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Alchemy | Texts | Texts
Marcellin Berthelot and Charles-Émile Ruelle (eds.), Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (CAAG), 3 vols., 1887–1888, Vol 1: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k96492923, Vol 2: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9680734p, Vol. 3: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9634942s.
André-Jean Festugière, La Révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2014 (, OCLC 897235256).
and (eds.), Les alchimistes grecs, t. 1 : Papyrus de Leyde – Papyrus de Stockholm – Recettes, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1981.
Otto Lagercrantz (ed), Papyrus Graecus Holmiensis, Uppsala, A.B. Akademiska Bokhandeln, 1913, Papyrus graecus holmiensis (P. holm.); Recepte für Silber, Steine und Purpur, bearb. von Otto Lagercrantz. Hrsg. mit Unterstützung des Vilh. Ekman'schen Universitätsfonds.
Michèle Mertens and (ed.), Les alchimistes grecs, t. 4.1 : Zosime de Panopolis. Mémoires authentiques, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1995.
Andrée Collinet and (ed.), Les alchimistes grecs, t. 10 : L'Anonyme de Zuretti ou l'Art sacré and divin de la chrysopée par un anonyme, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2000.
Andrée Collinet (ed), Les alchimistes grecs, t. 11 : Recettes alchimiques (Par. Gr. 2419; Holkhamicus 109) – Cosmas le Hiéromoine – Chrysopée, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2000.
Matteo Martelli (ed), The Four Books of Pseudo-Democritus, Maney Publishing, 2014. |
Alchemy | Studies | Studies
Dylan M. Burns, " μίξεώς τινι τέχνῃ κρείττονι : Alchemical Metaphor in the Paraphrase of Shem (NHC VII,1) ", Aries 15 (2015), p. 79–106.
Alberto Camplani, " Procedimenti magico-alchemici e discorso filosofico ermetico " in Giuliana Lanata (ed.), Il Tardoantico alle soglie del Duemila, ETS, 2000, p. 73–98.
Alberto Camplani and Marco Zambon, " Il sacrificio come problema in alcune correnti filosofice di età imperiale ", Annali di storia dell'esegesi 19 (2002), p. 59–99.
Régine Charron and Louis Painchaud, " 'God is a Dyer,' The Background and Significance of a Puzzling Motif in the Coptic Gospel According to Philip (CG II, 3), Le Muséon 114 (2001), p. 41-50.
Régine Charron, " The Apocryphon of John (NHC II,1) and the Greco-Egyptian Alchemical Literature ", Vigiliae Christinae 59 (2005), p. 438-456.
Philippe Derchain, "L'Atelier des Orfèvres à Dendara et les origines de l'alchimie," Chronique d'Égypte, vol. 65, no 130, 1990, p. 219–242.
Korshi Dosoo, " A History of the Theban Magical Library ", Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 53 (2016), p. 251–274.
Olivier Dufault, Early Greek Alchemy, Patronage and Innovation in Late Antiquity, California Classical Studies, 2019, Early Greek Alchemy, Patronage and Innovation in Late Antiquity.
Sergio Knipe, " Sacrifice and self-transformation in the alchemical writings of Zosimus of Panopolis ", in Christopher Kelly, Richard Flower, Michael Stuart Williams (eds.), Unclassical Traditions. Volume II: Perspectives from East and West in Late Antiquity, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 59–69.
André-Jean Festugière, La Révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2014 , .
Kyle A. Fraser, " Zosimos of Panopolis and the Book of Enoch: Alchemy as Forbidden Knowledge ", Aries 4.2 (2004), p. 125–147.
Kyle A. Fraser, " Baptized in Gnosis: The Spiritual Alchemy of Zosimos of Panopolis ", Dionysius 25 (2007), p. 33–54.
Kyle A. Fraser, " Distilling Nature's Secrets: The Sacred Art of Alchemy ", in John Scarborough and Paul Keyser (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World, Oxford University Press, 2018, p. 721–742. 2018. .
Shannon Grimes, Becoming Gold: Zosimos of Panopolis and the Alchemical Arts in Roman Egypt, Auckland, Rubedo Press, 2018,
Paul T. Keyser, " Greco-Roman Alchemy and Coins of Imitation Silver ", American Journal of Numismatics 7–8 (1995–1996), p. 209–234.
Paul Keyser, " The Longue Durée of Alchemy ", in John Scarborough and Paul Keyser (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World, Oxford University Press, 2018, p. 409–430.
Jean Letrouit, "Chronologie des alchimistes grecs," in Didier Kahn and Sylvain Matton, Alchimie: art, histoire et mythes, SEHA-Archè, 1995, p. 11–93.
Lindsay, Jack. The Origins of Alchemy in Greco-Roman Egypt. Barnes & Noble, 1970.
Paul Magdalino and Maria Mavroudi (eds.), The Occult Sciences in Byzantium, La Pomme d'or, 2006.
Matteo Martelli, " Alchemy, Medicine and Religion: Zosimus of Panopolis and the Egyptian Priests ", Religion in the Roman Empire 3.2 (2017), p. 202–220.
Daniel Stolzenberg, " Unpropitious Tinctures: Alchemy, Astrology & Gnosis According to Zosimos of Panopolis ", Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences 49 (1999), p. 3–31.
Cristina Viano, " Byzantine Alchemy, or the Era of Systematization ", in John Scarborough and Paul Keyser (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World, Oxford University Press, 2018, p. 943–964.
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Alchemy | Early modern | Early modern
Principe, Lawrence and William Newman. Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry. University of Chicago Press, 2002. |
Alchemy | External links | External links
SHAC: Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
ESSWE: European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism
Association for the Study of Esotericism
Category:Eastern esotericism
Category:Western esotericism
Category:Natural philosophy
Category:History of science |
Alchemy | Table of Content | Short description, Etymology, History, Hellenistic Egypt, Mythology, Technology, Philosophy, Byzantium, India, Islamic world, East Asia, Medieval Europe, Renaissance and early modern Europe, Later modern period, Women, Modern historical research, Core concepts, Magnum opus, Modernity, Esoteric interpretations of historical texts, Psychology, Literature, Science, See also, Notes, References, Citations, Sources used, Bibliography, Introductions and textbooks, Greco-Egyptian alchemy, Texts, Studies, Early modern, External links |
Alien | pp-vandalism | Alien primarily refers to:
Alien (law), a person in a country who is not a national of that country
Enemy alien, the above in times of war
Extraterrestrial life, life which does not originate from Earth
Specifically, a lifeform with extraterrestrial intelligence
For fictional extraterrestrial life, see Extraterrestrials in fiction
Introduced species, a species not native to its environment
Adventive plants or alien plants, species that are foreign to the native flora
Alien(s), or The Alien(s) may also refer to: |
Alien | Science and technology | Science and technology
AliEn (ALICE Environment), a grid framework
Alien (file converter), a Linux program
Alien Technology, a manufacturer of RFID technology |
Alien | Arts and entertainment | Arts and entertainment
Alien (franchise), a media franchise
Xenomorph, the titular alien in the franchise |
Alien | Films | Films
Alien (film), a 1979 film by Ridley Scott
Aliens (film), second film in the franchise from 1986 by James Cameron
Alien 3, third film in the franchise from 1992 by David Fincher
Alien Resurrection, fourth film in the franchise from 1997 by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Alien vs. Predator (film), fifth film in the franchise from 2004 by Paul W. S. Anderson
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, sixth film in the franchise from 2007 by the Brothers Strause
Prometheus (2012 film), seventh film in the franchise from 2012 by Ridley Scott
Alien: Covenant, eighth film in the franchise from 2017 by Ridley Scott
Alien: Romulus, ninth film in the franchise from 2024 by Fede Álvarez
Alien 2: On Earth, a 1980 unofficial sequel of the 1979 Alien film
Alien Visitor (also titled Epsilon) (1995 film) AustralianItalian science fiction film by Rolf de Heer
The Alien (2016 film), a 2016 Mexican film
The Alien (unproduced film), an incomplete 1960s IndianAmerican film
Alienoid, a 2022 South Korean film |
Alien | Literature | Literature
Alien novels, an extension of the Alien franchise
Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual, a 1995 book by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood, a guide to the fictional United States Colonial Marines
Aliens (Tappan Wright novel), a 1902 novel by Mary Tappan Wright
Aliens! (anthology) a 1980 anthology of science fiction edited by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann
The Alien (novel), the eighth book in the Animorphs series by Katherine Applegate
The Aliens (play), a 2010 play by Annie Baker |
Alien | Music | Music |
Alien | Performers | Performers
Alien (band), a 1980s Swedish rock group
The Aliens (Australian band), a 1970s new wave group
The Aliens (Scottish band), a 2005–2008 rock group
The Aliens, the backing band for the American musician Jared Louche on his 1999 solo debut album Covergirl |
Alien | Albums | Albums
Alien (soundtrack), 1979
Alien (Alien album), 1988
Alien (Beam album), 2022
Alien (Northlane album), 2019
Alien (Strapping Young Lad album), 2005
Alien, a 1989 EP by Tankard
Aliens (soundtrack), 1987 |
Alien | Songs | Songs
"Alien" (Britney Spears song), 2013
"Alien" (Jonas Blue and Sabrina Carpenter song), 2018
"Alien", a song by Atlanta Rhythm from the album Quinella, 1981
"Alien", a song by Bush from the album Sixteen Stone, 1994
"Alien", a song by Dead Letter Circus from the EP Dead Letter Circus, 2007
"Alien", a song by The Devil Wears Prada from the EP Space, 2014
"Alien", a song by Erasure from the album Loveboat, 2000
"Alien", a song by Japan from the album Quiet Life, 1979
"Alien", a song by Lamb from the album Fear of Fours, 1999
"Alien", a song by Nerina Pallot from the album Dear Frustrated Superstar, 2001
"Alien", a song by P-Model from the album Landsale, 1980
"Alien", a song by Pennywise from the album Straight Ahead, 1999
"Alien", a song by Stray Kids from the album SKZ-Replay, 2022
"Alien", a song by Structures from the album Life Through a Window, 2014
"Alien", a song by the National from the album First Two Pages of Frankenstein, 2023
"Alien", a song by Third Day from the album Conspiracy No. 5, 1997
"Alien", a song by Thriving Ivory from the album Thriving Ivory, 2003
"Alien", a song by Tokio Hotel from the album Humanoid, 2009
"Alien", a 2018 song by Beach House
"Alien", a 2020 song by Lee Su-hyun
"Alien", a 2020 song by Dennis Lloyd
"Aliens" (song), a 2017 song by Coldplay
"Aliens", a 1984 song by Warlord
"The Alien", a song by Dream Theater from the album A View from the Top of the World, 2021 |
Alien | Video games | Video games |
Alien | Based on the 1979 and 1986 films | Based on the 1979 and 1986 films
Alien (1982 video game), a 1982 maze game based on the 1979 film
Alien (1984 video game), based on the 1979 film
Aliens: The Computer Game (US Version), a 1986 game by Activision based on the 1986 film of the same name
Aliens: The Computer Game (UK Version), a 1986 game by Electric Dreams based on the 1986 film
Aliens (1990 video game), a game by Konami, based on the 1986 film
Alien: Isolation, a 2014 video game based on the Alien science fiction horror film series
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Alien | Other video games | Other video games
Aliens (1982 video game), a text-only clone of Space Invaders written for the CP/M operating system on the Kaypro computer |
Alien | Other media | Other media
