Jacob&Co watches

The earliest example of organised healthcare in Coventry was in existence by at least 1793. The General or Charitable Dispensary was financed by charity alone, and was intended for those who had “such claims to respectability” that they should be saved from resorting to parish aid. This was joined in 1831 by the Provident Dispensary in Bayley Lane, one of the earliest self-supporting dispensaries. There were two classes of subscribers: honorary members, whose contributions took the form of charitable donations, and “free” members, who paid a weekly or yearly sum to secure medical benefits.

Coventry’s periodic rapid growth outstripped its sanitation systems: overcrowded, poor living conditions combined with ineffective sewerage, drainage and refuse disposal systems lead to frequent epidemics and a high death toll. When the Commissioners on the State of Large Towns investigated Coventry in 1843 they found that there was no Act or regulation in force regarding drainage or sewerage, and an inquiry under the Public Health Act of 1848 lead to the city council being established as the local Board of Health in 1849 with associated powers,and the first Medical Officer of Health was appointed in 1874.

The increasing pressure on the General Dispensary during the 1830s drew attention to the need for a general hospital. The first, the Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital, was founded in 1838 in a converted private house.The General Dispensary was merged with the hospital, and to cope with increasing demand, in 1863 a site in Stoney Stanton Road on which to build a larger hospital was acquired from Sir Thomas White’s trustees and King Henry VIII Grammar School. The hospital was completed in 1866.

Plans for a workhouse hospital were submitted in 1845, and in 1871 the Local Government Board approved a plan for an infectious diseases hospital (known first as the Poor Law Institution, and later until 1929,the Coventry Poor Law Hospital) at the workhouse. By 1888 there was an infirmary with seven wards, but due to its inadequacy in several areas, the foundation stone of a new infirmary was laid in 1889. The workhouse infirmary combined the functions of a general, infectious diseases, and mental hospital.

A serious scarlet fever outbreak in 1874 instigated the opening of a fever hospital in Coventry known as the City Isolation Hospital. The first stop-gap hospital was replaced by a larger one in 1885, where scarlet fever and diphtheria were the principal diseases dealt with after a separate smallpox hospital was erected at Pinley Hill Farm in 1897.

Hospital expansion was steady for a while and generally related to demand, but the First World War provided further impetus and rapid industrial growth between the two World Wars was an important factor in further general growth.

Following the Local Government Act of 1929, the public health committee of the Corporation took control of the workhouse hospital, then renamed the Gulson Road Municipal Hospital. The hospital was open to all the sick inhabitants of Coventry, but priority was still given to the sick poor. The old workhouse was absorbed into the hospital in 1937.

Paybody Hospital opened in 1929 as a convalescent home for crippled children when Thomas Paybody donated £2,000, together with a large house in Allesley, to the Coventry Crippled Children’s Guild. About the same time, negotiations began for the sale of the old fever hospital in 1927–9, and the newly built Whitley Isolation Hospital opened in 1934.

During the bombing of 1940–41, Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital was virtually destroyed, and although Gulson and Whitley hospitals also sustained damage, Gulson became the main casualty hospital while most other services were dispersed to other hospitals in the region. In 1948, under the National Health Service Act (1946), Coventry Hospital Management Committee took over the control of 23 institutions and annexes, 10 of which lay within the boundaries of the city. At the same time, the long-established Provident Dispensary was dissolved.

In 1951 Allesley House was closed, and Allesley Hall initially became an annexe of Paybody Hospital before closing in 1959. In 1962 the relatively few orthopaedic cases at Paybody Hospital were moved to Whitley Hospital to be replaced a year later by ophthalmic patients from the Keresley branch of the Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital.

To meet the demands for a modern up-to-date general hospital, a new Walsgrave Hospital was opened in 1970,replacing a hospital of the same name that had existed from 1926–62.Whitley Hospital closed in 1988, followed by Gulson Road Hospital in 1998.

Building work commenced on a new University Hospital project in 2002 which consolidated the Walsgrave and Coventry & Warwickshire Hospitals into a single state-of-the-art development behind the existing Walsgrave Hospital site.In 2006 the two hospitals moved into the University Hospital, and the existing Walsgrave Hospital was demolished in 2007.

Senior Chinese and Ethiopian military officials pledged Monday to establish closer relations between the two nation’s armed forces.

