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steel

(Encyclopedia)steel, alloy of iron, carbon, and small proportions of other elements. Iron contains impurities in the form of silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, and manganese; steelmaking involves the removal of these imp...

Madison, James

(Encyclopedia)Madison, James, 1751–1836, 4th President of the United States (1809–17), b. Port Conway, Va. When Jefferson triumphed in the election of 1800, Madison became (1801) his secretary of state. He se...

Aswan

(Encyclopedia)Aswan or Assuan both: äswänˈ, ăswănˈ [key], city (1986 pop. 190,579), capital of Aswan governorate, S Egypt, on the Nile River at the First Cataract. It is one of the driest cities in the world....

Miocene epoch

(Encyclopedia)Miocene epoch mīˈəsēn [key], fourth epoch of the Tertiary period in the Cenozoic era of geologic time (see Geologic Timescale, tablegeologic timescale, table), lasting from around 24.6 to 5.1 mill...

Mycenaean civilization

(Encyclopedia)Mycenaean civilization mīsēnēˈən [key], an ancient Aegean civilization known from the excavations at Mycenae and other sites. They were first undertaken by Heinrich Schliemann and others after 18...

Gutenberg, Johann

(Encyclopedia)Gutenberg, Johann go͞oˈtənbərg, Ger. yōˈhän go͞oˈtənbĕrk [key], c.1397–1468, German inventor and printer, long credited with the invention of a method of printing from movable type, inclu...

Chinese music

(Encyclopedia)Chinese music, the classical music forms of China. Throughout the political and social turmoil following World War I, Western (classical and popular) and Japanese sources dominated Chinese music. At...

writing

(Encyclopedia)writing, the visible recording of language peculiar to the human species. Writing enables the transmission of ideas over vast distances of time and space and is a prerequisite of complex civilization....

dating

(Encyclopedia)dating, the determination of the age of an object, of a natural phenomenon, or of a series of events. There are two basic types of dating methods, relative and absolute. In relative dating, the tempor...

metamorphism

(Encyclopedia)metamorphism, in geology, process of change in the structure, texture, or composition of rocks caused by agents of heat, deforming pressure, shearing stress, hot, chemically active fluids, or a combin...