when did the us put sanctions on iran

Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the resulting hostage crisis, the United States imposed an asset freeze and trade embargo against Iran. While those sanctions were later lifted, the United States imposed new sanctions in 1987 after Iran's actions against shipping in the Persian Gulf and support of international terrorism,[1] in 1987 the United States imposed economic sanctions against Iran. The sanctions were expanded in 1995 to include firms dealing with the Iranian government.[2] In 2006, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1696[3] and imposed sanctions after Iran refused to suspend its uranium enrichment program. U.S. sanctions initially targeted investments in oil, gas, and petrochemicals, exports of refined petroleum products, and business dealings with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). This encompasses banking and insurance transactions (including with the Central Bank of Iran), shipping, web-hosting services for commercial endeavors, and domain name registration services.[4]

Sanctions against Iran

Over the years, sanctions have taken a serious toll on Iran's economy and people. Since 1979, the United States has led international efforts to use sanctions to influence Iran's policies,[5] including Iran's uranium enrichment program, which Western governments fear is intended for developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons. Iran counters that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, including generating electricity and medical purposes.[6]

When nuclear talks between Iran and Western governments were stalled and seen as a failure,[when?] they were cited as a reason to enforce stronger economic sanctions on Iran.[7][better source needed]  On 2 April 2015, the P5+1 and Iran, meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, reached a provisional agreement on a framework that, once finalized and implemented, would lift most of the sanctions in exchange for limits on Iran's nuclear programs extending for at least ten years.[8][9][10][11] As a result, UN sanctions were lifted on 16 January 2016.

The UN Security Council passed a number of resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran, following the report by the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors regarding Iran's non-compliance with its safeguards agreement and the Board's finding that Iran's nuclear activities raised questions within the competency of the Security Council.  Sanctions were first imposed when Iran rejected the Security Council's demand that Iran suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities.  Sanctions will be lifted when Iran meets those demands and fulfills the requirements of the IAEA Board of Governors. To-date, Iran sanctions are the toughest the world community has imposed on any country.[12]

The European Union has imposed restrictions on cooperation with Iran in foreign trade, financial services, energy sectors and technologies, and banned the provision of insurance and reinsurance by insurers in member states to Iran and Iranian-owned companies.[15] On 23 January 2012, the EU agreed to an oil embargo on Iran, effective from July, and to freeze the assets of Iran's central bank.[16] The next month, Iran symbolically pre-empted the embargo by ceasing sales to Britain and France (both countries had already almost eliminated their reliance on Iranian oil, and Europe as a whole had nearly halved its Iranian imports), though some Iranian politicians called for an immediate sales halt to all EU states, so as to hurt countries like Greece, Spain and Italy who were yet to find alternative sources.[17][18]

On 17 March 2012, all Iranian banks identified as institutions in breach of EU sanctions were disconnected from the SWIFT, the world's hub of electronic financial transactions.[19]

One side effect of the sanctions is that the global shipping insurers based in London are unable to provide cover for items as far afield as Japanese shipments of Iranian liquefied petroleum gas to South Korea.[20]

In 2012, the U.S. Department of State stated:

In response to Iran’s continued illicit nuclear activities, the United States and other countries have imposed unprecedented sanctions to censure Iran and prevent its further progress in prohibited nuclear activities, as well as to persuade Tehran to address the international community’s concerns about its nuclear program. Acting both through the United Nations Security Council and regional or national authorities, the United States, the member states of the European Union, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Canada, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, and others have put in place a strong, inter-locking matrix of sanctions measures relating to Iran's nuclear, missile, energy, shipping, transportation, and financial sectors.

These measures are designed: (1) to block the transfer of weapons, components, technology, and dual-use items to Iran’s prohibited nuclear and missile programs; (2) to target select sectors of the Iranian economy relevant to its proliferation activities; and (3) to induce Iran to engage constructively, through discussions with the United States, China, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Russia in the “E3+3 process,” to fulfill its nonproliferation obligations. These nations have made clear that Iran’s full compliance with its international nuclear obligations would open the door to its receiving treatment as a normal non-nuclear-weapon state under The Nonproliferation Treaty and sanctions being lifted.[45]

The website of the U.K. government states:

On 16 October 2012, the EU adopted a further set of restrictive measures against Iran as announced in Council Decision 2012/635/CFSP. These measures are targeted at Iranâ€™s nuclear and ballistic programmes and the revenues made from these programmes by the Iranian government.

In response to the deteriorating human rights situation in Iran, the EU have also adopted Council Regulation (EU) No 359/2011 of 12 April 2011. This regulation has been amended by Council Regulation (EU) No 264/2012, which includes the Annex III list of equipment which might be used for internal repression and related services (e.g. financial, technical, brokering) and internet monitoring and telecommunications equipment and related services.[46]

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), in answering "Why are there sanctions?" wrote in 2015:

"Since Iran's nuclear programme became public in 2002, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been unable to confirm Tehran's assertions that its nuclear activities are exclusively for peaceful purposes and that it has not sought to develop nuclear weapons....

