A Medley of Potpourri

Antimony is a chemical element with the symbol Sb (from Latin stibium) and atomic number 51. A lustrous gray metalloid, it is found in nature mainly as the sulfide mineral stibnite (Sb₂S₃). Antimony compounds have been known since ancient times and were powdered for use as medicine and cosmetics, often known by the Arabic name kohl. The earliest known description of the metalloid in the West was written in 1540 by Vannoccio Biringuccio.

China is the largest producer of antimony and its compounds, with most production coming from the Xikuangshan Mine in Hunan. The industrial methods for refining antimony from stibnite are roasting followed by reduction with carbon, or direct reduction of stibnite with iron.

The largest applications for metallic antimony are in alloys with lead and tin, which have improved properties for solders, bullets, and plain bearings. It improves the rigidity of lead-alloy plates in lead–acid batteries. Antimony trioxide is a prominent additive for halogen-containing flame retardants. Antimony is used as a dopant in semiconductor devices.

Characteristics

Properties

A clear vial containing small chunks of a slightly lustrous black solid, labeled "Sb". — A vial containing the black allotrope of antimony

Antimony is a member of group 15 of the periodic table, one of the elements called pnictogens, and has an electronegativity of 2.05. In accordance with periodic trends, it is more electronegative than tin or bismuth, and less electronegative than tellurium or arsenic. Antimony is stable in air at room temperature, but reacts with oxygen if heated to produce antimony trioxide, Sb₂O₃.

Antimony is a silvery, lustrous gray metalloid with a Mohs scale hardness of 3, which is too soft to mark hard objects. Coins of antimony were issued in China's Guizhou province in 1931; durability was poor, and minting was soon discontinued. Antimony is resistant to attack by acids.

Four allotropes of antimony are known: a stable metallic form, and three metastable forms (explosive, black, and yellow). Elemental antimony is a brittle, silver-white, shiny metalloid. When slowly cooled, molten antimony crystallizes into a trigonal cell, isomorphic with the gray allotrope of arsenic. A rare explosive form of antimony can be formed from the electrolysis of antimony trichloride. When scratched with a sharp implement, an exothermic reaction occurs and white fumes are given off as metallic antimony forms; when rubbed with a pestle in a mortar, a strong detonation occurs. Black antimony is formed upon rapid cooling of antimony vapor. It has the same crystal structure as red phosphorus and black arsenic; it oxidizes in air and may ignite spontaneously. At 100 °C, it gradually transforms into the stable form. The yellow allotrope of antimony is the most unstable; it has been generated only by oxidation of stibine (SbH₃) at −90 °C. Above this temperature and in ambient light, this metastable allotrope transforms into the more stable black allotrope.

Elemental antimony adopts a layered structure (space group R3m No. 166) whose layers consist of fused, ruffled, six-membered rings. The nearest and next-nearest neighbors form an irregular octahedral complex, with the three atoms in each double layer slightly closer than the three atoms in the next. This relatively close packing leads to a high density of 6.697 g/cm³, but the weak bonding between the layers leads to the low hardness and brittleness of antimony.

Isotopes

Antimony has two stable isotopes: ¹²¹Sb with a natural abundance of 57.36% and ¹²³Sb with a natural abundance of 42.64%. It also has 35 radioisotopes, of which the longest-lived is ¹²⁵Sb with a half-life of 2.75 years. In addition, 29 metastable states have been characterized. The most stable of these is ^120m1Sb with a half-life of 5.76 days. Isotopes that are lighter than the stable ¹²³Sb tend to decay by β⁺ decay, and those that are heavier tend to decay by β⁻ decay, with some exceptions. Antimony is the lightest element to have an isotope with an alpha decay branch, excluding ⁸Be and other light nuclides with beta-delayed alpha emission.

Occurrence

Stibnite, China CM29287 Carnegie Museum of Natural History specimen on display in Hillman Hall of Minerals and Gems

The abundance of antimony in the Earth's crust is estimated at 0.2 parts per million, comparable to thallium at 0.5 parts per million and silver at 0.07 ppm. Even though this element is not abundant, it is found in more than 100 mineral species. Antimony is sometimes found natively (e.g. on Antimony Peak), but more frequently it is found in the sulfide stibnite (Sb₂S₃) which is the predominant ore mineral.

Compounds

Antimony compounds are often classified according to their oxidation state: Sb(III) and Sb(V). The +5 oxidation state is more common.

Oxides and hydroxides

Antimony trioxide is formed when antimony is burnt in air. In the gas phase, the molecule of the compound is Sb
₄O
₆, but it polymerizes upon condensing. Antimony pentoxide (Sb
₄O
₁₀) can be formed only by oxidation with concentrated nitric acid. Antimony also forms a mixed-valence oxide, antimony tetroxide (Sb
₂O
₄), which features both Sb(III) and Sb(V). Unlike oxides of phosphorus and arsenic, these oxides are amphoteric, do not form well-defined oxoacids, and react with acids to form antimony salts.

Antimonous acid Sb(OH)
₃ is unknown, but the conjugate base sodium antimonite ([Na
₃SbO
₃]
₄) forms upon fusing sodium oxide and Sb
₄O
₆. Transition metal antimonites are also known. Antimonic acid exists only as the hydrate HSb(OH)
₆, forming salts as the antimonate anion Sb(OH)⁻
₆. When a solution containing this anion is dehydrated, the precipitate contains mixed oxides.

The most important antimony ore is stibnite (Sb
₂S
₃). Other sulfide minerals include pyrargyrite (Ag
₃SbS
₃), zinkenite, jamesonite, and boulangerite. Antimony pentasulfide is non-stoichiometric, which features antimony in the +3 oxidation state and S–S bonds. Several thioantimonides are known, such as [Sb
₆S
₁₀]²⁻
and [Sb
₈S
₁₃]²⁻
.

