Fascinating facts about the invention of the Ballpoint Pen by Ladislas Biro in 1935.

BALLPOINT PEN

The first great success for the ballpoint pen came on an October morning in 1945 when a crowd of over 5,000 people jammed the entrance of New York’s Gimbels Department Store. The day before, Gimbels had taken out a full-page ad in the New York Times promoting the first sale of ballpoints in the United States. The ad described the new pen as a "fantastic... miraculous fountain pen ... guaranteed to write for two years without refilling!" On that first day of sales, Gimbels sold out its entire stock of 10,000 pens-at $12.50 each!

Actually, this "new" pen wasn't new at all and didn't work much better than ballpoint pens that had been produced ten years earlier. The story begins in 1888 when John Loud, an American leather tanner, patented a roller-ball-tip marking pen. Loud’s invention featured a reservoir of ink and a roller ball that applied the thick ink to leather hides. John Loud’s pen was never produced, nor were any of the other 350 patents for ball-type pens issued over the next thirty years. The major problem was the ink - if the ink was thin the pens leaked, and if it was too thick, they clogged. Depending on the temperature, the pen would sometimes do both.The next stage of development came almost fifty years after Loud’s patent, with an improved version invented in Hungary in 1935 by Ladislas Biro and his brother, Georg.   Ladislas Biro was very talented and confident of his abilities, but he had never had a pursuit that kept his interest and earned him a good living.  He had studied medicine, art, and hypnotism, and in 1935 he was editing a small newspaper-where he was frustrated by the amount of time he wasted filling fountain pens and cleaning up ink smudges.  Besides that, the sharp tip of his fountain pen often scratched or tore through the newsprint (paper). Determined to develop a better pen, Ladislas and Georg (who was a chemist) set about making models of new designs and formulating better inks to use in them. One summer day while vacationing at the seashore, the Biro brothers met an interesting elderly gentleman, Augustine Justo, who happened to be the president of Argentina.   After the brothers showed him their model of a ballpoint pen, President Justo urged them to set up a factory in Argentina.  When World War II broke out in Europe, a few years later, the Biros fled to Argentina, stopping in Paris along the way to patent their pen. Once in Argentina, the Biros found several investors willing to finance their invention, and in 1943 they had set up a manufacturing plant.  Unfortunately, the pens were a spectacular failure. The Biro pen, like the designs that had preceded it, depended on gravity for the ink to flow to the roller ball. This meant that the pens worked only when they were held more or less straight up, and even then the ink flow was sometimes too heavy, leaving smudgy globs on the paper.  The Biro brothers returned to their laboratory and devised a new design, which relied on "capillsry action" rather than gravity to feed the ink.  The rough "ball" at the end of the pen acted like a metal sponge, and with this improvement ink could flow more smoothly to the ball, and the pen could be held at a slant rather than straight up.  One year later, the Biros were selling their new, improved ballpoint pen throughout Argentina. But it still was not a smashing success, and the men ran out of money. The greatest interest in the ballpoint pen came from American flyers who had been to Argentina during World War II. Apparently it was ideal for pilots because it would work well at high altitudes and, unlike fountain pens, did not have to be refilled frequently. The U.S. Department of State sent specifications to several American pen manufacturers asking them to develop a similar pen.  In an attempt to corner the market, the Eberhard Faber Company paid the Biro brothers $500,000 for the rights to manufacture their ballpoint pen in the United States. Eberhard Faber later sold its rights to the Eversharp Company, but neither was quick about putting a ballpoint pen on the market. There were still too many bugs in the Biro design. Meanwhile, in a surprise move, a fifty-four-year-old Chicago salesman named Milton Reynolds became the first American manufacturer to market a ballpoint pen successfully. While vacationing in Argentina, Reynolds had seen Biro’s pen in the stores and thought that the novel product would sell well in America.  Because many of the patents had expired, Reynolds thought he could avoid any legal problems, and so he went about copying much of the Biros’ design.  It was Reynolds who made the deal with Gimbels to be the first retail store in America to sell ballpoint pens.  He set up a makeshift factory with 300 workers who began stamping out pens from whatever aluminum was not being used for the war.  In the months that followed, Reynolds made millions of pens and became fairly wealthy, as did many other manufacturers who decided to cash in on the new interest. The competition among pen manufacturers during the mid-1940s became quite hectic, with each one claiming new and better features. Reynolds even claimed that his ballpoint could write under water, and he hired Esther Williams, the swimmer and movie star, to help prove it. Another manufacturer claimed that its pen would write through ten carbon copies, while still another demonstrated that its pen would write up-side down.  However, the effect of the slogans and advertising wore off as soon as the owners discovered the many problems that still existed with the ballpoint pens. As the sale of the pens began to drop, so did the price, and the once expensive luxury now would not even sell for as little as 19 cents.  Once again, it looked as if the ballpoint pen would be a complete failure.  For the pen to regain the public’s favor and trust, somebody would have to invent one that was smooth writing, quick drying, nonskipping, nonfading, and most important didn’t leak. Two men, each with his own pen company, delivered these results.  The first was Patrick J. Frawley Jr.  Frawley met Fran Seech, an unemployed Los Angeles chemist who had lost his job when the ballpoint pen company he was working for had gone out of business. Seech had been working on improvements in ballpoint ink, and on his own he continued his experiments in a tiny cubbyhole home laboratory.  Frawley was so impressed with his work that he bought Seech’s new ink formula in 1949 and started the Frawley Pen Company.  Within one year, Frawley was in the ballpoint pen business with yet another improved model-the first pen with a retractable ballpoint tip and the first with no-smear ink.  To overcome many of the old prejudices against the leaky and smeary ballpoint pen of the past, Frawley initiated an imaginative and risky advertising campaign, a promotion he called Project Normandy.  Frawley instructed his salesmen to barge into the offices of retail store buyers and scribble all over the executives’ shirts with one of the new pens.  Then the salesman would offer to replace the shirt with an even more expensive one if the ink did not wash out entirely.   The shirts did come clean and the promotion worked.  As more and more retailers accepted the pen, which Frawley named the "Papermate," sales began to skyrocket. Within a few years, the Papermate pen was selling in the hundreds of millions.The other man to bring the ballpoint pen successfully back to life was Marcel Bich, a French manufacturer of penholders and pen cases.  Bich was appalled at the poor quality of the ballpoint pens he had seen and he was also shocked at their high cost. But he recognized that the ballpoint was a firmly established innovation and he resolved to design a high-quality pen at a low price that would scoop the market.  He went to the Biro brothers and arranged to pay them a royalty on their patent.  Then for two years Marcel Bich studied the detailed construction of every ballpoint pen on the market, often working with a microscope.  By 1952 Bich was ready to introduce his new wonder: a clear-barreled, smooth-writing, non-leaky, inexpensive ballpoint pen he called the "Ballpoint Bic."  The ballpoint pen had finally become a practical writing instrument.  The public accepted it without complaint, and today it is as standard a writing implement as the pencil. In England, they are still called Biros, and many Bic models also say "Biro" on the side of the pen, as a testament to their primary inventors.  Laszlo Biro  The stunning pictures, measuring up to 10ft high, were drawn by a rising star of the art world, Juan Francisco Casas. Casas, 31, can use up to four 14p ballpoint pens for a canvas and his works are already a sell-out at exhibitions. Ballpoint Design The key to a ballpoint pen is, of course, the ball. This ball acts as a buffer between the material you're writing on and the quick-drying ink inside the pen. The ball rotates freely and rolls out the ink as it is continuously fed from the ink reservoir (usually a narrow plastic tube filled with ink). The ball is kept in place -- between the ink reservoir and the paper -- by a socket; and while it is in tight, it still has enough room to roll around as you write. As the pen moves across the paper, the ball turns and gravity forces the ink down the reservoir and onto the ball, where it is transferred onto the paper. It's this rolling mechanism that allows the ink to flow onto the top of the ball and roll onto the paper you're writing on, while at the same time sealing the ink from the air so it does not dry in the reservoir. Because the tip of a normal ballpoint pen is so tiny, it is hard to visualize how the ball and socket actually work. One way to understand it clearly is to look at a bottle of roll-on antiperspirant, which uses the same technology at a much larger scale. The typical container of roll-on has the same goals a ballpoint pen does -- it wants to keep air out of the liquid antiperspirant while at the same time making it easy to apply. At this scale, it is easy to see how the mechanism works. Here's a shot of the ball end of a typical roll-on: If you look inside the container, what you have is extremely simple -- the ball is exposed so it can pick up the liquid antiperspirant: The following two photos show you how the ball fits into the socket: A ballpoint pen works exactly the same way. The tiny ball is held in a socket, and the back of the ball is exposed so it can pick up ink from the reservoir. The ball fits into the socket with just enough space to move freely. The size of a ballpoint pen's line is determined by the width of the ballpoint. A "point five millimeter" (0.5 mm) pen has a ball that will produce a line that is 0.5-mm wide, and a "point seven millimeter" pen (0.7 mm) has a ball that will produce a 0.7-mm line. Ballpoints come as tiny as "point one millimeter" wide ("ultra fine").

