Measuring Financial Performance Example

Essays on Measuring Financial Performance Assignment Measuring Financial Performance Table of contents Introduction †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.†¦..3 Importance of financial performance appraisal ..................................................†¦3 Employees’ motivation†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦..†¦.†¦.3 Charting progress†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.....4 Enhancing good relations†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.†¦4 Profitability ratios†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦;†¦5 Working capital ratios†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦..†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.6 Limitations of financial ratios†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦...†¦7 Overtrading†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦....8 Conclusion†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦10 Reference list†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.11 Introduction The financial progress of a firm is very crucial in determining future growth. The aim of any firm is to maintain a positive financial performance throughout the business life. In essence, the future life of a business concern is usually uncertain and, therefore, it is necessary to conduct regular financial appraisal to assess the financial progress of a company. Sandler Keefe (2004) argue that performance appraisal can be described as a systematic process that involves monitoring and assessing performance of individuals towards achieving the established organisational goals. Several studies have revealed that performance appraisal has become very popular among modern business enterprises. Essentially, it is imperative to note that there are various benefits that a firm enjoys for having an organised appraisal of its financial performance. Apparently, some of the reasons why it is imperative for companies to appraise their financial performance include employees’ motivation, enhancing good relations and charting progress. Importance of financial performance appraisal Employees’ motivation Appraisal of the financial performance assesses the performance of the employees in various departments. In this regard, employees are obliged to be accountable for the financial transaction then engage in daily. Therefore, it can be observed that appraisal of financial performance promotes employees’ efficiency. In essence, financial performance appraisal is an effective motivational technique for employees. In most cases, companies offer attractive packages such as bonuses and paid holidays to employees who portray outstanding performance. As a result, the workforce is motivated to perform to the best of its ability to benefit from the rewards offered by the company. Moreover, performance appraisal motivates the management to establish structures that promote positive development of the company. Charting progress Financial performance appraisal aids in tracking the progress of a company on the basis of financial transaction. In essence, regular appraisal facilitates comparison of financial performance between various fiscal periods. In this regard, a company gets the foundation to base future cash flow projections. Basically, financial planning is usually based on the past cash flow patterns and, therefore, financial performance appraisal proves to be an effective planning tool. In addition, it is a measure of improvement that employees and the company can use to assess their ability to deliver. In addition, decisions such as demotions, salary increment and promotions are usually based on the performance appraisal reports. Therefore, it is clear that financial performance appraisal can be an appropriate approach to ensuring positive progressive results. Enhancing good relations Financial performance appraisal involves the management team meeting the company’s employees. Essentially, regular meetings between the employees and the company management create good relations in the workplace. Moreover, effective communication is enhanced thereby promoting appropriate means of problem-solving within the organization. Consequently, the employees get a chance to share work experience and challenges thereby promoting the quality of performance. In essence, it can be observed that financial performance appraisal is a sound mechanism for bringing the company’s workforce together. In addition, it strengthens the union between the employer and the employees’ thereby boosting performance. Profitability ratios John Lewis Partnership plc Annual Report and Accounts 2014. Source: https://www.google.com/url?sa=trct=jq=esrc=ssource=webcd=4cad=rjauact=8ved=0CDUQFjADurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.johnlewispartnership.co.uk%2Fcontent%2Fdam%2Fcws%2Fpdfs%2Ffinancials%2Fannual%2520reports%2FJLP-annual-report-and-accounts-2014.pdfei=p0lnVfvPHIeU7QaL7oLABAusg=AFQjCNH0wNB_y22wp3XxZD_qM9GfR8AWFwsig2=Qbi_YQ4O6bSCAU60wh6cFQbvm=bv.93990622,d.ZGU a) Gross profit ratio 2014 Gross profit ratio = gross profit/ sales *100 3018.9/ 10171.5*100= 29.679988 2013 Gross profit ration= 2825.4/9541.3*100 =29.612317 b) Net profit ratio 2014 Net profit ratio= net profit/sales*100 -9.7/10171.5*100 =-0.0953645 2013 Net profit ratio = 3.7/9541.3*100 =0.03877878 c) Return on Net Assets (RONA) 2014 329.1/ (5524-1705.6)*100 =8.6187932 2013 RONA= 343.3/ (5363.6-1633.9) =9.2044937 Working capital ratios a) Debtor days 2014 Debtor days = (Trade debtors/credit sales)*365 = (225.9/10171.5)*365 =8 days 2013 Debtor days = (191.1/9541.3)*365 =192.1/9541.3*365 =7 days b) Creditor days 2014 Creditor days = trade creditors/purchases * 365 =135.5/10171.5*365 =5 days 2013 Creditor days= 119.3/9541.3*365 =6 days c) Stock turnover days 2014 Stock turnover days= inventory/cost of sales * 365 =554/6008.9*365 =34 days 2013 Stock turnover days = 514/5640.1*365 =33 days Limitations of financial ratios Narrow coverage Apparently, financial ratios are only fit for companies that deal with limited line of products or services. Essentially, companies that deal with a number of lines of production may not enjoy the benefits of using the financial ratios for analysis. Actually, the more complex an organization is, the more complex it is to employ ratio analysis techniques. Therefore, it can be learnt that the use of financial ratios is not appropriate for large companies. Basically, large companies have many transactions taking place simultaneously and, therefore, assessing the progress of such transactions can be very challenging. In this case, use of financial ratios cannot serve as effective analysis tools. Unreliable Ratio analysis is based on the available financial statements of the company. In this regard, malicious recording of transaction in the company’s books of account might result in misleading analysis (Ogilvie Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. (2008). In essence, a company might manipulate its financial records to please the promoters or external investors. In this regard, using the various ratios to analysis such records will be erroneous since there are founded on malice. Therefore, ratio analysis is not a perfect mechanism for assessing a company’s progress since it is difficult to ascertain the credibility of the financial records. For this reason, companies should never over rely on ratio analysis to evaluate performance. It is customarily logical to employ a variety of mechanisms to analyse a company’s financial performance rather than over relying on a single mechanism. Seasonal changes The financial performance of a company is affected by many factors. Therefore, these factors affect the cash flows generated every financial year. As a result, understanding the seasonal changes of cash flows for a company might be very difficult. In this regard, ratio analysis is not effective in assessing financial performance of a company that experience irregular and unpredictable cash flows. Moreover, seasonal changes affect the historical ratio analysis of the company. Overtrading This refers to a situation where a company’s sales grow at a rate that the company is not able to finance. The situation leads to accumulation of accounts payable or accounts receivables thereby leading to insufficiency of working capital (Harvard Business School, 2009). Some of the causes of overtrading include over-investment in fixed assets, excessive drawings and misappropriation of business funds. Essentially, over-investment in fixed assets leaves the company with little or no capital to run the daily operations. In this regard, the company ends up in overtrading. In addition, excessive drawings cause financial shortage thereby resulting overtrading in the long run. Moreover, misappropriation of funds also causes over trading. Basically, misappropriation of funds leaves important projects unattended to thereby causing financial troubles a company. Conclusion Business concerns have established diverse mechanisms to handle challenges that they face in their daily operations. Financial performance appraisal has emerged as one of the best strategies for measuring a company’s progress. In essence, business scholars have cited various benefits for using performance appraisal in assessing financial progress. Some of the benefits include employees’ motivation, tracking a company’s progress, and promoting friendly relations among the employees and between the employees and the employer. Basically, financial ratios aid in the analysis of financial performance of a firm. However, the ratios are associated with several limitations that affect their efficiency. Research has shown that financial ratios do not handle the problem of misleading recording of financial transactions. In addition, ratio analysis for large companies is ineffective. Moreover, ratio analysis does not address the problem of unpredictable cash flows of a comp any. In this regard, companies should be cautious on basing their financial plans on the ratio analysis results. In fact companies should have various alternatives for tracking financial progress and performance. Over relying on one method can be very disastrous to the future development of a company. Reference list: Ogilvie, J., Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. (2008).  Management accounting - financial strategy. Oxford: CIMA. Sandler, C., Keefe, J. (2004).  Performance appraisal phrase book: The best words, phrases, and techniques for performance reviews. Avon, Mass: Adams Media. Harvard Business School. (2009).  Performance appraisal: Expert solutions to everyday challenges. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Press. John Lewis Partnership plc Annual Report and Accounts (2014). Retrieved on 29th may 2015 from: https://www.google.com/url?sa=trct=jq=esrc=ssource=webcd=4cad=rjauact=8ved=0CDUQFjADurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.johnlewispartnership.co.uk%2Fcontent%2Fdam%2Fcws%2Fpdfs%2Ffinancials%2Fannual%2520reports%2FJLP-annual-report-and-accounts-2014.pdfei=p0lnVfvPHIeU7QaL7oLABAusg=AFQjCNH0wNB_y22wp3XxZD_qM9GfR8AWFwsig2=Qbi_YQ4O6bSCAU60wh6cFQbvm=bv.93990622,d.ZGU

Adolescents On-line Free Essays

As technology give way to broader telecommunication options, a new form of social community was formed. The Cyber Community has been one of the most intriguing forms of contemporary society and adolescents welcomed it willingly. Today’s adolescents are vicariously participating in online social networks. We will write a custom essay sample on Adolescents On-line or any similar topic only for you Order Now According to the research made by Wolak and colleague, out of 246 individuals who engaged in close online relationships about 145 do not see each other face to face. Thus, it can be surmised that face to face relationships are not anymore a factor that affects relationships between two persons. Conventional friendships signifies personal contact which is absent in on-line relationships. Nonetheless, both relationships exist so as to provide comfort and help to participants. However, in on-line relationships, the level of trust and confidence is usually lower. While some people see on line relationships to be a way to escape reality, others view this sort of relationship as helpful in identifying real personality and attitude. Adolescents use online networking to communicate both with their online friends and offline friends as well. They can also send messages and express themselves more freely and at most times most effectively. Several online games which are predominantly role-playing games in character also extend adolescents capacity to interact with other people. Negotiating and solving conflicts are highlighted in this kind of virtual social community. It also through different virtual social networks that teenagers can gather information about certain areas of interest and views, this is a feature that can be found in forums and blogs. References: Subrahmanyam, K. and Greenfield, P. (2008). Online Communication and Adolescent Relationships. Volume 18 No. 1. Retrieved on October 18, 2008 from www.futureofchildren.org Wolak, J., Mitchell, KJ. And Finkelhor, D. (2002) Close Online Relationships ina National Sample of Adolescents. Retrieved on October 18, 2008 from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2248/is_147_37/ai_94598385/pg_ How to cite Adolescents On-line, Papers