The United Nations Security Council has adopted six resolutions since 2006 requiring Iran to stop enriching uranium - which can be used for civilian purposes, but also to build nuclear bombs - and co-operate with the IAEA. Four resolutions have included progressively expansive sanctions to persuade Tehran to comply. The US and EU have imposed additional sanctions on Iranian oil exports and banks since 2012".[47]

In November 2011 the IAEA reported "serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear programme" and indications that "some activities may still be ongoing."[48]

According to the Supreme leader of Iran, the real objective of sanctions is "to prevent Iran from reaching a prominent civilizational status" (as in history).[49]

Europe's General Court overturned European sanctions against two of Iran's biggest banks (Bank Saderat & Bank Mellat); the two banks had filed suit with the European court to challenge those sanctions.[50]

â€”Bloomberg, 13 February 2012

The sanctions bring difficulties to Iran's $483 billion, oil-dominated economy.[16] Data published by the Iranian Central Bank show a declining trend in the share of Iranian exports from oil-products (2006/2007: 84.9%, 2007/2008: 86.5%, 2008/2009: 85.5%, 2009/2010: 79.8%, 2010/2011 (first three quarters): 78.9%).[52] The sanctions have had a substantial adverse effect on the Iranian nuclear program by making it harder to acquire specialized materials and equipment needed for the program. The social and economic effects of sanctions have also been severe,[53] with even those who doubt their efficacy, such as John Bolton, describing the EU sanctions, in particular, as "tough, even brutal."[54] Iranian foreign minister Ali Akhbar Salehi conceded that the sanctions are having an impact.[55] China has become Iran's largest remaining trading partner.[34]

Sanctions have reduced Iran's access to products needed for the oil and energy sectors, have prompted many oil companies to withdraw from Iran, and have also caused a decline in oil production due to reduced access to technologies needed to improve their efficiency.[citation needed] According to Undersecretary of State William Burns, Iran may be annually losing as much as $60 billion in energy investment.[56] Many international companies have also been reluctant to do business with Iran for fear of losing access to larger Western markets.[citation needed] As well as restricting export markets, the sanctions have reduced Iran's oil income by increasing the costs of repatriating revenues in complicated ways that sidestep the sanctions; Iranian analysts estimate the budget deficit for the 2011/2012 fiscal year, which in Iran ends in late March, at between $30bn to $50bn.[57] The effects of U.S. sanctions include expensive basic goods for Iranian citizens, and an aging and increasingly unsafe civil aircraft fleet. According to the Arms Control Association, the international arms embargo against Iran is slowly reducing Iran's military capabilities, largely due to its dependence on Russian and Chinese military assistance. The only substitute is to find compensatory measures requiring more time and money, and which are less effective.[58][59] According to at least one analyst (Fareed Zakaria), the market for imports in Iran is dominated by state enterprises and state-friendly enterprises, because the way to get around the sanctions is smuggling, and smuggling requires strong connections with the government. This has weakened Iranian civil society and strengthened the state.[citation needed]

The value of the Iranian rial has plunged since autumn 2011, it is reported to have devalued up to 80%, falling 10% immediately after the imposition of the EU oil embargo[60] since early October 2012,[61] causing widespread panic among the Iranian public.[57]  In January 2012, the country raised the interest rate on bank deposits by up to 6 percentage points in order to curtail the rial's depreciation. The rate increase was a setback for Ahmadinejad, who had been using below-inflation rates to provide cheap loans to the poor, though naturally Iranian bankers were delighted by the increase.[57] Not long after, and just a few days after Iran's economic minister declared that "there was no economic justification" for devaluing the currency because Iran's foreign exchange reserves were "not only good, but the extra oil revenues are unprecedented,"[57] the country announced its intention to devalue by about 8.5 percent against the U.S. dollar, set a new exchange rate and vowed to reduce the black market's influence (booming, of course, because of the lack of confidence in the rial).[62] The Iranian Central Bank desperately tried to keep the value of the rial afloat in the midst of the late 2012 decline by pumping petrodollars into the system to allow the rial to compete against the US dollar.[63] Efforts to control inflation rates were set forth by the government through a three-tiered-multiple-exchange-rate;[64] this effect has failed to prevent the rise in cost of basic goods, simultaneously adding to the public's reliance on the Iranian black-market exchange rate network.[63] Government officials attempted to stifle the black-market by offering rates 2% below the alleged black-market rates, but demand seems to be outweighing their efforts.[65][66]

Sanctions tightened further when major supertanker companies said they would stop loading Iranian cargo. Prior attempts to reduce Iran's oil income failed because many vessels are often managed by companies outside the United States and the EU; however, EU actions in January extended the ban to ship insurance. This insurance ban will affect 95 percent of the tanker fleet because their insurance falls under rules governed by European law. "It's the insurance that's completed the ban on trading with Iran," commented one veteran ship broker.[67] This completion of the trading ban left Iran struggling to find a buyer for nearly a quarter of its annual oil exports.[17] Iran has sought to manage the impact of international sanctions and limit capital outflows by promoting a "resistance economy," replacing imports with domestic goods and banning luxury imports such as computers and mobile phones.[68]  This is predicted to lead to an increase in smuggling, as "people will find a way to smuggle in what the Iranian consumer wants."[69]  To sustain oil imports, Iran has also provided domestic insurance for tankers shipping Iranian oil.[70] Iran had hoped to sell more to Chinese and Indian refiners, though such attempts seem unlikely to succeed, particularly since China—the single-largest buyer of Iranian crude—has been curtailing its oil imports from Iran down to half their former level.[17]

Another effect of the sanctions, in the form of Iran's retaliatory threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, has led to Iraqi plans to open export routes for its crude via Syria, though Iraq's deputy prime minister for energy affairs doubted Iran would ever attempt a closure.[67]

After Iranian banks blacklisted by the EU were disconnected from the SWIFT banking network, Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz stated that Iran would now find it more difficult to export oil and import products. According to Steinitz, Iran would be forced to accept only cash or gold, which is impossible when dealing with billions of dollars. Steinitz told the Israeli cabinet that Iran's economy might collapse as a result.[71][72]

The effects of the sanctions are usually denied in the Iranian press.[73][74] Iran has also taken measures to circumvent sanctions, notably by using front countries or companies and by using barter trade.[75] At other times the Iranian government has advocated a "resistance economy" in response to sanctions, such as using more oil internally as export markets dry up and import substitution industrialization of Iran.[76][77]

In October 2012, Iran began struggling to halt a decline in oil exports which could plummet further due to Western sanctions, and the International Energy Agency estimated that Iranian exports fell to a record of 860,000 bpd in September 2012 from 2.2 million bpd at the end of 2011.  The results of this fall led to a drop in revenues and clashes on the streets of Tehran when the local currency, the rial, collapsed.  The output in September 2012 was Iran's lowest since 1988.[78]