The story of the fountain pen

Lewis Waterman
Residence - 265 Macon Street, Brooklyn, New York City
Born - Decatur, Otsego County, N.Y. - 1837
Death - 1901

Invented the capillary feed in fountain pens - now universally used - that allows for even ink flow. 
Though necessity may be the mother of invention, perhaps it is frustration that fuels the fire; or so it seemed for Lewis Waterman. In 1883, Lewis Waterman was an insurance broker in New York City, getting ready to sign one of his hottest contracts. In honor of the occasion, Lewis Waterman bought a new fountain pen that he considered far more stylish than a cumbersome dip pen and ink well. With the contract on the table and the pen in the client’s hand, the pen refused to write, and actually leaked onto the precious document. Horrified, Lewis Waterman raced back to his office for another contract, but a competing broker had closed the deal.

Determined to never again suffer such humiliation, Waterman began to make fountain pens in his brother’s workshop. Lewis Waterman used the capillarity principle which allowed air to induce a steady and even flow of ink. He christened his pen "the Regular," decorated it with wood accents, and obtained a patent for it in 1884. In his first year of operation, Waterman sold his hand-made pens out of the back of a cigar shop. He guaranteed the pens for five years and advertised in a trendy magazine, The Review of Review. The orders filtered in.

By 1899, Lewis Waterman opened a factory in Montreal and was offering a variety of designs. In 1901, upon Waterman’s death, his nephew, Frank D. Waterman took the business overseas and increased sales to 350,000 pens per year. The Treaty of Versailles was signed using a solid gold Waterman pen, a far cry from the day Lewis Waterman lost his important contract due to a leaky fountain pen.

Ramanujam..The mathematical genius is being understood only now.

The legacy of Srinivasa Ramanujan

M. RAM MURTY

V. KUMAR MURTY

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The Hindu Photo LibraryMathematician Srinivasa Ramanujam

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His work has had a fundamental role in the development of 20th century mathematics and his final writings are serving as an inspiration for the mathematics of this century

On a height he stood that looked towards greater heights.

Our early approaches to the Infinite

Are sunrise splendours on a marvellous verge

While lingers yet unseen the glorious sun.

What now we see is a shadow of what must come.

Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 1.4

The story of Srinivasa Ramanujan is a 20th century “rags to mathematical riches” story. In his short life, Ramanujan had a wealth of ideas that have transformed and reshaped 20th century mathematics. These ideas continue to shape mathematics of the 21st century. This article seeks to give a panoramic view of his essential contributions.

Born on December 22, 1887 in the town of Erode in Tamil Nadu, Ramanujan was largely self-taught and emerged from extreme poverty to become one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century. How did this transformation come about? Though it is difficult to pinpoint any precise causes for this transformation, one can delineate several significant events in his life that enabled this to come about.

Ramanujan cultivated his love for mathematics singlehandedly and in total isolation. As a child, he was quiet and often kept to himself. Those that knew him were impressed by his shining large eyes, which were his most prominent features. He had a prodigious memory, and at school he would entertain his friends by reciting the various declensions of Sanskrit roots, and by repeating the value of the constant ‘pi' to any number of decimal places. This was a foreshadow of what was to come, since later in life he would write a monumental paper that would connect the computations of the digits of ‘pi' to modular forms, a theory developed largely in the 20th century. It is a theory which is definitely at the forefront of modern mathematics today and we will expand on this theme later in this article.

