1965 Womens Wear Campaign

Highlights from the creative presentation made to Lightning Fastener for the 1965 Womens Wear campaign.

Zephyr nylon zipper

Lightning Fastener ad featuring the Lightning Zephyr nylon zipper from the 1965 Women’s Wear campaign. See the 1965 Womens Wear campaign creative rationale for a rough draft of this advertisement.

Nylon zipper and permanent press fabrics

An ad extolling the benefits of the Lightning Zephyr nylon zipper. This ad was directed towards the garment industry.

1969 Advertising Recommendations

Highlights from the creative presentation made to Lightning Fastener for the 1969 campaign.

You can count on it!

We’re having a really great run on our nylons. In the 1960's and 1970's Lightning Fastener's market share was being challenged by cheaper, but less dependable imports.

The same old line?

As long as you've got metal zippers in your garments you're selling an old line. Today's fashions are much more demanding. They need what a Lightning Zephyr can give them. Part of the tag line for an ad aimed at the garment industry.

1969 memo

Memo from Bruce Scott to Terry O'Malley regarding Lightning Fastener Company Limited and Time Magazine.

Gideon Sundback fonds, 1942, 1952, 1985-1986, 1991, 2004, n.d.

Gideon Sundback was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1880. He was educated as an engineer and settled in the United States in 1905. While working for the Universal Fastener Company, New Jersey in 1913 he developed and patented a “separable fastener”, which improved on an earlier version of what today is known as the zipper. He later moved his family to Meadville, Pennsylvania and sought a Canadian location for the production of his new invention. He settled on St. Catharines as it was an easy commute from his Pennsylvania home and opened The Lightning Fastener Company on Niagara Street. Sundback died on June 21, 1954 and is interred in Meadville, Pennsylvania. The plant continued to operate, but with increased foreign competition the manufacture of the zipper declined. The plant closed in 1981. Source: The St. Catharines Standard, July 3, 2004 Harold Fox was a noted lawyer, academic, businessman, author and a leading authority on intellectual property. He was engaged by Gideon Sunback and the Lightening Fastening Company to combat patent infringements by Colonial Fastener in the 1930s. The relationship continued when Fox was asked to become the managing director of the company, which he did until 1949. Fox lived in St. Catharines at his home “Foxcroft” until his death in 1969. Source: http://thefoxfund.com/harold.htm (November 2, 2009)

Le cinéma d'animation : avènement d'une institution et naissance d'une industrie

Les premiers comptes rendus de l’histoire du cinéma ont souvent considéré les premiers dessins animés, ou vues de dessins animés, comme des productions différentes des films en prise de vue réelle. Les dessins animés tirent en effet leurs sources d’inspiration d’une gamme relativement différente d’influences, dont les plus importantes sont la lanterne magique, les jouets optiques, la féérie, les récits en images et les comics. Le dessin animé n’en demeure pas moins fondamentalement cinématographique. Les vues de dessins animés de la décennie 1900 ne se distinguent ainsi guère des scènes à trucs sur le plan de la technique et du style. D’abord le fait de pionniers issus de l’illustration comique et du croquis vivant comme Émile Cohl, James Stuart Blackton et Winsor McCay, le dessin animé s’industrialise au cours de la décennie 1910 sous l’impulsion de créateurs venant du monde des comics, dont John Randolph Bray, Earl Hurd, Paul Terry et Max Fleisher. Le processus d’institutionnalisation par lequel le dessin animé en viendra à être considéré comme une catégorie de film à part entière dépend en grande partie de cette industrialisation. Les studios de dessins animés développent des techniques et pratiques managériales spécifiquement dédiées à la production à grande échelle de films d’animation. Le dessin animé se crée ainsi sa propre niche au sein d’une industrie cinématographique dont il dépend toutefois toujours entièrement. Ce phénomène d’individuation repose sur des formules narratives et des personnages récurrents conçus à partir de modèles issus des comics des années 1910.

Computational models for the prediction of severe thunderstorms over east indian region

Thunderstorm is one of the most spectacular weather phenomena in the atmosphere. Many parts over the Indian region experience thunderstorms at higher frequency during pre-monsoon months (March- May), when the atmosphere is highly unstable because of high temperatures prevailing at lower levels. Most dominant feature of the weather during the pre-monsoon season over the eastern Indo-Gangetic plain and northeast India is the outburst of severe local convective storms, commonly known as ‘Nor’wester’ or ‘Kalbaishakhi’. The severe thunderstorms associated with thunder, squall line, lightning and hail cause extensive losses in agriculture, damage to structure and also loss of life. The casualty due to lightning associated with thunderstorms in this region is the highest in the world. The highest numbers of aviation hazards are reported during occurrence of these thunderstorms. In India, 72% of tornadoes are associated with this thunderstorm.

The diagnosis of severe thunderstorms with high-resolution WRF model

Thunderstorm, resulting from vigorous convective activity, is one of the most spectacular weather phenomena in the atmosphere. A common feature of the weather during the pre-monsoon season over the Indo-Gangetic Plain and northeast India is the outburst of severe local convective storms, commonly known as ‘Nor’westers’(as they move from northwest to southeast). The severe thunderstorms associated with thunder, squall lines, lightning and hail cause extensive losses in agricultural, damage to structure and also loss of life. In this paper, sensitivity experiments have been conducted with the Non-hydrostatic Mesoscale Model (NMM) to test the impact of three microphysical schemes in capturing the severe thunderstorm event occurred over Kolkata on 15 May 2009. The results show that the WRF-NMM model with Ferrier microphysical scheme appears to reproduce the cloud and precipitation processes more realistically than other schemes. Also, we have made an attempt to diagnose four severe thunderstorms that occurred during pre-monsoon seasons of 2006, 2007 and 2008 through the simulated radar reflectivity fields from NMM model with Ferrier microphysics scheme and validated the model results with Kolkata Doppler Weather Radar (DWR) observations. Composite radar reflectivity simulated by WRF-NMM model clearly shows the severe thunderstorm movement as observed by DWR imageries, but failed to capture the intensity as in observations. The results of these analyses demonstrated the capability of high resolution WRF-NMM model in the simulation of severe thunderstorm events and determined that the 3 km model improve upon current abilities when it comes to simulating severe thunderstorms over east Indian region

