Examples of Mainly Corporate Funded Think Tanks: Brookings Institution

With a budget of US$ 23 million and assets worth US$ 192 million the Brookings Institution, based in Washington D.C., in 1998 was funded by: Corporate and private donations (38 %), endowment (30 %), revenue from conferences and seminars (18 %), sales of publications (9 %), government support (2 %).

Among the 138 corporate donors are: Bell Atlantic, Citibank, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, NationsBank, Exxon, Chevron, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Toyota, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Dupont, Mobil and Lockheed Martin, and the foundations of companies like American Express, Travelers, AT&T and McDonnell Douglas. A few media conglomerates, like Time Warner and the Washington Post Co.. Contributions of individual donors include executives from Visa, Procter and Gamble, BankAmerica and U.S. Airways.

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Seneca

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (~4 BC - 65 AD), originally coming from Spain, was a Roman philosopher, statesman, orator and playwright with a lot of influence on the Roman cultural life of his days. Involved into politics, his pupil Nero forced him to commit suicide. The French Renaissance brought his dramas back to stage.

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Nero

Nero's full name was Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (37-68 AD). Nero was Roman Emperor from 54-68 AD; during the first years in power he stood under the influence of his teacher Seneca. In this period he was very successful in inner politics and abroad, for example in Britannia. Soon he changed into a selfish dictator, had his brother, mother and wife killed and probably burnt Rome, blaming the Christians for it. More than in political affairs he was interested in arts. when he was dismissed in 68, he committed suicide.

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Fiber-optic cable networks

Fiber-optic cable networks may become the dominant method for high-speed Internet connections. Since the first fiber-optic cable was laid across the Atlantic in 1988, the demand for faster Internet connections is growing, fuelled by the growing network traffic, partly due to increasing implementation of corporate networks spanning the globe and to the use of graphics-heavy contents on the World Wide Web.

Fiber-optic cables have not much more in common with copper wires than the capacity to transmit information. As copper wires, they can be terrestrial and submarine connections, but they allow much higher transmission rates. Copper wires allow 32 telephone calls at the same time, but fiber-optic cable can carry 40,000 calls at the same time. A capacity, Alexander Graham Bell might have not envisioned when he transmitted the first words - "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you" - over a copper wire.

Copper wires will not come out of use in the foreseeable future because of technologies as DSL that speed up access drastically. But with the technology to transmit signals at more than one wavelength on fiber-optic cables, there bandwidth is increasing, too.

For technical information from the Encyclopaedia Britannica on telecommunication cables, click here. For technical information from the Encyclopaedia Britannica focusing on fiber-optic cables, click here.

An entertaining report of the laying of the FLAG submarine cable, up to now the longest fiber-optic cable on earth, including detailed background information on the cable industry and its history, Neal Stephenson has written for Wired: Mother Earth Mother Board. Click here for reading.

Susan Dumett has written a short history of undersea cables for Pretext magazine, Evolution of a Wired World. Click here for reading.

A timeline history of submarine cables and a detailed list of seemingly all submarine cables of the world, operational, planned and out of service, can be found on the Web site of the International Cable Protection Committee.

For maps of fiber-optic cable networks see the website of Kessler Marketing Intelligence, Inc.

http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/4/0...
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/4/0...
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffgla...
http://www.pretext.com/mar98/features/story3....
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Alexander Graham Bell

b., March 3, 1847, Edinburgh

d. Aug. 2, 1922, Beinn Bhreagh, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada

American audiologist and inventor wrongly remembered for having invented the telephone in 1876. Although Bell introduced the first commercial application of the telephone, in fact a German teacher called Reiss invented it.

For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/1/0,5716,15411+1+15220,00.html

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