At the age of 12, he borrowed from a friend a copy of Loney's book on Plane Trigonometry, published by Cambridge University Press in 1894. This book goes far beyond high school trigonometry and also deals with the rudiments of calculus. But the book that changed his life was Carr's book titled, A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics. This book is a compilation of 6,165 theorems, systematically arranged but with practically no proofs. It is not a remarkable book, and Ramanujan's use of it to propel himself to the centre stage of 20th century mathematics, has made the book remarkable. It was largely used by students of Carr who were preparing for the entrance examination in mathematics at Cambridge University. Ramanujan used the book to master all of 18th and 19th century mathematics. He set about to demonstrate each of the assertions of the book, using only his slate to do the calculations. He would jot down the formula to be proved, and then erase it with his elbow, and then continue to jot down some more formulas. In this way, he worked through the entire book. People used to speak of his “bruised elbow.” Sadly, he took Carr's book as a model for mathematical writing and left behind his famous notebooks containing many formulas but practically no proofs. Many mathematicians have made it an industry to prove these formulas that Ramanujan had scribbled into his notebooks since he left no hint as to how he got them.

In college

In 1903, Ramanujan entered the Government College in Kumbakonam. Unfortunately, he failed in the examination since he neglected his non-mathematical subjects.

Four years later, he entered another college in Chennai, and the same thing happened. Finally, in 1912, he secured a job as a clerk in the Madras Port Trust Office. Here, his duties were light and so he could devote a lot of time to his mathematical discoveries — which he recorded in his now celebrated notebooks. As luck would have it, the manager of the office, S.N. Aiyar, was also a mathematician who took kindly to Ramanujan and encouraged him in his mathematics. It was he who suggested to Ramanujan that he write to G.H. Hardy, a famous mathematician at Trinity College, Cambridge University.

In his famous 1913 letter to Hardy, Ramanujan attached 120 theorems as a representative sample of his work. Some of these formulas Hardy had already seen in the course of his own research work. But many of the other formulas, he had not. It took over two hours for him to analyse the letter in order to determine if it was written by a crank or a genius. He consulted with his eminent colleague J.E. Littlewood, also of Trinity College, and together they sat down for three more hours. Finally they concluded that it was the work of a genius. Hardy wrote: “They must be true, because if they were not true, no one would have had the imagination to invent them.'' With this certificate of approval, Ramanujan was invited to come to Trinity College to work with Hardy.

To England

Ramanujan sailed to England in March 1914, just a few months before the outbreak of the First World War. From 1914 to 1917, Hardy and Ramanujan collaborated on more than half a dozen research papers. At the same time, Ramanujan published more than 30 research papers in three years. The most notable of these collaborations involved the partition function. This function counts the number of ways a natural number can be decomposed into smaller parts. Hardy and Ramanujan developed a new method, now called the circle method, to derive an asymptotic formula for this function. If one analyses Ramanujan's first letter to Hardy, we already find a hint of the method in his work done in India while at the Port Trust Office. This method is now one of the central tools of analytic number theory and is largely responsible for major advances in the 20th century of notoriously difficult problems such as Goldbach's conjecture, Waring's conjecture and other additive questions. The circle method and its refinements constitute a very large area of current research and will probably continue to be so in the 21st century.

Another fundamental paper of Hardy and Ramanujan concerns what is now called the “normal order method.'' This method analyses the behaviour of additive arithmetical functions. In their paper, Hardy and Ramanujan showed that a random natural number usually has about log log n prime factors. Their paper led to the creation of an entirely new field of mathematics called probabilistic number theory. In the 20th century, it was largely developed by P. Erdos, M. Kac and J. Kubilius.

Landmark paper

But the paper that really changed the course of 20th century mathematics was the one written by Ramanujan in 1916, modestly titled “On certain arithmetical functions.'' In this paper, Ramanujan investigated the properties of Fourier coefficients of modular forms. At that time the theory of modular forms was not even developed. However, Ramanujan enunciated three fundamental conjectures that served as a guiding force for the development of the theory.