Alien (Armenian TV series), a 2017 melodrama series
Alien: Isolation – The Digital Series, web series in the Alien franchise from 2019 by Fabien Dubois
Alien: Earth, an upcoming science fiction horror television series in the franchise by Noah Hawley
Alien (sculpture), a 2012 work by David Breuer-Weil, in Mottisfont, Hampshire, England
Aliens (Dark Horse Comics line)
The Aliens (TV series), 2016 British sci-fi television series
"Aliens" (Roseanne), a 1992 television episode |
Alien | Other uses | Other uses
Alien (shipping company), a Russian company
Alien Sun (born 1974), Singaporean actress
Alien, a perfume by Thierry Mugler
Alian District (Alien), in Taiwan |
Alien | See also | See also
Alians, an Islamic order
Alien Project (disambiguation)
Alien 4 (disambiguation)
Alien vs. Predator (disambiguation)
Astrobiology, the study of hypothetical alien life
ATLiens, a 1996 album by OutKast
Predator (disambiguation)
UFO (disambiguation)
Unidentified flying object (disambiguation)
Outsider (disambiguation) |
Alien | Table of Content | pp-vandalism, Science and technology, Arts and entertainment, Films, Literature, Music, Performers, Albums, Songs, Video games, Based on the 1979 and 1986 films, Other video games, Other media, Other uses, See also |
Astronomer | short description | thumb|upright=1.5|A voting session is conducted in 2006 International Astronomical Union's general assembly for determining a new definition of a planet
An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either observational (by analyzing the data) or theoretical astronomy. Examples of topics or fields astronomers study include planetary science, solar astronomy, the origin or evolution of stars, or the formation of galaxies. A related but distinct subject is physical cosmology, which studies the Universe as a whole. |
Astronomer | Types | Types
Astronomers typically fall under either of two main types: observational and theoretical. Observational astronomers make direct observations of celestial objects and analyze the data. In contrast, theoretical astronomers create and investigate models of things that cannot be observed. Because it takes millions to billions of years for a system of stars or a galaxy to complete a life cycle, astronomers must observe snapshots of different systems at unique points in their evolution to determine how they form, evolve, and die. They use this data to create models or simulations to theorize how different celestial objects work.
Further subcategories under these two main branches of astronomy include planetary astronomy, astrobiology, stellar astronomy, astrometry, galactic astronomy, extragalactic astronomy, or physical cosmology. Astronomers can also specialize in certain specialties of observational astronomy, such as infrared astronomy, neutrino astronomy, x-ray astronomy, and gravitational-wave astronomy. |
Astronomer | Academic | Academic |
Astronomer | History | History
left|thumb|upright|Galileo is often referred to as the father of modern astronomy. Portrait by Justus Sustermans.
right|thumb|upright|Johannes Kepler, one of the fathers of modern astronomy
Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using physical laws. Today, that distinction has mostly disappeared and the terms "astronomer" and "astrophysicist" are interchangeable. Professional astronomers are highly educated individuals who typically have a PhD in physics or astronomy and are employed by research institutions or universities. They spend the majority of their time working on research, although they quite often have other duties such as teaching, building instruments, or aiding in the operation of an observatory.
The American Astronomical Society, which is the major organization of professional astronomers in North America, has approximately 8,200 members (as of 2024). This number includes scientists from other fields such as physics, geology, and engineering, whose research interests are closely related to astronomy. The International Astronomical Union comprises about 12,700 members from 92 countries who are involved in astronomical research at the PhD level and beyond (as of 2024).
thumb|upright|Portrait of the Flemish astronomer Ferdinand Verbiest who became head of the Mathematical Board and director of the Observatory of the Chinese emperor in 1669
Contrary to the classical image of an old astronomer peering through a telescope through the dark hours of the night, it is far more common to use a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera to record a long, deep exposure, allowing a more sensitive image to be created because the light is added over time. Before CCDs, photographic plates were a common method of observation. Modern astronomers spend relatively little time at telescopes, usually just a few weeks per year. Analysis of observed phenomena, along with making predictions as to the causes of what they observe, takes the majority of observational astronomers' time. |
Astronomer | Activities and graduate degree training | Activities and graduate degree training
Astronomers who serve as faculty spend much of their time teaching undergraduate and graduate classes. Most universities also have outreach programs, including public telescope time and sometimes planetariums, as a public service to encourage interest in the field.
Those who become astronomers usually have a broad background in physics, mathematics, sciences, and computing in high school. Taking courses that teach how to research, write, and present papers are part of the higher education of an astronomer, while most astronomers attain both a Master's degree and eventually a PhD degree in astronomy, physics or astrophysics.
PhD training typically involves 5-6 years of study, including completion of upper-level courses in the core sciences, a competency examination, experience with teaching undergraduates and participating in outreach programs, work on research projects under the student's supervising professor, completion of a PhD thesis, and passing a final oral exam. Throughout the PhD training, a successful student is financially supported with a stipend. |
Astronomer | Amateur astronomers | Amateur astronomers
While there is a relatively low number of professional astronomers, the field is popular among amateurs. Most cities have amateur astronomy clubs that meet on a regular basis and often host star parties. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific is the largest general astronomical society in the world, comprising both professional and amateur astronomers as well as educators from 70 different nations.
As with any hobby, most people who practice amateur astronomy may devote a few hours a month to stargazing and reading the latest developments in research. However, amateurs span the range from so-called "armchair astronomers" to people who own science-grade telescopes and instruments with which they are able to make their own discoveries, create astrophotographs, and assist professional astronomers in research. |
Astronomer | See also | See also
List of astronomers
List of women astronomers
List of Muslim astronomers
List of French astronomers
List of Hungarian astronomers
List of Russian astronomers and astrophysicists
List of Slovenian astronomers |
Astronomer | References | References |
Astronomer | Sources | Sources
|
Astronomer | External links | External links
American Astronomical Society
European Astronomical Society
International Astronomical Union
Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Space's astronomy news
Category:Astronomy
Category:Science occupations |
Astronomer | Table of Content | short description, Types, Academic, History, Activities and graduate degree training, Amateur astronomers, See also, References, Sources, External links |
ASCII | Short description | ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. ASCII has just 128 code points, of which only 95 are , which severely limit its scope. The set of available punctuation had significant impact on the syntax of computer languages and text markup. ASCII hugely influenced the design of character sets used by modern computers; for example the first 128 code points of Unicode are the same as ASCII.
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) prefers the name US-ASCII for this character encoding.
ASCII is one of the IEEE milestones. |
ASCII | Overview | Overview
ASCII was developed in part from telegraph code. Its first commercial use was in the Teletype Model 33 and the Teletype Model 35 as a seven-bit teleprinter code promoted by Bell data services. Work on the ASCII standard began in May 1961, with the first meeting of the American Standards Association's (ASA) (now the American National Standards Institute or ANSI) X3.2 subcommittee. The first edition of the standard was published in 1963, underwent a major revision during 1967, and experienced its most recent update during 1986. Compared to earlier telegraph codes, the proposed Bell code and ASCII were both ordered for more convenient sorting (i.e., alphabetization) of lists and added features for devices other than teleprinters.
The use of ASCII format for Network Interchange was described in 1969. (NB. Almost identical wording to USAS X3.4-1968 except for the intro.) That document was formally elevated to an Internet Standard in 2015.
Originally based on the (modern) English alphabet, ASCII encodes 128 specified characters into seven-bit integers as shown by the ASCII chart in this article. Ninety-five of the encoded characters are printable: these include the digits 0 to 9, lowercase letters a to z, uppercase letters A to Z, and punctuation symbols. In addition, the original ASCII specification included 33 non-printing control codes which originated with s; most of these are now obsolete, although a few are still commonly used, such as the carriage return, line feed, and tab codes.
For example, lowercase i would be represented in the ASCII encoding by binary 1101001 = hexadecimal 69 (i is the ninth letter) = decimal 105.
Despite being an American standard, ASCII does not have a code point for the cent (¢). It also does not support English terms with diacritical marks such as résumé and jalapeño, or proper nouns with diacritical marks such as Beyoncé (although on certain devices characters could be combined with punctuation such as Tilde (~) and Backtick (`) to approximate such characters.) |
ASCII | <span class="anchor" id="1963"></span><span class="anchor" id="1965"></span><span class="anchor" id="1967"></span><span class="anchor" id="1968"></span><span class="anchor" id="1977"></span><span class="anchor" id="1986"></span><span class="anchor" id="1992"></span><span class="anchor" id="1997"></span><span class="anchor" id="2002"></span><span class="anchor" id="2007"></span><span class="anchor" id="2012"></span><span class="anchor" id="2017"></span><span class="anchor" id="2022"></span>History | History
thumb|upright=1.25|right|ASCII (1963). Control Pictures of equivalent controls are shown where they exist, or a grey dot otherwise.
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) was developed under the auspices of a committee of the American Standards Association (ASA), called the X3 committee, by its X3.2 (later X3L2) subcommittee, and later by that subcommittee's X3.2.4 working group (now INCITS). The ASA later became the United States of America Standards Institute (USASI) and ultimately became the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).