Evaluación de la representación política de género de la bancada de mujeres (2006-2010)

Este estudio de caso tiene como objetivo explicar cómo fue el proceso de representación política de género de la Bancada de Mujeres en el Congreso de la República (2006-2010), creada como una Comisión Legal con el fin de realizar desde el trabajo legislativo de las congresistas una representación que favoreciera la inclusión e igualdad de las mujeres en el campo político del país. Se explican y se muestran las principales razones que motivaron su creación y los resultados alcanzados, partiendo de diferentes conceptos claves de la teoría feminista, como grupo social, opresión, inclusión y representación, desarrollados por distintos autores, entre los que se destacan Iris Marion Young, Hanna Pitkin y Didier Ruedin. Este acercamiento permite evaluar sí la Bancada de Mujeres puede ser considerado como un ejercicio de representación política de las mujeres dentro del principal espacio de la democracia colombiana.

Deep Convective System Evolution over Africa and the Tropical Atlantic

In the tropical African and neighboring Atlantic region there is a strong contrast in the properties of deep convection between land and ocean. Here, satellite radar observations are used to produce a composite picture of the life cycle of convection in these two regions. Estimates of the broadband thermal flux from the geostationary Meteosat-8 satellite are used to identify and track organized convective systems over their life cycle. The evolution of the system size and vertical extent are used to define five life cycle stages (warm and cold developing, mature, cold and warm dissipating), providing the basis for the composite analysis of the system evolution. The tracked systems are matched to overpasses of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite, and a composite picture of the evolution of various radar and lightning characteristics is built up. The results suggest a fundamental difference in the convective life cycle between land and ocean. African storms evolve from convectively active systems with frequent lightning in their developing stages to more stratiform conditions as they dissipate. Over the Atlantic, the convective fraction remains essentially constant into the dissipating stages, and lightning occurrence peaks late in the life cycle. This behavior is consistent with differences in convective sustainability in land and ocean regions as proposed in previous studies. The area expansion rate during the developing stages of convection is used to provide an estimate of the intensity of convection. Reasonable correlations are found between this index and the convective system lifetime, size, and depth.

An overview of Earth's global electric circuit and atmospheric conductivity

The Earth’s global atmospheric electric circuit depends on the upper and lower atmospheric boundaries formed by the ionosphere and the planetary surface. Thunderstorms and electrified rain clouds drive a DC current (∼1 kA) around the circuit, with the current carried by molecular cluster ions; lightning phenomena drive the AC global circuit. The Earth’s near-surface conductivity ranges from 10−7 S m−1 (for poorly conducting rocks) to 10−2 S m−1 (for clay or wet limestone), with a mean value of 3.2 S m−1 for the ocean. Air conductivity inside a thundercloud, and in fair weather regions, depends on location (especially geomagnetic latitude), aerosol pollution and height, and varies from ∼10−14 S m−1 just above the surface to 10−7 S m−1 in the ionosphere at ∼80 km altitude. Ionospheric conductivity is a tensor quantity due to the geomagnetic field, and is determined by parameters such as electron density and electron–neutral particle collision frequency. In the current source regions, point discharge (coronal) currents play an important role below electrified clouds; the solar wind-magnetosphere dynamo and the unipolar dynamo due to the terrestrial rotating dipole moment also apply atmospheric potential differences. Detailed measurements made near the Earth’s surface show that Ohm’s law relates the vertical electric field and current density to air conductivity. Stratospheric balloon measurements launched from Antarctica confirm that the downward current density is ∼1 pA m−2 under fair weather conditions. Fortuitously, a Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) event arrived at Earth during one such balloon flight, changing the observed atmospheric conductivity and electric fields markedly. Recent modelling considers lightning discharge effects on the ionosphere’s electric potential (∼+250 kV with respect to the Earth’s surface) and hence on the fair weather potential gradient (typically ∼130 V m−1 close to the Earth’s surface. We conclude that cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning discharges make only a small contribution to the ionospheric potential, and that sprites (namely, upward lightning above energetic thunderstorms) only affect the global circuit in a miniscule way. We also investigate the effects of mesoscale convective systems on the global circuit.

Air-earth current density measurements at Lerwick; implications for seasonality in the global electric circuit

Atmospheric electricity measurements were made at Lerwick Observatory in the Shetland Isles (60°09′N, 1°08′W) during most of the 20th century. The Potential Gradient (PG) was measured from 1926 to 84 and the air-earth conduction current (Jc) was measured during the final decade of the PG measurements. Daily Jc values (1978–1984) observed at 15 UT are presented here for the first time, with independently-obtained PG measurements used to select valid data. The 15 UT Jc (1978–1984) spans 0.5–9.5 pA/m2, with median 2.5 pA/m2; the columnar resistance at Lerwick is estimated as 70 PΩm2. Smoke measurements confirm the low pollution properties of the site. Analysis of the monthly variation of Lerwick Jc data shows that winter (DJF) Jc is significantly greater than the summer (JJA) Jc by 20%. The Lerwick atmospheric electricity seasonality differs from the global lightning seasonality, but Jc has a similar seasonal phasing to that observed in Nimbostratus clouds globally, suggesting a role for non-thunderstorm rain clouds in the seasonality of the global circuit.