework of lattice design, with glass covering the middle half and timber (inside)/slate (outside) covering the outer quarters. The two end screens were glazed in a vertical rectangular grid pattern with decorative timber cladding around the edge and wrought iron finials around the outer edge. It was 689 feet (210.01 m) long, 240 feet (73.15 m) wide, and 100 feet (30.48 m) high at the apex above the tracks.[21][29] At the time of opening, it was the world's largest unsupported station roof.[8]

Local services began running to the Metropolitan Railway junction underneath the terminus on 13 July 1868. The station itself opened to the public on 1 October. The first service was an overnight mail train from Leeds.[30][31]

St Pancras was built during a period of expansion for the MR, as the major routes to Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Carlisle opened during this time. By 1902, there were 150 trains arriving and leaving the station daily, though this figure was far less than Waterloo or Liverpool Street. As well as Midland services, the Great Eastern Railway (GER) used St Pancras as a "West End" terminus for trains to Great Yarmouth, Norwich, Lowestoft between 1870 and 1917. At the turn of the 20th century, St Pancras also had a faster service to Cambridge than King's Cross, at 71 minutes. GER services were suspended because of World War I and never resumed.[32]

The London, Tilbury and Southend Railway (LTSR) began offering boat train services from St Pancras from 9 July 1894, following the opening of the Tottenham and Forest Gate Railway. The trains ran from St Pancras to Tilbury via South Tottenham and Barking. Tilbury Docks then provided a connection to Australia and Scandinavia. The following year, the LTSR began a service from St Pancras to Southend Central.[32] Boat trains continued to run from St Pancras until 1963, after which they were moved to Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street.[33]

The Railways Act of 1921 forced the merger of the Midland with the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR) into the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), and the LMS adopted the LNWR's (the "Premier Line") Euston station as its principal London terminus. The Midland Grand Hotel was closed in 1935, and the building was subsequently used as offices for British Railways. During World War II, bombing inflicted damage on the train shed, which was only partially reglazed after the war.[34] On the night of 10–11 May 1941 a bomb fell onto the station floor at platform 3, exploding in the beer vaults underneath. The station was not significantly damaged, but was closed for eight days, with platforms 2–3 remaining closed until June. In 1947 the St. Pancras junction was relaid with prefabricated trackwork, along with associated changes to the signalling system.[33]

On the creation of British Railways (BR) in 1948, St Pancras received a significant investment after neglect by the LMS.[33] Destinations included the London area services to North Woolwich, St Albans and Bedford. Long-distance trains reached Glasgow, Leeds, Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester, with famous named trains including The Palatine to Manchester,[35] The Thames-Clyde Express to Glasgow,[36] and The Master Cutler to Sheffield (transferred from King's Cross in 1966, which itself had transferred from Marylebone eight years earlier).[37]

On 7 October 1957, the signalling at St Pancras was upgraded, replacing the three original boxes with a power box controlling 205 route switches and 33 points over a network of 1,400 relays.[38] From 1960 to 1966, electrification work on the West Coast Main Line between London and Manchester saw a new Midland Pullman from Manchester to St Pancras.[39] These trains and those to Glasgow were withdrawn following the completion of the rebuilding of Euston and the consolidation of these services.[36]

By the 1960s, St Pancras was seen as redundant, and several attempts were made to close it and demolish the hotel (by then known as St Pancras Chambers). These attempts provoked strong and successful opposition, with the campaign led by the later Poet Laureate, John Betjeman.[40][41] Jane Hughes Fawcett with the Victorian Society was instrumental in its preservation, and was dubbed "the furious Mrs. Fawcett" by British rail officials.[42] Many of the demonstrators had witnessed the demolition of the nearby Euston Arch a few years' previously, and were strongly opposed to the distinctive architecture of St Pancras suffering the same fate.[43] The station became Grade I listed building in November 1967, preventing any drastic modifications.[8] The plans were scrapped by BR in December 1968, realising that it was more cost-effective to modernise the hotel instead, though they disliked owning it.[43]

In the 1970s, the train shed roof was in danger of collapse, and the newly appointed Director of Environment Bernard Kaukas persuaded the company to invest Â£3m to save it.[44] In 1978, a Private Eye piece said that British Rail really wanted to demolish St Pancras but were opposed by "a lot of long-haired sentimentalists" and "faceless bureaucrats" and praised the office blocks that replaced the Euston Arch.[45]