The Chinese armed forces attache great importance to relations with the Ethiopian armed forces, said Chen Bingde, chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China, while meeting with Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Ethiopia, Samora Yenus.

Chen hailed the long friendship between the two armed forces, saying the PLA hopes to work with the Ethiopian armed forces to further cement the traditional friendship and expand pragmatic cooperation.

Samora said the two countries are both dedicated to building sustainable and solid bilateral relations based on friendly cooperation.

Ethiopia is satisfied with the friendly cooperative relationship between the two armed forces, he added.

The Ethiopian armed forces hope to foster closer links with the PLA in the new century to benefit both armed forces, Samora said.

In 1952, A.S. Douglas wrote his PhD degree at the University of Cambridge on Human-Computer interaction. Douglas created the first graphical computer game. The game was programmed on an EDSAC vacuum-tube computer, which had a cathode ray tube display.

William Higginbotham created the first video game ever in 1958. His game, called “Tennis for Two,” was created and played on a Brookhaven National Laboratory  oscilloscope. In 1962, Steve Russell invented “SpaceWar!”.” SpaceWar!” was the first game intended for computer use.

In 1967, Ralph Baer wrote the first video game played on a television set, a game called Chase. Ralph Baer was then part of Sanders Associates, a military electronics firm. Ralph Baer first conceived of his idea in 1951 while working for Loral, a television company.

In 1971, Nolan Bushnell together with Ted Dabney created the first arcade game. It was called Computer Space, based on Steve Russell’s earlier game of “Spacewar!”. The arcade game Pong was created by Nolan Bushnell a year later. Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney started Atari Computers that same year. In 1975, Atari re-released Pong as a home video game.

In 1972, the first commercial video game console that could be played in the home, the Odyssey was released by Magnavox and designed by Ralph Baer. The game machine was originally designed in 1966 while Ralph Baer was still at Sanders Associates, who managed to gain his legal rights to the machine after Sanders Associates rejected it. The Odyssey came programmed with twelve games.

In 1976, Fairchild released the first programmable home game console called the Fairchild Video Entertainment System, and later renamed Channel F. Channel F was one of the first electronic systems to use the newly invented microchip invented by Robert Noyce for the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation that allowed video games to not be limited by the number of TTL switches.

On June 17, 1980, Atari’s “Asteroids” and “Lunar Lander” were the first two video games to ever be registered in the Copyright Office.

No item of clothing is more American than blue jeans, which were invented in the late 19th century by Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss. These two immigrants turned denim, thread and a little metal into the most popular clothing product in the world – blue jeans.

In 1853, twenty-four-year-old Levi Strauss arrived in San Francisco to open a west coast branch of his brothers’ New York dry goods business. He had spent a few years studying the trade in New York after emigrating there from Germany. He built his business into a very successful operation over the next twenty years.

One of Strauss’s many customers was a tailor named Jacob Davis, who regularly purchased bolts of cloth wholesale from Strauss’ company. Among Davis’ customers was a difficult man who kept ripping the pockets of the pants that Davis made for him. Davis tried to think of a way to strengthen the man’s trousers. One day, he hit upon the idea of putting metal rivets at the points of strain, such as on the pocket corners and at the base of the button fly.

These riveted pants were an instant hit with Davis’ customers and he worried that someone might steal his idea. So he decided to apply for a patent on the process, but didn’t have the $68 that was required to file the papers. He needed a business partner, and Strauss was just the one.

In 1872 Davis wrote a letter to Strauss to suggest that they hold the patent together. Strauss, an astute businessman, saw the potential for this new product and agreed. On May 20, 1873, the two men received the patent no.139.121 from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. That day is considered to be the official ‘birthday’ of blue jeans.

Within a very short time, all types of working men were buying the innovative new pants and spreading the word about their unrivaled durability. When the patent expired, dozens of garment manufacturers began to imitate the original riveted clothing made popular by Levi Strauss & Co.

In the 1950s, high school kids put them on as a radical way of defining themselves, of wanting to look and be more adult. A decade later, blue jeans became a symbol of egalitarianism. In the 1970s with the beginnings of a celebrity culture surfacing, jeans were definitely about being sexy and all about fashion.