Indeed, the first two of his conjectures led to the development of what is now called Hecke theory, formulated by E. Hecke in 1936, twenty years after Ramanujan's paper. Many would have heard of Fermat's last theorem and how this was solved in 1994 by A. Wiles. But few will know that Wiles used Hecke's theory in an essential way in his solution of the problem.

However, it was the last of the three of Ramanujan's conjectures that created a sensation in 20th century mathematics. This conjecture, later called Ramanujan's conjecture, came to play a pivotal role in the towering edifice known as the Langlands program, a far-reaching program articulated by R.P. Langlands in the 1970s. This program connected two seemingly different fields of mathematics, namely representation theory and number theory. But the proof of Ramanujan's third conjecture came about through another route connecting algebraic geometry to number theory in the framework of general conjectures of A. Weil concerning the number of solutions of equations over finite fields. The Weil conjectures were settled by P. Deligne in 1974 and he was awarded the Fields Medal (the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize) for this work. Ramanujan's third conjecture turned out to be a special case of the Weil conjecture. Ramanujan's conjecture is now seen as a spectral line of a larger spectrum of conjectures, now called the generalised Ramanujan conjecture.

Last letter to Hardy

If Ramanujan's 1916 paper created a sensation by heralding the development of the theory of modular forms, his last letter to Hardy, written literally on his deathbed in 1920, outlining a new theory of “mock theta functions,” is now creating a greater sensation in the development of 21st century mathematics. Indeed, Ramanujan's theory of mock theta functions was largely ignored for much of the 20th century and was discussed in sporadic papers. Part of the difficulty was with Ramanujan's vague definition of a mock theta function. In fact, he never defined them. Rather, he listed 17 protypical examples of these new functions and formulated general conjectures concerning them. Many mathematicians tried to prove these conjectures without a proper theory in place. To a large extent, they succeeded in proving most of Ramanujan's conjectures. However, the unifying conceptual framework was missing. This framework was discovered only recently in 2002 in the doctoral thesis of S. Zwegers, written under the direction of D. Zagier. This thesis laid the groundwork for a new theory of mock modular forms.

We now understand Ramanujan's theory of mock theta functions as a special case of a larger theory of mock modular forms. These objects are generalisations of modular forms and thus include the classical theory of Hecke as a special case. Already, the richer theory of mock modular forms is bearing new mathematical fruit, as is evidenced by some recent breakthrough works of J. Bruinier, J. Funke, K. Bringman, and K. Ono. For instance, Bruinier and Ono recently derived an algebraic formula for the partition function using the theory of mock modular forms. M. Dewar and R. Murty noticed that this Bruinier-Ono formula can be used to derive the Hardy-Ramanujan formula for the partition function and thereby avoid the complicated circle method. These new viewpoints are definitely the tip of the iceberg, concealing a larger mass of mathematical truth.

In 1987, the famous physicist, Freeman Dyson, predicted: “The mock theta functions give us tantalising hints of a grand synthesis still to be discovered. It should be possible to build them into a coherent group-theoretical structure, analogous to the structure of modular forms which Hecke built around the old theta functions of Jacobi. This remains the challenge for the future.”

Foreshadow

Indeed, Dyson's prediction is right on target. The recent advances in the theory are just a foreshadow of greater things to come. Once the theory of mock modular forms is in place, it is only a question of time to marry the theory to the larger program of Langlands. This may be delicate, and one should not go too fast lest we miss the scenic beauty along the route. Nevertheless, it is the direction of the future. Thus, Ramanujan's work has had a fundamental role in the development of 20th century mathematics and his final writings are serving as an inspiration for the mathematics of this century.

We do not know how Ramanujan discovered his theorems. On this point, Hardy wrote: “It was his insight into algebraic formulae, transformations of infinite series and so forth, that was most amazing. On this side most certainly I have never met his equal, and I can compare him only with Euler or Jacobi. He worked far more than the majority of modern mathematicians, by induction from numerical examples; all his congruence properties of partitions, for example, were discovered in this way. But with his memory, his patience and his power of calculation, he combined a power of generalisation, a feeling for form, a capacity for rapid modification of his hypothesis, that were often really startling, and made him, in his own peculiar field, without a rival in his day.”