Halides

Antimony forms two series of halides: SbX
₃ and SbX
₅. The trihalides SbF
₃, SbCl
₃, SbBr
₃, and SbI
₃ are all molecular compounds having trigonal pyramidal molecular geometry.

The trifluoride SbF
₃ is prepared by the reaction of Sb
₂O
₃ with HF:

Sb
₂O
₃ + 6 HF → 2 SbF
₃ + 3 H
₂O

It is Lewis acidic and readily accepts fluoride ions to form the complex anions SbF⁻
₄ and SbF²⁻
₅. Molten SbF
₃ is a weak electrical conductor. The trichloride SbCl
₃ is prepared by dissolving Sb
₂S
₃ in hydrochloric acid:

Sb
₂S
₃ + 6 HCl → 2 SbCl
₃ + 3 H
₂S

Arsenic sulfides are not readily attacked by the hydrochloric acid, so this method offers a route to As-free Sb.

The pentahalides SbF
₅ and SbCl
₅ have trigonal bipyramidal molecular geometry in the gas phase, but in the liquid phase, SbF
₅ is polymeric, whereas SbCl
₅ is monomeric. SbF
₅ is a powerful Lewis acid used to make the superacid fluoroantimonic acid ("H₂SbF₇").

Oxyhalides are more common for antimony than for arsenic and phosphorus. Antimony trioxide dissolves in concentrated acid to form oxoantimonyl compounds such as SbOCl and (SbO)
₂SO
₄.

Antimonides, hydrides, and organoantimony compounds

Compounds in this class generally are described as derivatives of Sb³⁻. Antimony forms antimonides with metals, such as indium antimonide (InSb) and silver antimonide (Ag
₃Sb). The alkali metal and zinc antimonides, such as Na₃Sb and Zn₃Sb₂, are more reactive. Treating these antimonides with acid produces the highly unstable gas stibine, SbH
₃:

Sb³⁻
+ 3 H⁺
→ SbH
₃

Stibine can also be produced by treating Sb³⁺
salts with hydride reagents such as sodium borohydride. Stibine decomposes spontaneously at room temperature. Because stibine has a positive heat of formation, it is thermodynamically unstable and thus antimony does not react with hydrogen directly.

Organoantimony compounds are typically prepared by alkylation of antimony halides with Grignard reagents. A large variety of compounds are known with both Sb(III) and Sb(V) centers, including mixed chloro-organic derivatives, anions, and cations. Examples include triphenylstibine (Sb(C₆H₅)₃) and pentaphenylantimony (Sb(C₆H₅)₅).

History

Antimony(III) sulfide, Sb₂S₃, was recognized in predynastic Egypt as an eye cosmetic (kohl) as early as about 3100 BC, when the cosmetic palette was invented.

An artifact, said to be part of a vase, made of antimony dating to about 3000 BC was found at Telloh, Chaldea (part of present-day Iraq), and a copper object plated with antimony dating between 2500 BC and 2200 BC has been found in Egypt. Austen, at a lecture by Herbert Gladstone in 1892, commented that "we only know of antimony at the present day as a highly brittle and crystalline metal, which could hardly be fashioned into a useful vase, and therefore this remarkable 'find' (artifact mentioned above) must represent the lost art of rendering antimony malleable."

The British archaeologist Roger Moorey was unconvinced the artifact was indeed a vase, mentioning that Selimkhanov, after his analysis of the Tello object (published in 1975), "attempted to relate the metal to Transcaucasian natural antimony" (i.e. native metal) and that "the antimony objects from Transcaucasia are all small personal ornaments." This weakens the evidence for a lost art "of rendering antimony malleable."

The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder described several ways of preparing antimony sulfide for medical purposes in his treatise Natural History, around 77 AD. Pliny the Elder also made a distinction between "male" and "female" forms of antimony; the male form is probably the sulfide, while the female form, which is superior, heavier, and less friable, has been suspected to be native metallic antimony.

The Greek naturalist Pedanius Dioscorides mentioned that antimony sulfide could be roasted by heating by a current of air. It is thought that this produced metallic antimony.

Antimony was frequently described in alchemical manuscripts, including the Summa Perfectionis of Pseudo-Geber, written around the 14th century. A description of a procedure for isolating antimony is later given in the 1540 book De la pirotechnia by Vannoccio Biringuccio, predating the more famous 1556 book by Agricola, De re metallica. In this context Agricola has been often incorrectly credited with the discovery of metallic antimony. The book Currus Triumphalis Antimonii (The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony), describing the preparation of metallic antimony, was published in Germany in 1604. It was purported to be written by a Benedictine monk, writing under the name Basilius Valentinus in the 15th century; if it were authentic, which it is not, it would predate Biringuccio.

The metal antimony was known to German chemist Andreas Libavius in 1615 who obtained it by adding iron to a molten mixture of antimony sulfide, salt and potassium tartrate. This procedure produced antimony with a crystalline or starred surface.

With the advent of challenges to phlogiston theory, it was recognized that antimony is an element forming sulfides, oxides, and other compounds, as do other metals.

The first discovery of naturally occurring pure antimony in the Earth's crust was described by the Swedish scientist and local mine district engineer Anton von Swab in 1783; the type-sample was collected from the Sala Silver Mine in the Bergslagen mining district of Sala, Västmanland, Sweden.

Etymology

The medieval Latin form, from which the modern languages and late Byzantine Greek take their names for antimony, is antimonium. The origin of this is uncertain; all suggestions have some difficulty either of form or interpretation. The popular etymology, from ἀντίμοναχός anti-monachos or French antimoine, still has adherents; this would mean "monk-killer", and is explained by many early alchemists being monks, and antimony being poisonous. However, the low toxicity of antimony (see below) makes this unlikely.

