Armand (singer)

Herman George van Loenhout (10 April 1946 – 19 November 2015), better known as Armand, was a Dutch protest singer. His greatest hit song was "Ben ik te min" ("Am I not good enough?"). Armand came to the fore during the hippie generation and was well-known as an advocate of cannabis.

Biography

Armand was a member of a few bands before releasing a solo single, "En nou ik", in 1965. The single was a flop, and he had a bit more success with his next single, "Een van hen ben ik". Three months after that single's release, Radio Veronica played the single's B-side, "Ben ik te min", which was an instant success. The song spent 14 weeks in the Dutch top 40 chart in 1967. A song in which the speaker lashes out against the bourgeois father of his girlfriend, it is hailed as the best-known protest song in Dutch popular music. Another single, "Blommenkinders", also charted that year.

Because of his support for the legalization of cannabis, lyrics about which his record company (Fontana Records, an imprint of Philips Records) refused to release, he left for Johnny Hoes's Telstar. Telstar's imprint Killroy released six Armand albums between 1971 and 1981.

Singing

Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of tonality, rhythm, the use of sustained tones and a variety of vocal techniques. A person who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung without accompaniment or with accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in a group of other musicians, such as in a choir of singers with different voice ranges, or in an ensemble with instrumentalists, such as a rock group or baroque ensemble. Singers may also perform as soloist with accompaniment from a piano (as in art song and in some jazz styles) or with a symphony orchestra or big band. There are a range of different singing styles, including art music styles such as opera and Chinese opera, religious music styles such as Gospel, traditional music styles, world music, jazz, blues and popular music styles such as pop and rock.

Singing can be formal or informal, arranged or improvised. It may be done for religious devotion, as a hobby, as a source of pleasure, comfort, or ritual, as part of music education, or as a profession. Excellence in singing requires time, dedication, instruction, and regular practice. If practice is done on a regular basis then the sounds can become more clear and strong. Professional singers usually build their careers around one specific musical genre, such as classical or rock, although there are singers with crossover success (singing in more than one genre). They typically take voice training provided by voice teachers or vocal coaches throughout their careers.

Singer Motors

Singer Motors Limited was a British motor vehicle manufacturing business, originally a bicycle manufacturer founded as Singer & Co by George Singer, in 1874 in Coventry, England. Singer & Co's bicycle manufacture continued. From 1901 George Singer's Singer Motor Co made cars and commercial vehicles.

Singer Motor Co was the first motor manufacturer to make a small economy car that was a replica of a large car, showing a small car was a practical proposition. It was much more sturdily built than otherwise similar cyclecars. With its four-cylinder ten horsepower engine the Singer Ten was launched at the 1912 Cycle and Motor Cycle Show at Olympia. William Rootes, Singer apprentice at the time of its development and consummate car-salesman, contracted to buy 50, the entire first year's supply. It became a best-seller. Ultimately Singer's business was acquired by his Rootes Group in 1956, which continued the brand until 1970, a few years following Rootes' acquisition by the American Chrysler corporation.

Singer (naval mine)

The Singer was a naval mine made and deployed by the Confederacy during the American Civil War. It was a manually laid moored contact mine.

Development

During the American Civil War, Matthew Fontaine Maury, a Confederate government official established the Torpedo Bureau and the Torpedo Corps in Richmond, Virginia to oversee the development and deployment of new types of naval mines. Maury was convinced that the only way to defend the coastlines against Union assaults was through the widespread use of naval mines. Mines were inexpensive and easily produced on a large scale. The low cost and large volume of mines produced would supplement the small naval forces of the Confederacy and make it possible to defend against the superior fleet of the Union navy. The efforts of the Torpedo Bureau and the Torpedo Corps proved to be worth the investment of the Confederacy. For the relative low cost of the mines they did a tremendous amount of damage to the Union forces, sinking a total of 27 Union naval vessels.

Jacques-Eugène Armengaud

Jacques-Eugène Armengaud (25 October 1810 - 23 January 1891) was a French industrial engineer, and Professor of Machine drawing at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM), particularly known as the original author of The practical draughtsman's book of industrial design, 1851.

Life and work

Born in Ostend, Armengaud graduated from the School of Arts and Crafts at Châlons-sur-Marne, and became Professor of Machine drawing at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM) in Paris.

Jacques-Eugene Armengaud and his brother Charles (1813-1893) worked as patent agents and consulting engineers. Later Armengaud taught machine drawing at Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, and was partner in a machine factory. He specialized in the mechanical engineering and the design of machines, on which he wrote a series of books. His work made a significant contribution to the disclosure of new construction techniques in his days. He also edited the journal Publication industrielle des machines.

Armand (photographer)

Armenak Arzrouni (Armenian: Արմենակ Արծրունի; 1901–1963), who worked under the mononym Armand, was an Armenian photographer based in Egypt.

Biography

Born in August 1901 in Erzurum, then part of the Ottoman Empire, he came with his father to Alexandria, Egypt in 1907. At school, he had a passion for drawing. He started working as an apprentice under Nadir, a photographer based in Alexandria. In 1925, he went to Cairo as an assistant to Zola, an Austrian Jewish photographer and renowned portraitist, at his studio in Ard el-Sherif, near Midan Mustafa Kamel street. Zola sent Arzrouni to Austria to learn about the colorization of black-and-white photographs, as well as airbrush technique and the use of charcoal and chalk. Upon Zola's death in 1930, Arzrouni opened his own studio in Midan Mustafa Kamel under the name Armand Studio. His father built him a giant enlarger capable of handling negatives with large dimensions. By the mid-1950s, his first studio was threatened with destruction, so he opened a second studio in 1956, in Talaat Harb street. He specialized in portrait photography, and took photographs of politicians, film stars, famous cabaret dancers, as well as members of the royal family. The 1952 Revolution did not hinder his career, and he continued to take photographs of famous people, notably Gamal Abdel Nasser and foreign heads of state visiting Egypt. He was especially well known for the elaborate settings of his wedding photographs. He also occasionally received orders for photographs of hotels and department stores. His son Armand worked as his assistant as early as 1960, and took over the studio after his father's death in 1963. He signs his photographs in the same way as his father.

Armand (name)

Armand is both a masculine French given name and a surname, the French form of Herman.

Notable people with the name include: