SMPTE 421M, informally known as VC-1, which was initially developed as a proprietary video format by Microsoft, was released as a SMPTE video codec standard on April 3, 2006. It is today a supported standard found in Blu-ray Discs, Windows Media, Microsoft's Silverlight framework, Slingbox, and the now-discontinued HD DVD.

Format

VC-1 is an evolution of the conventional DCT-based video codec design also found in H.261, H.263, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 Part 2. It is widely characterized as an alternative to the latest ITU-T and MPEG video codec standard known as H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. VC-1 contains coding tools for interlaced video sequences as well as progressive encoding. The main goal of VC-1 Advanced Profile development and standardization was to support the compression of interlaced content without first converting it to progressive, making it more attractive to broadcast and video industry professionals.

Both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc have adopted VC-1 as a video standard, meaning their video playback devices will be capable of decoding and playing video-content compressed using VC-1. Windows Vista partially supports HD DVD playback by including the VC-1 decoder and some related components needed for playback of VC-1 encoded HD DVD movies.

Microsoft has designated VC-1 as the Xbox 360 video game console’s official video format, and game developers may use VC-1 for full motion video included with games. By means of an October 31, 2006 update, people can now play all formats of Windows Media Video on the Xbox 360 from a disc, USB storage device, or streaming from their PC via Windows Media Connect/Windows Media Player 11. This allows anyone to play VC-1 encoded video on the console.

VC-1 is also supported in the PlayStation 3 console and the FFmpeg project includes a free VC-1 decoder.

Microsoft codec implementations

The VC-1 codec specification has so far been implemented by Microsoft in the form of 3 codecs, each identified with a unique four character code.

WMV3

Simple and Main Profiles of VC-1 remained completely faithful to the existing WMV3 implementation, making WMV3 bitstreams fully VC-1 compliant. The WMV3 codec was designed to primarily support progressive encoding for computer displays. An interlaced encoding mode was implemented, but quickly became deprecated when Microsoft started implementing WMV Advanced Profile. Whereas WMV3 progressive encoding was implemented in the YUV 4:2:0 color space, the deprecated interlaced mode was implemented in the less common YUV 4:1:1 color space.

The Windows Media Video 9 (WMV3) codec implements the Simple and Main modes of the VC-1 codec standard, providing high-quality video for streaming and downloading. "It provides support for a wide range of bit rates, from high-definition content at one-half to one-third the bit rate of MPEG-2, to low-bit-rate Internet video delivered over a dial-up modem. This codec also supports professional-quality downloadable video with two-pass and variable bit rate (VBR) encoding. Windows Media Video 9 is already supported by a wide variety of players and devices."

A number of high definition movies and videos have been released commercially in a format dubbed WMV HD. These titles are encoded with WMV3 Main Profile @ High Level (MP@HL).

WMVA

WMVA was the original implementation of WMV Advanced Profile prior to the acceptance of the VC-1 draft by SMPTE. The codec was distributed with Windows Media Player 10 and Windows Media Format SDK 9.5 install packages. There are slight bitstream differences between WMVA and WVC1, so consequently WMVA is handled by a different DirectShow decoder than WVC1. Some 3rd party hardware and software decoders only decode WMVA based content. As of 2006, WMVA is considered a deprecated codec because it is not fully VC-1 compliant.

WVC1

WVC1, also known as Windows Media Video 9 Advanced Profile, implements a more recent and fully compliant Advanced Profile of the VC-1 codec standard. It offers support for interlaced content and is transport independent. With the previous version of the Windows Media Video 9 Series codec, users could deliver progressive content at data rates as low as one-third that of the MPEG-2 codec and still get equivalent or comparable quality to MPEG-2. The Windows Media Video 9 Advanced Profile codec also offers this same improvement in encoding efficiency with interlaced contents. A decoder for WVC1 is included in Windows Media Player 11, which is bundled with Windows Vista and is available as a download for Windows XP. This implementation is supported in Microsoft Silverlight.

Profiles

!	!Simple	!Main	!Advanced
! Baseline intra frame compression
! Variable-sized transform
! 16-bit transform
! Overlapped transform
! 4 motion vector per macroblock
! ¼ pixel luminance motion compensation
! ¼ pixel chrominance motion compensation
! Start codes
! Extended motion vectors
! Loop filter
! Dynamic resolution change
! Adaptive macroblock quantisation
! B frames
! Intensity compensation
! Range adjustment
! Field and frame coding modes
Group of pictures>GOP Layer
! Display metadata
!	!Simple	!Main	!Advanced

Bit rates and resolutions

! Profile	! Level	Bit rate>Bit Rate	! Resolution / Framerate
	Low	96 kbit/s
Medium	384 kbit/s
	Low	2 Mbit/s	320 × 240 / 24 (QVGA)
Medium	10 Mbit/s	720 × 480 / 30 (480p)720 × 576 / 25 (576p)
High	20 Mbit/s	1920 × 1080 / 30 (1080p)
	L0	2 Mbit/s	352 × 288 / 30 (CIF)
L1	10 Mbit/s	720 × 480 / 30 (NTSC-SD)720 × 576 / 25 (PAL-SD)
L2	20 Mbit/s	720 × 480 / 60 (480p)1280 × 720 / 30 (720p)
L3	45 Mbit/s	1920 × 1080 / 24 (1080p)1920 × 1080 / 30 (1080i)1280 × 720 / 60 (720p)
L4	135 Mbit/s	1920 × 1080 / 60 (1080p)2048 × 1536 / 24

Other implementations

Due to its origins in Microsoft's WMV9 codec, the most popular implementations of VC-1 encoders have so far been done by Microsoft, though third-party implementations exist as well. Sonic Cinevision PSE, a professional VC-1 encoding tool used predominantly in HD DVD and Blu-ray encoding, is a commercial version of Microsoft's PEP (Parallel Encoder) encoding tool and VC-1 Analyzer tool. Microsoft owns the code development whereas Sonic Solutions owns the sales and distribution. Microsoft also provides a separate VC-1 Encoder SDK which allows any company or software developer to integrate VC-1 encoding into their applications. Non-Microsoft VC-1 implementations (based entirely on the SMPTE specifications) have been done by Tandberg Television, MainConcept and Enciris Technologies. The FFmpeg project includes a free VC-1 decoder.

Encoding software

Windows Media Encoder 9 Series encodes VC-1 compliant video files, including WVC1 FourCC media. Windows Media Format 11 Runtime or Windows Media Player 11 must be installed on the computer to ensure full VC-1 compliance across all three profiles (Simple, Main and Advanced). If either of these are installed, Windows Movie Maker can also save VC-1 compliant videos, as can any other application built on the Windows Media Format SDK or Windows Media Codec DMOs. A Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition was initially announced for professional encoding but later cancelled by Microsoft. Microsoft Expression Encoder which is part of Expression Studio supports encoding VC-1 video to the Windows Media (ASF) file format and the IIS Smooth Streaming format.

Video encoder products made by Inlet, Digital Rapids, Harmonic, Envivio, Elemental, Anystream, Telestream and Rhozet support VC-1 encoding (based on the Microsoft VC-1 Encoder SDK) for IPTV and Web streaming.

Hardware-based encoding and decoding

Because VC-1 encoding and decoding requires significant computing power, software implementation that run on a general-purpose CPU are typically slow, especially when dealing with HD video content. To reduce CPU usage or to do real-time encoding, special-purpose hardware may be employed, either for the complete encoding or decoding process, or for acceleration assistance within a CPU-controlled environment. A hardware VC-1 encoder can be an ASIC or an FPGA.

Hardware-accelerated (also known as hardware-assisted) video decoding can either be done on dedicated, special-purpose hardware or on generic, multi-purpose hardware such as GPUs. The former is typically found in consumer electronics devices such as Blu-ray Disc players and 3G/4G mobile phones, while the latter is typically found in PCs. Nearly all video cards manufactured since 2006 support some level of GPU-accelerated VC-1 decoding on the Windows platform via DirectX Video Acceleration APIs. The native Windows WMV9/VC-1 decoder (wmvdecod.dll) only supports DXVA profiles A, B and C, while 3rd party VC-1 decoders such as Cyberlink's support the full DXVA Profile D decode acceleration. There is no support for GPU-accelerated VC-1 decode on the MacOS platform.

Legal status

Although widely considered to be Microsoft’s product, there are fifteen member companies within the VC-1 patent pool (as of August 17, 2006). As an SMPTE standard, VC-1 is open to implementation by anyone, although implementers may be required to pay licensing fees to the MPEG LA, LLC licensing body or directly to its members, who claim to hold essential patents on the format (since it is a non-exclusive licensing body).

See also

Comparison of H.264 and VC-1

Video Compression

VC-2 (Dirac)

References

External links

VC-1 reference software analysis at the MultimediaWiki

RFC 4425 – IETF RTP Payload Format for Video Codec 1

Category:Video codecs Category:Microsoft initiatives

ar:في سي 1 ca:VC-1 da:VC-1 es:VC-1 fr:VC-1 it:VC-1 nl:VC-1 (videocodec) ja:VC-1 pt:VC-1 ru:VC-1 fi:VC-1 yo:VC-1 zh:VC-1

Name	Tony Conrad
Birth name	Anthony S. Conrad
Birth place	Concord, New Hampshire
Nationality	United States
Occupation	Experimental filmmaker, musician/composer
Website	tonyconrad.net }}

Tony Conrad (born Anthony S. Conrad in 1940 in Concord, New Hampshire) is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer. His father was Arthur Conrad, who worked with Everett Warner during World War II in designing dazzle camouflage for the US Navy.