Another popular etymology is the hypothetical Greek word ἀντίμόνος antimonos, "against aloneness", explained as "not found as metal", or "not found unalloyed". Edmund Oscar von Lippmann conjectured a hypothetical Greek word ανθήμόνιον anthemonion, which would mean "floret", and cites several examples of related Greek words (but not that one) which describe chemical or biological efflorescence.

The early uses of antimonium include the translations, in 1050–1100, by Constantine the African of Arabic medical treatises. Several authorities believe antimonium is a scribal corruption of some Arabic form; Meyerhof derives it from ithmid; other possibilities include athimar, the Arabic name of the metalloid, and a hypothetical as-stimmi, derived from or parallel to the Greek.

The standard chemical symbol for antimony (Sb) is credited to Jöns Jakob Berzelius, who derived the abbreviation from stibium.

The ancient words for antimony mostly have, as their chief meaning, kohl, the sulfide of antimony. The Egyptians called antimony mśdmt or stm.

The Arabic word for the substance, as opposed to the cosmetic, can appear as إثمد ithmid, athmoud, othmod, or uthmod. Littré suggests the first form, which is the earliest, derives from stimmida, an accusative for stimmi. The Greek word, στίμμι (stimmi) is used by Attic tragic poets of the 5th century BC, and is possibly a loan word from Arabic or from Egyptian stm.

Production

Process

The extraction of antimony from ores depends on the quality and composition of the ore. Most antimony is mined as the sulfide; lower-grade ores are concentrated by froth flotation, while higher-grade ores are heated to 500–600 °C, the temperature at which stibnite melts and separates from the gangue minerals. Antimony can be isolated from the crude antimony sulfide by reduction with scrap iron:

Sb
₂S
₃ + 3 Fe → 2 Sb + 3 FeS

The sulfide is converted to an oxide by roasting. The product is further purified by vaporizing the volatile antimony(III) oxide, which is recovered. This sublimate is often used directly for the main applications, impurities being arsenic and sulfide. Antimony is isolated from the oxide by a carbothermal reduction:

2 Sb
₂O
₃ + 3 C → 4 Sb + 3 CO
₂

The lower-grade ores are reduced in blast furnaces while the higher-grade ores are reduced in reverberatory furnaces.

Top producers and production volumes

In 2022, according to the US Geological Survey, China accounted for 54.5% of total antimony production, followed in second place by Russia with 18.2% and Tajikistan with 15.5%.

Antimony mining in 2022
Country	Tonnes	% of total
China	60,000	54.5
Russia	20,000	18.2
Tajikistan	17,000	15.5
Myanmar	4,000	3.6
Australia	4,000	3.6
Top 5	105,000	95.5
Total world	110,000	100.0

Chinese production of antimony is expected to decline in the future as mines and smelters are closed down by the government as part of pollution control. Especially due to an environmental protection law having gone into effect in January 2015 and revised "Emission Standards of Pollutants for Stanum, Antimony, and Mercury" having gone into effect, hurdles for economic production are higher.

Reported production of antimony in China has fallen and is unlikely to increase in the coming years, according to the Roskill report. No significant antimony deposits in China have been developed for about ten years, and the remaining economic reserves are being rapidly depleted.

Reserves

World antimony reserves in 2022
Country	Reserves (tonnes)
China	350,000
Russia	350,000
Bolivia	310,000
Kyrgyzstan	260,000
Myanmar	140,000
Australia	120,000
Turkey	100,000
Canada	78,000
United States	60,000
Tajikistan	50,000
Total world	>1,800,000

Supply risk

For antimony-importing regions such as Europe and the U.S., antimony is considered to be a critical mineral for industrial manufacturing that is at risk of supply chain disruption. With global production coming mainly from China (74%), Tajikistan (8%), and Russia (4%), these sources are critical to supply.

European Union: Antimony is considered a critical raw material for defense, automotive, construction and textiles. The E.U. sources are 100% imported, coming mainly from Turkey (62%), Bolivia (20%) and Guatemala (7%).
United Kingdom: The British Geological Survey's 2015 risk list ranks antimony second highest (after rare earth elements) on the relative supply risk index.
United States: Antimony is a mineral commodity considered critical to the economic and national security. In 2022, no antimony was mined in the U.S.

Applications

Approximately 48% of antimony is consumed in flame retardants, 33% in lead–acid batteries, and 8% in plastics.

Flame retardants

Antimony is mainly used as the trioxide for flame-proofing compounds, always in combination with halogenated flame retardants except in halogen-containing polymers. The flame retarding effect of antimony trioxide is produced by the formation of halogenated antimony compounds, which react with hydrogen atoms, and probably also with oxygen atoms and OH radicals, thus inhibiting fire. Markets for these flame-retardants include children's clothing, toys, aircraft, and automobile seat covers. They are also added to polyester resins in fiberglass composites for such items as light aircraft engine covers. The resin will burn in the presence of an externally generated flame, but will extinguish when the external flame is removed.

Alloys

Antimony forms a highly useful alloy with lead, increasing its hardness and mechanical strength. For most applications involving lead, varying amounts of antimony are used as alloying metal. In lead–acid batteries, this addition improves plate strength and charging characteristics. For sailboats, lead keels are used to provide righting moment, ranging from 600 lbs to over 200 tons for the largest sailing superyachts; to improve hardness and tensile strength of the lead keel, antimony is mixed with lead between 2% and 5% by volume. Antimony is used in antifriction alloys (such as Babbitt metal), in bullets and lead shot, electrical cable sheathing, type metal (for example, for linotype printing machines), solder (some "lead-free" solders contain 5% Sb), in pewter, and in hardening alloys with low tin content in the manufacturing of organ pipes.