Cultural legacy

But beyond the mathematical legacy, Ramanujan left behind a cultural legacy. He appeared in the midst of the British colonial rule of India and now stands as an iconic symbol of an India that was rediscovering itself, an India that was rising up to take its place in the 20th century. This meant that science and education were to be revived and energised to meet the challenges of the new, independent India. Ramanujan's role in such a revival is best described in the words of Nobel laureate Subramanyam Chandrasekhar who, on the occasion of Ramanujan's birth centenary in 1987, wrote: “It must have been a day in April 1920, when I was not quite ten years old, when my mother told me of an item in the newspaper of the day that a famous Indian mathematician, Ramanujan by name, had died the preceding day; and she told me further that Ramanujan had gone to England some years earlier, had collaborated with some famous English mathematicians and that he had returned only very recently, and was well-known internationally for what he had achieved. Though I had no idea at that time of what kind of a mathematician Ramanujan was, or indeed what scientific achievement meant, I can still recall the gladness I felt at the assurance that one brought up under circumstances similar to my own, could have achieved what I could not grasp. I am sure that others were equally gladdened. I hope that it is not hard for you to imagine what the example of Ramanujan could have provided for young men and women of those times, beginning to look at the world with increasingly different perceptions. The fact that Ramanujan's early years were spent in a scientifically sterile atmosphere, that his life in India was not without hardships, that under circumstances that appeared to most Indians as nothing short of miraculous, he had gone to Cambridge, supported by eminent mathematicians, and had returned to India with every assurance that he would be considered, in time, as one of the most original mathematicians of the century — these facts were enough, more than enough, for aspiring young Indian students to break their bonds of intellectual confinement and perhaps soar the way that Ramanujan did.”

In these words of Chandrasekhar, we see the remarkable legacy left behind by Ramanujan. For the life of Chandrasekhar was equally full of hardships. Born in the same village surroundings as Ramanujan, he went to study at Cambridge and became a leading astrophysicist of the 20th century, finally being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983. Indeed, he soared the way Ramanujan did.

But a scientist belongs to no nation. Many scientists from around the world have testified that they gained inspiration from the life story of Ramanujan. For Ramanujan embodies that marvellous miracle of the human mind to frame concepts and to use formulas and symbols as tools of thought to probe deeper into the mysteries of the universe, and the mysteries of one's own being. As long as the spirit of inquiry is alive, his legacy will pass from one generation to the next.