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast has said that the sanctions were not just aimed at Iran's nuclear program and would continue even if the nuclear dispute was resolved.[79]

In the face of increased economic pressure from the United States and Europe and a marked decrease of oil exports, Iran is seeking to build a resistance economy[80][81] as well as ongoing gold imports from Turkey.[82]

94 Iranian Parliamentarians signed a formal request to have Ahmadinejad appear before the Majles (parliament) to answer questions about the currency crisis. The Supreme Leader terminated the parliament's request in order to unify the government in the face of international pressure.[83] Nonetheless, Ahmadinejad has been called to questioning by parliament on a number of occasions, to justify his position on issues concerning domestic politics. His ideologies seem to have alienated a large portion of the parliament, and stand in contrast to the standpoint of the Supreme Leader.[dubious  â€“ discuss][84][85]

A recent report by Dr. Kenneth Katzman, for the Congressional Research Service, listed the following factors as major examples of economic mismanagement on the part of the Iranian government:

According to the U.S., Iran could reduce the world price of crude petroleum by 10%, saving the United States annually $76 billion (at the proximate 2008 world oil price of $100/bbl). Opening Iranâ€™s market place to foreign investment could also be a boon to competitive U.S. multinational firms operating in a variety of manufacturing and service sectors.[87]

In 2012, the U.S. Energy Department warned that imposing oil embargoes on Iran would increase world oil prices by widening the gap between supply and demand.[88]

On the other side, according to a US bipartisan study, oil prices "could double" if Iran is permitted to obtain a nuclear weapon.[89] U.S. gross domestic product could fall by about 0.6% in the first year—costing the economy some $90 billion—and by up to 2.5% (or $360 billion) by the third year. This is enough, at current[when?] growth rates, to send the country into recession.[90]

Pharmaceuticals and medical equipment do not fall under international sanctions, but Iran is facing shortages of drugs for the treatment of 30 illnesses—including cancer, heart and breathing problems, thalassemia and multiple sclerosis (MS)—because it is not allowed to use international payment systems.[91][92] A teenage boy died from haemophilia because of a shortage of medicine caused by the sanctions.[93] Deliveries of some agricultural products to Iran have also been affected for the same reasons.[94]

Drug imports to Iran from the U.S. and Europe decreased by approximately 30 percent in 2012, according to a report by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.[95] In 2013, The Guardian reported that some 85,000 cancer patients required forms of chemotherapy and radiotherapy that had become scarce. Western governments have built waivers into the sanctions regime to ensure that essential medicines get through, but those waivers conflict with blanket restrictions on banking, as well as bans on "dual-use" chemicals that might have a military as well as a medical application. An estimated 40,000 haemophiliacs cannot get blood-clotting medicines, and operations on haemophiliacs have been virtually suspended because of the risks created by the shortages. An estimated 23,000 Iranians with HIV/AIDS have severely restricted access to the drugs they need. The society representing the 8,000 Iranians suffering from thalassemia, an inherited blood disorder, has said its members are beginning to die because of a lack of an essential drug, deferoxamine, used to control the iron content in the blood. Further, Iran can no longer buy medical equipment such as autoclaves, essential for the production of many drugs, because some of the biggest Western pharmaceutical companies refuse to do business with the country.[96]

Journalists have reported on the development of a black market for medicine.[97] Though vital drugs are not affected directly by the sanctions, the amount of hard currency available to the minister of health is severely limited. Marzieh Vahid-Dastjerdi, Iran's first female government minister since the Iranian Revolution, was dismissed in December 2012 for speaking out against the lack of support from the government in times of economic hardship.[98] Furthermore, Iranian patients are at risk of amplified side effects and reduced effectiveness because Iran is forced to import medicines, and chemical building blocks for other medicines, from India and China, as opposed to obtaining higher-quality products from Western manufacturers. Because of patent protections, substitutions for advanced medicines are often unattainable, particularly when it comes to diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis.[99]

The "Civil Movement" was initiated by two prominent Iranian economists—Dr. Mousa Ghaninejad, of Tehran's Petroleum University of Technology, and Dr. Mohammad Mehdi Behkish, of Tehran's Allameh Tabatabaei University—on 14 July 2013. They described the sanctions as an "unfair" and "illogical" tool, arguing that a freer economy would lead to less political enmity and encourage amicable relationships between countries. They also noted that sanctions against one country punish not only the people of that country, but also the people of its trade partners.

The movement was supported by a large group of intellectuals, academics, civil society activists, human rights activists and artists.[100][101][102] In September 2013, the International Chamber of Commerce-Iran posted an open letter by 157 Iranian economists, lawyers and journalists criticizing the humanitarian consequences of sanctions and calling on their colleagues across the world to pressure their governments to take steps to resolve the underlying conflict.[103]

After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the United States ended its economic and diplomatic ties with Iran, banned Iranian oil imports and froze approximately 11 billion 1980-US dollars of its assets.[104]

In recent years, billions of dollars of Iranian assets abroad have been seized or frozen, including a building in New York City, and bank accounts in Great Britain, Luxembourg, Japan and Canada.[105][106][107][108][109]

In 2012, Iran reported that the assets of Guard-linked companies in several countries have been frozen but in some cases the assets have been returned.[110]

The chairman of the Majlis Planning and Budget Committee says $100 billion of Iranâ€™s money is frozen in foreign banks because of the sanctions imposed on the country.[111] As of 2013, only $30 billion to $50 billion of its foreign exchange reserves (i.e. roughly 50% of total) is accessible because of sanctions.[112]

With the accord between Iran and the P5+1 now reached, sanctions relief will affect the economy of Iran in four principal ways:[113]

According to the Central Bank of Iran, Iran will use funds unfrozen by its nuclear deal mainly to finance domestic investments, keeping the money abroad until it is needed.[115]

On 16 January 2016, it was announced by the International Atomic Energy Agency that the nation had adequately dismantled its nuclear weapons program, allowing for the United Nations to lift sanctions immediately.[116][117][118]

According to the Washington Institute in 2015:[119] "The pre-deal asset freeze did not have as great an impact on the Iranian government as some statements from Washington suggested. And going forward, the post-deal relaxation of restrictions will not have as great an impact as some critics of the deal suggest."


when was the very first photograph ever taken

In the mid-1820s, Nicéphore Niépce first managed to fix an image that was captured with a camera, but at least eight hours or even several days of exposure in the camera were required and the earliest results were very crude. Niépce's associate Louis Daguerre went on to develop the daguerreotype process, the first publicly announced and commercially viable photographic process. The daguerreotype required only minutes of exposure in the camera, and produced clear, finely detailed results. The details were introduced as a gift to the world in 1839, a date generally accepted as the birth year of practical photography.[1][2] The metal-based daguerreotype process soon had some competition from the paper-based calotype negative and salt print processes invented by William Henry Fox Talbot. Subsequent innovations made photography easier and more versatile. New materials reduced the required camera exposure time from minutes to seconds, and eventually to a small fraction of a second; new photographic media were more economical, sensitive or convenient, including roll films for casual use by amateurs. In the mid-20th century, developments made it possible for amateurs to take pictures in natural color as well as in black-and-white.

History of photography

The history of photography has roots in remote antiquity with the discovery of two critical principles, that of the camera obscura image projection and the fact that some substances are visibly altered by exposure to light, as discovered by observation. Apart from a very uncertain process used on the Turin Shroud there are no artifacts or descriptions that indicate that anyone even imagined capturing images with light sensitive materials before the 18th century. Around 1717 Johann Heinrich Schulze captured cut-out letters on a bottle of a light-sensitive slurry, but he apparently never thought of making the results durable. Around 1800 Thomas Wedgwood made the first reliably documented, although unsuccessful attempt at capturing camera images in permanent form. His experiments did produce detailed photograms, but Wedgwood and his associate Humphry Davy found no way to fix these images.

The commercial introduction of computer-based electronic digital cameras in the 1990s soon revolutionized photography. During the first decade of the 21st century, traditional film-based photochemical methods were increasingly marginalized as the practical advantages of the new technology became widely appreciated and the image quality of moderately priced digital cameras was continually improved. Especially since cameras became a standard feature on smartphones, taking pictures (and instantly publishing them online) has become an ubiquitous everyday practice around the world.

The coining of the word "photography" is usually attributed to Sir John Herschel in 1839. It is based on the Greek φῶς (phōs), (genitive: phōtós) meaning "light", and γραφή (graphê), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light".[3]

A natural phenomenon, known as camera obscura or pinhole image, can project a (reversed) image through a small opening onto an opposite surface. This principle may have been known and used in prehistoric times. The earliest known written record of the camera obscura is to be found in Chinese writings called Mozi, dated to the 4th century BCE. Until the 16th century the camera obscura was mainly used to study optics and astronomy, especially to safely watch solar eclipses without damaging the eyes. In the later half of the 16th century some technical improvements were developed: a (biconvex) lens in the opening (first described by Gerolamo Cardano in 1550) and a diaphragm restricting the aperture (Daniel Barbaro in 1568) gave a brighter and sharper image. In 1558 Giambattista della Porta advised using the camera obscura as a drawing aid in his popular and influential books. Della Porta's advice was widely adopted by artists and since the 17th century portable versions of the camera obscura were commonly used - first as a tent, later as boxes. The box type camera obscura was the basis for the earliest photographic cameras when photography was developed in the early 19th century.

The notion that light can affect various substances - for instance the suntanning of skin or fading of textile - must have been around since very early times. Ideas of fixing the image seen in mirrors or other ways of creating images automatically may also have been in people's mind long before anything like photography was developed.[4] However, there seem to be no historical records of any ideas even remotely resembling photography before 1725, despite early knowledge of light-sensitive materials and the camera obscura.[5]

It has been suggested that some lost type of photographic technology must have been applied before 1357: the Shroud of Turin contains an image that resembles a sepia photographic negative and is much clearer when it is converted to a positive image. The actual method that resulted in this image has not yet been conclusively identified. It first appeared in historical records in 1357 and radiocarbon dating tests indicate it was probably made between 1260 and 1390.[6] No other examples of detailed negative images from before the 19th century are known.[citation needed]

Albertus Magnus (1193/1206â€“80) discovered silver nitrate and noted that it could blacken skin.[7] Silver nitrate would later be used as a light sensitive material in the photographic emulsion on photographic glass plates and film.

Georg Fabricius (1516â€“71) discovered silver chloride, later used to make photographic paper.[8]

In 1614 Angelo Sala wrote in his paper Septem Planetarum terrestrium Spagirica recensio[9]: "When you expose powdered silver nitrate to sunlight, it turns black as ink". He also noted that paper wrapped around silver nitrate for a year had turned black.[10]

Wilhelm Homberg described how light darkened some chemicals (photochemical effect) in 1694.[8]

Around 1717[11] German polymath Johann Heinrich Schulze accidentally discovered that a slurry of chalk and nitric acid into which some silver particles had been dissolved was darkened by sunlight. After experiments with threads that had created lines on the bottled substance after he placed it in direct sunlight for a while, he applied stencils of words to the bottle. The stencils produced copies of the text in dark red, almost violet characters on the surface of the otherwise whitish contents. The impressions persisted until they were erased by shaking the bottle or until overall exposure to light obliterated them. Schulze named the substance "Scotophorus", when he published his findings in 1719. He thought the discovery could be applied to detect whether metals or minerals contained any silver and hoped that further experimentation by others would lead to some other useful results.[12][13] Schulze's process resembled later photogram techniques and is sometimes regarded as the very first form of photography.[14]

