A lanyard is a rope or cord exclusively worn around the neck or wrist to carry something. Usually it is used where there is a risk of losing the object or to ensure it is visible at all times. Aboard a ship, it may refer to a piece of rigging used to secure objects. Alternatively it is a length of cord or wire with a hook at the end used to fire an artillery piece, or to arm the fuze mechanism on an air-dropped bomb by pulling out a cotter pin (thereby starting the arming delay) when it leaves the aircraft.

Origin

In the military, lanyards originally were used to connect a pistol, sword or whistle (for signalling) to a uniform on a semi-permanent basis. Lanyards were used in situations where there was a good chance of losing the object - commonly by cavalry and naval officers at sea. A well-made pistol lanyard can be easily removed and reattached by the user, but otherwise will stay connected to the pistol whether it is drawn or in a holster. Lanyards later became a more decorative item.

Lanyards of various colour combinations and braid patterns are also commonly worn on the shoulders of military uniforms to denote the wearer's qualification or regimental affiliation. Many regiments were originally mounted and wore the lanyard on the left, enabling the rider to pull a whistle from his left tunic pocket and maintain communication with his troop.

Styles

Simple lanyards made of braided fabric with a clip attached to the end are used frequently in retail and business situations for holding name badges. The typical arrangement is to attach a plastic pouch with at least one clear side to the lanyard, with the person's name badge facing the front and occasionally small items such as business cards, pens or tools stashed behind the badge for easy access. Such lanyards can also be used as keychains, particularly in situations where keys can easily be lost for lack of storage, such as gyms, public pools and communal showers.

Common lanyard materials include polyester, nylon, satin, silk, and Polyethylene terephthalate or PET.

Other uses

Lanyards are widely used with small electronic devices such as cameras, MP3 players and USB flash drives to prevent loss or dropping. Electronics designed to take a lanyard usually have a small through-hole built into a corner or edge of the case or anchored to the frame of the device; the corresponding lanyard generally has a loop of thread on the end that is attached to that hole with a simple knot, usually a cow hitch. Some earphones incorporate the audio signal into the lanyard, meaning it doubles up as headphone cords as well. The Wii Remote wrist strap is a form of lanyard, keeping the device attached to a player's arm during the often vigorous movements involved in its use.

Lanyards are commonly used to display badges, tickets or ID cards for identification where security is required, for example, public places such as hospitals, prisons and some schools or in commercial enterprises as well as public gatherings such as concerts, conventions and trade fairs.

In these cases, lanyards are often customized with the related name and/or logo of the event, business, or organization. Lanyards can feature a variety of customization techniques including screen-printing, Jacquard loom weaving, heat transfer, and offset printing.

Lanyards are also often attached to dead man's switches or "kill switches" on dangerous machinery, such as large industrial cutting/slicing machines; on vehicles, such as jet-skis or trains; and on exercise treadmills, so that if the operator suddenly becomes incapacitated, their fall will pull on the lanyard attached to their wrist, which will then pull the switch to immediately stop the machine or vehicle.

Some law enforcement officers and members of the military utilize specialized lanyards to keep sidearms from falling to the ground during missions.

Military Lanyards

Certain lanyards are still worn on uniforms as decorations. Among these are the Orange Lanyard in the Military William Order of the Netherlands, and the German Armed Forces Badge of Marksmanship.

Also

Lanyard can also refer to Scoubidou, (also called Gimp, Scoubi, Scoobie, or Boondoggle). It is a plaiting and knotting craft, originally aimed at children, which originated in France, where it became a fad in the late 1950s. Scoubidou-making is a popular pastime at summer camps for children, often employed to keep the children busy.

See also

Rope splicing

Halyard

Access badge

References

External links

"The Lanyard" - Poem by Billy Collins

Lanyard Lanyard Lanyard Category:Bracelets Category:Necklaces

ca:Acollador cs:Lanyard de:Lanyard es:Acollador fr:Dragonne it:Dragona lt:Rankosaitis pl:Felcech ru:Темляк uk:Темляк

birth date	March 22, 1941
birth place	New York City, New York, United States
occupation	Professor, Poet, Author, Anthologist
nationality	American
notable works	''The Apple That Astonished Paris'', ''Questions About Angels'', ''The Art of Drowning'' }}

Billy Collins (born William James Collins March 22, 1941) is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004-2006.

Biography

Early years

Collins was born in New York City to William and Katherine Collins. Katherine Collins was a nurse who stopped working to raise the couple's only child. Mrs. Collins had the ability to recite verses on almost any subject, which she often did, and cultivated in her young son the love of words, both written and spoken. Billy Collins attended Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains and received a B.A. (English) from the College of the Holy Cross in 1963 and received his M.A. and Ph.D in English from the University of California, Riverside. His professors at Riverside included Victorian scholar and poet Robert Peters. In 1975 Collins founded ''The Mid Atlantic Review'' with his good friend and co-editor, Michael Shannon.