What is Freemasonary

WHAT IS FREEMASONRY

Freemasonry is the oldest and largest world wide fraternity dedicated to the Brotherhood of Man under the Fatherhood of a Supreme Being. Although of a religious nature, Freemasonry is not a religion. It urges its members, however, to be faithful and devoted to their own religious beliefs. The organization of Freemasonry is based on a system of Grand Lodges, each sovereign within its own territory. There is no central authority governing all Grand Lodges. However, to be acknowledged by others, acceptable traditions, standards and practices must be maintained. In our Province the governing body is called the Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Canada in the Province of Ontario. It is under the leadership of the Grand Master. He presides over 53,000 Masons who belong to one or more of the 587 lodges in our jurisdiction. Each of these lodges is under the direction of a Worshipful Master. WHAT IT DOES? As a fraternity, Freemasonry provides an opportunity for men to meet and enjoy friendly companionship. In the spirit of helpfulness and brotherly love and guided by strict moral principles it encourages goodwill toward all mankind. Freemasonry is of a personal nature in its private ceremonies. Its ritual dramatizes a philosophy of life based on morality. It promotes self improvement. The tools of operative masons are used to symbolize and teach the basic principles of brotherly love, charity, and truth which Masons are encouraged to practice in their daily lives. Charity is a tangible way in which Masons help those whose circumstances in life fairly warrant it. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Our traditions can be traced directly to the associations of operative masons. They were men of outstanding character and high ideals, who built the cathedrals, abbeys, and castles of the Middle Ages. With the decline of cathedral building in the 17th Century, many guilds of stonemasons, called "Operative" masons, started to accept into their membership those who were not members of the masons' craft and called them "Speculative" or "Accepted" masons. It was in these groups, called lodges, comprised mainly of "Accepted" masons that Freemasonry, as we know it today, had its beginning. In 1717, four such lodges, which had been meeting regularly in London, united to form the first Grand Lodge of England under the direction of a Grand Master. From that first Grand Lodge, Freemasonry has spread throughout the world. Today, some 150 Grand Lodges have a total membership of approximately four million Masons. MEMBERSHIP One of Freemasonry's customs is not to solicit members. However, anyone should feel free to approach any Mason to seek further information about the Craft. Membership is for men, 21 years of age or older, who meet the qualifications and standards of character and reputation, who are of good moral character, and who believe in the existence of a supreme being. A man who wants to join a lodge must be recommended for by two members of that lodge. He must understand that his character will be investigated. After approval by the members of that lodge, he will be accepted as an applicant for membership in Freemasonry. The doors of Freemasonry are open to men who seek harmony with their fellow man, feel the need for self-improvement and wish to participate in making this world a better place to live. Any man who becomes a Mason is taught a pattern for living - reverence, morality, kindness, honesty, dependability and compassion. He must be prepared to honour his country, uphold its laws and respect those in authority. He must be prepared to maintain honourable relations with others and be willing to share in Masonic activities. Freemasonry is a way of life.                    Some symbols associated with Freemasonary and views not held by Freemasons The sun, moon and stars, known in Scripture as the host of heaven, are found to be to the fore of Masonic imagery. These heathenish emblems, which have always been associated with Baal worship, are also found prominently displayed today within most New Age shops. It is not surprising to find such imagery spread widely throughout the occult world. Paganism has always showed its trinities in art by the sun (with a face) representing the male sun god, the moon (with a face) representing the moon goddess (or queen of heaven) and the all-seeing eye representing their offspring. Nothing on this picture represents anything scriptural. The words, "Faith, Hope and Charity," are Biblical, but the image does nothing to point a person in the direction of the Bible.

A Masonic Apron with symbols similar to the picture above it. One can only imagine that such a insipid work of art can only have it's inception from the very depths of hell. Can you find the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob anywhere on this thing? I certainly cannot.

---

Date found on a monument found in a park in Tarboro, North
Carolina. Masons say that the initials A.L. stand for 'Anno Lucis',meaning, "year of light," like it is some innocuous meaning. Those of us who know that Satan, also known as being able to manifest as an "angel of light," is also called Lucifer. Too blatant to be a coincidence.

The point and the circle carries a sexual connotation.  Another Masonic author states that this symbol is used in Sun Worship, and then says: "The female principle, symbolized by the moon, assumed the form of a lunette [small circular opening], or crescent, while the male principle, symbolized by the sun, assumed the form of the lingam [Phallus] and placed himself erect in the center of the lunette, like the mast of a ship." ["Point Within A Circle," Short Talk Bulletin , August, 1931, Masonic Bulletin designed to read within the Lodges, p. 4]

Chera, Dynasty in Tamilian History.

Sangam Age in Tamil Kingdoms

The history of the Tamil country becomes clear only from the Sangam period. The word Sangam means an association. Here, it refers to the Tamil Sangam, an association of Tamil poets, which flourished in ancient Tamil Nadu. These Tamil poets had composed the Sangam literature. The period in which theseliteratures were composed is called the Sangam Age in the history of Tamil Nadu. During this age there were three Tamil Kingdoms, namely the Chera, Chola and Pandy kingdoms in the Tamil country. They were popularly known as Moovendar.

Tamil Kingdoms

There were three important kingdoms, namely Chera, Chola and Pandya kingdoms in the Tamil country during the Sangam Age. In addition to these three kingdoms, there were also local chieftains. The most famous among the local chieftains were the Seven Patrons, popularly known as Kadaiyelu Vallalgal.

