Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Baltimore & Ohio Railroad

(Encyclopedia)Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O), first U.S. public railroad, chartered in 1827 by a group of Baltimore businessmen to regain trans-Allegheny traffic lost to the newly opened Erie Canal. Constr...

Paul, Les

(Encyclopedia)Paul, Les, 1915–2009, American guitarist and inventor, b. Waukesha, Wis., as Lester William Polsfuss (later Polfuss). He began playing country music a...

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...

Aub, Max

(Encyclopedia)Aub, Max mäks oup [key], 1903–72, Spanish author, b. Paris. He was educated in Spain where he lived until 1942, when he emigrated to Mexico. His style combines realism with fantasy. He used the Spa...

Betzig, Robert Eric

(Encyclopedia)Betzig, Robert Eric, 1960–, American physicist, b. Ann Arbor, Mich., Ph.D. Cornell, 1988. Betzig worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1988 to 1996, when he become vice president of research and...

electromagnet

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Electromagnet electromagnet, device in which magnetism is produced by an electric current. Any electric current produces a magnetic field, but the field near an ordinary straight conductor is ...

videodisc

(Encyclopedia)videodisc or videodisk, disk used with a special player and television to reproduce both pictures and sound. A videodisc player cannot record television programs off the air for later playback, unlike...

Caribbean Community and Common Market

(Encyclopedia)Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM), organization founded by the Treaty of Chaguaramas (Trinidad; 1973, revised 2001) and including Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica...

Spanish colonial art and architecture

(Encyclopedia)Spanish colonial art and architecture, fl. 16th–early 19th cent., the artistic production of Spain's colonies in the New World. These works followed the historical development of styles previously e...

baroque, in art and architecture

(Encyclopedia)baroque bərōkˈ [key], in art and architecture, a style developed in Europe, England, and the Americas during the 17th and early 18th cent. The baroque style is characterized by an emphasis on unity...

Browse by Subject