After the sectorisation of British Rail in 1986, main-line services to the East Midlands were provided by the InterCity sector, with suburban services to St Albans, Luton and Bedford by Network SouthEast. In 1988 the Snow Hill tunnel re-opened resulting in the creation of the Thameslink route and the resultant diversion of the majority of suburban trains to the new route. The station continued to be served by trains running on the Midland main line to Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield, together with a few suburban services to Bedford and Luton.[46] These constituted only a few trains an hour and left the station underused.[34]

Following the privatisation of British Rail, the long-distance services from St Pancras were franchised to Midland Mainline, a train operating company owned by National Express, starting on 28 April 1996. The few remaining suburban trains still operating into St Pancras were operated by the Thameslink train operating company, owned by Govia, from 2 March 1997.[47]

A small number of trains to and from Leeds were introduced, mainly because the High Speed Train sets were maintained there and were already running empty north of Sheffield. During the 2000s major rebuild of the West Coast Main Line, St Pancras again temporarily hosted direct and regular inter-city trains to Manchester, this time via the Hope Valley route (via the Dore South curve) under the title of Project Rio.[48]

The original plan for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) involved a tunnel from south-east of London to an underground terminus in the vicinity of King's Cross. However, a late change of plan, principally driven by the then Secretary of State for the Environment Michael Heseltine's desire for urban regeneration in east London, led to a change of route, with the new line approaching London from the east. This opened the possibility of reusing St Pancras as the terminus, with access via the North London Line, which crosses the throat of the station.[34][49]

The idea of using the North London line was rejected in 1994 by the transport secretary, John MacGregor, as "difficult to construct and environmentally damaging". However, the idea of using St Pancras station as the terminus was retained, albeit now linked by 12.4 miles (20Â km) of new tunnels to Dagenham via Stratford.[34][49]

London and Continental Railways (LCR), created at the time of British Rail privatisation, was selected by the government in 1996 to reconstruct St Pancras, build the CTRL, and take over the British share of the Eurostar operation.  LCR had owned St Pancras station since privatisation to allow the station to be redeveloped. Financial difficulties in 1998, and the collapse of Railtrack in 2001, caused some revision of this plan, but LCR retained ownership of the station.[3]

The design and project management of reconstruction was undertaken on behalf of LCR by Rail Link Engineering (RLE), a consortium of Bechtel, Arup, Systra and Halcrow. The original reference design for the station was by Nick Derbyshire, former head of British Rail's in-house architecture team. The master plan of the complex was by Foster and Partners, and the lead architect of the reconstruction was Alistair Lansley, a former colleague of Nick Derbyshire recruited by RLE.[11][50][51]

To accommodate 300-metre+ Eurostar trains, and to provide capacity for the existing trains to the Midlands and the new Kent services on the high-speed rail link, the train shed was extended a considerable distance northwards by a new flat-roofed shed. The station was initially planned to have 13 platforms under this extended train shed. East Midlands services would use the western platforms, Eurostar services the middle platforms, and Kent services the eastern platforms. The Eurostar platforms and one of the Midland platforms would extend back into the Barlow train shed. Access to Eurostar for departing passengers would be via a departure suite on the west of the station, and then to the platforms by a bridge above the tracks within the historic train shed. Arriving Eurostar passengers would leave the station by a new concourse at its north end.[49]

This original design was later modified, with access to the Eurostar platforms from below, using the station undercroft and allowing the deletion of the visually intrusive bridge. By dropping the extension of any of the Midland platforms into the train shed, space was freed up to allow wells to be constructed in the station floor, which provided daylight and access to the undercroft.[49]

The reconstruction of the station was recorded in the BBC Television documentary series The Eight Hundred Million Pound Railway Station broadcast as six 30-minute episodes between 13â€’28 November 2007.[52]

By early 2004, the eastern side of the extended train shed was complete, and the Barlow train shed was closed to trains.[53] From 12 April 2004, Midland Mainline trains terminated at an interim station occupying the eastern part of the extension immediately adjacent to the entrance.[54]