Psycho, The Movie Essay Example For Students

Psycho, The Movie Essay From the site: http://geocities.com/Hollywood/Lot/7145/ By Esteban Mejia Mesa (2001)Psycho (1960) Perhaps no other film changed so drastically Hollywoods perception of the horror film as did PSYCHO. More surprising is the fact that this still unnerving horror classic was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, a filmmaker who never relied upon shock values until this film. Here Hitchcock indulged in nudity, bloodbaths, necrophilia, transvestism, schizophrenia, and a host of other taboos and got away with it, simply because he was Hitchcock. The great director clouded his intent and motives by reportedly stating that the entire film was nothing more than one huge joke. No one laughed. Instead they cringed in their seats, waiting for the next assault on their senses. The violence and bloodletting of PSYCHO may look tame to those who have grown up on Jason and Freddy Krueger, but no one had ever seen anything like it in 1960. Inspired by the life of the demented, cannibalistic Wisconsin killer Ed Gein (whose heinous acts would also inspire THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, 1974 and DERANGED, 1974), PSYCHO is probably Hitchcocks most gruesome and dark film. Its importance to its genre cannot be overestimated. PSYCHOs enduring influence comes not only from the Norman Bates character (who has since been reincarnated in a staggering variety of forms), but also from the psychological themes Hitchcock develops. Enhancing the sustained fright of this film are an excellent cast, from which the director coaxes extraordinary performances, and Bernard Herrmanns chilling score. Especially effective is the composers so-called murder music, high-pitched screeching sounds that flash across the viewers consciousness as quickly as the killers deadly knife. Bernard Herrmann achieved this effect by having a group of violinists frantically saw the same notes over and over again. Hitchcock really shocked Paramount when he demanded that he be allowed to film the sleazy, sensational novel that Robert Bloch based on the Gein killings. Blochs subject matter and characters were a great departure from the sophisticated homicide and refined characters usually found in Hitchcocks films, but the filmmaker kept after the studios front office until the executives relented. He was told, however, that he would have to shoot the film on an extremely limited budgetno more than $800,000. Surprisingly, Hitchcock accepted the budget restrictions and went ahead with the film, utilizing television technical people, who were less expensive than standard Hollywood crews. Moreover, the director, realizing that Paramount expected this to be his first box-office failure, proposed that he finance the film with his own money in return for 60 percent of the profits. Relieved that its own coffers were secure, Paramount agreed to act as the films distributor. But even Hitchcocks close associates refused to believe that he was making a wise decision. His longtime associate producer, Joan Harrison, refused t o take points in this film, opting for a direct salary, telling him Youre on your own on this one, Hitch. After rejecting writer James Cavanaughs adaptation of the Bloch novel, Hitchcock, at the urging of MCA, met briefly with writer Joseph Stefano, who had only one screenplay credit, THE BLACK ORCHID (1959), a less-than-inspiring film starring Sophia Loren and Anthony Quinn. Although he had expressed doubts about Stefano (who would later go on to produce The Outer Limits for television), Hitchcock changed his mind after meeting the writer and gave him the green light. When Stefano told Hitchcock that he could not work up much sympathy for a peeping Tom killer in his forties (the age of the murderer in Blochs novel), the director proposed using a much younger character and even suggested to the writer that Perkins get the lead role. When Hitchcock began production on PSYCHO, he was told that he would have to use the facilities at Revue Studios, the television division of Universal S tudios, which Paramount had rented for the making of the film. Although he was unable to use his erstwhile cinematographer, Robert Burks, Hitchcock managed to convince Paramount that his special editor, George Tomasini, should be included in the production. The directors penchant for detail was in full force here. He insisted that Stefano and others scout motels along Route 99 to learn how they operated, who stopped at them, and who ran them. The Bates Motel was then put together on the Universal back lot and was definitely on the seedy side, with a scaled-down The mansion cost only $15,000 to construct and technicians cannibalized several other stock buildings on the lot to keep the costs down, throwing onto the structure a tower that had been part of the Dowd home in HARVEY (1950). Perkins, then only twenty-seven, was hired without the actor even reading the script. The rising young performer owed Paramount one film under his contract and was taken aboard both because Hitchcock th ought him right for the role of Norman Bates and because he would cost little. The role of the female lead was a problem. Hitchcock was reputedly interested in using Shirley Jones, but her salary would have been too high. Instead, he selected Leigh, who was more of a starlet than a star at the time, although this part would change that. The name of the first victim in the novel is Mary Crane, but when Hitchcocks researchers found that a real Mary Crane lived in Phoenixwhere the film beginsLeighs characters name was changed to Marion to avoid lawsuits. Leigh received a copy of the Bloch novel before shooting began, but the director wrote a note to her pointing out that the female victim, who is almost incidental in the novel, would have much more importance in the film. Actually Leigh is on screen for only forty-five minutes before she is slashed to pieces. Leighs relatively rapid departure forces viewers to switch the focus of their attention to Perkins. Hitchcock is able to achieve this transference of audience sympathy by showing Perkinss Norman to be sensitive and oddly compelling, leading viewers to believe that his unseen mother is the culprit. To protect the murderous mothers real identity, Hitchcock announced to the press that he was considering Helen Hayes or Judith Anderson to play the role. This attempt to set up viewers for the surprise ending (an atypical finish for a film by a director who always avoided surprise endings) backfired somewhat when Hitchcock was deluged with wires and letters from actresses asking to be considered for the role of the mother. Originally, the concept for the horrific cadaver was nothing more than a large plastic doll with glass eyes; however, Hitchcock was quick to alter this approach, substituting a sunken-faced, ossified corpse of his own design. He used that cadaver for one of the many offbeat pranks he pulled on Leigh, which the actress took so well that she quickly became one of Hitchcocks favorite performers. Onc e the corpse was created, Hitchcock had it placed in Leighs dressing room so that when she entered and turned on the light the corpse sat grinning at her, causing the actress to let out piercing screams louder and more frightening than her shrieks in the shower scene. The films male lead, Gavin (who would later become the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico), makes considerably less of an impression on viewers than the shower scene. Never Hitchcocks top choice for the impoverished lover turned amateur detective, Gavin, a contract player at Universal (the studio that was renting its facilities to the production), was practically forced on Paramount. Indeed, Hitchcock wanted anybody but Gavin for the role and considered Stuart Whitman, Tom Tryon, Brian Keith, Cliff Robertson, Tom Laughlin, Jack Lord, Robert Loggia (who would have a part in PSYCHO II, 1983), and Rod Taylor (who would star in Hitchcocks THE BIRDS, 1963.) In the end, Hitchcock gave in to pressure from Universal and gave Gavin the less than pivotal role, saying lamely, I guess hell be all right. The shower scene. When it came to that famous shower scene, Hitchcock not only approved of every little detail in the scenefrom toilet to shower nozzlebut he demonstrated every move the killer and victim were to make. The director even showed Perkins exactly how he was to wrap the body in the shower curtain. Ironically, Perkins was not present for the filming of Leighs murder. He later commented: Not many people know this, but I was in New York rehearsing for a play when the shower scene was filmed in Hollywood. It is rather strange to go through life being identified with this sequence knowing that it was my double. Actually the first time I saw PSYCHO and that shower scene was at the studio. I found it really scary. I was just as frightened as anybody else. Working on the picture, though, was one of the happiest filming experiences of my life. We had fun making itnever realizing the impact it would have. It was Hitc hcock who specifically ordered this murder shown as a brutal thing, scribbling in his own hand for shot 116: The slashing. An impression of a knife slashing, as if tearing at the very screen, ripping the film. This filmic slaying is long, terrifying, and gory. Through lightning cuts between Leigh and closeups of the knife striking her body (she is stabbed at least a dozen times) and seemingly piercing her flesh, Hitchcock depictsfor the first time in film historythe bloody realities of violent murder. Reportedly, a fast motion reverse shot was used to give the impression that the knife actually enters Leighs abdomen. Another of the inventive techniques Hitchcock employs in this legendary scene is the way in which he shows the spray coming directly out of the shower nozzle. Jets of water encompass the camera without ever hitting the lens, as if Leigh is looking directly into the nozzle. To achieve this effect, Hitchcock ordered a huge shower nozzle made, then moved his camera in for a closeup. Even though the film was shot on a frenzied schedule of a little over a month, Hitchcock took a full week to shoot the shower scene, directing it from a tower above the set, employing a single cameraman. He had abandoned the use of Technicolor, so as not to make the film more gory than it already was, and washed chocolate sauce down the drain as if it were Leighs blood. A makeup man walked onto the set and looked about and then asked Hitchcock: My dear boy, it will have so much more impact in black and white. Although a stand-in was used for the shots of Leighs corpse wrapped in the plastic curtain on the bathroom floor, Leigh performed the rest of the shower scene herself, though she was concerned about displaying her bosom, even before a few technicians in a closed set. She and aides researched various transparent garments worn by strippers but did not come up with anything that would work. A technician finally came up with an answer, flesh-colored moleskin. But during shooting hot water from the shower undermined this solution. I felt something strange happening around my breasts, Leigh later said. The steam from the hot water had melted the adhesive on the moleskin and I sensed the napped cotton fabric peeling away from my skin. What to do?To spoil the so far successful shot and be modest? Or get it over with and be immodest. I opted for immodestythat was the printed take, and no one noticed my bareness before I could cover it up. I think! (Janet Leigh, There Really Was a Hollywood.) Because he owned so much of the