Other applications

Three other applications consume nearly all the rest of the world's supply. One application is as a stabilizer and catalyst for the production of polyethylene terephthalate. Another is as a fining agent to remove microscopic bubbles in glass, mostly for TV screens – antimony ions interact with oxygen, suppressing the tendency of the latter to form bubbles. The third application is pigments.

In the 1990s antimony was increasingly being used in semiconductors as a dopant in n-type silicon wafers for diodes, infrared detectors, and Hall-effect devices. In the 1950s, the emitters and collectors of n-p-n alloy junction transistors were doped with tiny beads of a lead-antimony alloy. Indium antimonide (InSb) is used as a material for mid-infrared detectors.

Biology and medicine have few uses for antimony. Treatments containing antimony, known as antimonials, are used as emetics. Antimony compounds are used as antiprotozoan drugs. Potassium antimonyl tartrate, or tartar emetic, was once used as an anti-schistosomal drug from 1919 on. It was subsequently replaced by praziquantel. Antimony and its compounds are used in several veterinary preparations, such as anthiomaline and lithium antimony thiomalate, as a skin conditioner in ruminants. Antimony has a nourishing or conditioning effect on keratinized tissues in animals.

Antimony-based drugs, such as meglumine antimoniate, are also considered the drugs of choice for treatment of leishmaniasis in domestic animals. Besides having low therapeutic indices, the drugs have minimal penetration of the bone marrow, where some of the Leishmania amastigotes reside, and curing the disease – especially the visceral form – is very difficult. Elemental antimony as an antimony pill was once used as a medicine. It could be reused by others after ingestion and elimination.

Antimony(III) sulfide is used in the heads of some safety matches. Antimony sulfides help to stabilize the friction coefficient in automotive brake pad materials. Antimony is used in bullets, bullet tracers, paint, glass art, and as an opacifier in enamel. Antimony-124 is used together with beryllium in neutron sources; the gamma rays emitted by antimony-124 initiate the photodisintegration of beryllium. The emitted neutrons have an average energy of 24 keV. Natural antimony is used in startup neutron sources.

Historically, the powder derived from crushed antimony (kohl) has been applied to the eyes with a metal rod and with one's spittle, thought by the ancients to aid in curing eye infections. The practice is still seen in Yemen and in other Muslim countries.

Precautions

Antimony and many of its compounds are toxic, and the effects of antimony poisoning are similar to arsenic poisoning. The toxicity of antimony is far lower than that of arsenic; this might be caused by the significant differences of uptake, metabolism and excretion between arsenic and antimony. The uptake of antimony(III) or antimony(V) in the gastrointestinal tract is at most 20%. Antimony(V) is not quantitatively reduced to antimony(III) in the cell (in fact antimony(III) is oxidised to antimony(V) instead).

Since methylation of antimony does not occur, the excretion of antimony(V) in urine is the main way of elimination. Like arsenic, the most serious effect of acute antimony poisoning is cardiotoxicity and the resulted myocarditis, however it can also manifest as Adams–Stokes syndrome which arsenic doesn't. Reported cases of intoxication by antimony equivalent to 90 mg antimony potassium tartrate dissolved from enamel has been reported to show only short term effects. An intoxication with 6 g of antimony potassium tartrate was reported to result in death after 3 days.

Inhalation of antimony dust is harmful and in certain cases may be fatal; in small doses, antimony causes headaches, dizziness, and depression. Larger doses such as prolonged skin contact may cause dermatitis, or damage the kidneys and the liver, causing violent and frequent vomiting, leading to death in a few days.

Antimony is incompatible with strong oxidizing agents, strong acids, halogen acids, chlorine, or fluorine. It should be kept away from heat.

Antimony leaches from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles into liquids. While levels observed for bottled water are below drinking water guidelines, fruit juice concentrates (for which no guidelines are established) produced in the UK were found to contain up to 44.7 µg/L of antimony, well above the EU limits for tap water of 5 µg/L. The guidelines are:

World Health Organization: 20 µg/L
Japan: 15 µg/L
United States Environmental Protection Agency, Health Canada and the Ontario Ministry of Environment: 6 µg/L
EU and German Federal Ministry of Environment: 5 µg/L

The tolerable daily intake (TDI) proposed by WHO is 6 µg antimony per kilogram of body weight. The immediately dangerous to life or health (IDLH) value for antimony is 50 mg/m³.

Toxicity

Certain compounds of antimony appear to be toxic, particularly antimony trioxide and antimony potassium tartrate. Effects may be similar to arsenic poisoning. Occupational exposure may cause respiratory irritation, pneumoconiosis, antimony spots on the skin, gastrointestinal symptoms, and cardiac arrhythmias. In addition, antimony trioxide is potentially carcinogenic to humans.

Adverse health effects have been observed in humans and animals following inhalation, oral, or dermal exposure to antimony and antimony compounds. Antimony toxicity typically occurs either due to occupational exposure, during therapy or from accidental ingestion. It is unclear if antimony can enter the body through the skin. The presence of low levels of antimony in saliva may also be associated with dental decay.

English Renaissance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Renaissance

The *Ermine Portrait* of Elizabeth I of England

The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England during the late 15th, 16th and early 17th centuries. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century. As in most of the rest of northern Europe, England saw little of these developments until more than a century later within the Northern Renaissance. Renaissance style and ideas were slow to penetrate England, and the Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance. Many scholars see its beginnings in the early 16th century during the reign of Henry VIII. Others argue the Renaissance was already present in England in the late 15th century.

The English Renaissance is different from the Italian Renaissance in several ways. The dominant art forms of the English Renaissance were literature and music. Visual arts in the English Renaissance were much less significant than in the Italian Renaissance. The English period began far later than the Italian, which was moving into Mannerism and the Baroque by the 1550s or earlier.