Career

Collins is a Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College in the Bronx, where he joined the faculty in 1968 and has taught for over thirty years. Additionally, he is a founding Advisory Board member of the CUNY Institute for Irish-American Studies at Lehman College. He also has taught and served as a visiting writer at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York as well as teaching workshops across the U.S. and in Ireland. Collins is a member of the faculty of SUNY Stonybrook Southampton College, where he teaches poetry workshops. Collins was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2001 and held the title until 2003. Collins served as Poet Laureate for the State of New York from 2004 until 2006. Collins has been named Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Winter Park Institute in Winter Park, Florida, an affiliate of Rollins College. He is on the editorial board at The Alaska Quarterly Review, not actively involved since 2000. He is on the advisory board at the ''Southern Review'', and is similarly named in other journals

As U.S. Poet Laureate, Collins read his poem ''The Names'' at a special joint session of the United States Congress on September 6, 2002, held to remember the victims of the 9/11 attacks. Though, unlike their British counterparts, U.S. poets laureate are not asked or expected to write occasional poetry, Collins was asked by the Librarian of Congress to write a poem especially for that event. Collins initially refused to read "The Names" in public, though he has read it two times in public since 2002. He vows not to include it in any of his books, refusing to capitalize in any way on the 9/11 attacks. However, "The Names" was included in the ''The Poets Laureate Anthology,'' put out by the Library of Congress, for which Collins wrote the foreword. The only published version of "The Names," it contains a number of regrettable typographical errors. As Poet Laureate, Collins instituted the program ''Poetry 180'' for high schools. Collins chose 180 poems for the program and the accompanying book, ''Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry''-- one for each day of the school year. Collins edited a second anthology, ''180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day'' to refresh the supply of available poems. The program is online, and poems are available there for no charge.

In 1997, Collins recorded ''The Best Cigarette'', a collection of 34 of his poems, that would become a bestseller. In 2005, the CD was re-released under a Creative Commons license, allowing free, non-commercial distribution of the recording. He also recorded two of his poems for the audio versions of Garrison Keillor's collection ''Good Poems'' (2002). Collins has appeared on Keillor's radio show, ''A Prairie Home Companion'', numerous times, where he gained a portion of his large following. In 2005, Collins recorded "Billy Collins Live: A Performance at the Peter Norton Symphony Space" in New York City. Collins was introduced by his friend, actor Bill Murray.

Billy Collins has been called "The most popular poet in America" by the ''New York Times.'' When he moved from the University of Pittsburgh Press to Random House, the advance he received shocked the poetry world — a six-figure sum for a three-book deal, virtually unheard of in poetry. The deal secured for Collins through his literary agent, Chris Calhoun of Sterling Lord Literistic, with the editor Daniel Menaker, remained the talk of the poetry world, and indeed the literary world, for quite some time.

Over the years, the U.S. magazine ''Poetry'' has awarded Collins several prizes in recognition of poems they publish. During the 1990s, Collins won five such prizes. The magazine also selected him as "Poet of the Year" in 1994. In 2005 Collins was the first annual recipient of its Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and in 1993, from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

Awards and honors

1986, Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts

1983, Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts

1991, National Poetry Series publication prize - winner, Questions About Angels

1992, New York Public Library 'Literary Lion'

1993, Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation

1994, Poetry Magazine - Poet of the Year

1995, Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, Academy of American Poets - shortlist, The Art of Drowning

2001, US Poet Laureate

2002, US Poet Laureate

2004, New York State Poet Laureate

2005, Mark Twain Award for Humor in Poetry

Poetry collections

''Pokerface'' (1977)

''Video Poems'' (1980)

; University of Arkansas Press, 2006, ISBN 9781557288233

''Questions About Angels'' (1991)

''The Art of Drowning'' University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995, ISBN 9780822955672

''Picnic, Lightning'' (1998)

''Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes'' (2000)

; reprint Random House, Inc., 2002, ISBN 9780375755194 ; reprint Random House, Inc., 2007, ISBN 9780375755217

''She Was Just Seventeen'' (2006)

"Horoscopes for the Dead" (2011) ISBN 9781400064922

Editor

References

External links

The Library of Congress. Collins Online Resources

Biography

Billy Collins Biography at PoetryFoundation.org

Griffin Poetry Prize biography (2004 judge and award emcee)

Billy Collins biography at poets.org

Audio and video

Audio: Billy Collins reading at the 2003 Key West Literary Seminar

Audio: Billy Collins lecture and reading at the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar: "Dear Reader"

11 animated poems read by Billy Collins

Collins at Open-Door Poetry

33 poems read aloud by Billy Collins, no charge (Creative Commons)

Billy Collins reads "My Jacket is Polished Gray" from ''The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation''

Interviews

"The Pleasures of Disorientation": 2009 Interview on ''Littoral'', the Journal of the Key West Literary Seminar

Q&A; With Billy Collins

Author interview with Collins in Guernica Magazine (Guernicamag.com)

Category:American poets Category:American Poets Laureate Category:Lehman College faculty Category:College of the Holy Cross alumni Category:People from New York City Category:University of California, Riverside alumni Category:Sarah Lawrence College faculty Category:1941 births Category:Living people

de:Billy Collins fa:بیلی کالینز fr:Billy Collins it:Billy Collins he:בילי קולינס simple:Billy Collins fi:Billy Collins