With the other special characters and control codes filled in, ASCII was published as ASA X3.4-1963, leaving 28 code positions without any assigned meaning, reserved for future standardization, and one unassigned control code. There was some debate at the time whether there should be more control characters rather than the lowercase alphabet. The indecision did not last long: during May 1963 the CCITT Working Party on the New Telegraph Alphabet proposed to assign lowercase characters to sticks 6 and 7,Brief Report: Meeting of CCITT Working Party on the New Telegraph Alphabet, May 13–15, 1963. and International Organization for Standardization TC 97 SC 2 voted during October to incorporate the change into its draft standard.Report of ISO/TC/97/SC 2 – Meeting of October 29–31, 1963. The X3.2.4 task group voted its approval for the change to ASCII at its May 1963 meeting.Report on Task Group X3.2.4, June 11, 1963, Pentagon Building, Washington, DC. Locating the lowercase letters in sticks 6 and 7 caused the characters to differ in bit pattern from the upper case by a single bit, which simplified case-insensitive character matching and the construction of keyboards and printers.
The X3 committee made other changes, including other new characters (the brace and vertical bar characters),Report of Meeting No. 8, Task Group X3.2.4, December 17 and 18, 1963 renaming some control characters (SOM became start of header (SOH)) and moving or removing others (RU was removed). ASCII was subsequently updated as USAS X3.4-1967, then USAS X3.4-1968, ANSI X3.4-1977, and finally, ANSI X3.4-1986. |
ASCII | Revisions | Revisions
ASA X3.4-1963
ASA X3.4-1965 (approved, but not published, nevertheless used by IBM 2260 & 2265 Display Stations and IBM 2848 Display Control)
USAS X3.4-1967
USAS X3.4-1968
ANSI X3.4-1977
ANSI X3.4-1986
ANSI X3.4-1986 (R1992)
ANSI X3.4-1986 (R1997)
ANSI INCITS 4-1986 (R2002)
ANSI INCITS 4-1986 (R2007)
INCITS 4-1986 (R2012)
INCITS 4-1986 (R2017)
INCITS 4-1986 (R2022)
In the X3.15 standard, the X3 committee also addressed how ASCII should be transmitted (least significant bit first) and recorded on perforated tape. They proposed a 9-track standard for magnetic tape and attempted to deal with some punched card formats. |
ASCII | Design considerations | Design considerations |
ASCII | Bit width | Bit width
The X3.2 subcommittee designed ASCII based on the earlier teleprinter encoding systems. Like other character encodings, ASCII specifies a correspondence between digital bit patterns and character symbols (i.e. graphemes and control characters). This allows digital devices to communicate with each other and to process, store, and communicate character-oriented information such as written language. Before ASCII was developed, the encodings in use included 26 alphabetic characters, 10 numerical digits, and from 11 to 25 special graphic symbols. To include all these, and control characters compatible with the Comité Consultatif International Téléphonique et Télégraphique (CCITT) International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2) standard of 1932, FIELDATA (1956), and early EBCDIC (1963), more than 64 codes were required for ASCII.
ITA2 was in turn based on Baudot code, the 5-bit telegraph code Émile Baudot invented in 1870 and patented in 1874.
The committee debated the possibility of a shift function (like in ITA2), which would allow more than 64 codes to be represented by a six-bit code. In a shifted code, some character codes determine choices between options for the following character codes. It allows compact encoding, but is less reliable for data transmission, as an error in transmitting the shift code typically makes a long part of the transmission unreadable. The standards committee decided against shifting, and so ASCII required at least a seven-bit code.
The committee considered an eight-bit code, since eight bits (octets) would allow two four-bit patterns to efficiently encode two digits with binary-coded decimal. However, it would require all data transmission to send eight bits when seven could suffice. The committee voted to use a seven-bit code to minimize costs associated with data transmission. Since perforated tape at the time could record eight bits in one position, it also allowed for a parity bit for error checking if desired. Eight-bit machines (with octets as the native data type) that did not use parity checking typically set the eighth bit to 0. |
ASCII | Internal organization | Internal organization
The code itself was patterned so that most control codes were together and all graphic codes were together, for ease of identification. The first two so-called ASCII sticks (32 positions) were reserved for control characters. The "space" character had to come before graphics to make sorting easier, so it became position 20hex; for the same reason, many special signs commonly used as separators were placed before digits. The committee decided it was important to support uppercase 64-character alphabets, and chose to pattern ASCII so it could be reduced easily to a usable 64-character set of graphic codes, as was done in the DEC SIXBIT code (1963). Lowercase letters were therefore not interleaved with uppercase. To keep options available for lowercase letters and other graphics, the special and numeric codes were arranged before the letters, and the letter A was placed in position 41hex to match the draft of the corresponding British standard. The digits 0–9 are prefixed with 011, but the remaining 4 bits correspond to their respective values in binary, making conversion with binary-coded decimal straightforward (for example, 5 in encoded to 0110101, where 5 is 0101 in binary).
Many of the non-alphanumeric characters were positioned to correspond to their shifted position on typewriters; an important subtlety is that these were based on mechanical typewriters, not electric typewriters. Mechanical typewriters followed the de facto standard set by the Remington No. 2 (1878), the first typewriter with a shift key, and the shifted values of 23456789- were "#$%_&'() early typewriters omitted 0 and 1, using O (capital letter o) and l (lowercase letter L) instead, but 1! and 0) pairs became standard once 0 and 1 became common. Thus, in ASCII !"#$% were placed in the second stick, positions 1–5, corresponding to the digits 1–5 in the adjacent stick. The parentheses could not correspond to 9 and 0, however, because the place corresponding to 0 was taken by the space character. This was accommodated by removing _ (underscore) from 6 and shifting the remaining characters, which corresponded to many European typewriters that placed the parentheses with 8 and 9. This discrepancy from typewriters led to bit-paired keyboards, notably the Teletype Model 33, which used the left-shifted layout corresponding to ASCII, differently from traditional mechanical typewriters.
Electric typewriters, notably the IBM Selectric (1961), used a somewhat different layout that has become de facto standard on computers following the IBM PC (1981), especially Model M (1984) and thus shift values for symbols on modern keyboards do not correspond as closely to the ASCII table as earlier keyboards did. The /? pair also dates to the No. 2, and the ,< .> pairs were used on some keyboards (others, including the No. 2, did not shift , (comma) or . (full stop) so they could be used in uppercase without unshifting). However, ASCII split the ;: pair (dating to No. 2), and rearranged mathematical symbols (varied conventions, commonly -* =+) to :* ;+ -=.
Some then-common typewriter characters were not included, notably ½ ¼ ¢, while ^ ` ~ were included as diacritics for international use, and < > for mathematical use, together with the simple line characters \ | (in addition to common /). The @ symbol was not used in continental Europe and the committee expected it would be replaced by an accented À in the French variation, so the @ was placed in position 40hex, right before the letter A.
The control codes felt essential for data transmission were the start of message (SOM), end of address (EOA), end of message (EOM), end of transmission (EOT), "who are you?" (WRU), "are you?" (RU), a reserved device control (DC0), synchronous idle (SYNC), and acknowledge (ACK). These were positioned to maximize the Hamming distance between their bit patterns. |
ASCII | <span class="anchor" id="Order"></span>Character order | Character order
ASCII-code order is also called ASCIIbetical order. Collation of data is sometimes done in this order rather than "standard" alphabetical order (collating sequence). The main deviations in ASCII order are:
All uppercase come before lowercase letters; for example, "Z" precedes "a"
Digits and many punctuation marks come before letters
An intermediate order converts uppercase letters to lowercase before comparing ASCII values. |
ASCII | <span class="anchor" id="Code chart"></span><span class="anchor" id="ASCII printable code chart"></span><span class="anchor" id="ASCII printable characters"></span>Character set | Character set
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ASCII | Character groups | Character groups |
ASCII | <span class="anchor" id="ASCII control characters"></span>Control characters | Control characters
thumb|right|Early symbols assigned to the 32 control characters, space and delete characters. (ISO 2047, MIL-STD-188-100, 1972)
ASCII reserves the first 32 code points (numbers 0–31 decimal) and the last one (number 127 decimal) for control characters. These are codes intended to control peripheral devices (such as printers), or to provide meta-information about data streams, such as those stored on magnetic tape. Despite their name, these code points do not represent printable characters (i.e. they are not characters at all, but signals). For debugging purposes, "placeholder" symbols (such as those given in ISO 2047 and its predecessors) are assigned to them.
For example, character 0x0A represents the "line feed" function (which causes a printer to advance its paper), and character 8 represents "backspace". refers to control characters that do not include carriage return, line feed or white space as non-whitespace control characters. (NB. NO-WS-CTL.) Except for the control characters that prescribe elementary line-oriented formatting, ASCII does not define any mechanism for describing the structure or appearance of text within a document. Other schemes, such as markup languages, address page and document layout and formatting.
The original ASCII standard used only short descriptive phrases for each control character. The ambiguity this caused was sometimes intentional, for example where a character would be used slightly differently on a terminal link than on a data stream, and sometimes accidental, for example the standard is unclear about the meaning of "delete".
Probably the most influential single device affecting the interpretation of these characters was the Teletype Model 33 ASR, which was a printing terminal with an available paper tape reader/punch option. Paper tape was a very popular medium for long-term program storage until the 1980s, less costly and in some ways less fragile than magnetic tape. In particular, the Teletype Model 33 machine assignments for codes 17 (control-Q, DC1, also known as XON), 19 (control-S, DC3, also known as XOFF), and 127 (delete) became de facto standards. The Model 33 was also notable for taking the description of control-G (code 7, BEL, meaning audibly alert the operator) literally, as the unit contained an actual bell which it rang when it received a BEL character. Because the keytop for the O key also showed a left-arrow symbol (from ASCII-1963, which had this character instead of underscore), a noncompliant use of code 15 (control-O, shift in) interpreted as "delete previous character" was also adopted by many early timesharing systems but eventually became neglected.
When a Teletype 33 ASR equipped with the automatic paper tape reader received a control-S (XOFF, an abbreviation for transmit off), it caused the tape reader to stop; receiving control-Q (XON, transmit on) caused the tape reader to resume. This so-called flow control technique became adopted by several early computer operating systems as a "handshaking" signal warning a sender to stop transmission because of impending buffer overflow; it persists to this day in many systems as a manual output control technique. On some systems, control-S retains its meaning, but control-Q is replaced by a second control-S to resume output.