Conrad is a graduate of Harvard University (A.B., 1962, major Mathematics).

Support for Conrad's work has come from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the State University of New York, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Film

Conrad's most famous film, ''The Flicker'' (1966), is considered a key early work of the structural film movement. The film consists of only completely black and completely white images, which, as the title suggests, produces a flicker when projected. When the film was first screened several viewers in the audience became physically ill. (Rapid flashes produce epileptic attacks in a small percentage of population.) Conrad began to work in video and performance in the 1970s as a professor at Antioch College in Ohio and the Center for Media Studies at the University at Buffalo.

Another of Conrad's early films, "Coming Attractions" (1970) led indirectly to the founding of Syntonic Research and the Environments series of natural sound recordings.

Conrad's work has been shown at many museums including the Museum of Modern Art and P.S. 1 in New York City. In 1991, he had a video retrospective at The Kitchen, an artist-run-organization in New York City. His film ''The Flicker'' was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art's exhibition, ''The American Century.'' In 2006, the full hour-long recording of Conrad's ''Joan of Arc'' was released, a 1968 recording for the soundtrack to Piero Heliczer's like-named short film.

Conrad has been a faculty member in the State University of New York at Buffalo since 1976. He continues to teach there in the Department of Media Study as well as work on many notable B&W; film image projects with Princess G. St. Mary.

Music

In music, Conrad was an early (though not original) member of the Theatre of Eternal Music, nicknamed ''The Dream Syndicate'', which included John Cale, Angus MacLise, La Monte Young, and Marian Zazeela, and utilized just intonation and sustained sound (drones) to produce what the group called "dream music" (and is now called drone music).

The Theater of Eternal Music performed pieces consisting of long extended tones, in which the performers sustained harmonically related pitches for the duration of each piece. Often, Young performed complex improvisations on saxophone or voice. In recent years, Young (who retains many original recordings) has claimed authorship for the "compositions" the group performed. However, Conrad has characterized those works as collaboration for which he, Angus MacLise, and John Cale should share collective credit. These views remain a source of contention for Conrad and, to a lesser extent, Cale among the former participants in the group.

Conrad's first musical release, and only release for many years, was a 1972 collaboration with the German "Krautrock" group Faust, ''Outside the Dream Syndicate'', published by Caroline (UK) in 1973. This remains his best known musical work and is considered a classic of minimalist music and drone music.

Recently, Conrad has composed more than a dozen audio works with special scales and tuning for solo amplified violin with amplified strings. Recent releases include ''Early Minimalism Volume 1'', a four-CD set, ''Slapping Pythagoras'', ''Four Violins'' (recorded in the 1960s), ''Outside the Dream Syndicate Alive'' (with Faust, from London 1995), and ''Fantastic Glissando''. He also issued two archival CDs featuring the work of late New York filmmaker Jack Smith, with whom he was associated in the 1960s. He released the 1968 recording of ''Joan of Arc'' in 2006. Conrad played together with Rhys Chatham in an early ensemble. Conrad has been chosen by Animal Collective to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that they will curate in May 2011.

Conrad and The Velvet Underground

Conrad is known as being indirectly responsible for the name of The Velvet Underground, although he was not an actual member of the famous group. Lou Reed and John Cale found a book entitled ''The Velvet Underground,'' which had belonged to Conrad, after moving into his old apartment on Ludlow Street in New York City.

References

External links

Tony Conrad Website

Interview with Tony Conrad, 1996

"About Tony Conrad" from the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany

The Tony Conrad Project

Tony Conrad in the Video Data Bank

Tony Conrad's MySpace Page

Tony Conrad faculty page at University at Buffalo

Video

PUNKCAST#1143-02 Live @ Swiss Institute NYC on May 2, 2007. (Flash)

Category:1940 births Category:American experimental filmmakers Category:Living people Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Noise musicians Category:University at Buffalo faculty Category:Video artists

cs:Tony Conrad de:Tony Conrad fr:Tony Conrad lt:Tony Conrad

The following is a list of significant men and women known for being the father, mother, or considered the founders mostly in Western socities in a field, listed by category. In most non-science fields, the title of being the "father" is debatable.

