Atlas

An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a map of Earth or a region of Earth, but there are atlases of the other planets (and their satellites) in the Solar System. Furthermore, atlases of anatomy exist, mapping out the human body or other organisms. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographic features and political boundaries, many atlases often feature geopolitical, social, religious and economic statistics. They also have information about the map and places in it.

Etymology

The word atlas dates from 1636, first in reference to the English translation of Atlas, sive cosmographicae meditationes de fabrica mundi (1585) by Flemish geographer Gerhardus Mercator, who might have been the first to use this word in this way. A picture of the Titan Atlas holding up the world appeared on the frontispiece of this and other early map collections.

History

The first work that contained systematically arranged woodcut maps of uniform size, intended to be published in a book, thus representing the first modern atlas, was De Summa totius Orbis (1524–26) by the 16th-century Italian cartographer Pietro Coppo. Nonetheless, this distinction is conventionally awarded to the Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius who in 1570 published the collection of maps Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.

Atlas (computer)

The Atlas Computer was a joint development between the University of Manchester, Ferranti, and Plessey. The first Atlas, installed at Manchester University and officially commissioned in 1962, was one of the world's first supercomputers, considered to be the most powerful computer in the world at that time. It was said that whenever Atlas went offline half of the United Kingdom's computer capacity was lost. It was a second-generation machine, using discrete germanium transistors. Two other Atlas machines were built: one for British Petroleum and the University of London, and one for the Atlas Computer Laboratory at Chilton near Oxford.

A derivative system was built by Ferranti for Cambridge University. Called the Titan, or Atlas 2, it had a different memory organisation and ran a time-sharing operating system developed by Cambridge University Computer Laboratory. Two further Atlas 2s were delivered: one to the CAD Centre in Cambridge (later called CADCentre, then AVEVA), and the other to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE), Aldermaston.

Atlas (topology)

In mathematics, particularly topology, one describes a manifold using an atlas. An atlas consists of individual charts that, roughly speaking, describe individual regions of the manifold. If the manifold is the surface of the Earth, then an atlas has its more common meaning. In general, the notion of atlas underlies the formal definition of a manifold and related structures such as vector bundles and other fibre bundles.

Charts

The definition of an atlas depends on the notion of a chart. A chart for a topological space M (also called a coordinate chart, coordinate patch, coordinate map, or local frame) is a homeomorphism from an open subset U of M to an open subset of Euclidean space. The chart is traditionally recorded as the ordered pair .

Formal definition of atlas

An atlas for a topological space M is a collection of charts on M such that . If the codomain of each chart is the n-dimensional Euclidean space and the atlas is connected, then M is said to be an n-dimensional manifold.

Mimi (given name)

Mimi is one of the many variants for the given names Miriam, Maria, Mary, and Emilia.

A–G

Mimi (film)

Mimi is a 1935 British romance directed by Paul L. Stein and starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Gertrude Lawrence and Diana Napier. In nineteenth century Paris a composer is inspired by a young woman he encounters. It is based on the novel La Vie de Bohème by Henri Murger.

Cast

Reception

Writing for The Spectator, Graham Greene described the film as evoking a "happy juvenility" and attributed its success to the superior acting skills of Fairbanks and Lawrence, and to the wardrobe designed by Doris Zinkeisen.

References

External links

The Voyage of the Mimi

The Voyage of the Mimi is a thirteen-episode American educational television program depicting the crew of the Mimi exploring the ocean and taking a census of humpback whales. The series aired on PBS and was created by the Bank Street College of Education in 1984 to teach middle-schoolers about science and mathematics in an interesting and interactive way, where every lesson related to real world applications. The series was also released on VHS and as a LaserDisc collection. In August 2014, the series was released in digital form via iTunes U.

Format

After a segment of fictional adventure in the first part of each episode, a corresponding "expedition documentary" taught viewers something scientific relating to plot events in the previous episode of the show. For example, there was an episode where the plot was about obtaining drinkable water, and over the course of the episode, the viewer would also be given lessons about condensation, heat, and the three states of matter. Each lesson had accompanying student and teacher handouts or worksheets. Four software modules were available that covered topics and skills in navigation and map reading, computer literacy and programming, the elements of ecosystems, and the natural environment of whales.