The 33 ASR also could be configured to employ control-R (DC2) and control-T (DC4) to start and stop the tape punch; on some units equipped with this function, the corresponding control character lettering on the keycap above the letter was TAPE and TAPE respectively. |
ASCII | Delete vs backspace | Delete vs backspace
The Teletype could not move its typehead backwards, so it did not have a key on its keyboard to send a BS (backspace). Instead, there was a key marked that sent code 127 (DEL). The purpose of this key was to erase mistakes in a manually-input paper tape: the operator had to push a button on the tape punch to back it up, then type the rubout, which punched all holes and replaced the mistake with a character that was intended to be ignored. Teletypes were commonly used with the less-expensive computers from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC); these systems had to use what keys were available, and thus the DEL character was assigned to erase the previous character. Because of this, DEC video terminals (by default) sent the DEL character for the key marked "Backspace" while the separate key marked "Delete" sent an escape sequence; many other competing terminals sent a BS character for the backspace key.
The early Unix tty drivers, unlike some modern implementations, allowed only one character to be set to erase the previous character in canonical input processing (where a very simple line editor is available); this could be set to BS or DEL, but not both, resulting in recurring situations of ambiguity where users had to decide depending on what terminal they were using (shells that allow line editing, such as ksh, bash, and zsh, understand both). The assumption that no key sent a BS character allowed Ctrl+H to be used for other purposes, such as the "help" prefix command in GNU Emacs. |
ASCII | Escape | Escape
Many more of the control characters have been assigned meanings quite different from their original ones. The "escape" character (ESC, code 27), for example, was intended originally to allow sending of other control characters as literals instead of invoking their meaning, an "escape sequence". This is the same meaning of "escape" encountered in URL encodings, C language strings, and other systems where certain characters have a reserved meaning. Over time this interpretation has been co-opted and has eventually been changed.
In modern usage, an ESC sent to the terminal usually indicates the start of a command sequence, which can be used to address the cursor, scroll a region, set/query various terminal properties, and more. They are usually in the form of a so-called "ANSI escape code" (often starting with a "Control Sequence Introducer", "CSI", "") from ECMA-48 (1972) and its successors. Some escape sequences do not have introducers, like the "Reset to Initial State", "RIS" command "".
In contrast, an ESC read from the terminal is most often used as an out-of-band character used to terminate an operation or special mode, as in the TECO and vi text editors. In graphical user interface (GUI) and windowing systems, ESC generally causes an application to abort its current operation or to exit (terminate) altogether. |
ASCII | End of line | End of line
The inherent ambiguity of many control characters, combined with their historical usage, created problems when transferring "plain text" files between systems. The best example of this is the newline problem on various operating systems. Teletype machines required that a line of text be terminated with both "carriage return" (which moves the printhead to the beginning of the line) and "line feed" (which advances the paper one line without moving the printhead). The name "carriage return" comes from the fact that on a manual typewriter the carriage holding the paper moves while the typebars that strike the ribbon remain stationary. The entire carriage had to be pushed (returned) to the right in order to position the paper for the next line.
DEC operating systems (OS/8, RT-11, RSX-11, RSTS, TOPS-10, etc.) used both characters to mark the end of a line so that the console device (originally Teletype machines) would work. By the time so-called "glass TTYs" (later called CRTs or "dumb terminals") came along, the convention was so well established that backward compatibility necessitated continuing to follow it. When Gary Kildall created CP/M, he was inspired by some of the command line interface conventions used in DEC's RT-11 operating system.
Until the introduction of PC DOS in 1981, IBM had no influence in this because their 1970s operating systems used EBCDIC encoding instead of ASCII, and they were oriented toward punch-card input and line printer output on which the concept of "carriage return" was meaningless. IBM's PC DOS (also marketed as MS-DOS by Microsoft) inherited the convention by virtue of being loosely based on CP/M, and Windows in turn inherited it from MS-DOS.
Requiring two characters to mark the end of a line introduces unnecessary complexity and ambiguity as to how to interpret each character when encountered by itself. To simplify matters, plain text data streams, including files, on Multics used line feed (LF) alone as a line terminator. The tty driver would handle the LF to CRLF conversion on output so files can be directly printed to terminal, and NL (newline) is often used to refer to CRLF in UNIX documents. Unix and Unix-like systems, and Amiga systems, adopted this convention from Multics. On the other hand, the original Macintosh OS, Apple DOS, and ProDOS used carriage return (CR) alone as a line terminator; however, since Apple later replaced these obsolete operating systems with their Unix-based macOS (formerly named OS X) operating system, they now use line feed (LF) as well. The Radio Shack TRS-80 also used a lone CR to terminate lines.
Computers attached to the ARPANET included machines running operating systems such as TOPS-10 and TENEX using CR-LF line endings; machines running operating systems such as Multics using LF line endings; and machines running operating systems such as OS/360 that represented lines as a character count followed by the characters of the line and which used EBCDIC rather than ASCII encoding. The Telnet protocol defined an ASCII "Network Virtual Terminal" (NVT), so that connections between hosts with different line-ending conventions and character sets could be supported by transmitting a standard text format over the network. Telnet used ASCII along with CR-LF line endings, and software using other conventions would translate between the local conventions and the NVT. The File Transfer Protocol adopted the Telnet protocol, including use of the Network Virtual Terminal, for use when transmitting commands and transferring data in the default ASCII mode. This adds complexity to implementations of those protocols, and to other network protocols, such as those used for E-mail and the World Wide Web, on systems not using the NVT's CR-LF line-ending convention. |
ASCII | End of file/stream | End of file/stream
The PDP-6 monitor, and its PDP-10 successor TOPS-10, used control-Z (SUB) as an end-of-file indication for input from a terminal. Some operating systems such as CP/M tracked file length only in units of disk blocks, and used control-Z to mark the end of the actual text in the file. For these reasons, EOF, or end-of-file, was used colloquially and conventionally as a three-letter acronym for control-Z instead of SUBstitute. The end-of-text character (ETX), also known as control-C, was inappropriate for a variety of reasons, while using control-Z as the control character to end a file is analogous to the letter Z's position at the end of the alphabet, and serves as a very convenient mnemonic aid. A historically common and still prevalent convention uses the ETX character convention to interrupt and halt a program via an input data stream, usually from a keyboard.
The Unix terminal driver uses the end-of-transmission character (EOT), also known as control-D, to indicate the end of a data stream.
In the C programming language, and in Unix conventions, the null character is used to terminate text strings; such null-terminated strings can be known in abbreviation as ASCIZ or ASCIIZ, where here Z stands for "zero". |
ASCII | Table of codes | Table of codes |
ASCII | Control code table<span class="anchor" id="ASCII control code chart"></span> | Control code table
Binary Oct Dec Hex Abbreviation Unicode Control Pictures Caret notation C escape sequence Name (1967) 1963 1965 1967 000 0000 000 0 00NULLNUL ␀ Null 000 0001 001 1 01SOMSOH ␁ Start of Heading 000 0010 002 2 02EOASTX ␂ Start of Text 000 0011 003 3 03EOMETX ␃ End of Text 000 0100 004 4 04EOT ␄ End of Transmission 000 0101 005 5 05WRUENQ ␅ Enquiry 000 0110 006 6 06RUACK ␆ Acknowledgement 000 0111 007 7 07BELLBEL ␇ Bell 000 1000 010 8 08FE0BS ␈ Backspace 000 1001 011 9 09HT/SKHT ␉ Horizontal Tab 000 1010 012 10 0ALF ␊ Line Feed 000 1011 013 11 0BVTABVT ␋ Vertical Tab 000 1100 014 12 0CFF ␌ Form Feed 000 1101 015 13 0DCR ␍ Carriage Return 000 1110 016 14 0ESO ␎ Shift Out 000 1111 017 15 0FSI ␏ Shift In 001 0000 020 16 10DC0DLE ␐ Data Link Escape 001 0001 021 17 11DC1 ␑ Device Control 1 (often XON) 001 0010 022 18 12DC2 ␒ Device Control 2 001 0011 023 19 13DC3 ␓ Device Control 3 (often XOFF) 001 0100 024 20 14DC4 ␔ Device Control 4 001 0101 025 21 15ERRNAK ␕ Negative Acknowledgement 001 0110 026 22 16SYNCSYN ␖ Synchronous Idle 001 0111 027 23 17LEMETB ␗ End of Transmission Block 001 1000 030 24 18S0CAN ␘ Cancel 001 1001 031 25 19S1EM ␙ End of Medium 001 1010 032 26 1AS2SSSUB ␚ Substitute 001 1011 033 27 1BS3ESC ␛ Escape 001 1100 034 28 1CS4FS ␜ File Separator 001 1101 035 29 1DS5GS ␝ Group Separator 001 1110 036 30 1ES6RS ␞ Record Separator 001 1111 037 31 1FS7US ␟ Unit Separator 111 1111 177 127 7FDEL ␡ Delete
Other representations might be used by specialist equipment, for example ISO 2047 graphics or hexadecimal numbers. |
ASCII | <span class="anchor" id="ASCII-printable-characters"></span><span class="anchor" id="Printable_characters"></span>Printable character table | Printable character table
At the time of adoption, the codes 20hex to 7Ehex would cause the printing of a visible character (a glyph), and thus were designated "printable characters". These codes represent letters, digits, punctuation marks, and a few miscellaneous symbols. There are 95 printable characters in total.
The empty space between words, as produced by the space bar of a keyboard, is character code 20hex. Since the space character is visible in printed text it considered a "printable character", even though it is unique in having no visible glyph. It is listed in the printable character table, as per the ASCII standard, instead of in the control character table.
Code 7Fhex corresponds to the non-printable "delete" (DEL) control character and is listed in the control character table.
Earlier versions of ASCII used the up arrow instead of the caret (5Ehex) and the left arrow instead of the underscore (5Fhex).