film, Hitchcock turned promotion minded with PSYCHO, devising the entire publicity campaign for his gruesome masterpiece. He insisted that no moviegoer be seated during the showing of the film. He also demanded that even the critics see the film with the audiences from the beginning, which alienated many a reviewer (leading some critics to label the directors work as cruel, sadistic, and even pornographic). The directors response was to say that he had fun with the film. In an interview with French director Franois Truffaut, Hitchcock stated that it was rather exciting to use the camera to deceive the audiencesThe game with the audience was fascinating. I was directing the viewers. You might say I was playing them like an organ I didnt start off to make an important movie. I thought I could have fun with this subject and this situation My main satisfaction is that the film had an effect on the audience I feel its tremendously satisfying for us to be able to use the cinematic art to achieve something of a mass emotion. And with PSYCHO we most definitely achieved this. It wasnt a message that stirred the audiences, nor was it a great performance or their enjoyment of the novel. They were aroused by pure film. Thats why I take pride in the fact that PSYCHO, more than any of my other pictures, is a film that belongs to filmmakers. This was no news to Hitchcocks fans. In a 1947 press conference the great director lai d out his philosophy of the mystery-horror genre: I am to provide the public with beneficial shocks. Civilization has become so protective that were no longer able to get our goose bumps instinctively. The only way to remove the numbness and revive our moral equilibrium is to use artificial means to bring about the shock. The best way to achieve that, it seems to me, is through a movie. PSYCHO provided shocks heard around the world and became an instant smash, breaking all box-office records in its initial release. Hitchcock had a horselaugh on the Paramount executives who wanted no part of PSYCHO from the beginning. The film became one of Paramounts largest grossing pictures and it made Hitchcock not only a master of the modern horror film but also fabulously wealthy. He had outwitted everyonethe industry, the audience, and the critics. The International Accounting Standards Boards Accounting Essay

Watch Market free essay sample

â€Å"MARKET SEGMENTATION OF WRIST WATCHES. † A report submitted to IIMT, Greater NOIDA as per a fulfillment of full time Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY: Dr. D. K. Garg Hareram Kumar Chairman,ENR- 15033 Ishan Institute of Management 15th Batch PGDBM And Technology ISHAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY 2 A, KNOWLEDGE PARK – 1, GREATER NOIDA Website: www. ishanfamily. com, E-mail: [emailprotected] com PREFACE In the Watch industry, marketing and selling are playing a big role, sales have big concern with the profit but marketing of any product in sector is concern with the need, want, and recruitment of customer with the organization profitability. In telecom industry competition is very tough and change is very fast. So marketing strategy play a very vital role in this industry My final project is all about the Market segmentation of wrist watches. It means that I have to work on the strategy which the company is adopting in marketing and selling of its products and services for expanding its business and competing with the competitors. We will write a custom essay sample on Watch Market or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page In this project, I supposed to know the selling and marketing strategies of the MTNL product and services. What are the marketing steps being taken by the agencies. The queries, which are asked by the client, should be solved by the discussion with the company guide and marketing research. CERTIFICATE I have great pleasure in certifying that the final project on â€Å"Market Segmentation of wrist watches† submitted by Shri HARERAM KUMAR of Ishan Institute of Management and Technology, Greater Noida in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of degree of P. G. Diploma in Management has carried out under my supervision and guidance. This work has not been submitted anywhere else for any other degree or diploma. Date: (Ajay kumar) Guide of project ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Practical study is essential for any Professional curriculum otherwise it will merely leap in dark. Apart from classroom study it is necessary to know about the day to day working of the organization. To fulfill the above objective every student has to undergo practical study before he/she can consider himself/herself fully qualified as a Potential Manager. During the course of my training, I learn that there is big difference between class room study and practical life. I got opportunity to undergo training under Mr. Ajay Kumar I express my thanks to my company guide Mr. Ajay Kumar ( Managing Director Gagdamba Watch Tugalpur Gr. Noida) for accepting me as a Summer Trainee in the organization and for his resolute guidance, meticulous supervision and constant encouragement during training till now. I would also like to wish a special thanks to our Dr. D. K. Garg (Chairman) and Pro. M. K. Verma (Dean) without whose guidance this project would have been a distant dream. (HARERAM KUMAR) DECLARATION The final project on â€Å"Market Segmentation of Wrist Watches. † Under the guidance of Mr. Ajay Kumar Gr. Noida. This is the original work done by me. This is the property of the institute and use of this report without prior permission of the institute will be considered illegal and actionable. Date: Name: HARERAM KUMAR Signature: Place: ENR. No: 15033 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 Executive summary Literature Review Objective of the study Chapter 2 Introduction a)History of wrist watches b) Early growth c) Recent Development Chapter 3 a)Wrist watch business in India b)Recent step taken in India Chapter 4 Market segmentation Men’s wrist watch Women’s wrist watch Kids wrist watch Watches according to the ceremony,marriage purpose,gifts Chapter -5 Market strategy of different watch company †¢Titan †¢Hmt †¢Maxima †¢Timex †¢Rado †¢Swiss Chapter-6 Organised player Titan Maxima Hmt Timex Citizen Casio Seiko Chapter -7 Product planning Expansion of watches Chapter-8 How company generate revenue by wrist watches. Chapter -9 My experience. Chapter -10 Consumer behavior of different segment towards wrist watches. A market survey. Questionnaire Chapter-11 †¢Conclusion †¢Finding †¢Suggestion †¢Bibliography EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report introduces a brief study of marketing segmentation of different wrist watches for its customers. The study report will provide an opportunity to know customers psychographic needs, it may provide an opportunity to the Wrist watch to frame a good future plan to satisfy maximum needs, taste and preferences of the customers and established its guiding role in the market and in marketing plan in particular area. An Analysis report provides detailed information about using the opportunities in market competition and thus prepares itself to meet the market challenge by making adjustment in its new strategy and promotions activities. Gone are the days when people were very unsure about the future and hardly cared about it in terms of technological developments. But the situation has changed now. In the new millennium, people often feel a growing uneasiness about the future. Certainly many countries today are suffering from chronic high unemployment, a persistent deficit of economy and gradual deterioration of purchasing power. Nations are passing through a phase of rapid transformation. Forces are mostly responsible for these types of drastic changes; they are explosive growth of trade and international competition. This new era has witnessed remarkable advancement in the availability of information and a number of large companies operations in such market where the principal of natural selection lead to â€Å"survival of the fittest†. Market provides a key to gain actual success only to those companies which match best to the current environment i. e. â€Å"imperative† which can be delivered what are the people needs and they are ready to buy at the right time without any delay. It is perfectly true but this also depends on the availability of good quality products and excellent services, which further attract and add a golden opportunity for huge sales. This also depends on the good planning approach and provide ample opportunity plus sufficient amount of products for sales in the coming next financial year. LITERATURE REVIEW In this report I have described the facts and theories which were seen by me in field. I have described the market mix in this report and then I have applied the marketing mix to the MTNL’s products. I have given full description about the marketing strategy, how it works and how it plays a vital role in selling the product. I have described about the advertisement and how it play a very important role in selling the product. I have also described promotion and various tools of promotion. I have described various types of pricing strategies used by the different companies and the strategy used by the MTNL for selling its products. I have given full description of the segmentation, what is the role of segmentation, types of segmentation, targeting and positioning is also explained by me. I have explained the strategy used by MTNL for 3G and how it is trying to take the advantage of monopoly because right now it is single in the market and private player will come after few months. Here I am giving the brief of marketing and the rest topics are in the form of chapters. Marketing Marketing is an ongoing process of planning and executing the marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion) for products, services or ideas to create exchange between individuals and organizations. Marketing tends to be seen as a creative industry, which includes advertising, distribution and selling. It is also concerned with anticipating the customers future needs and wants, which are often discovered through market research. Essentially, marketing is the process of creating or directing an organization to be successful in selling a product or service that people not only desire, but are willing to buy. Its specialist areas include: * Advertising and branding * Communications * Database marketing * Direct Marketing * Event organization * Global marketing * International marketing * Internet marketing * Industrial marketing * Market research * Public Relations * Retailing * Search Engine Marketing * Marketing Strategy * Marketing Plan * Strategic Management Concept of Marketing Marketing is an instructive business domain that serves to inform and educate target markets about the value and competitive advantage of a company and its products. â€Å"Value (marketing)† is worth derived by the customer from owning and using the product. â€Å"Competitive Advantage† is a depiction that the company or its products are each doing something better than their competition in a way that could benefit the customer. Marketing is focused on the task of conveying pertinent company and product related information o specific customers, and there are a multitude of decisions (strategies) to be made within the marketing domain regarding what information to deliver, how much information to deliver, to whom to deliver, how to deliver, when to deliver, and where to deliver. Once the decisions are made, there are numerous ways (tactics) and processes that could be employed in support of the selected strategies. The goal of marketing is to build a nd maintain a preference for a company and its products within the target markets. The goal of any business is to build mutually profitable and sustainable relationships with its customers. While all business domains are responsible for accomplishing this goal, the marketing domain bears a significant share of the responsibility. Within the larger scope of its definition, marketing is performed through the actions of three coordinated disciplines named: â€Å"Product Marketing†, â€Å"Corporate Marketing†, and â€Å"Marketing Communications†. Two levels of marketing Strategic marketing attempts to determine how an organization competes against its competitors in a market place. In particular, it aims at generating a competitive advantage relative to its competitors. Operational