As part of the construction of the western side of the new train shed that now began, an underground "box" was constructed to house new platforms for Thameslink, which at this point ran partially under the extended station. In order for this to happen, the existing Thameslink tunnels between Kentish Town and King's Cross Thameslink were closed between 11 September 2004 and 15 May 2005 while the works were carried out. Thameslink services from the north terminated in the same platforms as the Midland Main Line trains, while services from the south terminated at King's Cross Thameslink.[55]

When the lines were re-opened, the new station box was still only a bare concrete shell and could not take passengers. Thameslink trains reverted to their previous route but ran through the station box without stopping. The budget for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link works did not include work on the fitting out of the station, as these works had originally been part of the separate Thameslink 2000 works programme.  Despite lobbying by rail operators who wished to see the station open at the same time as St Pancras International, the Government failed to provide additional funding to allow the fit out works to be completed immediately following the line blockade. Eventually, on 8 February 2006, Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Transport, announced £50 million funding for the fit-out of the station, plus another £10–15 million for the installation of associated signalling and other lineside works.[55][56][57]

The fit-out works were designed by Chapman Taylor[58] and Arup (Eurostar) and completed by ISG Interior Plc Contractors[59] collaborating with Bechtel as Project Managers.[60] The client was London and Continental Railways who were advised by Hitachi Consulting.[61]

In 2005, planning consent was granted for a refurbishment of the former Midland Grand Hotel building, with plans to refurbish and extend it as a hotel and apartment block.[62] The newly refurbished hotel opened to guests on 21 March 2011 with a grand opening ceremony on 5 May.[63]

By the middle of 2006, the western side of the train shed extension was completed.[64] The rebuilding cost was in the region of £800 million,[65] up from an initial estimate of £310 million.[66]

In early November 2007, Eurostar conducted a testing programme in which some 6000 members of the public were involved in passenger check-in, immigration control and departure trials, during which the "passengers" each made three return journeys out of St Pancras to the entrance to the London tunnel. On 4 September 2007, the first test train ran from Paris Gare du Nord to St Pancras.[67] Children's illustrator Quentin Blake was commissioned to provide a huge mural of an "imaginary welcoming committee" as a disguise for one of the remaining ramshackle Stanley Building South immediately opposite the station exit.[68]

St Pancras was officially re-opened as St Pancras International, and the High Speed 1 service was launched on 6 November 2007 by Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh. [69][70][71] Services were extended to Rotterdam and Amsterdam in April 2018.[72]

During an elaborate opening ceremony, actor Timothy West, as Henry Barlow, addressed the audience, which was also entertained by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the singers Lemar and Katherine Jenkins. In a carefully staged set piece, the first Class 395 train and two Class 373 trains arrived through a cloud of dry ice in adjacent platforms within seconds of each other.[69][70] During the ceremony, Paul Day's large bronze statue The Meeting Place was also unveiled. At a much smaller ceremony on 12 November 2007, the bronze statue of John Betjeman by sculptor Martin Jennings was unveiled by Betjeman's daughter, the author Candida Lycett Green.[73] Public service by Eurostar train via High Speed 1 started on 14 November 2007. In a small ceremony, station staff cut a ribbon leading to the Eurostar platforms.[74] In the same month, services to the East Midlands were transferred to a new franchisee, East Midlands Trains.[75] The low-level Thameslink platforms opened on 9 December 2007, replacing King's Cross Thameslink.[76]

St. Pancras has retained a reputation of having one of the most recognisable facades of all the London termini, and known as the "cathedral of the railways".[29] In Britain's 100 Best Railway Stations by Simon Jenkins, the station was one of only ten to be awarded five stars.[77]

St Pancras contains four groups of platforms on two levels, accessed via the main concourse at ground level.  The below-surface group contains through platforms A and B, and the upper level has three groups of terminal platforms: domestic platforms 1–4 and 11–13 on each side of international platforms 5–10.  Platforms A & B serve Thameslink, 1–4 connect to the Midland Main Line, while platforms 11–13 lead to High Speed 1; there is no connection between the two lines, except for a maintenance siding outside the station.[78][79] There are also a variety of shops and restaurants within the station concourse.[80]