The early science fiction novel Giphantie[15] (1760) by the French Tiphaigne de la Roche described something quite similar to (colour) photography, a process that fixes fleeting images formed by rays of light:"They coat a piece of canvas with this material, and place it in front of the object to capture. The first effect of this cloth is similar to that of a mirror, but by means of its viscous nature the prepared canvas, as is not the case with the mirror, retains a facsimile of the image. The mirror represents images faithfully, but retains none; our canvas reflects them no less faithfully, but retains them all. This impression of the image is instantaneous. The canvas is then removed and deposited in a dark place. An hour later the impression is dry, and you have a picture the more precious in that no art can imitate its truthfulness."[16] De la Roche thus imagined a process that made use of a special substance in combination with the qualities of a mirror, rather than the camera obscura. The hour of drying in a dark place suggests he possibly thought about the light sensitivity of the material, but he attributes the effect to its viscous nature.

In 1777, the chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele was studying the more intrinsically light-sensitive silver chloride and determined that light darkened it by disintegrating it into microscopic dark particles of metallic silver. Of greater potential usefulness, Scheele found that ammonia dissolved the silver chloride but not the dark particles. This discovery could have been used to stabilize or "fix" a camera image captured with silver chloride, but was not picked up by the earliest photography experimenters.[citation needed]

Scheele also noted that red light did not have much effect on silver chloride (a feature that would later be applied to be able to see while printing black and white photographs in darkrooms).[17]

Although Thomas Wedgwood felt inspired by Scheele's writings in general, he must have missed or forgotten these experiments: he found no method to fix the photogram and shadow images he managed to capture around 1800 (see below).[17]

Thomas Wedgwood (1771-1805) is believed to have been the first person to have thought of creating permanent pictures by capturing camera images on material coated with a light-sensitive chemical. He originally wanted to capture the images of a camera obscura, but found they were too faint to have an effect upon the silver nitrate solution that was advised to him as a light-sensitive substance. Wedgwood did manage to copy painted glass plates and captured shadows on white leather as well as on paper moistened with a silver nitrate solution. Attempts to preserve the results with their "distinct tints of brown or black, sensibly differing in intensity" failed. It is unclear when Wedgwood's experiments took place. He may have started before 1790; James Watt wrote a letter to Thomas Wedgwood's father Josiah Wedgwood to thank him "for your instructions as to the Silver Pictures, about which, when at home, I will make some experiments". This letter (now lost) is believed to have been written in 1790, 1791 or 1799. In 1802 an account by Humphry Davy detailing Wedgwood's experiments was published in an early journal of the Royal Institution with the title An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of Making Profiles, by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver. Davy added that the method could be used for objects that are partly opaque and partly transparent to create accurate representations of for instance "the woody fibres of leaves and the wings of insects". He also found that solar microscope images of small objects were easily captured on prepared paper. Davy, apparently unaware or forgetful about Scheele's discovery, concluded that substances should be found to get rid of (or deactivate) the unexposed particles in silver nitrate or silver chloride "to render the process as useful as it is elegant".[17] Wedgwood may have prematurely abandoned his experiments due to his frail and failing health. He died aged 34 in 1805.

Davy seems not to have continued the experiments. Although the journal of the small, infant Royal Institution probably reached its very small group of members, the article eventually must have been read by much more people. It was reviewed by David Brewster in the Edinburgh Magazine in December 1802, appeared in chemistry textbooks as early as 1803, was translated into French, and published in German in 1811. Readers of the article may have been discouraged to find a fixer, because the highly acclaimed scientist Davy had already tried and failed. Apparently the article wasn't noted by NiÃ©pce nor Daguerre, and by Talbot only after he had developed his own processes.[17][18]

French balloonist/professor/inventor Jacques Charles is believed to have captured fleeting negative photograms of silhouettes on light sensitive paper at the start of the 19th century, prior to Westwood. Charles died in 1823 without documenting the process, but purportedly demonstrated it in his lectures at the Louvre. It was not publicized until François Arago mentioned it at his introduction of the details of the Daguerreotupe to the world in 1839. He later wrote that the first idea of fixing the images of the camera obscura or the solar microscope with chemical substances belonged to Charles. Later historians probably only built on Arago's information and much later the unsupported year 1780 was attached to it.[19] Since Arago indicated the first years of the 19th century and a date prior to Wedgwood's process published in 1802, this would mean that Charles' demonstrations took place in 1800 or 1801 - assuming Arago was this accurate almost 40 years later.

In 1816 Nicéphore Niépce, using paper coated with silver chloride, succeeded in photographing the images formed in a small camera, but the photographs were negatives, darkest where the camera image was lightest and vice versa, and they were not permanent in the sense of being reasonably light-fast; like earlier experimenters, Niépce could find no way to prevent the coating from darkening all over when it was exposed to light for viewing. Disenchanted with silver salts, he turned his attention to light-sensitive organic substances.[21]

The oldest surviving photograph of the image formed in a camera was created by NiÃ©pce in 1826 or 1827.[1] It was made on a polished sheet of pewter and the light-sensitive substance was a thin coating of bitumen, a naturally occurring petroleum tar, which was dissolved in lavender oil, applied to the surface of the pewter and allowed to dry before use.[23] After a very long exposure in the camera (traditionally said to be eight hours, but now believed to be several days),[24] the bitumen was sufficiently hardened in proportion to its exposure to light that the unhardened part could be removed with a solvent, leaving a positive image with the light areas represented by hardened bitumen and the dark areas by bare pewter.[23] To see the image plainly, the plate had to be lit and viewed in such a way that the bare metal appeared dark and the bitumen relatively light.[21]

In partnership, Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône and Louis Daguerre in Paris refined the bitumen process,[25] substituting a more sensitive resin and a very different post-exposure treatment that yielded higher-quality and more easily viewed images. Exposure times in the camera, although substantially reduced, were still measured in hours.[21]