marketing executes marketing functions to attract and keep customers and to maximize the value derived for them, as well as to satisfy the customer with prompt services and meeting the customer expectations. Operational Marketing includes the determination of the porters five forces model 1. INTRODUCTION a) History of wrist watch Over the centuries clocks have been used as a status symbol by those who wear them. Their precision, elegance and convenience are just some of the attributes that clocks and watches represent. Often they are bought purely for their aesthetic looks. and at other times they are bought because of their technical attributes like being precise to the last second or even millisecond. This is what makes clocks and watches so collectible and in some cases they can command high sums of money. Whether you collect the new high precision watches or ones that come from a past era, the fact is that over the years this hobby has become a high turnover business. And collecting watches is in a lot of circles regarded as a wise form of investing. At the start of the last century the clocks that were available for men or women were firstly pocket clocks, and then clocks that held by a pendant attached to the lining of jackets or corsets. The advent of war, industrialization, and the development of the sport activities, brought over new trends which extended to not only the way we dressed, but also how we carried our clocks. It is said that it was a nanny who invented wrist watches at around the end of the 19th century, who fixed a clock around her wrist by using a silk band. The first watches to be made were in fact smaller models of pocket clocks that were fitted with a leather strap. Once this product hit the market newer designs started to be produced based around this same concept. It was Louis Cartier who first made the kind of watches we see today when he created a watch for a flying pioneer hero by the name Santos Dumont. By 1911 this same type of watch was on general sale. That same type of watch became the blueprint of what wrist watches look like to this day. Soon after the design of wrist clocks began to diversify away from the classical round shape that had been in vogue up until that time. From the Cartier classical wrist watch other makes of watch started to emerge which were characterized by their shape. Movado is the perfect example of these new designs when it came out with the Polyplan shaped watch. Then came the famously and cryptically called clock reference n. 1593 by Patek Philippe which was a rectangular shaped watch. From 1913 onwards more and more watches started to be developed in all shapes and styles. From the gondola watch of Patek Phillipe to Louis Cartiers Tank; named thus because it was inspired by the shape of English armored cars of the time. These are watches which are very much sought after. There were other numerous watch makers like Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin who along with Patek Philippe and Cartier came out with many other designs which added other features to the watches like lunar phases, month and day most of which are found in modern watches now. Of course we could not mention wrist watches without mentioning the most famous of them all: the Rolex watch. In the 1920s Rolex debuted in the world of wrist watches with the elegant Rolex Prince and its revolutionary dual time feature made famous for having the seconds sector larger than that of the minutes. At the same time Jaeger Le Coultre produced an even more advanced piece called the Reverse, also very revolutionary in that it could be turn 180 degrees within its case, thus protecting the crystal and dial. It became incredibly popular and was only prevented from achieving even greater success by the recession of the 1930s and the advent of world war 2. These early watches of the 1910s to 1930s are what define all the makes of watches that we see and wear today. This short article has only scratched the surface of what is a very vast subject which has many more watch makers with diverse and revolutionary designs. However it is makers like Rolex, Cartier, Jaeger Le Coultre and the others mentioned that are amongst the most valuable and collectible, and should you ever be so lucky to get one then make sure you hang on to it preferably to your wrist. For thousands of years, devices have been used to measure and keep track of time. The current sexagesimal system of time measurement dates to approximately 2000 BC, in Sumer. The Ancient Egyptians divided the day into two 12-hour periods, and used large obelisks to track the movement of the Sun. They also developed water clocks, which were probably first used in the Precinct of Amun-Re, and later outside Egypt as well; they were employed frequently by the Ancient Greeks, who called them clepsydrae. The Shang Dynasty is believed to have used the outflow water clock around the same time, devices which were introduced from Mesopotamia as early as 2000 BC. Other ancient timekeeping devices include the candle clock, used in China, Japan, England and Iraq; the timestick, widely used in India and Tibet, as well as some parts of Europe; and the hourglass, which functioned similarly to a water clock. The earliest clocks relied on shadows cast by the sun, and hence were not useful in cloudy weather or at night and required recalibration as the seasons changed (if the gnomon was not aligned with the Earths axis). The earliest known clock with a water-powered escapement mechanism, which transferred rotational energy into intermittent motions,[1] dates back to 3rd century BC ancient Greece;[2] Chinese engineers later invented clocks incorporating mercury-powered escapement mechanisms in the 10th century,[3] followed by Arabic engineers inventing water clocks driven by gears and weights in the 11th century. 4] Mechanical clocks employing the verge escapement mechanism were invented in Europe at the turn of the 14th century, and became the standard timekeeping device until the spring-powered clock and pocket watch in the 16th century, followed by the pendulum clock in the 18th century. During the 20th century, quartz oscillators were invented, followed by atomic clocks. Although first used in laboratories, quartz oscillators were both easy to produce and accurate, leading to their use in wristwatches. Atomic clocks are far more accurate than any previous timekeeping device, and are used to calibrate other clocks and to calculate the proper time on Earth; a standardized civil system, Coordinated Universal Time, is based on atomic time. b) Early growth Many ancient civilizations observed astronomical bodies, often the Sun and Moon, to determine times, dates, and seasons. [5][6] Methods of sexagesimal timekeeping, now common in Western society, first originated nearly 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and Egypt;[5][7][8] a similar system was developed later in Mesoamerica. 9] The first calendars may have been created during the last glacial period, by hunter-gatherers who employed tools such as sticks and bones to track the phases of the moon or the seasons. [6] Stone circles, such as Englands Stonehenge, were built in various parts of the world, especially in Prehistoric Europe, and are thought to have been used to time and predict seasonal and annual events such as equinoxes or solsti ces. [6][10] As those megalithic civilizations left no recorded history, little is known of their calendars or timekeeping methods. 11] [edit] 3500 BC – 500 BC See also: History of timekeeping devices in Egypt Sundials have their origin in shadow clocks, which were the first devices used for measuring the parts of a day. [12] The oldest known shadow clock is from Egypt, and was made from green schist. Ancient Egyptian obelisks, constructed about 3500 BC, are also among the earliest shadow clocks. [6][13][14] The Luxor Obelisk in Place de la Concorde, Paris, France Egyptian shadow clocks divided daytime into 10 parts, with an additional four twilight hours—two in the morning, and two in the evening. One type of shadow clock consisted of a long stem with five variable marks and an elevated crossbar which cast a shadow over those marks. It was positioned eastward in the morning, and was turned west at noon. Obelisks functioned in much the same manner: the shadow cast on the markers around it allowed the Egyptians to calculate the time. The obelisk also indicated whether it was morning or afternoon, as well as the summer and winter solstices. [6][15] A third shadow clock, developed c. 1500 BC, was similar in shape to a bent T-square. It measured the passage of time by the shadow cast by its crossbar on a non-linear rule. The T was oriented eastward in the mornings, and turned around at noon, so that it could cast its shadow in the opposite direction. [16] Although accurate, shadow clocks relied on the sun, and so were useless at night and in cloudy weather. [15][17] The Egyptians therefore developed a number of alternative timekeeping instruments, including water clocks, hourglasses, and a system for tracking star movements. The oldest description of a water clock is from the tomb inscription of the 16th-century BC Egyptian court official Amenemhet, identifying him as its inventor. 18] There were several types of water clocks, some more elaborate than others. One type consisted of a bowl with small holes in its bottom, which was floated on water and allowed to fill at a near-constant rate; markings on the side of the bowl indicated elapsed time, as the surface of the water reached them. The oldest-known waterclock was found in the tomb of pharaoh Amenhotep I (1525–1504 BC), suggesting that the y were first used in ancient Egypt. [15][19][20] The ancient Egyptians are also believed to be the inventors of the hourglass, which consisted of two vertically aligned glass chambers connected by a small opening. When the hourglass was turned over, grains of sand fell at a constant rate from one chamber to the other. [17] Another Egyptian method of determining the time during the night was using plumb-lines called merkhets. In use since at least 600 BC, two of these instruments were aligned with Polaris, the north pole star, to create a north–south meridian. The time was accurately measured by observing certain stars as they crossed the line created with the merkhets. [15][21] [edit] 500 BC – 1 BC Ctesibiuss clepsydra from the 3rd century BC. Clepsydra, literally water thief, is the Greek word for water clock. [22] Water clocks, or clepsydrae, were commonly used in Ancient Greece following their introduction by Plato, who also invented a water-based alarm clock. [23][24] One account of Platos alarm clock describes it as depending on the nightly overflow of a vessel containing lead balls, which floated in a columnar vat. The vat held a steadily increasing amount of water, supplied by a cistern. By morning, the vessel would have floated high enough to tip over, causing the lead balls to cascade onto a copper platter. The resultant clangor would then awaken Platos students at the Academy. [25] Another possibility is that it comprised two jars, connected by a siphon. Water emptied until it reached the siphon, which transported the water to the other jar. There, the rising water would force air through a whistle, sounding an alarm. [24] The Greeks and Chaldeans regularly maintained timekeeping records as an essential part of their astronomical observations. Greek astronomer, Andronicus of Cyrrhus, supervised the construction of the Tower of the Winds in Athens in the 1st century B. C. In Greek tradition, clepsydrae were used in court; later, the Romans adopted this practice, as well. There are several mentions of this in historical records and literature of the era; for example, in Theaetetus, Plato says that Those men, on the other hand, always speak in haste, for the flowing water urges them on. [26] Another mention occurs in Lucius Apuleius The Golden Ass: The Clerk of the Court began bawling again, this time summoning the chief witness for the prosecution to appear. Up stepped an old man, whom I did not know. He was invited to speak for as long as there was water in the clock; this was a hollow globe into which water was poured through a funnel in the neck, and from which it gradually escaped through fine perforations at the base. [27] The clock in Apuleius account was one of several types of water clock used. Another consisted of a bowl with a hole in its centre, which was floated on water. Time was kept by observing how long the bowl took to fill with water. 