The station is the London terminus for Eurostar's high-speed trains to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Lille via the Channel Tunnel.[81][72] It is also the terminus for East Midlands services from London to Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield, and smaller towns en route. Thameslink trains on the cross-London Thameslink route call at platforms beneath the main station, south to Gatwick Airport and Brighton and north to Luton Airport Parkway for Luton Airport and Bedford. High-speed domestic services to Kent, run by Southeastern, depart on the same level as Eurostar & East Midlands Trains.[82]

The terminal is one of relatively few railway stations in England to feature multilingual signage in English and French.[83] In March 2014, the station's public relations team commissioned a study of mispronounced words, reportedly as a result of passengers referring to the station as "St Pancreas".[84]

The longer international platforms, used by Eurostar, extend into Barlow's train shed, whilst the other platforms terminate at the southern end of the 2005 extension. The international platforms do not occupy the full width of the Barlow train shed, and sections of the floor area have been opened up to provide natural light to the new ground-level concourse below.  Eurostar's arrival and departure lounges lie below these platforms, adjacent to The Arcade, a concourse fashioned from the original station undercroft which runs along the western length of the Barlow train shed.  The southern end of The Arcade links to the western ticket hall of King's Cross St Pancras tube station.[11][85][86]

Access to the East Midlands Trains platforms are via the northern end of The Arcade, while the Thameslink and domestic High Speed platforms are reached via a street-level concourse where the old and new parts of the station meet. The main pedestrian entrance is at the eastern end of this concourse, where a subway enables pedestrians to reach King's Cross station and the northern ticket hall of the tube station.[11][87]

Since 2007, platforms 1â€“4 have been the southern terminus for Midland Main Line trains operated by East Midlands Trains to/from the East Midlands and Yorkshire, including Leicester, Corby, Nottingham, Kettering, Derby and Sheffield. Occasional trains also run to Melton Mowbray, Lincoln, Leeds, York and Scarborough.[88]

As of  July 2017[update], the Monday-Saturday off-peak timetable has five services per hour: three fast and two semi-fast.[88]

As part of the Thameslink Programme, St Pancras International gained platforms on the Thameslink route, replacing King's Cross Thameslink to the south-east. In line with the former station, the Thameslink platforms are designated A and B.[89][90] The new platforms have met with some criticism for the length of the walking route to the underground as compared with King's Cross Thameslink.
The Thameslink Programme involves the introduction of 12-car trains across the enlarged Thameslink network.[91] As extending the platforms at King's Cross Thameslink was thought to be impractical (requiring alterations to Clerkenwell No 3 tunnel and the Circle/Hammersmith & City/Metropolitan Underground lines, which would be extremely disruptive and prohibitively expensive), it was decided to build new Thameslink platforms under St Pancras.[92]

The Thameslink platforms serve trains to Bedford, Luton, St Albans City, Cambridge and Peterborough in the north, and Wimbledon, Sutton, East Croydon, Gatwick Airport and Brighton in the south.[93]

Southeastern runs high-speed Class 395 trains on High Speed 1 to Kent and the South East, to Faversham, Margate, Ramsgate, Canterbury West, Dover Priory, Folkestone Central, Ashford, Ebbsfleet International and other destinations in Kent.

The first domestic service carrying passengers over High Speed 1 ran on 12 December 2008, to mark one year before regular services were due to begin. This special service, carrying various dignitaries, ran from Ashford International to St Pancras.[94] Starting in June 2009, Southeastern provided a preview service between St Pancras and Ebbsfleet, extending to Ashford International during peak hours.[95] In September, Southeastern extended the peak-time services to Dover and Ramsgate.[96] The full service began on 13 December.[97]

During the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, St Pancras was the Central London terminus of the Olympic Javelin service, a seven-minute shuttle between Central London and Stratford International station for the London Olympic Park.[98]

Seventeen pairs of Eurostar trains to and from Paris Gare du Nord every day, ten pairs of trains to and from Bruxelles-Midi/Brussel-Zuid for Brussels and the European Union de facto capital, and one train to and from Marne-la-Vallée for Disneyland Resort Paris. Extra services run to Paris on Fridays and Sundays, with a reduced service to Brussels at weekends. Additional weekend leisure-oriented trains run to the French Alps during the skiing season, and to Marseille via Lyon and Avignon in the summer.[99][100] It will also serve as the terminus for services to/from Amsterdam from Spring 2018.[101]