Literature

England had a strong tradition of literature in the English vernacular, which gradually increased as English use of the printing press became common by the mid-16th century. This tradition of literature written in English vernacular largely began with the Protestant Reformation's call to let people interpret the Bible for themselves instead of accepting the Catholic Church's interpretation. Discussions on how to translate the Bible so that it could be understood by laymen but still do justice to God's word became contentious, with people arguing how much license could be taken to impart the correct meaning without sacrificing its eloquence. The desire to let people read the Bible for themselves led William Tyndale to publish his own translation in 1526, giving way to Sir Rowland Hill's publication of the Geneva Bible in 1560, marking the re-establishment of the Church of England at the accession of Elizabeth I. These would be predecessors to the King James Version of the Bible.

Another early proponent of literature in the vernacular was Roger Ascham, who was tutor to Princess Elizabeth during her teenage years, and is now often called the "father of English prose." He proposed that speech was the greatest gift to man from God and to speak or write poorly was an affront. The peak of English drama and theatre is said to be the Elizabethan Age; a golden age in English history where the arts, drama and creative work flourished. Morality plays emerged as a distinct dramatic form around 1400 and flourished in the early Elizabethan era in England. By the time of Elizabethan literature, a vigorous literary culture in both drama and poetry included poets such as Edmund Spenser, whose verse epic The Faerie Queene had a strong influence on English literature but was eventually overshadowed by the lyrics of William Shakespeare, Thomas Wyatt and others. Typically, the works of these playwrights and poets circulated in manuscript form for some time before they were published, and above all the plays of English Renaissance theatre were the outstanding legacy of the period. The works of this period are also affected by Henry VIII's declaration of independence from the Catholic Church and technological advances in sailing and cartography, which are reflected in the generally nonreligious themes and various shipwreck adventures of Shakespeare.

William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe (disputed portrait), Sir Rowland Hill publisher of multiple books chief of all being the Geneva Bible, and Sir Francis Bacon.

The growing population of London, the growing wealth of its people, and their fondness for spectacle produced a dramatic literature of remarkable variety, quality, and extent. Genres of the period included the history play, which depicted English or European history. Shakespeare's plays about the lives of kings, such as Richard III and Henry V, belong to this category, as do Christopher Marlowe's Edward II and George Peele's Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First. History plays dealt with more recent events, like A Larum for London which dramatizes the sack of Antwerp in 1576. Tragedy was a very popular genre. Marlowe's tragedies were exceptionally successful, such as Dr. Faustus and The Jew of Malta. The audiences particularly liked revenge dramas, such as Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. The four tragedies considered to be Shakespeare's greatest (Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth) were composed during this period. The English theatre scene, which performed both for the court and nobility in private performances and a very wide public in the theatres, was the most crowded in Europe, with a host of other playwrights as well as the giant figures of Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Elizabeth herself was a product of Renaissance humanism trained by Roger Ascham, and wrote occasional poems such as "On Monsieur's Departure" at critical moments of her life. William Shakespeare, whose works include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, remains one of the most championed authors in English literature. The playwright and poet is widely regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time.

Philosophers and intellectuals included Thomas More and Francis Bacon. Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes wrote on empiricism and materialism, including scientific method and social contract. Bacon's works are seen as developing the scientific method and remained highly influential through the Scientific Revolution. Robert Filmer wrote on the Divine Right of Kings. All the 16th century Tudor monarchs were highly educated, as was much of the nobility, and Italian literature had a considerable following, providing the sources for many of Shakespeare's plays. English thought advanced towards modern science with the Baconian Method. The language of the Book of Common Prayer, first published in 1549, and at the end of the period the Bible had enduring and profound impacts on the English consciousness.

Visual arts

England was slow to produce visual arts in Renaissance styles, and the artists of the Tudor court were mainly imported foreigners until after the end of the Renaissance; Hans Holbein was the outstanding figure. The English Reformation produced a huge programme of iconoclasm that destroyed almost all medieval religious art, and all but ended the skill of painting in England; English art was to be dominated by portrait painting, and then later landscape art, for centuries to come.

The significant English invention was the portrait miniature, which essentially took the techniques of the dying art of the illuminated manuscript and transferred them to small portraits worn in lockets. Though the form was developed in England by foreign artists, mostly Flemish like Lucas Horenbout, the somewhat undistinguished founder of the tradition, by the late 16th century natives such as Nicolas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver produced the finest work, even as the best producers of larger portraits in oil were still foreigners. The portrait miniature had spread all over Europe by the 18th century.

The portraiture of Elizabeth I was carefully controlled and developed into an elaborate and wholly un-realist iconic style, that has succeeded in creating enduring images. The many portraits drove the evolution of English royal portraits in the Early Modern period. Even the earliest portraits of Elizabeth I contain symbolic objects such as roses and prayer books that would have carried meaning to viewers of her day. Later portraits of Elizabeth layer the iconography of empire—globes, crowns, swords and columns—and representations of virginity and purity—such as moons and pearls—with classical allusions to present a complex "story" that conveyed to Elizabethan era viewers the majesty and significance of their Virgin Queen. The Armada Portrait is an allegorical panel painting depicting the queen surrounded by symbols of empire against a backdrop representing the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

Music

English Renaissance music kept in touch with continental developments far more than visual art, and managed to survive the Reformation relatively successfully, though William Byrd (c.1539/40 or 1543 – 1623) and other major figures were Catholic. The Elizabethan madrigal was distinct from, but related to, the Italian tradition. Thomas Tallis, (c. 1505 –1585 Thomas Morley (1557 or 1558 – 1602)), and John Dowland (1563 – 1626) were other leading English composers.