28] Although clepsydrae were more useful than sundials—they could be used indoors, during the night, and also when the sky was cloudy—they were not as accurate; the Greeks, therefore, sought a way to improve their water clocks. [29] Although still not as accurate as sundials, Greek water clocks became more accurate around 325 BC, and they were adapted to have a face with an hour hand, making the reading of the clock more precise and convenient. One of the more common problems in most types of clepsydrae was caused by water pressure: when the container holding the water was full, the increased pressure caused the water to flow more rapidly. This problem was addressed by Greek and Roman horologists beginning in 100 BC, and improvements continued to be made in the following centuries. To counteract the increased water flow, the clocks water containers—usually bowls or jugs—were given a conical shape; positioned with the wide end up, a greater amount of water had to flow out in order to drop the same distance as when the water was lower in the cone. Along with this improvement, clocks were constructed more elegantly in this period, with hours marked by gongs, doors opening to miniature figurines, bells, or moving mechanisms. 15] There were some remaining problems, however, which were never solved, such as the effect of temperature. Water flows more slowly when cold, or may even freeze. [30] Although the Greeks and Romans did much to advance water clock technology, they still continued to use shadow clocks. The mathematician and astronomer Theodosius of Bithynia, for example, is said to have invented a univers al sundial that was accurate anywhere on Earth, though little is known about it. [31] Others wrote of the sundial in the mathematics and literature of the period. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, the Roman author of De Architectura, wrote on the mathematics of gnomons, or sundial blades. [32] During the reign of Emperor Augustus, the Romans constructed the largest sundial ever built, the Solarium Augusti. Its gnomon was an obelisk from Heliopolis. [33] Similarly, the obelisk from Campus Martius was used as the gnomon for Augustus zodiacal sundial. [34] Pliny the Elder records that the first sundial in Rome arrived in 264 BC, looted from Catania, Sicily; according to him, it gave the incorrect time until the markings and angle appropriate for Romes latitude were used—a century later. 35] [edit] AD 1 – AD 1500 [edit] Water clocks The water-powered elephant clock by Al-Jazari, 1206. Joseph Needham speculated that the introduction of the outflow clepsydra to China, perhaps from Mesopotamia, occurred as far back as the 2nd millennium BC, during the Shang Dynasty, and at the latest by the 1st millennium BC. By the beginning of the Han Dynasty, in 202 BC, the outflow clepsydra was gradually replaced by the inflow clepsydra, which featured an indicator rod on a float. To compensate for the falling pressure head in the reservoir, which slowed timekeeping as the vessel filled, Zhang Heng added an extra tank between the reservoir and the inflow vessel. Around 550 AD, Yin Gui was the first in China to write of the overflow or constant-level tank added to the series, which was later described in detail by the inventor Shen Kuo. Around 610, this design was trumped by two Sui Dynasty inventors, Geng Xun and Yuwen Kai, who were the first to create the balance clepsydra, with standard positions for the steelyard balance. [36] Joseph Needham states that: the balance clepsydra] permitted the seasonal adjustment of the pressure head in the compensating tank by having standard positions for the counterweight graduated on the beam, and hence it could control the rate of flow for different lengths of day and night. With this arrangement no overflow tank was required, and the two attendants were warned when the clepsydra needed refilling. [36] Between 270 BC and 500 AD, Hellenistic (Ctesibius, Hero of Alexandria, Archimedes) and Roman horologists and astronomers were developing more elaborate mechanized water clocks. The added complexity was aimed at regulating the flow and at providing fancier displays of the passage of time. For example, some water clocks rang bells and gongs, while others opened doors and windows to show figurines of people, or moved pointers, and dials. Some even displayed astrological models of the universe. Some of the most elaborate water clocks were designed by Muslim engineers. In particular, the water clocks by Al-Jazari in 1206 are credited for going well beyond anything that had preceded them. In his treatise, he describes one of his water clocks, the elephant clock. The clock recorded the passage of temporal hours, which eant that the rate of flow had to be changed daily to match the uneven length of days throughout the year. To accomplish this, the clock had two tanks: the top tank was connected to the time indicating mechanisms and the bottom was connected to the flow control regulator. At daybreak the tap was opened and water flowed from the top tank to the bottom tank via a float regulator that maintained a constant pressure in the receiving tank. [37] [edit] Candle clocks A candle clock It is not known specifically where and when candle clocks were first used; however, their earliest mention comes from a Chinese poem, written in 520 by You Jianfu. According to the poem, the graduated candle was a means of determining time at night. Similar candles were used in Japan until the early 10th century. [38] The candle clock most commonly mentioned and written of is attributed to King Alfred the Great. It consisted of six candles made from 72 pennyweights of wax, each 12 inches (30 cm) high, and of uniform thickness, marked every inch (2. 5 cm). As these candles burned for about four hours, each mark represented 20 minutes. Once lit, the candles were placed in wooden framed glass boxes, to prevent the flame from extinguishing. 39] The most sophisticated candle clocks of their time were those of Al-Jazari in 1206. One of his candle clocks included a dial to display the time and, for the first time, employed a bayonet fitting, a fastening mechanism still used in modern times. [40] Donald Routledge Hill described Al-Jazaris candle clocks as follows: The candle, whose rate of burning was known, bore against the underside of the cap, and i ts wick passed through the hole. Wax collected in the indentation and could be removed periodically so that it did not interfere with steady burning. The bottom of the candle rested in a shallow dish that had a ring on its side connected through pulleys to a counterweight. As the candle burned away, the weight pushed it upward at a constant speed. The automata were operated from the dish at the bottom of the candle. No other candle clocks of this sophistication are known. [41] An oil-lamp clock A variation on this theme were oil-lamp clocks. These early timekeeping devices consisted of a graduated glass reservoir to hold oil — usually whale oil, which burned cleanly and evenly — supplying the fuel for a built-in lamp. As the level in the reservoir dropped, it provided a rough measure of the passage of time. [edit] Incense clocks Main article: Incense clock In addition to water, mechanical, and candle clocks, incense clocks were used in the Far East, and were fashioned in several different forms. [42] Incense clocks were first used in China around the 6th century; in Japan, one still exists in the Shosoin,[43] although its characters are not Chinese, but Devanagari. [44] Due to their frequent use of Devanagari characters, suggestive of their use in Buddhist ceremonies, Edward H. Schafer speculated that incense clocks were invented in India. [44] Although similar to the candle clock, incense clocks burned evenly and without a flame; therefore, they were more accurate and safer for indoor use. [45] Several types of incense clock have been found, the most common forms include the incense stick and incense seal. [46][47] An incense stick clock was an incense stick with calibrations;[47] most were elaborate, sometimes having threads, with weights attached, at even intervals. The weights would drop onto a platter or gong below, signifying that a certain amount of time had elapsed. Some incense clocks were held in elegant trays; open-bottomed trays were also used, to allow the weights to be used together with the decorative tray. [48][49] Sticks of incense with different scents were also used, so that the hours were marked by a change in fragrance. [50] The incense sticks could be straight or spiraled; the spiraled ones were longer, and were therefore intended for long periods of use, and often hung from the roofs of homes and temples. [51] In Japan, a geisha was paid for the number of senkodokei (incense sticks) that had been consumed while she was present, a practice which continued until 1924. 52] Incense seal clocks were used for similar occasions and events as the stick clock; while religious purposes were of primary importance,[46] these clocks were also popular at social gatherings, and were used by Chinese scholars and intellectuals. [53] The seal was a wooden or stone disk with one or more grooves etched in it[46] into which incense was placed. [54] Th ese clocks were common in China,[53] but were produced in fewer numbers in Japan. [55] To signal the passage of a specific amount of time, small pieces of fragrant woods, resins, or different scented incenses could be placed on the incense powder trails. Different powdered incense clocks used different formulations of incense, depending on how the clock was laid out. [56] The length of the trail of incense, directly related to the size of the seal, was the primary factor in determining how long the clock would last; all burned for long periods of time, ranging between 12 hours and a month. [57][58][59] While early incense seals were made of wood or stone, the Chinese gradually introduced disks made of metal, most likely beginning during the Song dynasty. This allowed craftsmen to more easily create both large and small seals, as well as design and decorate them more aesthetically. Another advantage was the ability to vary the paths of the grooves, to allow for the changing length of the days in the year. As smaller seals became more readily available, the clocks grew in popularity among the Chinese, and were often given as gifts. [60] Incense seal clocks are often sought by modern-day clock collectors; however, few remain that have not already been purchased or been placed on display at museums or temples. [55] [edit] Clocks with gears and escapements Greek washstand automaton working with the earliest escapement. The mechanism was also used in Greek water clocks. [61] The earliest instance of a liquid-driven escapement was described by the Greek engineer Philo of Byzantium (fl. 3rd century BC) in his technical treatise Pneumatics (chapter 31) where he likens the escapement mechanism of a washstand automaton with those as employed in (water) clocks. [61] Another early clock to use escapements was built during the 7th century AD in Changan, by Tantric monk and mathematician, Yi Xing, and government official Liang Lingzan. 62][63] An astronomical instrument that served as a clock, it was discussed in a contemporary text as follows:[64] [It] was made in the image of the round heavens and on it were shown the lunar mansions in their order, the equator and the degrees of the heavenly circumference. Water, flowing into scoops, turned a wheel automatically, rotating it one complete revolution in one day and night. Besides this, there wer e two rings fitted around the celestial sphere outside, having the sun and moon threaded on them, and these were made to move in circling orbit And they made a wooden casing the surface f which represented the horizon, since the instrument was half sunk in it. It permitted the exact determinations of the time of dawns and dusks, full and new moons, tarrying and hurrying. Moreover, there were two wooden jacks standing on the horizon surface, having one a bell and the other a drum in front of it, the bell being struck automatically to indicate the hours, and the drum being beaten automatically to indicate the quarters. All these motions were brought about by machinery within the casing, each depending on wheels and shafts, hooks, pins and interlocking rods, stopping devices and locks checking mutually. 