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Worth, William Jenkins

(Encyclopedia)Worth, William Jenkins, 1794–1849, American army officer, b. Hudson, N.Y. He served with distinction on the Niagara frontier in the War of 1812 and later became commandant of cadets and instructor o...

Davis, Jefferson

(Encyclopedia)Davis, Jefferson, 1808–89, American statesman, President of the Southern Confederacy, b. Fairview, near Elkton, Ky. His birthday was June 3. Davis took little part in the secession movement until ...

Mauna Kea Observatories

(Encyclopedia)Mauna Kea Observatories mouˈnə kāˈə [key], astronomical observatory complex located on Mauna Kea peak, the “white mountain” on the island of Hawaii, at an altitude of more than 13,600 ft (4,1...

Dresser, Christopher

(Encyclopedia)Dresser, Christopher, 1834–1904, British designer, pioneer of modern industrial design, b. Scotland, He moved (1847) to London, where he studied (1847–54) at the Government School of Design. He be...

Fields, W. C.

(Encyclopedia)Fields, W. C. (William Claude Fields), 1880–1946, American comic actor, b. Philadelphia as Claude William Dukenfield. He began his career as a juggler, and much later appeared in the Ziegfeld Follie...

Hunkers

(Encyclopedia)Hunkers, conservative faction of the Democratic party in New York state in the 1840s, so named because they were supposed to “hanker” or “hunker” after office. In opposition to them stood the ...

parallel processing

(Encyclopedia)parallel processing, the concurrent or simultaneous execution of two or more parts of a single computer program, at speeds far exceeding those of a conventional computer. Parallel processing requires ...

Carlotta

(Encyclopedia)Carlotta, Span. Carlota kärlōˈtä [key], 1840–1927, empress of Mexico, daughter of Leopold I of Belgium, christened Marie Charlotte Amélie. She married (1857) Maximilian, archduke of Austria and...

Treisman, Anne

(Encyclopedia)Treisman, Anne, 1935–2018, British cognitive psychologist, b. Anne Marie Taylor, Ph.D. Oxford, 1962. She taught at Oxford from 1968, the Univ. of British Columbia from 1978, Univ. of California, Ber...

Pyle, Ernie

(Encyclopedia)Pyle, Ernie (Ernest Taylor Pyle), 1900–1945, American journalist, b. Dana, Ind. After working (1923–32) as a reporter, an editor, and an aviation writer, he became managing editor of the Washingto...