Binary Oct Dec Hex Glyph 1963 1965 1967010 0000 040 32 20 space (no visible glyph)010 0001 041 33 21 !010 0010 042 34 22 "010 0011 043 35 23 #010 0100 044 36 24 $010 0101 045 37 25 %010 0110 046 38 26 &010 0111 047 39 27 '010 1000 050 40 28 (010 1001 051 41 29 )010 1010 052 42 2A *010 1011 053 43 2B +010 1100 054 44 2C ,010 1101 055 45 2D -010 1110 056 46 2E .010 1111 057 47 2F /011 0000 060 48 30 0011 0001 061 49 31 1011 0010 062 50 32 2011 0011 063 51 33 3011 0100 064 52 34 4011 0101 065 53 35 5011 0110 066 54 36 6011 0111 067 55 37 7011 1000 070 56 38 8011 1001 071 57 39 9011 1010 072 58 3A :011 1011 073 59 3B ;011 1100 074 60 3C <011 1101 075 61 3D =011 1110 076 62 3E >011 1111 077 63 3F ?100 0000 100 64 40 @ ` @100 0001 101 65 41 A100 0010 102 66 42 B100 0011 103 67 43 C100 0100 104 68 44 D100 0101 105 69 45 E100 0110 106 70 46 F100 0111 107 71 47 G100 1000 110 72 48 H100 1001 111 73 49 I100 1010 112 74 4A J100 1011 113 75 4B K100 1100 114 76 4C L100 1101 115 77 4D M100 1110 116 78 4E N100 1111 117 79 4F O101 0000 120 80 50 P101 0001 121 81 51 Q101 0010 122 82 52 R101 0011 123 83 53 S101 0100 124 84 54 T101 0101 125 85 55 U101 0110 126 86 56 V101 0111 127 87 57 W101 1000 130 88 58 X101 1001 131 89 59 Y101 1010 132 90 5A Z101 1011 133 91 5B [101 1100 134 92 5C \ ~ \101 1101 135 93 5D ]101 1110 136 94 5E ↑ ^101 1111 137 95 5F ← _110 0000 140 96 60 @ `110 0001 141 97 61 a110 0010 142 98 62 b110 0011 143 99 63 c110 0100 144 100 64 d110 0101 145 101 65 e110 0110 146 102 66 f110 0111 147 103 67 g110 1000 150 104 68 h110 1001 151 105 69 i110 1010 152 106 6A j110 1011 153 107 6B k110 1100 154 108 6C l110 1101 155 109 6D m110 1110 156 110 6E n110 1111 157 111 6F o111 0000 160 112 70 p111 0001 161 113 71 q111 0010 162 114 72 r111 0011 163 115 73 s111 0100 164 116 74 t111 0101 165 117 75 u111 0110 166 118 76 v111 0111 167 119 77 w111 1000 170 120 78 x111 1001 171 121 79 y111 1010 172 122 7A z111 1011 173 123 7B {111 1100 174 124 7C ACK ¬ |111 1101 175 125 7D }111 1110 176 126 7E ESC | ~ |
ASCII | Usage | Usage
ASCII was first used commercially during 1963 as a seven-bit teleprinter code for American Telephone & Telegraph's TWX (TeletypeWriter eXchange) network. TWX originally used the earlier five-bit ITA2, which was also used by the competing Telex teleprinter system. Bob Bemer introduced features such as the escape sequence. His British colleague Hugh McGregor Ross helped to popularize this work according to Bemer, "so much so that the code that was to become ASCII was first called the Bemer–Ross Code in Europe". (NB. Bemer was employed at IBM at that time.) Because of his extensive work on ASCII, Bemer has been called "the father of ASCII".
On March 11, 1968, US President Lyndon B. Johnson mandated that all computers purchased by the United States Federal Government support ASCII, stating:
I have also approved recommendations of the Secretary of Commerce [Luther H. Hodges] regarding standards for recording the Standard Code for Information Interchange on magnetic tapes and paper tapes when they are used in computer operations.
All computers and related equipment configurations brought into the Federal Government inventory on and after July 1, 1969, must have the capability to use the Standard Code for Information Interchange and the formats prescribed by the magnetic tape and paper tape standards when these media are used.
ASCII was the most common character encoding on the World Wide Web until December 2007, when UTF-8 encoding surpassed it; UTF-8 is backward compatible with ASCII. |
ASCII | <span class="anchor" id="Variants"></span>Variants and derivations | Variants and derivations
As computer technology spread throughout the world, different standards bodies and corporations developed many variations of ASCII to facilitate the expression of non-English languages that used Roman-based alphabets. One could class some of these variations as "ASCII extensions", although some misuse that term to represent all variants, including those that do not preserve ASCII's character-map in the 7-bit range. Furthermore, the ASCII extensions have also been mislabelled as ASCII. |
ASCII | <span class="anchor" id="7-bit"></span>7-bit codes | 7-bit codes
From early in its development,"Specific Criteria", attachment to memo from R. W. Reach, "X3-2 Meeting – September 14 and 15", September 18, 1961 ASCII was intended to be just one of several national variants of an international character code standard.
Other international standards bodies have ratified character encodings such as ISO 646 (1967) that are identical or nearly identical to ASCII, with extensions for characters outside the English alphabet and symbols used outside the United States, such as the symbol for the United Kingdom's pound sterling (£); e.g. with code page 1104. Almost every country needed an adapted version of ASCII, since ASCII suited the needs of only the US and a few other countries. For example, Canada had its own version that supported French characters.
Many other countries developed variants of ASCII to include non-English letters (e.g. é, ñ, ß, Ł), currency symbols (e.g. £, ¥), etc. See also YUSCII (Yugoslavia).
It would share most characters in common, but assign other locally useful characters to several code points reserved for "national use". However, the four years that elapsed between the publication of ASCII-1963 and ISO's first acceptance of an international recommendation during 1967 caused ASCII's choices for the national use characters to seem to be de facto standards for the world, causing confusion and incompatibility once other countries did begin to make their own assignments to these code points.
ISO/IEC 646, like ASCII, is a 7-bit character set. It does not make any additional codes available, so the same code points encoded different characters in different countries. Escape codes were defined to indicate which national variant applied to a piece of text, but they were rarely used, so it was often impossible to know what variant to work with and, therefore, which character a code represented, and in general, text-processing systems could cope with only one variant anyway.
Because the bracket and brace characters of ASCII were assigned to "national use" code points that were used for accented letters in other national variants of ISO/IEC 646, a German, French, or Swedish, etc. programmer using their national variant of ISO/IEC 646, rather than ASCII, had to write, and thus read, something such as
ä aÄiÜ = 'Ön'; ü
instead of
{ a[i] = '\n'; }
C trigraphs were created to solve this problem for ANSI C, although their late introduction and inconsistent implementation in compilers limited their use. Many programmers kept their computers on ASCII, so plain-text in Swedish, German etc. (for example, in e-mail or Usenet) contained "{, }" and similar variants in the middle of words, something those programmers got used to. For example, a Swedish programmer mailing another programmer asking if they should go for lunch, could get "N{ jag har sm|rg}sar" as the answer, which should be "Nä jag har smörgåsar" meaning "No I've got sandwiches".
In Japan and Korea, still a variation of ASCII is used, in which the backslash (5C hex) is rendered as ¥ (a Yen sign, in Japan) or ₩ (a Won sign, in Korea). This means that, for example, the file path C:\Users\Smith is shown as C:¥Users¥Smith (in Japan) or C:₩Users₩Smith (in Korea).
In Europe, teletext character sets, which are variants of ASCII, are used for broadcast TV subtitles, defined by World System Teletext and broadcast using the DVB-TXT standard for embedding teletext into DVB transmissions. In the case that the subtitles were initially authored for teletext and converted, the derived subtitle formats are constrained to the same character sets. |
ASCII | <span class="anchor" id="8-bit"></span>8-bit codes | 8-bit codes
Eventually, as 8-, 16-, and 32-bit (and later 64-bit) computers began to replace 12-, 18-, and 36-bit computers as the norm, it became common to use an 8-bit byte to store each character in memory, providing an opportunity for extended, 8-bit relatives of ASCII. In most cases these developed as true extensions of ASCII, leaving the original character-mapping intact, but adding additional character definitions after the first 128 (i.e., 7-bit) characters. ASCII itself remained a seven-bit code: the term "extended ASCII" has no official status.
For some countries, 8-bit extensions of ASCII were developed that included support for characters used in local languages; for example, ISCII for India and VISCII for Vietnam. Kaypro CP/M computers used the "upper" 128 characters for the Greek alphabet.
Even for markets where it was not necessary to add many characters to support additional languages, manufacturers of early home computer systems often developed their own 8-bit extensions of ASCII to include additional characters, such as box-drawing characters, semigraphics, and video game sprites. Often, these additions also replaced control characters (index 0 to 31, as well as index 127) with even more platform-specific extensions. In other cases, the extra bit was used for some other purpose, such as toggling inverse video; this approach was used by ATASCII, an extension of ASCII developed by Atari.
Most ASCII extensions are based on ASCII-1967 (the current standard), but some extensions are instead based on the earlier ASCII-1963. For example, PETSCII, which was developed by Commodore International for their 8-bit systems, is based on ASCII-1963. Likewise, many Sharp MZ character sets are based on ASCII-1963.
IBM defined code page 437 for the IBM PC, replacing the control characters with graphic symbols such as smiley faces, and mapping additional graphic characters to the upper 128 positions. Digital Equipment Corporation developed the Multinational Character Set (DEC-MCS) for use in the popular VT220 terminal as one of the first extensions designed more for international languages than for block graphics. Apple defined Mac OS Roman for the Macintosh and Adobe defined the PostScript Standard Encoding for PostScript; both sets contained "international" letters, typographic symbols and punctuation marks instead of graphics, more like modern character sets.
The ISO/IEC 8859 standard (derived from the DEC-MCS) provided a standard that most systems copied (or at least were based on, when not copied exactly). A popular further extension designed by Microsoft, Windows-1252 (often mislabeled as ISO-8859-1), added the typographic punctuation marks needed for traditional text printing. ISO-8859-1, Windows-1252, and the original 7-bit ASCII were the most common character encoding methods on the World Wide Web until 2008, when UTF-8 overtook them.
ISO/IEC 4873 introduced 32 additional control codes defined in the 80–9F hexadecimal range, as part of extending the 7-bit ASCII encoding to become an 8-bit system. |
ASCII | Unicode | Unicode
Unicode and the ISO/IEC 10646 Universal Character Set (UCS) have a much wider array of characters and their various encoding forms have begun to supplant ISO/IEC 8859 and ASCII rapidly in many environments. While ASCII is limited to 128 characters, Unicode and the UCS support more characters by separating the concepts of unique identification (using natural numbers called code points) and encoding (to 8-, 16-, or 32-bit binary formats, called UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32, respectively).