64] The original diagram of Su Songs book showing the inner workings of his clock tower Since Yi Xings clock was a water clock, it was affected by temperature variations. That problem was solved in 976 by Zhang Sixun by replacing the water with mercury, which remains liquid down to ? 39  °C (? 38  °F). Zhang implemented the changes into his clock tower, which was about 10 metres (33 ft) tall, with escapements to keep the clock turning and bells to signal every quarter-hour. Another noteworthy clock, the elaborate Cosmic Engine, was built by Su Song, in 1088. It was about the size of Zhangs tower, but had an automatically rotating armillary sphere—also called a celestial globe—from which the positions of the stars could be observed. It also featured five panels with mannequins ringing gongs or bells, and tablets showing the time of day, or other special times. [15] Furthermore, it featured the first known endless power-transmitting chain drive in horology. [3] Originally built in the capital of Kaifeng, it was dismantled by the Jin army and sent to the capital of Yanjing (now Beijing), where they were unable to put it back together. As a result, Su Songs son Su Xie was ordered to build a replica. [65] Drawing of the Jayrun Water Clock in Damascus from the treatise On the Construction of Clocks and their Use (1203) The clock towers built by Zhang Sixun and Su Song, in the 10th and 11th centuries, respectively, also incorporated a striking clock mechanism, the use of clock jacks to sound the hours. [66] A striking clock outside of China was the Jayrun Water Clock, at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria, which struck once every hour. It was constructed by Muhammad al-Saati in the 12th century, and later described y his son Ridwan ibn al-Saati, in his On the Construction of Clocks and their Use (1203), when repairing the clock. [67] In 1235, an early monumental water-powered alarm clock that announced the appointed hours of prayer and the time both by day and by night was completed in the entrance hall of the Mustansiriya Madrasah in Baghdad. [68] The first geared clock was invented in the 11th century by the Arab engineer Ibn Khalaf al-Muradi in Islamic Iberia; it was a water clock that employed a complex gear train mechanism, including both segmental and epicyclic gearing,[4][69] capable of transmitting high torque. 70] The clock was unrivalled in its use of sophisticated complex gearing, until the mechanical clocks of the mid-14th century. [69][70] Al-Muradis clock also employed the use of mercury in its hydraulic linkages,[71][72] which could function mechanical automata. [72] Al-Muradis work was known to scholars working under Alfonso X of Castile,[73] hence the mechanism may have played a role in the development of the European mechanical clocks. [69] Other monumental water clocks constructed by medieval Muslim engineers also employed complex gear trains and arrays of automata. 74] Like the earlier Greeks and Chinese, Arab engineers at the time also developed a liquid-driven escapement mechanism which they employed in some of their water clocks. Heavy floats were used as weights and a constant-head system was used as an escapement mechanism,[4] which was present in the hydraulic controls they used to make heavy floats descend at a slow and steady rate. [74] A mercury clock, described in the Libros del saber de Astronomia, a Spanish work from 1277 consisting of translations and paraphrases of Arabic works, is sometimes quoted as evidence for Muslim knowledge of a mechanical clock. However, the device was actually a compartmented cylindrical water clock,[75] which the Jewish author of the relevant section, Rabbi Isaac, constructed using principles described by a philosopher named Iran, identified with Heron of Alexandria (fl. 1st century AD), on how heavy objects may be lifted. Astronomical clocks Astrolabes were used as astronomical clocks by Muslim astronomers at mosques and observatories. During the 11th century in the Song Dynasty, the Chinese astronomer, horologist and mechanical engineer Su Song created a water-driven astronomical clock for his clock tower of Kaifeng City. It incorporated an escapement mechanism as well as the earliest known endless power-transmitting chain drive, which drove the armillary sphere. Contemporary Muslim astronomers also constructed a variety of highly accurate astronomical clocks for use in their mosques and observatories, such as the water-powered astronomical clock by Al-Jazari in 1206, and the astrolabic clock by Ibn al-Shatir in the early 14th century. [80] The most sophisticated timekeeping astrolabes were the geared astrolabe mechanisms designed by Abu Rayhan Biruni in the 11th century and by Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr in the 13th century. These devices functioned as timekeeping devices and also as calenders. Castle clock by Al-Jazari in 1206 A sophisticated water-powered astronomical clock was built by Al-Jazari in 1206. This castle clock is considered by some to be an early example of a programmable analog computer. It was a complex device that was about 11 feet high, and had multiple functions alongside timekeeping. It included a display of the zodiac and the solar and lunar orbits, and a pointer in the shape of the crescent moon which travelled across the top of a gateway, moved by a hidden cart and causing automatic doors to open, each revealing a mannequin, every hour. It was possible to re-program the length of day and night in order to account for the changing lengths of day and night throughout the year. This clock also featured a number of automata including falcons and musicians who automatically played music when moved by levers operated by a hidden camshaft attached to a water wheel. Modern devices Modern devices of ancient origin A 20th-century sundial in Seville, Andalusia, Spain Sundials were further developed by Muslim astronomers. As the ancient dials were nodus-based with straight hour-lines, they indicated unequal hours—also called temporary hours—that varied with the seasons. Every day was divided into 12 equal segments regardless of the time of year; thus, hours were shorter in winter and longer in summer. The idea of using hours of equal length throughout the year was the innovation of Abul-Hasan Ibn al-Shatir in 1371, based on earlier developments in trigonometry by Muhammad ibn Jabir al-Harrani al-Battani (Albategni). Ibn al-Shatir was aware that using a gnomon that is parallel to the Earths axis will produce sundials whose hour lines indicate equal hours on any day of the year. His sundial is the oldest polar-axis sundial still in existence. The concept appeared in Western sundials starting in 1446. Following the acceptance of heliocentrism and equal hours, as well as advances in trigonometry, sundials appeared in their present form during the Renaissance, when they were built in large numbers. In 1524, the French astronomer Oronce Fine constructed an ivory sundial, which still exists; later, in 1570, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Padovani published a treatise including instructions for the manufacture and laying out of mural (vertical) and horizontal sundials. Similarly, Giuseppe Biancanis Constructio instrumenti ad horologia solaria (c. 1620) discusses how to construct sundials. The Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan used 18 hourglasses on each ship during his circumnavigation of the globe in 1522. Since the hourglass was one of the few reliable methods of measuring time at sea, it is speculated that it had been used on board ships as far back as the 11th century, when it would have complemented the magnetic compass as an aid to navigation. However, the earliest evidence of their use appears in the painting Allegory of Good Government, by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, from 1338. From the 15th century onwards, hourglasses were used in a wide range of applications at sea, in churches, in industry, and in cooking; they were the first dependable, reusable, reasonably accurate, and easily constructed time-measurement devices. The hourglass also took on symbolic meanings, such as that of death, temperance, opportunity, and Father Time, usually represented as a bearded, old man. Though also used in China, the hourglasss history there is unknown. Clocks The astronomical clock of St Albans Abbey, built by its abbot, Richard of Wallingford Clocks encompass a wide spectrum of devices, ranging from wristwatches to the Clock of the Long Now. The English word clock is said to derive from the Middle English clokke, Old North French cloque, or Middle Dutch clocke, all of which mean bell, and are derived from the Medieval Latin clocca, also meaning bell. Indeed, bells were used to mark the passage of time; they marked the passage of the hours at sea and in abbeys. Throughout history, clocks have had a variety of power sources, including ravity, springs, and electricity. The invention of mechanical clockwork itself is usually credited to the Chinese official Liang Lingzan and monk Yi Xing. However, mechanical clocks were not widely used in the West until the 14th century. Clocks were used in medieval monasteries to keep the regulated schedule of prayers. The clock continued to be improved, with the first pendulum clock being designed a nd built in the 17th century by Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch scientist. Early Western mechanical clocks The earliest medieval European clockmakers were Christian monks. Medieval religious institutions required clocks because daily prayer and work schedules were strictly regulated. This was done by various types of time-telling and recording devices, such as water clocks, sundials and marked candles, probably used in combination. When mechanical clocks were used, they were often wound at least twice a day to ensure accuracy. Important times and durations were broadcast by bells, rung either by hand or by a mechanical device, such as a falling weight or rotating beater. As early as 850, Pacificus, archdeacon of Verona, constructed a water clock (horologium nocturnum). The religious necessities and technical skill of the medieval monks were crucial factors in the development of clocks, as the historian Thomas Woods writes: The monks also counted skillful clock-makers among them. The first recorded clock was built by the future Pope Sylvester II for the German town of Magdeburg, around the year 996. Much more sophisticated clocks were built by later monks. Peter Lightfoot, a 14th-century monk of Glastonbury, built one of the oldest clocks still in existence, which now sits in excellent condition in Londons Science Museum. Da Dondis 1364 Padua clock The appearance of clocks in writings of the 11th century implies that they were well-known in Europe in that period. [104] In the early 14th century, the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri referred to a clock in his Paradiso; considered to be the first literary reference to a clock that struck the hours. The earliest detailed description of clockwork was presented by Giovanni da Dondi, Professor of Astronomy at Padua, in his 1364 treatise Il Tractatus Astrarii. This has inspired several modern replicas, including some in Londons Science Museum and the Smithsonian Institution. 97] Other notable examples from this period were built in Milan (1335), Strasbourg (1354), Lund (1380), Rouen (1389), and Prague (1462). Salisbury cathedral clock, dating from about 1386, is the oldest working clock in the world, still with most of its original parts. [106] It has no dial, as its purpose was to strike a bell at precise times. [106] The wheels and gears are mounted in an open, box-like iron frame, m easuring about 1. 2 metres (3. 