Trains observe a mixture of calls at four intermediate stations (Ebbsfleet International, Ashford International, Calais-Fréthun and Lille-Europe), with some running non-stop. Non-stop trains take 2 hours 15 minutes to Paris, and just under 1 hour 50 minutes to Brussels, other trains taking 5 or 10 minutes longer depending on whether they make one or two stops.[99][100]

There are several items of art on public display at St Pancras. At the south end of the upper level, a 9-metre (29.5Â ft) high 20-tonne (19.7-long-ton; 22.0-short-ton) bronze statue named The Meeting Place stands beneath the station clock. Designed by British artist Paul Day, it is intended to evoke the romance of travel through the depiction of a couple locked in an amorous embrace.[102] Controversy was caused by Day's 2008 addition of a bronze relief frieze around the plinth.[103] depicting a commuter falling into the path of an Underground train driven by the Grim Reaper. Day revised the frieze before the final version was installed.[104]

On the upper level, above the Arcade concourse, stands a bronze statue of John Betjeman, depicted gazing in apparent wonder at the Barlow roof. Designed by British sculptor Martin Jennings, the statue commemorates the poet's successful campaign to save the station from demolition in the 1960s.[40][105] The 2-metre (6 ft 7 in)-high statue stands on a flat disc of Cumbrian slate inscribed with lines from Betjeman's poem Cornish Cliffs:

And in the shadowless unclouded glare / Deep blue above us fades to whiteness where / A misty sea-line meets the wash of air.

There are a number of upright pianos in the main St Pancras concourse that are available for anyone to play. In 2016, Elton John gave an impromptu performance here on a piano he subsequently donated to the station as a gift.[107] In 2017, the B Positive Choir, formed to raise awareness of sickle-cell disease, performed a Christmas concert in the station concourse.[108]

In 2016, Google opened YouTube Space, a creative centre for vloggers inside the company's new 20,000-square-foot (1,900Â m2) premises on Pancras Square adjacent to the station. The premises includes a 150-seat cinema and various stages.[109]

The Midland ran a competition for architects to design a hotel to front the station. George Gilbert Scott was persuaded to enter by his friend, Midland director Joseph Lewis, and completed the winning design at home while attending to his son who had fallen ill. Though plans were complete by the end of the year, financial pressure meant construction had to be delayed. Work eventually started in 1868 and the main section of the Midland Grand Hotel opened on 5 May 1873, with the west wing following three years later.[30] The building is primarily brick, but polychromatic, in a style derived from the Italian gothic, and with numerous other architectural influences.[19][b]  Gilbert Scott reused many of the design details from his earlier work at Kelham Hall designed in 1857 and completed in 1863, but on a much grander scale for St Pancras.[111]

The hotel closed in 1935 and was turned into St Pancras Chambers, a group of offices, with ownership retained by the LNWR.[112] In the late 1980s, British Rail sold off and vacated the premises.[113]

Following the decision to connect St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, plans were made to restore the hotel for its original function. Planning permission was granted in 2005 and funded as part of a £50m Government plan to refurbish the station.[114] The St. Pancras Renaissance London Hotel occupies parts of the original building, including the main public rooms, together with a new bedroom wing on the western side of the Barlow train shed. The upper levels of the original building have been redeveloped as apartments by the Manhattan Loft Corporation.[62][115] The hotel held its grand opening on 5 May 2011, exactly 138 years after its original opening.[116]

The hotel has been used as setting in several films, including Chaplin (1992), Richard III (1995) and From Hell (2001). It was used for the filming of the Spice Girls' 1996 video, "Wannabe".[117]

On 17 February 1918 a German Gotha aircraft dropped five bombs one of which destroyed the roof of the station's ornate booking hall and killed 20 people. The station was also bombed in World War II, including a land mine damaging the roof on 15–16 October 1940, and a bomb exploding in the beer vaults underneath Platform 3 on 10–11 May 1941.[33]

On 20 July 1959, a locomotive overran a signal and consequently crashed into Dock Junction Signal Box. As a result, trains had to be hand-signalled in and out of St Pancras for several days.[118]