The key composers from the early Renaissance era also wrote in a late Medieval style, and as such, they are transitional figures. Leonel Power (c. 1370s or 1380s–1445) was an English composer of the late medieval and early Renaissance music eras. Along with John Dunstaple, he was one of the major figures in English music in the early 15th century. Power is the composer best represented in the Old Hall Manuscript. Power was one of the first composers to set separate movements of the ordinary of the mass which were thematically unified and intended for contiguous performance. The Old Hall Manuscript contains his mass based on the Marian antiphon, Alma Redemptoris Mater, in which the antiphon is stated literally in the tenor voice in each movement, without melodic ornaments. This is the only cyclic setting of the mass ordinary which can be attributed to him. He wrote mass cycles, fragments, and single movements and a variety of other sacred works.

John Dunstaple (or Dunstable) (c. 1390–1453) was an English composer of polyphonic music of the late medieval era and early Renaissance periods. He was one of the most famous composers active in the early 15th century, a near-contemporary of Power, and was widely influential, not only in England but on the continent, especially in the developing style of the Burgundian School. Dunstaple's influence on the continent's musical vocabulary was enormous, particularly considering the relative paucity of his (attributable) works. He was recognized for possessing something never heard before in music of the Burgundian School: la contenance angloise ("the English countenance"), a term used by the poet Martin le Franc in his Le Champion des Dames.

The colossal polychoral productions of the Venetian School had been anticipated in the works of Thomas Tallis, and the Palestrina style from the Roman School had already been absorbed prior to the publication of Musica transalpina, in the music of masters such as William Byrd.

The Italian and English Renaissances were similar in sharing a specific musical aesthetic. In the late 16th century Italy was the musical center of Europe, and one of the principal forms which emerged from that singular explosion of musical creativity was the madrigal. In 1588, Nicholas Yonge published in England the Musica transalpina—a collection of Italian madrigals that had been Anglicized—an event which began a vogue of madrigal in England which was almost unmatched in the Renaissance in being an instantaneous adoption of an idea, from another country, adapted to local aesthetics. English poetry was exactly at the right stage of development for this transplantation to occur, since forms such as the sonnet were uniquely adapted to setting as madrigals; indeed, the sonnet was already well developed in Italy. Composers such as Thomas Morley, the only contemporary composer to set Shakespeare, and whose work survives, published collections of their own, roughly in the Italian manner but yet with a unique Englishness; interest in the compositions of the English Madrigal School has enjoyed a considerable revival in recent decades.

Architecture

Hampton Court Palace, Audley End House and gardens, Wollaton Hall, and Soulton Hall in Shropshire.

Despite some buildings in a partly Renaissance style from the reign of Henry VIII (1491 – 1547), notably Hampton Court Palace (begun in 1515), the vanished Nonsuch Palace, Sutton Place and Layer Marney Tower, and the building of Soulton Hall under Queen Mary I, it was not until dawning of Elizabethan architecture that a true Renaissance style became widespread.

The wool trade, which had carried the economic life of England in the late medieval period, was no longer as prosperous as it had been and there was less disposable wealth for architectural projects. Under Elizabeth, farming was encouraged resulting in a recovery that put a vast amount of wealth into the hands of a large number of people. Elizabeth built no new palaces, instead encouraging her courtiers to build extravagantly and house her on her summer progresses. A large number of small houses were built, and at the same time many country mansions were constructed. Many of the earlier medieval or Tudor manors were remodelled and modernised during Elizabeth's reign. Civic and institutional buildings were also becoming increasingly common.

The most famous buildings, of a type called the prodigy house, are large show houses constructed for courtiers, and characterised by lavish use of glass, as at "Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall", Wollaton Hall, Montacute House, Hatfield House and Burghley House, the style continuing into the early 17th century before developing into Jacobean architecture. Lesser, but still large, houses like Little Moreton Hall continued to be constructed and expanded in essentially medieval half-timbered styles until the late 16th century. Church architecture essentially continued in the late medieval Perpendicular Gothic style until the Reformation, and then stopped almost completely, although church monuments, screens and other fittings often had classical styles from about the mid-century. The few new church buildings post-Reformation were usually still Gothic in style, as in Langley Chapel of 1601.

It was also at this time that the long gallery became popular in English manor houses, often displaying painting collections and decorated ceilings. This was apparently mainly used for walking in, and a growing range of parlours and withdrawing rooms supplemented the main living room for the family, the great chamber. The great hall was now mostly used by the servants, and as an impressive point of entry to the house.

Major English Renaissance authors

Major literary figures in the English Renaissance include:

Typesetting

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typesetting

Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical type (or sort) in mechanical systems or glyphs in digital systems representing characters (letters and other symbols). Stored types are retrieved and ordered according to a language's orthography for visual display. Typesetting requires one or more fonts (which are widely but erroneously confused with and substituted for typefaces). One significant effect of typesetting was that authorship of works could be spotted more easily, making it difficult for copiers who have not gained permission.

Pre-digital era

Manual typesetting

During much of the letterpress era, movable type was composed by hand for each page by workers called compositors. A tray with many dividers, called a case, contained cast metal sorts, each with a single letter or symbol, but backwards (so they would print correctly). The compositor assembled these sorts into words, then lines, then pages of text, which were then bound tightly together by a frame, making up a form or page. If done correctly, all letters were of the same height, and a flat surface of type was created. The form was placed in a press and inked, and then printed (an impression made) on paper. Metal type read backwards, from right to left, and a key skill of the compositor was their ability to read this backwards text.

Before computers were invented, font sizes were changed by physically adjusting the size of the letterpress type, or by using a different size of type. In letterpress printing, individual letters and punctuation marks were cast on small metal blocks, known as "sorts," and then arranged to form the text for a page. The size of the type was determined by the height of the sort, and a printer would need to physically swap out the sorts for a different size to change the font size.