9 ft) square. The framework is held together with metal dowels and pegs, and the escapement is the verge and foliot type, standard for clocks of this age. The power is supplied by two large stones, hanging from pulleys. As the weights fall, ropes unwind from the wooden barrels. One barrel drives the main wheel, which is regulated by the escapement, and the other drives the striking mechanism and the air brake. Peter Lightfoots Wells Cathedral clock, constructed c. 1390, is also of note. The dial represents a geocentric view of the universe, with the Sun and Moon revolving around a centrally fixed Earth. It is unique in having its original medieval face, showing a philosophical model of the pre-Copernican universe. Above the clock is a set of figures, which hit the bells, and a set of jousting knights who revolve around a track every 15 minutes. The clock was converted to pendulum and anchor escapement in the 17th century, and was installed in Londons Science Museum in 1884, where it continues to operate. Similar astronomical clocks, or horologes, can be seen at Exeter, Ottery St Mary, and Wimborne Minster. The face of the Prague Astronomical Clock (1462) One clock that has not survived to the present-day is that of the Abbey of St Albans, built by the 14th-century abbot Richard of Wallingford. It may have been destroyed during Henry VIIIs Dissolution of the Monasteries, but the abbots notes on its design have allowed a full-scale reconstruction. As well as keeping time, the astronomical clock could accurately predict lunar eclipses, and may have shown the Sun, Moon (age, phase, and node), stars and planets, as well as a wheel of fortune, and an indicator of the state of the tide at London Bridge. According to Thomas Woods, a clock that equaled it in technological sophistication did not appear for at least two centuries. Giovanni de Dondi was another early mechanical clockmaker, whose clock did not survive, but has been replicated based on the designs. De Dondis clock was a seven-faced construction with 107 moving parts, showing the positions of the Sun, Moon, and five planets, as well as religious feast days. Around this period, mechanical clocks were introduced into abbeys and monasteries to mark important events and times, gradually replacing water clocks which had served the same purpose. During the Middle Ages, clocks were primarily used for religious purposes; the first employed for secular timekeeping emerged around the 15th century. In Dublin, the official measurement of time became a local custom, and by 1466 a public clock stood on top of the Tholsel (the city court and council chamber). It was probably the first of its kind in Ireland, and would only have had an hour hand. The increasing lavishness of castles led to the introduction of turret clocks. A 1435 example survives from Leeds castle; its face is decorated with the images of the Crucifixion of Jesus, Mary and St George. Clock towers in Western Europe in the Middle Ages were also sometimes striking clocks. The most famous original still standing is possibly St Marks Clock on the top of St Marks Clocktower in St Marks Square, Venice, assembled in 1493, by the clockmaker Gian Carlo Rainieri from Reggio Emilia. In 1497, Simone Campanato moulded the great bell that every definite time-lapse is beaten by two mechanical bronze statues (h. 2,60 m. ) called Due Mori (Two Moors), handling a hammer. Possibly earlier (1490 by clockmaster Jan Ruze also called Hanus) is the Prague Astronomical Clock, that according to another source was assembled as early as 1410 by clockmaker Mikulas of Kadan and mathematician Jan Sindel. The allegorical parade of animated sculptures rings on the hour every day. Early clock dials did not use minutes and seconds. A clock with a minutes dial is mentioned in a 1475 manuscript, and clocks indicating minutes and seconds existed in Germany in the 15th century. Timepieces which indicated minutes and seconds were occasionally made from this time on, but this was not common until the increase in accuracy made possible by the pendulum clock and, in watches, the spiral balance spring. The 16th-century astronomer Tycho Brahe used clocks with minutes and seconds to observe stellar positions. Ottoman mechanical clocks The Ottoman engineer Taqi al-Din described a weight-driven clock with a verge-and-foliot escapement, a striking train of gears, an alarm, and a representation of the moons phases in his book The Brightest Stars for the Construction of Mechanical Clocks (Al-Kawakib al-durriyya fi wadh al-bankamat al-dawriyya), written around 1556. Similarly to earlier 15th-century European mechanical alarm clocks, the alarm was set by placing a peg on the dial wheel at the appropriate time. The clock had three dials reading in hours, degrees and minutes. Taqi al-Din later constructed a clock for the Istanbul Observatory, where he used it to make observations of right ascensions, stating: â€Å"We constructed a mechanical clock with three dials which show the hours, the minutes, and the seconds. We divided each minute into five seconds. † This was an important innovation in 16th-century practical astronomy, as at the start of the century clocks were not accurate enough to be used for astronomical purposes. An example of a watch which measured time in minutes was created by an Ottoman watchmaker, Meshur Sheyh Dede, in 1702. Pendulum clocks Main article: Pendulum clock Innovations to the mechanical clock continued, with miniaturization leading to domestic clocks in the 15th century, and personal watches in the 16th. In the 1580s, the Italian polymath Galileo Galilei investigated the regular swing of the pendulum, and discovered that it could be used to regulate a clock. Although Galileo studied the pendulum as early as 1582, he never actually constructed a clock based on that design. The first pendulum clock was designed and built by Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens, in 1656. Early versions erred by less than one minute per day, and later ones only by 10 seconds, very accurate for their time. The Jesuits were another major contributor to the development of pendulum clocks in the 17th and 18th centuries, having had an unusually keen appreciation of the importance of precision. In measuring an accurate one-second pendulum, for example, the Italian astronomer Father Giovanni Battista Riccioli persuaded nine fellow Jesuits to count nearly 87,000 oscillations in a single day. They served a crucial role in spreading and testing the scientific ideas of the period, and collaborated with contemporary scientists, such as Huygens. The modern longcase clock, also known as the grandfather clock, has its origins in the invention of the anchor escapement mechanism in about 1670. Before then, pendulum clocks had used the older verge escapement mechanism, which required very wide pendulum swings of about 100 °. To avoid the need for a very large case, most clocks using the verge escapement had a short pendulum. The anchor mechanism, however, reduced the pendulums necessary swing to between 4 ° to 6 °, allowing clockmakers to use longer pendulums with consequently slower beats. These required less power to move, caused less friction and wear, and were more accurate than their shorter predecessors. Most longcase clocks use a pendulum about a metre (39 inches) long to the center of the bob, with each swing taking one second. This requirement for height, along with the need for a long drop space for the weights that power the clock, gave rise to the tall, narrow case. In 1675, 18 years after inventing the pendulum clock, Huygens devised the spiral balance spring for the balance wheel of pocket watches, an improvement on the straight spring invented by English natural philosopher Robert Hooke. [This resulted in a great advance in accuracy of pocket watches, from perhaps several hours per day to 10 minutes per day, similar to the effect of the pendulum upon mechanical clocks. Clockmakers A pocket watch The first professional clockmakers came from the guilds of locksmiths and jewellers. Clockmaking developed from a specialized craft into a mass production industry over many years. Paris and Blois were the early centers of clockmaking in France. French clockmakers such as Julien Le Roy, clockmaker of Versailles, were leaders in case design and ornamental clocks. Le Roy belonged to the fifth generation of a family of clockmakers, and was described by his contemporaries as the most skillful clockmaker in France, possibly in Europe. He invented a special repeating mechanism which improved the precision of clocks and watches, a face that could be opened to view the inside clockwork, and made or supervised over 3,500 watches. The competition and scientific rivalry resulting from his discoveries further encouraged researchers to seek new methods of measuring time more accurately. An antique pocket watch movement, from an 1891 encyclopedia. Between 1794 and 1795, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the French government briefly mandated decimal clocks, with a day divided into 10 hours of 100 minutes each. The astronomer and mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace, among other individuals, modified the dial of his pocket watch to decimal time. A clock in the Palais des Tuileries kept decimal time as late as 1801, but the cost of replacing all the nations clocks prevented decimal clocks from becoming widespread. Because decimalized clocks only helped astronomers rather than ordinary citizens, it was one of the most unpopular changes associated with the metric system, and it was abandoned. In Germany, Nuremberg and Augsburg were the early clockmaking centers, and the Black Forest came to specialize in wooden cuckoo clocks. [135] The English became the predominant clockmakers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Switzerland established itself as a clockmaking center following the influx of Huguenot craftsmen, and in the 19th century, the Swiss industry gained worldwide supremacy in high-quality machine-made watches. The leading firm of the day was Patek Philippe, founded by Antoni Patek of Warsaw and Adrien Philippe of Berne. : Wristwatch In 1904, Alberto Santos-Dumont, an early aviator, asked his friend, a French watchmaker called Louis Cartier, to design a watch that could be useful during his flights. 136] The wristwatch had already been invented by Patek Philippe, in 1868, but only as a lady’s bracelet watch, intended as jewelry. As pocket watches were unsuitable, Louis Cartier created the Santos wristwatch, the first mans wristwatch and the first designed for practical use. Wristwatches gained in popularity during World War I, when officers found them to be more convenient than pocket watches in battle. Also, because the pocket watch was mainly a middle class item, the enlisted m en usually owned wristwatches, which they brought with them. Artillery and infantry officers depended on their watches as battles became more complicated and coordinated attacks became necessary. Wristwatches were found to be needed in the air as much as on the ground: military pilots found them more convenient than pocket watches for the same reasons as Santos-Dumont had. Eventually, army contractors manufactured watches en masse, for both infantry and pilots. In World War II, the A-11 was a popular watch among American airmen, with its simple black face and clear white numbers for easy readability. A twin-barrel box chronometer. Marine chronometers Marine chronometers are clocks used at sea as time standards, to determine longitude by celestial navigation. They were first developed by Yorkshire carpenter John Harrison, who won the British governments Longitude Prize in 1759. Marine chronometers keep the time of a fixed location—usually Greenwich Mean Time—allowing seafarers to determine longitude by comparing the local high noon to the clock. Chronometers A modern quartz watch and chronograph A chronometer is a portable timekeeper that meets certain precision standards. Initially, the term was used to refer to the marine chronometer, a timepiece used to determine longitude by means of celestial navigation. More recently, the term has also been applied to the chronometer watch, a wristwatch that meets certain precision standards set by the Swiss agency COSC. Over 1,000,000 Officially Certified Chronometer certificates, mostly for mechanical wrist-chronometers—wristwatches—with sprung balance oscillators, are delivered each year, after passing the COSCs most severe tests, and being singly identified by an officially recorded individual serial number. According to COSC, a chronometer is a high-precision watch, capable of displaying the seconds and housing a movement that has been tested over several days, in different positions, and at different temperatures, by an official, neutral body. To meet this requirement, each movement is individually tested for several consecutive days, in five positions, and at three temperatures. Any watch with the designation chronometer has a certified movement. Quartz oscillators Main article: Crystal oscillator Internal construction of a modern high performance HC-49 package quartz crystal. The piezoelectric properties of crystalline quartz were discovered by Jacques and Pierre Curie in 1880. The first quartz crystal oscillator was built by Walter G. Cady in 1921, and in 1927 the first quartz clock was built by Warren Marrison and J. W. Horton