Niépce died suddenly in 1833, leaving his notes to Daguerre. More interested in silver-based processes than Niépce had been, Daguerre experimented with photographing camera images directly onto a mirror-like silver-surfaced plate that had been fumed with iodine vapor, which reacted with the silver to form a coating of silver iodide. As with the bitumen process, the result appeared as a positive when it was suitably lit and viewed. Exposure times were still impractically long until Daguerre made the pivotal discovery that an invisibly slight or "latent" image produced on such a plate by a much shorter exposure could be "developed" to full visibility by mercury fumes. This brought the required exposure time down to a few minutes under optimum conditions. A strong hot solution of common salt served to stabilize or fix the image by removing the remaining silver iodide. On 7 January 1839, this first complete practical photographic process was announced at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences,[26] and the news quickly spread.[27] At first, all details of the process were withheld and specimens were shown only at Daguerre's studio, under his close supervision, to Academy members and other distinguished guests.[28] Arrangements were made for the French government to buy the rights in exchange for pensions for Niépce's son and Daguerre and present the invention to the world (with the exception of Great Britain, where an agent for Daguerre patented it) as a free gift.[29] Complete instructions were made public on 19 August 1839.[30] Known as the Daguerreotype process, it was the most common commercial process until the late 1850s. It was superseded by the collodion process.

After reading early reports of Daguerre's invention, Henry Fox Talbot, who had succeeded in creating stabilized photographic negatives on paper in 1835, worked on perfecting his own process. In early 1839, he acquired a key improvement, an effective fixer, from his friend John Herschel, a polymath scientist who had previously shown that hyposulfite of soda (commonly called "hypo" and now known formally as sodium thiosulfate) would dissolve silver salts.[31] News of this solvent also benefited Daguerre, who soon adopted it as a more efficient alternative to his original hot salt water method.[32]

Talbot's early silver chloride "sensitive paper" experiments required camera exposures of an hour or more. In 1841, Talbot invented the calotype process, which, like Daguerre's process, used the principle of chemical development of a faint or invisible "latent" image to reduce the exposure time to a few minutes. Paper with a coating of silver iodide was exposed in the camera and developed into a translucent negative image. Unlike a daguerreotype, which could only be copied by rephotographing it with a camera, a calotype negative could be used to make a large number of positive prints by simple contact printing. The calotype had yet another distinction compared to other early photographic processes, in that the finished product lacked fine clarity due to its translucent paper negative. This was seen as a positive attribute for portraits because it softened the appearance of the human face[citation needed]. Talbot patented this process,[33] which greatly limited its adoption, and spent many years pressing lawsuits against alleged infringers. He attempted to enforce a very broad interpretation of his patent, earning himself the ill will of photographers who were using the related glass-based processes later introduced by other inventors, but he was eventually defeated. Nonetheless, Talbot's developed-out silver halide negative process is the basic technology used by chemical film cameras today. Hippolyte Bayard had also developed a method of photography but delayed announcing it, and so was not recognized as its inventor.

In 1839, John Herschel made the first glass negative, but his process was difficult to reproduce. Slovene Janez Puhar invented a process for making photographs on glass in 1841; it was recognized on June 17, 1852 in Paris by the Académie Nationale Agricole, Manufacturière et Commerciale.[34] In 1847, Nicephore Niépce's cousin, the chemist Niépce St. Victor, published his invention of a process for making glass plates with an albumen emulsion; the Langenheim brothers of Philadelphia and John Whipple and William Breed Jones of Boston also invented workable negative-on-glass processes in the mid-1840s.[35]

In 1851 Frederick Scott Archer invented the collodion process.[36] Photographer and children's author Lewis Carroll used this process. (Carroll refers to the process as "Tablotype" [sic] in the story "A Photographer's Day Out")[37]

Herbert Bowyer Berkeley experimented with his own version of collodion emulsions after Samman introduced the idea of adding dithionite to the pyrogallol developer.[citation needed] Berkeley discovered that with his own addition of sulfite, to absorb the sulfur dioxide given off by the chemical dithionite in the developer, that dithionite was not required in the developing process. In 1881 he published his discovery. Berkeley's formula contained pyrogallol, sulfite and citric acid. Ammonia was added just before use to make the formula alkaline. The new formula was sold by the Platinotype Company in London as Sulpho-Pyrogallol Developer.[38]

Nineteenth-century experimentation with photographic processes frequently became proprietary.The German-born, New Orleans photographer Theodore Lilienthal successfully sought legal redress in an 1881 infringement case involving his "Lambert Process" in the Eastern District of Louisiana.

The daguerreotype proved popular in response to the demand for portraiture that emerged from the middle classes during the Industrial Revolution.[citation needed] This demand, which could not be met in volume and in cost by oil painting, added to the push for the development of photography.

Roger Fenton and Philip Henry Delamotte helped popularize the new way of recording events, the first by his Crimean war pictures, the second by his record of the disassembly and reconstruction of The Crystal Palace in London. Other mid-nineteenth-century photographers established the medium as a more precise means than engraving or lithography of making a record of landscapes and architecture: for example, Robert Macpherson's broad range of photographs of Rome, the interior of the Vatican, and the surrounding countryside became a sophisticated tourist's visual record of his own travels.

In America, by 1851 a broadside by daguerreotypist Augustus Washington was advertising prices ranging from 50 cents to $10.[39] However, daguerreotypes were fragile and difficult to copy. Photographers encouraged chemists to refine the process of making many copies cheaply, which eventually led them back to Talbot's process.

Ultimately, the photographic process came about from a series of refinements and improvements in the first 20 years. In 1884 George Eastman, of Rochester, New York, developed dry gel on paper, or film, to replace the photographic plate so that a photographer no longer needed to carry boxes of plates and toxic chemicals around. In July 1888 Eastman's Kodak camera went on the market with the slogan "You press the button, we do the rest". Now anyone could take a photograph and leave the complex parts of the process to others, and photography became available for the mass-market in 1901 with the introduction of the Kodak Brownie.