During typesetting, individual sorts are picked from a type case with the right hand, and set into a composing stick held in the left hand from left to right, and as viewed by the setter upside down. As seen in the photo of the composing stick, a lower case 'q' looks like a 'd', a lower case 'b' looks like a 'p', a lower case 'p' looks like a 'b' and a lower case 'd' looks like a 'q'. This is reputed to be the origin of the expression "mind your p's and q's". It might just as easily have been "mind your b's and d's".

A forgotten but important part of the process took place after the printing: the expensive sorts had to be sorted, so they would be ready for reuse. Errors in sorting would produce later misprints.

The diagram at right illustrates a cast metal sort: a face, b body or shank, c point size, 1 shoulder, 2 nick, 3 groove, 4 foot. Wooden printing sorts were used for centuries in combination with metal type. Not shown, and more the concern of the casterman, is the “set”, or width of each sort. Set width, like body size, is measured in points.

In order to extend the working life of type, and to account for the finite sorts in a case of type, copies of forms were cast when anticipating subsequent printings of a text, freeing the costly type for other work. This was particularly prevalent in book and newspaper work where rotary presses required type forms to wrap an impression cylinder rather than set in the bed of a press. In this process, called stereotyping, the entire form is pressed into a fine matrix such as plaster of Paris or papier mâché to create a flong, from which a positive form is cast in type metal.

Advances such as the typewriter and computer would push the state of the art even farther ahead. Still, hand composition and letterpress printing have not fallen completely out of use, and since the introduction of digital typesetting, it has seen a revival as an artisanal pursuit. However, it is a small niche within the larger typesetting market.

Hot metal typesetting

The time and effort required to manually compose the text led to several efforts in the 19th century to produce mechanical typesetting. While some, such as the Paige compositor, met with limited success, by the end of the 19th century, several methods had been devised whereby an operator working a keyboard or other devices could produce the desired text. Most of the successful systems involved the in-house casting of the type to be used, hence are termed "hot metal" typesetting. The Linotype machine, invented in 1884, used a keyboard to assemble the casting matrices, and cast an entire line of type at a time (hence its name). In the Monotype System, a keyboard was used to punch a paper tape, which was then fed to control a casting machine. The Ludlow Typograph involved hand-set matrices, but otherwise used hot metal. By the early 20th century, the various systems were nearly universal in large newspapers and publishing houses.

Phototypesetting

Phototypesetting or "cold type" systems first appeared in the early 1960s and rapidly displaced continuous casting machines. These devices consisted of glass or film disks or strips (one per font) that spun in front of a light source to selectively expose characters onto light-sensitive paper. Originally they were driven by pre-punched paper tapes. Later they were connected to computer front ends.

One of the earliest electronic photocomposition systems was introduced by Fairchild Semiconductor. The typesetter typed a line of text on a Fairchild keyboard that had no display. To verify correct content of the line it was typed a second time. If the two lines were identical a bell rang and the machine produced a punched paper tape corresponding to the text. With the completion of a block of lines the typesetter fed the corresponding paper tapes into a phototypesetting device that mechanically set type outlines printed on glass sheets into place for exposure onto a negative film. Photosensitive paper was exposed to light through the negative film, resulting in a column of black type on white paper, or a galley. The galley was then cut up and used to create a mechanical drawing or paste up of a whole page. A large film negative of the page is shot and used to make plates for offset printing.

Digital era

The next generation of phototypesetting machines to emerge were those that generated characters on a cathode ray tube display. Typical of the type were the Alphanumeric APS2 (1963), IBM 2680 (1967), I.I.I. VideoComp (1973?), Autologic APS5 (1975), and Linotron 202 (1978). These machines were the mainstay of phototypesetting for much of the 1970s and 1980s. Such machines could be "driven online" by a computer front-end system or took their data from magnetic tape. Type fonts were stored digitally on conventional magnetic disk drives.

Computers excel at automatically typesetting and correcting documents. Character-by-character, computer-aided phototypesetting was, in turn, rapidly rendered obsolete in the 1980s by fully digital systems employing a raster image processor to render an entire page to a single high-resolution digital image, now known as imagesetting.

The first commercially successful laser imagesetter, able to make use of a raster image processor, was the Monotype Lasercomp. ECRM, Compugraphic (later purchased by Agfa) and others rapidly followed suit with machines of their own.

Early minicomputer-based typesetting software introduced in the 1970s and early 1980s, such as Datalogics Pager, Penta, Atex, Miles 33, Xyvision, troff from Bell Labs, and IBM's Script product with CRT terminals, were better able to drive these electromechanical devices, and used text markup languages to describe type and other page formatting information. The descendants of these text markup languages include SGML, XML and HTML.

The minicomputer systems output columns of text on film for paste-up and eventually produced entire pages and signatures of 4, 8, 16 or more pages using imposition software on devices such as the Israeli-made Scitex Dolev. The data stream used by these systems to drive page layout on printers and imagesetters, often proprietary or specific to a manufacturer or device, drove development of generalized printer control languages, such as Adobe Systems' PostScript and Hewlett-Packard's PCL.

Computerized typesetting was so rare that BYTE magazine (comparing itself to "the proverbial shoemaker's children who went barefoot") did not use any computers in production until its August 1979 issue used a Compugraphics system for typesetting and page layout. The magazine did not yet accept articles on floppy disks, but hoped to do so "as matters progress". Before the 1980s, practically all typesetting for publishers and advertisers was performed by specialist typesetting companies. These companies performed keyboarding, editing and production of paper or film output, and formed a large component of the graphic arts industry. In the United States, these companies were located in rural Pennsylvania, New England or the Midwest, where labor was cheap and paper was produced nearby, but still within a few hours' travel time of the major publishing centers.