ASCII was incorporated into the Unicode (1991) character set as the first 128 symbols, so the 7-bit ASCII characters have the same numeric codes in both sets. This allows UTF-8 to be backward compatible with 7-bit ASCII, as a UTF-8 file containing only ASCII characters is identical to an ASCII file containing the same sequence of characters. Even more importantly, forward compatibility is ensured as software that recognizes only 7-bit ASCII characters as special and does not alter bytes with the highest bit set (as is often done to support 8-bit ASCII extensions such as ISO-8859-1) will preserve UTF-8 data unchanged. |
ASCII | See also | See also
3568 ASCII – an asteroid named after the character encoding
Basic Latin (Unicode block) – ASCII as a subset of Unicode
HTML decimal character rendering
Jargon File – a glossary of computer programmer slang which includes a list of common slang names for ASCII characters
List of computer character sets
List of Unicode characters |
ASCII | Notes | Notes |
ASCII | References | References |
ASCII | Further reading | Further reading
from:
(facsimile, not machine readable)
|
ASCII | External links | External links
Category:Computer-related introductions in 1963
Category:Character sets
Category:Character encoding
Category:Latin-script representations
Category:Presentation layer protocols
Category:American National Standards Institute standards |
ASCII | Table of Content | Short description, Overview, <span class="anchor" id="1963"></span><span class="anchor" id="1965"></span><span class="anchor" id="1967"></span><span class="anchor" id="1968"></span><span class="anchor" id="1977"></span><span class="anchor" id="1986"></span><span class="anchor" id="1992"></span><span class="anchor" id="1997"></span><span class="anchor" id="2002"></span><span class="anchor" id="2007"></span><span class="anchor" id="2012"></span><span class="anchor" id="2017"></span><span class="anchor" id="2022"></span>History, Revisions, Design considerations, Bit width, Internal organization, <span class="anchor" id="Order"></span>Character order, <span class="anchor" id="Code chart"></span><span class="anchor" id="ASCII printable code chart"></span><span class="anchor" id="ASCII printable characters"></span>Character set, Character groups, <span class="anchor" id="ASCII control characters"></span>Control characters, Delete vs backspace, Escape, End of line, End of file/stream, Table of codes, Control code table<span class="anchor" id="ASCII control code chart"></span>, <span class="anchor" id="ASCII-printable-characters"></span><span class="anchor" id="Printable_characters"></span>Printable character table, Usage, <span class="anchor" id="Variants"></span>Variants and derivations, <span class="anchor" id="7-bit"></span>7-bit codes, <span class="anchor" id="8-bit"></span>8-bit codes, Unicode, See also, Notes, References, Further reading, External links |
Austin | wiktionary | Austin refers to: |
Austin | Common meanings | Common meanings
Austin, Texas, United States, a city
Austin (given name), a list of people and fictional characters
Austin (surname), a list of people and fictional characters
Austin Motor Company, a British car manufacturer |
Austin | Arts and entertainment | Arts and entertainment
Austin (album), by Post Malone, 2023
"Austin" (Blake Shelton song), 2001
"Austin" (Dasha song), 2023
Austin (TV series), a 2024 Australian comedy series |
Austin | Businesses and organisations | Businesses and organisations |
Austin | Businesses | Businesses
American Austin Car Company, short-lived American automobile maker
Austin Automobile Company, short-lived American automobile company
Austin Motor Company, British car manufacturer
Austin magazine, produced for the Austin Motor Company by in-house Nuffield Press
Austin Airways, a former Canadian passenger airline and freight carrier
Austin cookies and crackers, a Keebler Company brand |
Austin | Education | Education
Austin College, in Sherman, Texas, U.S.
Austin High School (disambiguation), several schools
University of Austin, in Austin, Texas, U.S.
University of Texas at Austin, in Austin, Texas, U.S. |
Austin | Military | Military
USS Austin, the name of three ships
Austin-class amphibious transport dock, a former US Navy ship class
Austin Armoured Car, a British First World War armoured car |
Austin | People | People
Austin (given name), including a list of people with the name
Austin (surname), including a list of people with the name
Augustine of Hippo (354–430), also known as St. Austin, Christian theologian and saint |
Austin | Places | Places |
Austin | Canada | Canada
Austin, Manitoba, an unincorporated community
Austin, Ontario, a neighbourhood
Austin, Quebec, a municipality
Austin Island, Nunavut |
Austin | United States | United States
Austin, Arkansas, a city
Austin, Colorado, an unincorporated community
Austin, Chicago, Illinois, a community area
Austin, Indiana, a city
Austin, Kentucky
Austin, Minnesota, a city
Austin, Missouri, an unincorporated community
Austin, Nevada, an unincorporated town and census-designated place
Austin, Ohio, an unincorporated community
Austin, Oregon, an unincorporated community considered a ghost town
Austin, Pennsylvania, a borough
Austin, Texas, the capital city of Texas
Austin County, Texas
Austin Lake, Michigan
Lake Austin, a reservoir in Austin, Texas
Austin Township (disambiguation) |
Austin | Elsewhere | Elsewhere
Austin, Western Australia, Australia, a ghost town
Mount Austin (Antarctica), Palmer Land
Austin Peak, part of the Mirabito Range in Victoria Land, Antarctica
Mount Austin, Hong Kong, a hill also known as Victoria Peak |
Austin | Sports | Sports
Austin FC, an American soccer club
Austin FC II, reserve team for Austin FC
Austin Spurs, an American basketball team
Austin Bruins, an American ice hockey team |
Austin | Other uses | Other uses
Austin (building), a building designed by artist Ellsworth Kelly in Austin, Texas
Austin, an adjective in England for Augustinian friars |
Austin | See also | See also
Austin station (disambiguation)
Austins (disambiguation)
Austen (disambiguation)
Austin Airport (disambiguation)
Austin Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Austin Road, Hong Kong |
Austin | Table of Content | wiktionary, Common meanings, Arts and entertainment, Businesses and organisations, Businesses, Education, Military, People, Places, Canada, United States, Elsewhere, Sports, Other uses, See also |
Apollo | Short description | thumb|Apollo, God of Light, Eloquence, Poetry and the Fine Arts with Urania, Muse of Astronomy (1798) by Charles Meynier
Apollo is one of the Olympian deities in ancient Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, and more. One of the most important and complex of the Greek gods, he is the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. He is considered to be the most beautiful god and is represented as the ideal of the kouros (ephebe, or a beardless, athletic youth). Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu.Krauskopf, I. 2006. "The Grave and Beyond." The Religion of the Etruscans. edited by N. de Grummond and E. Simon. Austin: University of Texas Press. p. vii, p. 73-75.
As the patron deity of Delphi (Apollo Pythios), Apollo is an oracular god—the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle and also the deity of ritual purification. His oracles were often consulted for guidance in various matters. He was in general seen as the god who affords help and wards off evil, and is referred to as , the "averter of evil". Medicine and healing are associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius. Apollo delivered people from epidemics, yet he is also a god who could bring ill health and deadly plague with his arrows. The invention of archery itself is credited to Apollo and his sister Artemis. Apollo is usually described as carrying a silver or golden bow and a quiver of arrows.
As the god of mousike, Apollo presides over all music, songs, dance, and poetry. He is the inventor of string-music and the frequent companion of the Muses, functioning as their chorus leader in celebrations. The lyre is a common attribute of Apollo. Protection of the young is one of the best attested facets of his panhellenic cult persona. As a , Apollo is concerned with the health and education of children, and he presided over their passage into adulthood. Long hair, which was the prerogative of boys, was cut at the coming of age () and dedicated to Apollo. The god himself is depicted with long, uncut hair to symbolise his eternal youth.
Apollo is an important pastoral deity, and he was the patron of herdsmen and shepherds. Protection of herds, flocks and crops from diseases, pests and predators were his primary rustic duties. On the other hand, Apollo also encouraged the founding of new towns and the establishment of civil constitutions, is associated with dominion over colonists, and was the giver of laws. His oracles were often consulted before setting laws in a city. Apollo Agyieus was the protector of the streets, public places and home entrances.
In Hellenistic times, especially during the 5th century BCE, as Apollo Helios he became identified among Greeks with Helios, the personification of the Sun.For the iconography of the Alexander–Helios type, see H. Hoffmann, 1963. "Helios", in Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 2, pp. 117–23; cf. Yalouris 1980, no. 42. Although Latin theological works from at least 1st century BCE identified Apollo with Sol,Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, § 2.68Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, Greek Theology, § 65 there was no conflation between the two among the classical Latin poets until 1st century CE.Joseph Fontenrose, "Apollo and Sol in the Latin poets of the first century BC", Transactions of the American Philological Association 30 (1939), pp 439–55; "Apollo and the Sun-God in Ovid", American Journal of Philology 61 (1940) pp 429–44; and "Apollo and Sol in the Oaths of Aeneas and Latinus" Classical Philology 38.2 (April 1943), pp. 137–138. |
Apollo | Etymology | Etymology
thumb|upright|Apollo, fresco from Pompeii, 1st century AD
Apollo (Attic, Ionic, and Homeric Greek: , ( ); Doric: , ; Arcadocypriot: , ; Aeolic: , ; )
The name Apollo—unlike the related older name Paean—is generally not found in the Linear B (Mycenean Greek) texts, although there is a possible attestation in the lacunose form ]pe-rjo-[ (Linear B: ]-[) on the KN E 842 tablet,R. S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 118. though it has also been suggested that the name might actually read "Hyperion" ([u]-pe-rjo-[ne]).
The etymology of the name is uncertain. The spelling ( in Classical Attic) had almost superseded all other forms by the beginning of the common era, but the Doric form, (), is more archaic, as it is derived from an earlier . It probably is a cognate to the Doric month Apellaios (), and the offerings () at the initiation of the young men during the family-festival ()."The young men became grown-up , and Apollon was the (The Great Kouros) : Jane Ellen Harrison (2010): Themis: A study to the Social origins of Greek Religion Cambridge University Press. pp. 439–441, According to some scholars, the words are derived from the Doric word (), which originally meant "wall", "fence for animals" and later "assembly within the limits of the square".The word usually appears in plural: Hesychius: (), ("folds"), ("assemblies"), ("elections"): Nilsson, Vol. I, p. 556Doric Greek verb: ("to assemble"), and the festival ), which surely belonged to Apollo. Nilsson, Vol I, p. 556. Apella () is the name of the popular assembly in Sparta, corresponding to the (). R. S. P. Beekes rejected the connection of the theonym with the noun and suggested a Pre-Greek proto-form *Apalyun.Beekes, 2009, pp. 115, 118–119.
