Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Brazzaville

(Encyclopedia)Brazzaville brăzˈəvĭl, Fr. bräzävēlˈ [key], city (1984 pop. 585,812), capital of the Republic of the Congo, on Pool Malebo of the Congo River. It is the nation's largest city and its administr...

Daley, Richard Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Daley, Richard Joseph, 1902–76, U.S. political leader, b. Chicago. Admitted to the bar in 1933, he entered politics and served as a Democrat in the state assembly (1936–38) and the state senate (1...

gear

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Types of gears gear, toothed wheel, cylinder, or cone that transmits motion from one part of a machine to another; it is one of the oldest means of transmitting motion. When the teeth of two g...

art deco

(Encyclopedia)art deco är môdĕrnˈ, ärt [key], term that designates a style of design that originated in French luxury goods shortly before World War I and became ubiquitously and internationally popular during...

marine engine

(Encyclopedia)marine engine, machine for the propulsion of watercraft. The earliest marine power plants, reciprocating steam engines, were used almost exclusively until the early 1900s. In later ship construction t...

Poitiers

(Encyclopedia)Poitiers pwätyāˈ [key], city (1990 pop. 82,507), capital of Vienne dept., W central France, on the Clain River. The ancient capital of Poitou, it is now an industrial, agricultural, and communicati...

Pretoria

(Encyclopedia)Pretoria prĭtôˈrēə [key], city, Gauteng prov., administrative capital of South Africa and formerly capital of Transvaal. Pretoria is now part and seatof the City of Tshwane metropolitan municipal...

Bowie, David

(Encyclopedia)Bowie, David, 1947–2016, British rock-and-roll singer and songwriter who successfully, merged rock, art, and fashion, b. London as David Robert Jones. After singing with five different bands in the ...

supercomputer

(Encyclopedia)supercomputer, a state-of-the-art, extremely powerful computer capable of manipulating massive amounts of data in a relatively short time. Supercomputers are very expensive and are employed for specia...

Wells, H. G.

(Encyclopedia)Wells, H. G. (Herbert George Wells), 1866–1946, English author. Although he is probably best remembered for his works of science fiction, he was also an imaginative social thinker, working assiduous...