In 1985, with the new concept of WYSIWYG (for What You See Is What You Get) in text editing and word processing on personal computers, desktop publishing became available, starting with the Apple Macintosh, Aldus PageMaker (and later QuarkXPress) and PostScript and on the PC platform with Xerox Ventura Publisher under DOS as well as Pagemaker under Windows. Improvements in software and hardware, and rapidly lowering costs, popularized desktop publishing and enabled very fine control of typeset results much less expensively than the minicomputer dedicated systems. At the same time, word processing systems, such as Wang, WordPerfect and Microsoft Word, revolutionized office documents. They did not, however, have the typographic ability or flexibility required for complicated book layout, graphics, mathematics, or advanced hyphenation and justification rules (H and J).

By 2000, this industry segment had shrunk because publishers were now capable of integrating typesetting and graphic design on their own in-house computers. Many found the cost of maintaining high standards of typographic design and technical skill made it more economical to outsource to freelancers and graphic design specialists.

The availability of cheap or free fonts made the conversion to do-it-yourself easier, but also opened up a gap between skilled designers and amateurs. The advent of PostScript, supplemented by the PDF file format, provided a universal method of proofing designs and layouts, readable on major computers and operating systems.

QuarkXPress had enjoyed a market share of 95% in the 1990s, but lost its dominance to Adobe InDesign from the mid-2000s onward.

SCRIPT variants

IBM created and inspired a family of typesetting languages with names that were derivatives of the word "SCRIPT". Later versions of SCRIPT included advanced features, such as automatic generation of a table of contents and index, multicolumn page layout, footnotes, boxes, automatic hyphenation and spelling verification.

NSCRIPT was a port of SCRIPT to OS and TSO from CP-67/CMS SCRIPT.

Waterloo Script was created at the University of Waterloo (UW) later. One version of SCRIPT was created at MIT and the AA/CS at UW took over project development in 1974. The program was first used at UW in 1975. In the 1970s, SCRIPT was the only practical way to word process and format documents using a computer. By the late 1980s, the SCRIPT system had been extended to incorporate various upgrades.

The initial implementation of SCRIPT at UW was documented in the May 1975 issue of the Computing Centre Newsletter, which noted some the advantages of using SCRIPT:

It easily handles footnotes.
Page numbers can be in Arabic or Roman numerals, and can appear at the top or bottom of the page, in the centre, on the left or on the right, or on the left for even-numbered pages and on the right for odd-numbered pages.
Underscoring or overstriking can be made a function of SCRIPT, thus uncomplicating editor functions.
SCRIPT files are regular OS datasets or CMS files.
Output can be obtained on the printer, or at the terminal…

The article also pointed out SCRIPT had over 100 commands to assist in formatting documents, though 8 to 10 of these commands were sufficient to complete most formatting jobs. Thus, SCRIPT had many of the capabilities computer users generally associate with contemporary word processors.

SCRIPT/VS was a SCRIPT variant developed at IBM in the 1980s.

DWScript is a version of SCRIPT for MS-DOS, named after its author, D. D. Williams, but was never released to the public and only used internally by IBM.

Script is still available from IBM as part of the Document Composition Facility for the z/OS operating system.

SGML and XML systems

The standard generalized markup language (SGML) was based upon IBM Generalized Markup Language (GML). GML was a set of macros on top of IBM Script. DSSSL is an international standard developed to provide a stylesheets for SGML documents.

XML is a successor of SGML. XSL-FO is most often used to generate PDF files from XML files.

The arrival of SGML/XML as the document model made other typesetting engines popular. Such engines include Datalogics Pager, Penta, Miles 33's OASYS, Xyvision's XML Professional Publisher, FrameMaker, and Arbortext. XSL-FO compatible engines include Apache FOP, Antenna House Formatter, and RenderX's XEP. These products allow users to program their SGML/XML typesetting process with the help of scripting languages.

YesLogic's Prince is another one, which is based on CSS Paged Media.

Troff and successors

During the mid-1970s, Joe Ossanna, working at Bell Laboratories, wrote the troff typesetting program to drive a Wang C/A/T phototypesetter owned by the Labs; it was later enhanced by Brian Kernighan to support output to different equipment, such as laser printers. While its use has fallen off, it is still included with a number of Unix and Unix-like systems, and has been used to typeset a number of high-profile technical and computer books. Some versions, as well as a GNU work-alike called groff, are now open source.

TeX and LaTeX

The TeX system, developed by Donald E. Knuth at the end of the 1970s, is another widespread and powerful automated typesetting system that has set high standards, especially for typesetting mathematics. LuaTeX and LuaLaTeX are variants of TeX and of LaTeX scriptable in Lua. TeX is considered fairly difficult to learn on its own, and deals more with appearance than structure. The LaTeX macro package, written by Leslie Lamport at the beginning of the 1980s, offered a simpler interface and an easier way to systematically encode the structure of a document. LaTeX markup is widely used in academic circles for published papers and books. Although standard TeX does not provide an interface of any sort, there are programs that do. These programs include Scientific Workplace and LyX, which are graphical/interactive editors; TeXmacs, while being an independent typesetting system, can also aid the preparation of TeX documents through its export capability.

Other text formatters

GNU TeXmacs (whose name is a combination of TeX and Emacs, although it is independent from both of these programs) is a typesetting system which is at the same time a WYSIWYG word processor.

SILE borrows some algorithms from TeX and relies on other libraries such as HarfBuzz and ICU, with an extensible core engine developed in Lua. By default, SILE's input documents can be composed in a custom LaTeX-inspired markup (SIL) or in XML. Via the adjunction of 3rd-party modules, composition in Markdown or Djot is also possible.

A new typesetting system Typst tries to combine a simple markup of the input and the possibility of using common programming constructs with a high typographical quality of the output. This system has been in beta testing since March 2023 and was presented in July 2023 at the Tex Users Group (TUG) 2023 conference.

Several other text-formatting software packages exist—notably Lout, Patoline, Pollen, and Ant —but are not widely used.

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