They are

1. Chera
2. Chola
3. Pandya

Chera Kingdom

The Chera kings of the Sangam Age were known by many titles such as Vanavar, Villavar and Malaiyar. There were two important lines of Chera Kings. The first one started from Odiyan Cheralathan and the second from Irumporai. The kings belonging to these two lines ruled the Chera kingdom. Their capital was Vanji and their chief port Thondi, Their symbol in the flag was bow and arrow.

chera‑kings

Cheran Senguttuvan was the most popular king of the Sangam Cheras. The Sangam works, Padhithrupaththu and Ahananuru provide a lot of information about him. The Tamil Epic Silappathigaram also tells about his military achievements. Senguttuvan led an expedition up to the Himalayas. He crossed the river Ganges and defeated his enemies, He reached the Himalayas and hoisted the Chera flag. He brought stones from there and built a temple in memory of Kannagi. His brother Elango Adigal composed Silappathigaram.

 Kongu Chera Coins

The kingdoms of the Cheras were located to the south of the great Mauryan Dynasty and Keralaputra and Cheraputra were first mentioned in the inscriptions of Ashoka the Great. However we come to know many details about the Chera Dynasty from the poems of the Sangam literature.

The Chera dynasty was one of the ancient Tamil dynasties who reigned over south India from early times until the fifteenth century. Their kingdom extended over the Malabar Coast, Karur, Coimbatore and Salem Districts in South India, which now is a part of present day Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The Chera kings were constantly into conflicts with their neighboring kingdoms to established political associations they sometimes inter- married with the families of the adversary kings.

The first Chera ruler was Perumchottu Utiyan Cheralatan who founded the Chera dynasty. He was succeeded by his son Imayavaramban Nedum Cheralatan who converted the Chera dynasty into a powerful one and extended and enriched his kingdom from all aspects. Imayavaramban’s reign was also very important for the development of art and Literature as he patronized art and culture greatly. His poet laureate was Kannanar.

However, the greatest ruler of the Chera Dynasty was Kadalpirakottiya Vel Kelu Kuttuvan, whose reference has been made in the great Tamil epic- Silappadigaram.

Trade and Commerce flourished during the reign of the Cheras. The Cheras traded in ivory, timber, spices and exported precious gems and pearls to the Middle East and these trade contacts with the Middle East established Judaism.

Though the Cheras had their personal religion, a large number of other religious traditions also existed during their rule. Buddhism and Jainism both were introduced in Kerala by the second century BC.

 

Ancient Chera Kings (c. 400 BC – 397 AD)

1. Udiyancheralatan

1. Antuvancheral
2. Imayavaramban Nedun-Cheralatan (56–115 AD)
3. Cheran Chenkutuvan (from 115)
4. Palyanai Sel-Kelu Kuttuvan (115–130)
5. Poraiyan Kadungo (from 115)
6. Kalankai-Kanni Narmudi Cheral (115–140)
7. Vel-Kelu Kuttuvan (130–185)
8. Selvak-Kadungo (131–155)
9. Adukotpattu Cheralatan (140–178)
10. Kuttuvan Irumporai (178–185)
11. Tagadur Erinda Perumcheral (185–201)
12. Yanaikat-sey Mantaran Cheral (201–241)
13. Ilamcheral Irumporai (241–257)
14. Perumkadungo (257–287)
15. Ilamkadungo (287–317)
16. Kanaikal Irumporai (367–397)

Kulashekhara Dynasty (1020–1314 AD)

1. Kulashekhara Varman (800–820 AD), also called Kulashekhara Alwar
2. Rajashekhara Varman (820–844 AD), also called Cheraman Perumal
3. Sthanu ravi Varman (844–885 AD), contemporary of Aditya Chola
4. Rama Varma Kulashekhara (885–917 AD)
5. Goda Ravi Varma (917–944 AD)
6. Indu Kotha Varma (944–962 AD)
7. Bhaskara Ravi Varman I (962–1019 AD)
8. Bhaskara Ravi Varman II (1019–1021 AD)
9. Vira Kerala (1021–1028 AD)
10. Rajasimha (1028–1043 AD)
11. Bhaskara Ravi Varman III (1043–1082 AD)
12. Rama Varma Kulashekhara (1090–1122 AD), also called Cheraman Perumal

• Ravi Varma Kulashekhara (c. 1250–1314), last of the Cheras

Rankot ViharaVasco de Gamas first visit to India.

Adi Sankara lived during Kulasekhars time 1250-1314AD; The last Chera.

Temple during Chera period

                                                                                          Coin with Cheraman Perumal.