Several instances of popular etymology are attested by ancient authors. Thus, the Greeks most often associated Apollo's name with the Greek verb (), "to destroy". Plato in Cratylus connects the name with (), "redemption", with (apolousis), "purification", and with (), "simple",The suggestion is repeated by Plutarch in Moralia in the sense of "unity". in particular in reference to the Thessalian form of the name, , and finally with (), "ever-shooting". Hesychius connects the name Apollo with the Doric (), which means "assembly", so that Apollo would be the god of political life, and he also gives the explanation (), "fold", in which case Apollo would be the god of flocks and herds. In the ancient Macedonian language () means "stone",R. S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 1168. and some toponyms may be derived from this word: (Pella,. the capital of ancient Macedonia) and (Pellēnē/Pellene).Nilsson Vol I, p. 558
The Hittite form Apaliunas (d) is attested in the Manapa-Tarhunta letter.The reading of Apaliunas and the possible identification with Apollo is due to Emil Forrer (1931). It was doubted by Kretschmer, Glotta XXIV, p. 250. Martin Nilsson (1967), Vol I, p. 559 The Hittite testimony reflects an early form , which may also be surmised from the comparison of Cypriot with Doric . The name of the Lydian god Qλdãns // may reflect an earlier /-/ before palatalization, syncope, and the pre-Lydian sound change * > . Note the labiovelar in place of the labial // found in pre-Doric and Hittite Apaliunas. A Luwian etymology suggested for Apaliunas makes Apollo "The One of Entrapment", perhaps in the sense of "Hunter". |
Apollo | Greco-Roman epithets | Greco-Roman epithets
Apollo's chief epithet was Phoebus ( ; , Phoibos ), literally "bright".R. S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 1582. It was very commonly used by both the Greeks and Romans for Apollo's role as the god of light. Like other Greek deities, he had a number of others applied to him, reflecting the variety of roles, duties, and aspects ascribed to the god. However, while Apollo has a great number of appellations in Greek myth, only a few occur in Latin literature. |
Apollo | Sun | Sun
Aegletes ( ; , Aiglētēs), from , "light of the Sun"Apollonius of Rhodes, 2.1730;Apollodorus, 1.9.26.
Helius ( ; , Helios), literally "Sun"
Lyceus ( ; , Lykeios, from Proto-Greek *), "light". The meaning of the epithet "Lyceus" later became associated with Apollo's mother Leto, who was the patron goddess of Lycia () and who was identified with the wolf ().Aelian, On the Nature of Animals 4. 4 (A.F. Scholfield, tr.)
Phanaeus ( ; , Phanaios), literally "giving or bringing light"
Phoebus ( ; , Phoibos), literally "bright", his most commonly used epithet by both the Greeks and Romans
Sol (Roman) (), "Sun" in Latin |
Apollo | Wolf | Wolf
Lycegenes ( ; , Lukēgenēs), literally "born of a wolf" or "born of Lycia"
Lycoctonus ( ; , Lykoktonos), from , "wolf", and , "to kill" |
Apollo | Origin and birth | Origin and birth
Apollo's birthplace was Mount Cynthus on the island of Delos.
Cynthius ( ; , Kunthios), literally "Cynthian"
Cynthogenes ( ; , Kynthogenēs), literally "born of Cynthus"
Delius ( ; , Delios), literally "Delian"
Didymaeus ( ; , Didymaios) from δίδυμος, "twin", as the twin of Artemis |
Apollo | Place of worship | Place of worship
Delphi and Actium were his primary places of worship.Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.715.Strabo, x. p. 451
Acraephius ( ; , Akraiphios, literally "Acraephian") or Acraephiaeus ( ; , Akraiphiaios), "Acraephian", from the Boeotian town of Acraephia (), reputedly founded by his son Acraepheus.Wiliam Smith. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology Acraepheus
Actiacus ( ; , Aktiakos), literally "Actian", after Actium ()
Delphinius ( ; , Delphinios), literally "Delphic", after Delphi (Δελφοί). An etiology in the Homeric Hymns associated this with dolphins.
Epactaeus, meaning "god worshipped on the coast", in Samos.
Pythius ( ; , Puthios, from Πυθώ, Pythō), from the region around Delphi
Smintheus ( ; , Smintheus), "Sminthian"—that is, "of the town of Sminthos or Sminthe". near the Troad town of HamaxitusThe epithet "Smintheus" has historically been confused with , "mouse", in association with Apollo's role as a god of disease
Napaian Apollo (), from the city of Nape at the island of LesbosSuda, nu, 31
Eutresites, from the city of Eutresis.
thumb|upright|Statue of Apollo Sauroctonus attributed to Praxiteles c. 340 BC, Cleveland Museum of Art
Ixios (Ἴξιος), derived from a district in Rhodes called Ixiae or Ixia.Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898), Ixios |
Apollo | Healing and disease | Healing and disease
thumb|upright|Chryselephantine statue of Apollo in Delphi, mid-6th century B.C.
Acesius ( ; , Akesios), from , "healing". Acesius was the epithet of Apollo worshipped in Elis, where he had a temple in the agora.
Acestor ( ; , Akestōr), literally "healer"
Culicarius (Roman) ( ), from Latin culicārius, "of midges"
Iatrus ( ; , Iātros), literally "physician"Euripides, Andromache 901
Medicus (Roman) ( ), "physician" in Latin. A temple was dedicated to Apollo Medicus in Rome, probably next to the temple of Bellona.
Paean ( ; , Paiān), physician, healerπαιών
Parnopius ( ; , Parnopios), from , "locust" |
Apollo | Founder and protector | Founder and protector
Agyieus ( ; , Aguīeus), from , "street", for his role in protecting roads and homes
Alexicacus ( ; , Alexikakos), literally "warding off evil"
Apotropaeus ( ; , Apotropaios), from , "to avert"
Archegetes ( ; , Arkhēgetēs), literally "founder"
Averruncus (Roman) ( ; from Latin āverruncare), "to avert"
Clarius ( ; , Klārios), from Doric , "allotted lot"κλάρος
Epicurius ( ; , Epikourios), from , "to aid"
Genetor ( ; , Genetōr), literally "ancestor"
Nomius ( ; , Nomios), literally "pastoral"
Nymphegetes ( ; , Numphēgetēs), from , "Nymph", and , "leader", for his role as a protector of shepherds and pastoral life
Patroos (, Patrōios) from , "related to one's father", for his role as father of Ion and founder of the Ionians, as worshipped at the Temple of Apollo Patroos in Athens
Sauroctonus (, Sauroctonos), "lizard-killer", possibly a reference to his killing of Python |
Apollo | Prophecy and truth | Prophecy and truth
Coelispex (Roman) ( ), from Latin coelum, "sky", and specere "to look at"
Iatromantis ( ; , Iātromantis,) from , "physician", and , "prophet", referring to his role as a god both of healing and of prophecy
Leschenorius ( ; , Leskhēnorios), from , "converser"
Loxias ( ; , Loxias), from , "to say", historically associated with , "ambiguous"
Manticus ( ; , Mantikos), literally "prophetic"
Proopsios (), meaning "foreseer" or "first seen"Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1.32.2 |
Apollo | Music and arts | Music and arts
Musagetes ( ; Doric , Mousāgetās), from , "Muse", and "leader".
Musegetes ( ; , Mousēgetēs), as the preceding |
Apollo | Archery | Archery
Aphetor ( ; , Aphētōr), from , "to let loose"
Aphetorus ( ; , Aphētoros), as the preceding
Arcitenens (Roman) ( ), literally "bow-carrying"
Argyrotoxus ( ; , Argyrotoxos), literally "with silver bow"
Clytotoxus ( ; , Klytótoxos), "he who is famous for his bow", the renowned archer.Homer, Odyssey 17.494
Hecaërgus ( ; , Hekaergos), literally "far-shooting"
Hecebolus ( ; , Hekēbolos), "far-shooting"
Ismenius ( ; , Ismēnios), literally "of Ismenus", after Ismenus, the son of Amphion and Niobe, whom he struck with an arrow |
Apollo | Appearance | Appearance
Acersecomes (, Akersekómēs), "he who has unshorn hair", the eternal ephebe.See ἀκερσεκόμης
Chrysocomes ( ; , Khrusokómēs), literally "he who has golden hair". |
Apollo | Amazons | Amazons
Amazonius (), Pausanias at the Description of Greece writes that near Pyrrhichus there was a sanctuary of Apollo, called Amazonius () with an image of the god said to have been dedicated by the Amazons.Pausanias, Description of Greece, § 3.25.3 |
Apollo | Other | Other
Boedromius (), was a surname of Apollo in Athens, with varying explanations for its origin. Some claim that the reason the god was given this name was because he had helped the Athenians overcome the Amazons in their battle, which took place on the seventh of Boedromion, the day the Boedromia were later commemorated. Others claim that the term originated from the fact that, in the battle between Eumolpus and Erechtheus and Ion, Apollo had counselled the Athenians to charge the enemy with a war cry (Βοή) if they were going to win.A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, Boedromius |
Apollo | Celtic epithets and cult titles | Celtic epithets and cult titles
Apollo was worshipped throughout the Roman Empire. In the traditionally Celtic lands, he was most often seen as a healing and sun god. He was often equated with Celtic gods of similar character.Miranda J. Green, Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend, Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1997
Apollo Atepomarus ("the great horseman" or "possessing a great horse"). Apollo was worshipped at Mauvières (Indre). Horses were, in the Celtic world, closely linked to the Sun.Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XIII, 1863–1986; A. Ross, Pagan Celtic Britain, 1967; M.J. Green, The Gods of the Celts, 1986, London
Apollo Belenus ("bright" or "brilliant"). This epithet was given to Apollo in parts of Gaul, Northern Italy and Noricum (part of modern Austria). Apollo Belenus was a healing and sun god.J. Zwicker, Fontes Historiae Religionis Celticae, 1934–36, Berlin; Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum V, XI, XII, XIII; J. Gourcest, "Le culte de Belenos en Provence occidentale et en Gaule", Ogam 6.6 (1954:257–262); E. Thevonot, "Le cheval sacre dans la Gaule de l'Est", Revue archeologique de l'Est et du Centre-Est (vol 2), 1951; [], "Temoignages du culte de l'Apollon gaulois dans l'Helvetie romaine", Revue celtique (vol 51), 1934.
Apollo Cunomaglus ("hound lord"). A title given to Apollo at a shrine at Nettleton Shrub, Wiltshire. May have been a god of healing. Cunomaglus himself may originally have been an independent healing god.W.J. Wedlake, The Excavation of the Shrine of Apollo at Nettleton, Wiltshire, 1956–1971, Society of Antiquaries of London, 1982.
Apollo Grannus. Grannus was a healing spring god, later equated with Apollo.M. Szabo, The Celtic Heritage in Hungary (Budapest 1971)Divinites et sanctuaires de la Gaule, E. Thevonat, 1968, ParisLa religion des Celtes, J. de Vries, 1963, Paris
Apollo Maponus. A god known from inscriptions in Britain. This may be a local fusion of Apollo and Maponus.