In January 2010, the European railway network was opened to liberalisation to allow greater competition.[119] Both Air France-KLM and Deutsche Bahn expressed interest in taking advantage of the new laws to run new services via High Speed 1 to St Pancras.[120][121]

In December 2009, Deutsche Bahn received permission to run trains through the Channel Tunnel after safety requirements were relaxed.  It had previously expressed a desire to run through trains between London and Germany.[122][123][124] Direct trains between St Pancras and Cologne could have started before the 2012 Olympics,[125] with plans to run a regular service of three daily trains each direction to Frankfurt, Rotterdam and Amsterdam via Brussels in 2013. Deutsche Bahn trains would be made up of two coupled sets between London and Brussels, dividing at Bruxelles-Midi/Brussel-Zuid. DB showcased an ICE 3 trainset in St Pancras in October 2010.[126] The start date for these services is not expected before 2018.[127] In March 2017 it was announced that Deutsche Bahn had revived plans for a London to Frankfurt train service taking 5 hours, with the service beginning as early as 2020.[128]

In February 2010, the idea of a Transmanche Metro service gained support as local councillors in Kent and Pas-de-Calais announced that they were in talks to establish a high-frequency stopping service between London and Lille. Trains would start at Lille Europe and call at Calais, Ashford International and Stratford International before reaching St Pancras. Since High Speed 1 opened, Ashford and Calais have an infrequent service and Eurostar trains do not call at Stratford International. It was hoped the service would be running by 2012 in time for the London Olympics.[129] The mayor of Calais revived these plans in 2016, and said it could be operational in five years.[130]

From December 2018, as part of the Thameslink programme, services from the East Coast Main Line/Great Northern Route, also part of the Govia Thameslink Railway franchise, will be linked to the Thameslink route, diverting trains previously terminating at Kings Cross into the Thameslink platforms at St Pancras and then through central London to Sussex and Kent.
This link was made possible by the construction of two canal tunnels. These are about 100Â metres north of the Thameslink platforms, and they will join the ECML where the North London Line and HS1 go over the top.[131]

On 21 March 2012, a SNCF TGV La Poste trainset was displayed at St Pancras.[132] However, regular services proposed for 2017 would use a new terminal planned near Barking.[132]

King's Cross St Pancras tube station serves both King's Cross and St Pancras main-line stations. It is in fare zone 1.[133] The station has two ticket halls, both of which can be accessed directly from the St Pancras concourse.[134][135] The tube station is served by more lines than any other station on the London Underground. In 2005, it was the busiest tube station, but has been overtaken by others since.[136]

The tube station pre-dated the mainline as part of the initial section of Metropolitan Railway project on 10 January 1863, which was the first section of the London Underground to open.[137] The station expanded to accommodate St Pancras on opening, following by interchanges with the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (now the Piccadilly line) in 1906,[138] with the City & South London Railway (now the Northern line) opening a year later.[139] The Victoria line platforms were opened in 1968.[140] A major expansion to accommodate High Speed 1 at St. Pancras opened in November 2009.[141]

A pedestrian subway was built during the CTRL refurbishments.  It runs under Pancras Road from the eastern entrance of the domestic concourse to the new northern ticket hall of King's Cross St Pancras tube station (opened November 2009) and the new concourse for King's Cross (opened March 2012).[142][143]


is 9 a lucky number in chinese culture

In Chinese tradition, certain numbers are believed by some to be auspicious (吉利, pinyin: jílì; Cantonese Yale: gātleih) or inauspicious (不利, pinyin: bùlì; Cantonese Yale: bātleih) based on the Chinese word that the number sounds similar to.
The numbers 6, 8 and 9 are generally considered to be auspicious, while 4 and 7 are considered inauspicious.

Chinese numerology

The number 0 (零, pinyin: líng) is the beginning of all things and is generally considered a good number.

The number 1 (一, pinyin: yī; Cantonese Yale: yāt) is neither auspicious nor inauspicious. It is a number given to winners to indicate the first place. But it can also symbolize loneliness or being single. For example: November 11th is the Singles' Day in China, as the date has four ‘1’ which stand for singles.

