Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Nielsen, A. C.

(Encyclopedia)Nielsen, A. C. (Arthur Charles Nielsen) nēlˈsən [key], 1897–1980, American market researcher, b. Chicago, grad. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison (B.S., 1918). He worked as an electrical engineer befor...

mast

(Encyclopedia)mast, large metal or timber pole secured vertically or nearly vertically in a ship, used primarily for supporting sails and rigging. The mast is as old as sailing vessels, and the oldest sailboats dep...

Évreux

(Encyclopedia)Évreux āvröˈ [key], town , capital of Eure dept., N France, in Normandy. It is an industr...

Tristan da Cunha

(Encyclopedia)Tristan da Cunha trĭsˈtăn də ko͞oˈnə [key], group of volcanic islands in the S Atlantic, about midway between S Africa and S America, part of the British Saint Helena overseas territory. The on...

Cambridgeshire

(Encyclopedia)Cambridgeshire, county, 1,313 sq mi (3,402 sq km), E central England. The county seat is Cambridge. The county is divided into five administrative distr...

Morita, Akio

(Encyclopedia)Morita, Akio äkˈēō môrˈētä [key], 1921–99, Japanese business executive, b. Nagoya, Japan. The eldest son of a successful sake brewer, Morita joined Masaru Ibuka to found Tokyo Telecommunicat...

searchlight

(Encyclopedia)searchlight, device, usually swiveled, using a lens and reflecting surface to direct a powerful beam of light of nearly parallel rays. In 1892 such apparatus was used along the English Channel in coas...

Bennett, Alan

(Encyclopedia)Bennett, Alan, 1934–, British playwright and actor, b. Leeds, England, grad. Exeter College, Oxford (1957). Bennett became a fixture of the British cultural scene as part of the satirical revue Beyo...

Ginzburg, Vitaly Lazarevich

(Encyclopedia)Ginzburg, Vitaly Lazarevich, 1916–2009, Russian physicist, Ph.D. Moscow State Univ., 1938. He was a researcher at Lebedev Physics Institute of the USSR (later Russian) Academy of Sciences after 1940...

Merovingian art and architecture

(Encyclopedia)Merovingian art and architecture mĕrˌəvĭnˈjēən [key]. This period is named for Merovech, the founder of the first Germanic-Frankish dynasty (c.a.d. 500–a.d. 751). The Merovingian period was m...

Browse by Subject