at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Canada. The following decades saw the development of quartz clocks as precision time measurement devices in laboratory settings—the bulky and delicate counting electronics, built with vacuum tubes, limited their practical use elsewhere. In 1932, a quartz clock able to measure small weekly variations in the rotation rate of the Earth was developed. The National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) based the time standard of the United States on quartz clocks from late 1929 until the 1960s, when it changed to atomic clocks. In 1969, Seiko produced the worlds first quartz wristwatch, the Astron. Their inherent accuracy and low cost of production has resulted in the subsequent proliferation of quartz clocks and watches. Atomic clocks Atomic clocks are the most accurate timekeeping devices known to date. Accurate to within a few seconds over many thousands of years, they are used to calibrate other clocks and timekeeping instruments. The first atomic clock, invented in 1949, is on display at the Smithsonian Institution. It was based on the absorption line in the ammonia molecule, but most are now based on the spin property of the cesium atom. The International System of Units standardized its unit of time, the second, on the properties of cesium in 1967. SI defines the second as 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation which corresponds to the transition between two electron spin energy levels of the ground state of the 133Cs atom. The cesium atomic clock, maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is accurate to 30 billionths of a second per year. Atomic clocks have employed other elements, such as hydrogen and rubidium vapor, offering greater stability—in the case of hydrogen clocks—and smaller size, lower power consumption, and thus lower cost (in the case of rubidium clocks). c) Recent Development The concept of latent demand is rather subtle. The term latent typically refers to something that is dormant, not observable, or not yet realized. Demand is the notion of an economic quantity that a target population or market requires under different assumptions of price, quality, and distribution, among other factors. Latent demand, therefore, is commonly defined by economists as the industry earnings of a market when that market becomes accessible and attractive to serve by competing firms. It is a measure, therefore, of potential industry earnings (P. I. E. ) or total revenues (not profit) if a market is served in an efficient manner. It is typically expressed as the total revenues potentially extracted by firms. The ? market? s defined at a given level in the value chain. There can be latent demand at the retail level, at the wholesale level, the manufacturing level, and the raw materials level (the P. I. E. of higher levels of the value chain being always smaller than the P. I. E. of levels at lower levels of the same value chain, assuming all levels maintain minimum profitability). The latent demand for mid-range wrist w atches is not actual or historic sales. Nor is latent demand future sales. In fact, latent demand can be lower either lower or higher than actual sales if a market is inefficient (i. e. not representative of relatively competitive levels). Inefficiencies arise from a number of factors, including the lack of international openness, cultural barriers to consumption, regulations, and cartel-like behavior on the part of firms. In general, however, latent demand is typically larger than actual sales in a country market. For reasons discussed later, this report does not consider the notion of ? unit quantities? , only total latent revenues (i. e. , a calculation of price times quantity is never made, though one is implied). The units used in this report are U. S. dollars not adjusted for inflation (i. e. the figures incorporate inflationary trends) and not adjusted for future dynamics in exchange rates. If inflation rates or exchange rates vary in a substantial way compared to recent expe rience, actually sales can also exceed latent demand (when expressed in U. S. dollars, not adjusted for inflation). On the other hand, latent demand can be typically higher than actual sales as there are often distribution inefficiencies that reduce actual sales below the level of latent demand. As mentioned in the introduction, this study is strategic in nature, taking an aggregate and long-run view,

How to Form the Italian Gerund

How to Form the Italian Gerund I am eating, you are drinking, the soprano is singing. In Italian, the gerund (il gerundio) is equivalent to the -ing verb form in English. Forming the Gerund To form the simple gerund in Italian, add -ando to the stem of -are verbs and -endo to the stem of -ere and -ire verbs. There is also another form of the gerund, the compound gerund (il gerundio composto). It is formed with the either the gerund form of either avere or essere past participle of the action verb (see the table below). The Italian gerund is equal to the English present participle - i.e. the part of the verb ending in -ing, like thinking, running, talking, speaking, drinking, etc.Also called the adverbial present participle, the gerund (gerundio) is formed by adding a suffix to the verb. Examples: ARE verbs add -ando.Example:  parl-ando  (speaking)IRE verbs add -endo.Example:  dorm-endo  (sleeping)ERE verbs add -endo.Example:  vend-endo  (selling) Adverbial participles answer questions about the main verbs action. Examples: Sbagliando si impara  - One learns by making mistakesThis answers the question, How does one learn? Gerunds are used like English present participles to form progressive tenses with the verb stare. Examples: Sto parlando  -  I am talkingAnswers the question, What am I engaged in doing?Stava dormendo  - He was sleepingAnswers the question, What was he engaged in doing When to Use the Gerund To indicate a preceding action that relates to the principal action.If a sentence consists of a main clause as well as a dependent/subordinate clause and both verbs have the same subject, the verb in the dependent clause can typically be replaced with a gerund.Create the gerund by taking off the –are, -ire or -ere ending Forming Gerunds Imperfect Stems GERUNDIO GERUNDIO COMPOSTO cadendo (falling) essendo caduto/a/i/e (having fallen) leggendo (reading) avendo letto (having read) mangiando (eating) avendo mangiato (having eaten) The imperfect stems are used to form the gerunds of verbs such as dire (dicendo), fare (facendo), porre (ponendo), and tradurre (traducendo). The reflexive verbs attach the reflexive pronoun to the end of the word: lavandosi, sedendosi, divertendosi. Ways to Avoid Using the Gerund Sentences can be turned around to avoid using the gerund. To do this use on of the following words to start the sentence. Quando (when)Mentre (while)Poichà © (since)Siccome (since)Nonostante (notwithstanding)Benchà © (although/even though)Sebbene (although/even though)Malgrado (in spite of/even though)

Asian Essay Research Paper After nearly thirty

Asiatic Essay, Research Paper After about 30 old ages of great economic growing many Asiatic states are in recession due to many bad concern determinations. The Asiatic fiscal crisis caused the value of Asiatic currency fall 50-60 per centum, stock markets to worsen by 40 per centum, belongings values to drop, and Bankss to shut. The Asiatic fiscal crisis began in mid 1997 because of currency devaluation, bad banking patterns, high foreign debt, and corruptness ; has lead to a diminution in the currency and stock markets of all Asiatic states. As the fiscal crisis continued it shortly turned into an economic and societal crisis every bit good. At the base of the fiscal crisis is 1000000s of dollars in bad bank loans. Many of the Bankss suffered from limited institutional development and a deficiency of regulating Torahs. Credit tended to flux towards borrowers with authorities relationships or private bank proprietors and to prefer sectors instead that on the footing of projected hard currency flows, realistic sensitiveness analysis, and recoverable collateral values. The fiscal crisis began in Thailand in May of 1997 when investors became disquieted about Thailand s political instability, decelerating economic system and inordinate debt. As they invested their money in more stable markets and pulled out of Thailand the value of the tical fell aggressively. Due to the inter-linked economic systems of Asia Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malayan economic systems were shortly crippled by the autumn of the tical value. Indonesia s economic system shortly fell after when the rupiah lost 80 per centum of its value against the U.S. dollar. The state was plagued with more than $ 70 billion worth of bad debts due to a corrupt and inefficient authorities. Indonesia and Thailand were besides enduring from being to ambitious with the enlargement of their substructures due to the immense inflow of money from optimistic foreign investors. Two major economic systems that were besides effected were China and Japan. Chinese Bankss may hold been transporting up to $ 1 trillion dollars in bad bank loans. Much of this came from authorities corruptness and lending 66 per centum of China s investing capital to state-run industries that produce merely 12 per centum of Chinas industrial end product. Japan was crippled by more than $ 300 billion in bad bank loans due relaxed banking regulations and corruptness. Besides their exportation decreased, as other states were able to bring forth high-end electronics for cheaper. Both the Nipponese hankering and stock market declined in value as a consequence doing Japan to travel into a recession. Korea was besides greatly effected since its export growing has tended to mirror alterations in the yen-dollar exchange rate. They were besides enduring from immense foreign debt that they were no longer able to pay off. As Asiatic economic systems slowed down many households felt the consequence of the crisis. The demand for labour has dropped dramatically since edifice and enlargement undertakings have come to a arrest. Because of this and drought many urban and rural households are now unemployed. Due to interchange rate devaluation monetary values for basic necessities such as nutrient and medical specialty, have risen drastically. Spending has besides slowed down since households don Ts have adequate money to buy more than that which is necessary. Due to Asia s big function in the universe economic system other states economic systems have suffered because of the crisis. As Asiatic currency devaluated and economic systems declined so has the demand for importing goods from other states. The devaluated currency besides has made Asiatic merchandises seem cheaper which has led to increased degree of exporting to other states. The International Monetary Fund has implemented a program and loaned one million millions of dollars in order to assist Asiatic states pull out of this fiscal crisis. The program calls for an increased intrest rate and to fasten money supplies in order to decelerate down enlargement. The restructuring of pudding stones and better supervising of Bankss to cut down on the type of corruptness that was really common in the past. Opening of the international market to convey back foreign investing and promote investors to purchase off failed companies. They besides want to increase revenue enhancements to make a authorities excess so Asiatic states can break command their economic systems. So far the IMF has loaned $ 18 billion to Thailand, $ 47 billion to Korea, and $ 57 billion to Korea in hopes of carry throughing its program. Right now it looks as though the IMF program is working. Many Asiatic economic systems are sing growing after the market bottomed out last twelvemonth. Many authoritiess are doing tougher banking Torahs and the increased involvement rate has curved the rapid growing that helped take to the fiscal crisis. The Asiatic states are get downing to open their doors to more foreign investing and ownership. Many people are disquieted that this is a impermanent solution and that Asia will fall into a worse economic crisis. If the Asiatic economic systems fall even further, in a desire to raise hard currency, they might sell the 100s of billion dollars in U.S. exchequers they now own. This along with an increased trade shortage, coming from more importing and less exporting will take to higher involvement rates and an American recession.