Apollo Moritasgus ("masses of sea water"). An epithet for Apollo at Alesia, where he was worshipped as the god of healing and, possibly, of physicians.J. Le Gall, Alesia, archeologie et histoire (Paris 1963).
Apollo Vindonnus ("clear light"). Apollo Vindonnus had a temple at Essarois, near Châtillon-sur-Seine in present-day Burgundy. He was a god of healing, especially of the eyes.
Apollo Virotutis ("benefactor of mankind"). Apollo Virotutis was worshipped, among other places, at Fins d'Annecy (Haute-Savoie) and at Jublains (Maine-et-Loire).Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XIII |
Apollo | Origins | Origins
thumb|250px|Omphalos in the Museum of Delphi
Apollo is considered the most Hellenic (Greek) of the Olympian gods.Burkert 1985:143.
The cult centers of Apollo in Greece, Delphi and Delos, date from the 8th century BCE. The Delos sanctuary was primarily dedicated to Artemis, Apollo's twin sister. At Delphi, Apollo was venerated as the slayer of the monstrous serpent Python. For the Greeks, Apollo was the most Greek of all the gods, and through the centuries he acquired different functions. In Archaic Greece he was the prophet, the oracular god who in older times was connected with "healing". In Classical Greece he was the god of light and of music, but in popular religion he had a strong function to keep away evil.Martin Nilsson (1967). "Die Geschicte der Giechischen Religion, Vol I." C.F.Beck Verlag.Munchen. p. 529 Walter Burkert discerned three components in the prehistory of Apollo worship, which he termed "a Dorian-northwest Greek component, a Cretan-Minoan component, and a Syro-Hittite component."Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion, 1985:144. |
Apollo | Healer and god-protector from evil | Healer and god-protector from evil
left|thumb|upright=.9|Apollo Victorious over the Python by Pietro Francavilla (1591), depicting Apollo's victory over the serpent Python (The Walters Art Museum)
In classical times, his major function in popular religion was to keep away evil, and he was therefore called "apotropaios" (, "averting evil") and "alexikakos" ( "keeping off ill"; from v. + n. ).Pausanias VIII 41, 8-IV 34, 7-Sittig. Nom P. 48. f-Aristoph. Vesp. V. 61-Paus. I 3, 4. Martin Nilsson (1967) Vol I, pp. 540, 544 Apollo also had many epithets relating to his function as a healer. Some commonly-used examples are "paion" ( literally "healer" or "helper"): Harper's Dictionary of classical antiquity "epikourios" (, "succouring"), "oulios" (, "healer, baleful"). and "loimios" (, "of the plague"). In later writers, the word, "paion", usually spelled "Paean", becomes a mere epithet of Apollo in his capacity as a god of healing.
Apollo in his aspect of "healer" has a connection to the primitive god Paean (), who did not have a cult of his own. Paean serves as the healer of the gods in the Iliad, and seems to have originated in a pre-Greek religion.Paieon () puts pain-relieving medicines on the wounds of Pluton and Ares ( Ilias E401). This art is related with Egypt: (Odyssey D232): M. Nilsson Vol I, p. 543 It is suggested, though unconfirmed, that he is connected to the Mycenaean figure pa-ja-wo-ne (Linear B: ). At Google Books. Paean was the personification of holy songs sung by "seer-doctors" (), which were supposed to cure disease.. Which is sung to stop the plagues and the diseases. Proklos: Chrestom from Photios Bibl. code. 239, p. 321: Martin Nilsson. Die Geschicthe der Griechischen religion. Vol I, p. 543
Homer uses the noun Paeon to designate both a god and that god's characteristic song of apotropaic thanksgiving and triumph. Such songs were originally addressed to Apollo and afterwards to other gods: to Dionysus, to Apollo Helios, to Apollo's son Asclepius the healer. About the 4th century BCE, the paean became merely a formula of adulation; its object was either to implore protection against disease and misfortune or to offer thanks after such protection had been rendered. It was in this way that Apollo had become recognized as the god of music. Apollo's role as the slayer of the Python led to his association with battle and victory; hence it became the Roman custom for a paean to be sung by an army on the march and before entering into battle, when a fleet left the harbour, and also after a victory had been won.
In the Iliad, Apollo is the healer under the gods, but he is also the bringer of disease and death with his arrows, similar to the function of the Vedic god of disease Rudra."The conception that the diseases come from invisible shots sent by magicians or supernatural beings is common in primitive people and also in European folklore. In North-Europe they speak of the "Elf-shots". In Sweden where the Lapps were called magicians, they speak of the "Lappen-shots". Martin Nilsson (1967). Vol I, p. 541 He sends a plague () to the Achaeans. Knowing that Apollo can prevent a recurrence of the plague he sent, they purify themselves in a ritual and offer him a large sacrifice of cows, called a hecatomb.Ilias A 314. Martin Nilsson (1967). Vol I, p. 543 |
Apollo | Dorian origin | Dorian origin
The Homeric Hymn to Apollo depicts Apollo as an intruder from the north.Herbert W. Park (1956). The delphic oracle. Vol. I, p. 3 The connection with the northern-dwelling Dorians and their initiation festival apellai is reinforced by the month Apellaios in northwest Greek calendars.Graf, Apollo, pp. 104–113; Burkert also notes in this context Archilochus Fr. 94. The family-festival was dedicated to Apollo (Doric: ).Burkert, p. 255. Apellaios is the month of these rites, and Apellon is the "megistos kouros" (the great Kouros).Jane Ellen Harrison (2010): Themis: A study to the Social origins of Greek Religion. Cambridge University Press. p. 441. However it can explain only the Doric type of the name, which is connected with the Ancient Macedonian word "pella" (Pella), stone. Stones played an important part in the cult of the god, especially in the oracular shrine of Delphi (Omphalos).Compare: Baetylus. In Semitic: sacred stoneMartin Nilsson (1967). Vol I. p. 556 |
Apollo | Minoan origin | Minoan origin
thumb|250px|Ornamented golden Minoan labrys
George Huxley considered the identification of Apollo with the Minoan deity Paiawon, worshipped in Crete, to have originated at Delphi. In the Homeric Hymn, Apollo appears as a dolphin carrying Cretan priests to Delphi, to which site they evidently transfer their religious practices. Apollo Delphinios or Delphidios was a sea-god worshipped especially in Crete and in the islands.Martin Nilsson (1967). Vol I, p. 554 A4 Apollo's sister Artemis, who was the Greek goddess of hunting, is identified with the Minoan goddess Britomartis (Diktynna), and with Laphria the Pre-Greek "mistress of the animals" who was specially worshipped at Delphi. In her earliest depictions she was accompanied by the "Master of the animals", a bow-wielding god of hunting whose name has been lost; aspects of this figure may have been absorbed into the more popular Apollo.Martin Nilsson (1967), Vol I, pp. 499–500 A family of priests at Delphi was named "Lab(r)yaden". The name may derive from Laphria. |
Apollo | Anatolian origin | Anatolian origin
thumb|250px|Illustration of a coin of Apollo Agyieus from Ambracia
A non-Greek origin of Apollo has long been assumed in scholarship. The name of Apollo's mother Leto has Lydian origin, and she was worshipped on the coasts of Asia Minor. The inspiration oracular cult was probably introduced into Greece from Anatolia, which is the origin of Sibyl, and where some of the oldest oracular shrines originated. Omens, symbols, purifications, and exorcisms appear in old Assyro-Babylonian texts. These rituals were spread into the empire of the Hittites, and from there into Greece.Martin Nilsson. Die Geschichte der Griechische Religion Vol I, pp. 563–564
Homer pictures Apollo on the side of the Trojans, fighting against the Achaeans, during the Trojan War. He is pictured as a terrible god, less trusted by the Greeks than other gods. The god seems to be related to Appaliunas, a tutelary god of Wilusa (Troy) in Asia Minor, but the word is not complete.Paul Kretschmer (1936). Glotta XXIV p. 250. Martin Nilsson (1967). Vol I, p. 559. The stones found in front of the gates of Homeric Troy were the symbols of Apollo. A western Anatolian origin may also be bolstered by references to the parallel worship of Artimus (Artemis) and Qλdãns, whose name may be cognate with the Hittite and Doric forms, in surviving Lydian texts. However, recent scholars have cast doubt on the identification of Qλdãns with Apollo.
The Greeks gave to him the name agyieus as the protector god of public places and houses who wards off evil and his symbol was a tapered stone or column.Martin Nilsson, Die Geschichte der Griechische Religion. vol. I (C. H. Beck), 1955:563f. However, while usually Greek festivals were celebrated at the full moon, all the feasts of Apollo were celebrated on the seventh day of the month, and the emphasis given to that day (sibutu) indicates a Babylonian origin.Martin Nilsson (1967). Vol I, p. 561. |
Apollo | Proto-Indo-European | Proto-Indo-European
The Vedic Rudra has some functions similar to those of Apollo. The terrible god is called "the archer" and the bow is also an attribute of Shiva.For as a name of Shiva see: Apte, p. 910. Rudra could bring diseases with his arrows, but he was able to free people of them and his alternative Shiva is a healer physician god.For the association between Rudra and disease, with Rigvedic references, see: Bhandarkar, p. 146. However the Indo-European component of Apollo does not explain his strong association with omens, exorcisms, and an oracular cult. |
Apollo | Oracular cult | Oracular cult
thumb|250px|Columns of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece
thumb|250px|Oracular tripod
Unusually among the Olympic deities, Apollo had two cult sites that had widespread influence: Delos and Delphi. In cult practice, Delian Apollo and Pythian Apollo (the Apollo of Delphi) were so distinct that they might both have shrines in the same locality. Lycia was sacred to the god, for this Apollo was also called Lycian.Diodorus Siculus, Library 1–7, 5.77.5Diodorus Siculus, Library 1–7, 5.77.5 – GR Apollo's cult was already fully established when written sources commenced, about 650 BCE. Apollo became extremely important to the Greek world as an oracular deity in the archaic period, and the frequency of theophoric names such as Apollodorus or Apollonios and cities named Apollonia testify to his popularity. Oracular sanctuaries to Apollo were established in other sites. In the 2nd and 3rd century CE, those at Didyma and Claros pronounced the so-called "theological oracles", in which Apollo confirms that all deities are aspects or servants of an all-encompassing, highest deity. "In the 3rd century, Apollo fell silent. Julian the Apostate (359–361) tried to revive the Delphic oracle, but failed." |
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