The CRCC-Tongguan Investment (Canada) Co., a joint venture with investments from China Railway Construction Corporation Limited (CRCC) and Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group Holdings Co.,Ltd., finally acquired 96.6 percent shares of CorrienteResources Inc. after two setbacks.

The bulletin released by Tongling Nonferrous Metals yesterday evening showed that CRCC-Tongguan purchased all the outstanding common shares of Corriente at a price of 8.60 Canadian dollars in cash per share before the expiry of the offer at 5:00 p.m. (Vancouver time) on May 28, 2010. CRCC and Tongling bought around 76 million common shares of Corriente under the agreement.

CRCC-Tongguan, was founded on Dec. 10, 2009 and it is a 50-50 joint venture by Tongling Nonferrous Metals and CRCC. After the joint venture’s establishment, CRCC, Tongling Nonferrous Metals and CorrienteResources Inc. jointly signed an “acquisition support agreement” on Dec. 28, 2009.

According to the agreement, CRCC-Tongguan was set to acquire 100 percent shares of Corriente in 100 percent of cash of offer acquisition.

CorrienteResources Inc., a junior mining company listed in the securities market of Canada and the United States, was set up in Vancouver, Canada. Its main business was to explore and develop copper, gold, silver and gypsum.

The data showed that it is the second largest overseas copper mining acquisition deal for Chinese companies. In accordance with estimation by analysts, the deal can achieve profits of 150 billion yuan in total in a view of the 10 million tons’ reserve after the acquisition.

China’s consumption in copper accounted for 26.4 percent in 2008, the largest consumer in the world. Currently, China’s dependency on copper ore is second only to the iron ore. China relies on imports for two-thirds of its copper ore. Before that, Chinalco successfully acquired Peru Coppe Inc. with 12 million tons of copper volume for the price of 86 million U.S. dollars.

They are generally two different types of cooling system:water-cooling system and air-cooling system.Water-cooling system is more common.The cooling medium, or coolant, in them is either water or some low-freezing liquid, called antifreeze.A water-cooling system consists of the engine water jacket, thermostat, water pump, radiator, radiator cap, fan, fan drive belt and neccessary hoses.
  A water-cooling system means that water is used as a cooling agent to circulate through the engine to absorb the heat and carry it to the radiator for disposal.The ebgine is cooled mainly through heat transfer and heat dissipation.The heat generated by the mixture burned in the engine must be transferred from the iron or aluminum cylinder to the waterin the water jacket.The outside of the water jacket dissipates some of the heat to the air surrounding it, but most of the heat is carried by the cooling water to the radiator for dissipation.When the coolant temperature in the system reaches 90′,the termostat valve open fully, its slanted edge shutting off the sforter circuit so that coolant circulates through the longer one: water-pump-cooling jacket-thermostat-radiator top-tank-radiator core-bottom tank-pump.
   Water pumps have many designs, but most are the centrifugal type.They consist of a rotating fan,or impeller,and seldom are of the positive displacement type that uses gears or plungers.Many water pumps have a spring-loaded seal to avoid leakage of water around the pump shaft.Some V-type engines have a pump on each cylinder biock.
   The radiator is a device designed to dissipate the heat which the coolant has absorbed from the engine;it is constructed to hold a large amount of water in tubes or other passages which provide a large area in contact with the atmosphere.
   The radiator usually mainly consists of the radiator core, radiator bottom tank,and radiator top tank.Radiator cores are of two basic types,the fin and tube(fins are placed around the tubes to increase the area for radiating the heat)and of the ribbon cellular or honey comb tybe.The popular fin and tube type of radiator core has the advantage of fewer soldered joints and is there a stronger construction.It consists of a series of pareller tubes extending from the upper to the lower tank.The honeycomb type core consists of a large number of narrow water passage made by soldering pairs of thin metal ribbons together their edges.These tubes are separated by fins of metal ribbon which help dissipate the heat.
   The radiator cap serves not only to prevent the coolant from splashing out the filler opening,but also to prevevt evaporation of the coolant.
   The fan designed to draw cooling air through the radiator core.The fan is usually mounted on an extension of the water pump shaft and is driven by V-belt from a pulley mounted on the front end of the crabkshaft.Usually the same belt drives the alternator, and belt tension is adjusted by swinging the alternator on its mounting.