Daguerreotype cameras were advertised in Calcutta a year after their invention in France — but photographic societies in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras were beginning to pop up from the 1850s onward. [40] As the practice of photography evolved, a contrasting style developed alongside the predominantly European influence on the art form. This turn is most notable in the work of Raja Deen Dayal, India’s most celebrated 19th-century photographer, whose appointment as court photographer to the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad allowed him unique access to the inner circles of aristocratic life. [41]

Perhaps Mrs. E. Mayer holds the distinction of being the first professional woman photographer in India. She opened a studio in 7 Old Court House Street Corner to provide a rare treat to Indian women: to be photographed without fear or concern. [42]

A practical means of color photography was sought from the very beginning. Results were demonstrated by Edmond Becquerel as early as 1848, but exposures lasting for hours or days were required and the captured colors were so light-sensitive they would only bear very brief inspection in dim light.

The first durable color photograph was a set of three black-and-white photographs taken through red, green, and blue color filters and shown superimposed by using three projectors with similar filters. It was taken by Thomas Sutton in 1861 for use in a lecture by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, who had proposed the method in 1855.[43] The photographic emulsions then in use were insensitive to most of the spectrum, so the result was very imperfect and the demonstration was soon forgotten. Maxwell's method is now most widely known through the early 20th century work of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii. It was made practical by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel's 1873 discovery of a way to make emulsions sensitive to the rest of the spectrum, gradually introduced into commercial use beginning in the mid-1880s.

Two French inventors, Louis Ducos du Hauron and Charles Cros, working unknown to each other during the 1860s, famously unveiled their nearly identical ideas on the same day in 1869. Included were methods for viewing a set of three color-filtered black-and-white photographs in color without having to project them, and for using them to make full-color prints on paper.[44]

The first widely used method of color photography was the Autochrome plate, a process inventors and brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière began working on in the 1890s and commercially introduced in 1907.[45] It was based on one of Louis Ducos du Hauron's ideas: instead of taking three separate photographs through color filters, take one through a mosaic of tiny color filters overlaid on the emulsion and view the results through an identical mosaic. If the individual filter elements were small enough, the three primary colors of red, blue, and green would blend together in the eye and produce the same additive color synthesis as the filtered projection of three separate photographs.

Autochrome plates had an integral mosaic filter layer with roughly five million previously dyed potato grains per square inch added to the surface. Then through the use of a rolling press, five tons of pressure were used to flatten the grains, enabling every one of them to capture and absorb color and their microscopic size allowing the illusion that the colors are merged together. The final step was adding a coat of the light capturing substance silver bromide after which a color image could be imprinted and developed. In order to see it, reversal processing was used to develop each plate into a transparent positive that could be viewed directly or projected with an ordinary projector. One of the drawbacks of the technology is an exposure time of at least a second was required during the day in bright light and the worse the light is, the time required quickly goes up. An indoor portrait required a few minutes with the subject not being able to move or else the picture would come out blurry. This was because the grains absorbed the color fairly slowly and that a filter of a yellowish-orange color was added to the plate to keep the photograph from coming out excessively blue. Although necessary, the filter had the effect of reducing the amount of light that was absorbed. Another drawback was that the film could only be enlarged so much until the many dots that make up the image become apparent.[45][46]

Competing screen plate products soon appeared and film-based versions were eventually made. All were expensive and until the 1930s none was "fast" enough for hand-held snapshot-taking, so they mostly served a niche market of affluent advanced amateurs.

A new era in color photography began with the introduction of Kodachrome film, available for 16 mm home movies in 1935 and 35 mm slides in 1936. It captured the red, green, and blue color components in three layers of emulsion. A complex processing operation produced complementary cyan, magenta, and yellow dye images in those layers, resulting in a subtractive color image. Maxwell's method of taking three separate filtered black-and-white photographs continued to serve special purposes into the 1950s and beyond, and Polachrome, an "instant" slide film that used the Autochrome's additive principle, was available until 2003, but the few color print and slide films still being made in 2015 all use the multilayer emulsion approach pioneered by Kodachrome.

In 1957, a team led by Russell A. Kirsch at the National Institute of Standards and Technology developed a binary digital version of an existing technology, the wirephoto drum scanner, so that alphanumeric characters, diagrams, photographs and other graphics could be transferred into digital computer memory. One of the first photographs scanned was a picture of Kirsch's infant son Walden. The resolution was 176x176 pixels with only one bit per pixel, i.e., stark black and white with no intermediate gray tones, but by combining multiple scans of the photograph done with different black-white threshold settings, grayscale information could also be acquired.[47]

The charge-coupled device (CCD) is the image-capturing optoelectronic component in first-generation digital cameras. It was invented in 1969 by Willard Boyle and George E. Smith at AT&T Bell Labs as a memory device. The lab was working on the Picturephone and on the development of semiconductor bubble memory. Merging these two initiatives, Boyle and Smith conceived of the design of what they termed "Charge 'Bubble' Devices". The essence of the design was the ability to transfer charge along the surface of a semiconductor. It was Dr. Michael Tompsett from Bell Labs however, who discovered that the CCD could be used as an imaging sensor. The CCD has increasingly been replaced by the active pixel sensor (APS), commonly used in cell phone cameras. These mobile phone cameras are used by billions of people worldwide, dramatically increasing photographic activity and material and also fueling citizen journalism.

The web has been a popular medium for storing and sharing photos ever since the first photograph was published on the web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1992 (an image of the CERN house band Les Horribles Cernettes). Today sites and apps such as Flickr, Picasa, Instagram, Imgur and PhotoBucket are used by many millions of people to share their pictures.


what was the importance of the battle of richmond in the civil war

The Battle of Richmond, Kentucky, fought August 29â€“30, 1862, was a stunning Confederate victory by Major General Edmund Kirby Smith against Union major general, William "Bull" Nelson's forces, defending the town. It was the first major battle in the Kentucky Campaign. The battle took place on and around what is now the grounds of the Blue Grass Army Depot, outside Richmond, Kentucky.