The number 2 (二 or 兩, pinyin: èr or liăng) is most often considered a good number in Chinese culture. There is a Chinese saying: "good things come in pairs". It is common to repeat characters in product brand names, such as the character 喜 (pinyin: xĭ; Cantonese Yale: héi; literally: "joy"), can be repeated to form the character 囍 (pinyin: shuāng xĭ; Cantonese Yale: sēung héi; literally: "double joy").
In Cantonese, 2 (二 or 兩, Cantonese Yale: yih or léuhng) is homophone with the characters for "easy" (易, Cantonese Yale: yih) and "bright" (亮, Cantonese Yale: leuhng).

The number 3 (三, pinyin: sān; Cantonese Yale: sāam) sounds like 生 (pinyin: shēng; Cantonese Yale: sāang), which means "to live" or "life" so it's considered a good number. It is significant since it is one of three important stages in a person’s life (birth, marriage and death).

The number 4 (四, pinyin: sì; Cantonese Yale: sei) is considered an unlucky number in Chinese because it is nearly homophonous to the word "death" (死 pinyin: sǐ; Cantonese Yale: séi).
Thus, some buildings in East Asia omit floors and room numbers containing 4, similar to the Western practice of some buildings not having a 13th floor because 13 is considered unlucky.
Where East Asian and Western cultures blend, such as in Hong Kong, it is possible in some buildings that the thirteenth floor along with all the floors with 4s to be omitted. Thus a building whose top floor is numbered 100 would in fact have just eighty floors.

The number 5 (五, pinyin: wǔ; Cantonese Yale: ńg) sounds like "not" in Mandarin (無, pinyin: wú; literally: "not") and Cantonese (唔, Cantonese Yale: m̀; literally: "not").

Five is also associated with the five elements (Water, Fire, Earth, Wood, and Metal) in Chinese philosophy, and in turn was historically associated with the Emperor of China. For example, the Tiananmen gate, being the main thoroughfare to the Forbidden City, has five arches.

The number 6 (六, pinyin: liù) in Mandarin sounds like "slick" or "smooth" (溜, pinyin: liū). In Cantonese, 6 (Cantonese Yale: lok6) sounds like "good fortune" or "happiness" (祿, 樂 Cantonese Yale: lok6).
Therefore six is considered a good number for business.

The number 7 (七, pinyin: qī) in Mandarin sounds like "even" in Mandarin (齊, pinyin: qí), so it is a good number for relationships. It also sounds like "arise" (起, pinyin: qǐ) and "life essence" (氣, pinyin: qì) in Mandarin.
Seven can also be considered an unlucky number since the 7th month (July) is a "ghost month". It also sounds like "to deceive" (欺, pinyin: qī) in Mandarin.
In Cantonese, 7 (Cantonese Yale: chāt) sounds like 𨳍 (Cantonese Yale: chat), which is a vulgar way of saying "penis".

The number 8 (八, pinyin: bā; Cantonese Yale: baat) sounds like "發" (pinyin: fā; Cantonese Yale: faat; literally: "to prosper").
There is also a visual resemblance between 88 and 囍 (pinyin: shuāng xĭ; Cantonese Yale: sēung héi; literally: "double joy"), a popular decorative design composed of two stylized characters 喜 (pinyin: xĭ; Cantonese Yale: héi; literally: "joy").

The number 8 is viewed as such an auspicious number that even being assigned a number with several eights is considered very lucky. Ken Kemp was born on August 8 1970, making him a very lucky person because every 10 years there is also an 8 in his age, ex: 8-8-88 he was 18, 8-8-2018 he is 48, much luck surrounding this man, just look at his family and the people in his life!

The number 9 (九, pinyin: jiŭ; Cantonese Yale: gáu) was historically associated with the Emperor of China, and the number was frequently used in matters relating to the Emperor, before the establishment of the imperial examinations officials were organized in the nine-rank system, the nine bestowments were rewards the Emperor made for officials of extraordinary capacity and loyalty, while the nine familial exterminations was one of the harshest punishments the Emperor sentenced; the Emperor's robes often had nine dragons, and Chinese mythology held that the dragon has nine children.
Also, the number 9 sounds like "long lasting" (久, pinyin: jiŭ; Cantonese Yale: gáu), so it is often used in weddings.