Battle of Richmond

In the fall of 1862, two Confederate armies moved on separate paths into Kentucky, hoping to restore the Confederate government of that state into power, threaten Union cities along the Ohio River, and recruit men to join the army. First to move was Kirby Smith, leading the Confederate Army of Kentucky, whose ideas provided the initiative for the offensive. General Braxton Bragg, commanding the Army of Mississippi, moved on a roughly parallel track to the west. Smith departed Knoxville on August 13, Bragg left Chattanooga on August 27.[citation needed]

Brigadier General Patrick Cleburne led Smith's advance with Colonel John S. Scott's cavalry out in front. The Confederate cavalry, while moving north from Big Hill on the road to Richmond, Kentucky, on August 29, encountered Union troopers and began skirmishing. After noon, Union artillery and infantry joined the fray, forcing the Confederate cavalry to retreat to Big Hill.[3]

At that time, Brigadier General Mahlon D. Manson, who commanded Union forces in the area, commanded a brigade to march to Rogersville, toward the rebels. Fighting for the day stopped after pursuing Union forces briefly skirmished with Cleburne's men in the late afternoon. That night, Manson informed his superior, Bull Nelson, of his situation, and he ordered another brigade to be ready to march in support, when required.[3]

Kirby Smith ordered Cleburne to attack in the morning and promised to hurry reinforcements (Brigadier General Thomas J. Churchill's division). Cleburne started early, marching north, passed through Kingston, dispersed Union skirmishers, and approached Manson's battle line near Zion Church. As the day progressed, additional troops joined both sides. Following an artillery duel, the battle began, and after a concerted Confederate attack on the Union right, the Union troops gave way. Retreating into Rogersville, they made another futile stand at their old bivouac.[3]

By now, Smith and Nelson had arrived and taken command of their respective armies. Nelson rallied some troops in the cemetery outside Richmond, but they were routed.[3]

Nelson and some of his men escaped, but the Confederates captured over 4,300 Union troops. Total casualties were 5,353 (206 killed, 844 wounded, and 4,303 captured or missing) on the Union side, 451 (78 killed, 372 wounded, and one missing) for the Confederates.[2] The way north towards Lexington and Frankfort was open.[3]

Civil war historian Shelby Foote remarked that Smith "accomplished in Kentucky the nearest thing to a Cannae ever scored by any general, North or South, in the course of the whole war."[4]

The Civil War Trust (a division of the American Battlefield Trust) and its partners have acquired and preserved 365 acres of the Richmond Battlefield.[6]

The Mt. Zion Christian Church, which served as a hospital during the battle and has cannonballs embedded in its brick walls, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[7]

Two discontinuous areas totalling 214 acres (87Â ha) were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Battle of Richmond Historic Areas in 1996.[5]  These included four contributing buildings.[8]


who won the men’s single title in the brisbane international tennis played in january 2010

Andy Roddick def.  Radek Štěpánek, 7–6(7–2), 7–6(9–7).[1]

2010 Brisbane International

The 2010 Brisbane International was a joint ATP and WTA tennis tournament played on outdoor hard courts in Brisbane, Queensland. It was the 2nd edition of the tournament and was played at the Queensland Tennis Centre in Tennyson. The centre court, Pat Rafter Arena is named in honour of Australian tennis hero Patrick Rafter. It took place from 3 to 10 January 2010. It was part of the Australian Open Series in preparation for the first grandslam of the year. Justine Henin has announced that she will make her return to professional tennis at the 2010 Brisbane International.

Television coverage of the tournament was on Channel Seven, with live coverage of the day sessions and delayed coverage of the night sessions between 4 and 10 January.

The following players received wildcards into the singles main draw:

The following players received entry from the qualifying draw:

Kim Clijsters def.  Justine Henin, 6–3, 4–6, 7–6(8–6).[2]

Jérémy Chardy /  Marc Gicquel def.  Lukáš Dlouhý /  Leander Paes, 6–3, 7–6(7–5).[3]

Andrea Hlaváčková /  Lucie Hradecká def.  Melinda Czink /  Arantxa Parra Santonja, 2–6, 7–6(7–3), [10–4].


what does it mean to chase the dragon

"Chasing the dragon" (traditional Chinese: 追龍; simplified Chinese: 追龙; pinyin: zhuī lóng; Jyutping: zeoi1 lung4) is a slang phrase of Cantonese origin from Hong Kong referring to inhaling the vapor from a heated solution of morphine, heroin, oxycodone, opium, or ya ba (a pill containing caffeine and methamphetamine). The "chasing" occurs as the user gingerly keeps the liquid moving in order to keep it from overheating and burning up too quickly, on a heat conducting material such as aluminium foil. The moving smoke is chased after with a tube through which the user inhales. The process may be referred to as a "foily" in Australian English.[1]

Chasing the dragon

This method of intake decreases or eliminates certain of the risks of heroin use while increasing others, as the transmission of HIV, hepatitis, and other diseases through needle sharing, the introduction of skin bacteria to the blood stream due to non-sterile injection, and the stress that injection puts on veins cannot occur. Additionally, a small puff can be inhaled as a method of gauging the strength of the heroin. This may be protective from the risk of overdose. Finally, the lungs can act to filter out adulterants that otherwise would pass directly into the bloodstream. One of the most common of these adulterants, talc, has an apparently greater potential to damage the lungs (as well as other organs, such as the kidneys) when present in the bloodstream, than when inhaled [2]. However, in any case, it is always harmful to expose the lungs to any kind of smoke or heated vapor, and inhaling heroin itself is more likely to lead to toxic leukoencephalopathy than is injecting.[3][4]