Church

Games

Subject	Father/Mother	Reason
Miniature wargaming	H.G. Wells
	Nolan Bushnell	Creator of ''Pong'' and founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese's
	Shigeru Miyamoto	Creator of many successful Nintendo franchises
Role-playing game	Gary Gygax	Creator of ''Dungeons & Dragons''
Stealth game	Hideo Kojima
Video game	Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr.	Inventor of the First video game
Wargaming	Charles S. Roberts

Humanities

Military

Subject	Father/Mother	Reason
Aerial warfare	Oswald Boelcke	The first to formalize rules of air fighting, which he presented as the Dicta Boelcke, also credited as being the first pilot to shoot down an aircraft.
Atomic bomb	Robert OppenheimerLeó SzilárdEnrico Fermi
Blitzkrieg	Heinz Guderian
	Edward Teller
Atomic submarine and "nuclear navy"	Hyman G. Rickover
Fourth Generation Warfare	William S. Lind
	Jean-Baptiste Colbert	Built on the fleet of France inherited from Cardinal Richelieu.
Naval Special Warfare	Phil H. Bucklew	US Naval Officer and First Commanding Officer of Navy SEAL Team One
Naval tactical studies	Paul Hoste	Jesuit Professor of Mathematics at the Royal College of the Marine in Toulon; wrote ''L'Art des Armées Navales'' (1697)
Luftwaffe and Luftstreitkräfte	Oswald Boelcke
The Soviet Union's Hydrogen Bomb	Andrei Sakharov
	William C. Lee	First commander of the parachute school at Fort Benning, Georgia.
	Kazimierz Pułaski	Brigadier-general and commander of the cavalry of the Continental Army (1770s).
United States Navy
Subject	Father/Mother	! Reason
[[American football">John Barry (naval officer)

Nations

Natural and social sciences

Sports

Subject	Father/Mother	! Reason
[[American football	Walter Camp
American motocross	Edison Dye	Introduced motorcross to American riders.
American road racing	Cameron Argetsinger
		Godfather, created the New York Cosmos soccer team and imported a number of well known international footballers to the team in an attempt to bring interest to soccer in the US.
Angling	Izaak Walton	Author of ''The Compleat Angler''.
	Alexander Watson Hutton
Argentine professional golf	José Jurado
Argentine winter sports	Otto Meiling
Association football	Ebenezer Cobb Morley
Baseball
Basketball	James Naismith
	Scot Breithaupt
	Charles William Miller
	Jim Downing	Built a racecar a season before it became the basis of a new lightweight prototype class in .
		Coined the rodeo term "stampede" and was world's first rodeo producer, rodeo stock contractor, and rodeo champion in 1902.
	Wally Parks
Don Garlits	Considered to be one of the innovators of drag racing safety.
Eddie Hill	Regarded as the forefather of drag racing.
	Kunimitsu Takahashi
East Coast skateboarding	Vinny Raffa (godfather)
Florida skateboarding	Bruce Walker (godfather)
	Ebenezer Cobb Morley
Freestyle BMX	Bob Haro
Freestyle Motocross	Mike Metzger	Godfather.
Funny Car	Dick Landy
Ice Hockey	James Creighton (ice hockey)	Captained of one of the two teams that participated in the first indoor hockey game on March 3, 1875 in Montreal.
	Frank Choi	Hosted one of the first events specifially for import cars in the mid-1990s to keep drivers out of street racing that progressed into a professional category.
rowspan="2"	James Richardson Spensley
William Garbutt	Laying the foundations of skilled coaching in Italian football.
rowspan="2"		Credited for introducing baseball in Japan.
Hiroshi Hiraoka	Credited for establishing the first baseball team.
Jogging	Jim Fixx	Founding father.
Kart racing	Art Ingels	Developed the world's first kart (1956).
Lacrosse	William George Beers	Codified the sport.
Mixed martial arts	Bruce Lee	Called so by Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. For his experimentation into other styles and invention of Jeet Kune Do.
	Eugen Sandow
	Called so by Arnold Schwarzenegger during a press statement on his passing in 2004. Inventor of the modern exercise machines.
	James Figg
James J. Corbett
Modern figure skating	Jackson Haines	"Jackson Haines - The Father of Figure Skating," according to Roy Blakey
	Dettmar Cramer
	Earl W. Bascom	Bascom's many equipment innovations pioneered the sport starting in 1916.
	Italo Santelli
Modern surfing	Duke Kahanamoku
	Earl W. Bascom	Bascom designed and made the first one-hand rigging in 1924.
	A. G. Guillemard
William Webb Ellis	"Who with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time first took the ball in his arms and ran with it thus originating the distinctive feature of the rugby game".
Scuba diving	Jacques Cousteau	Developed the aqua-lung jointly with Émile Gagnan; popularized scuba diving as a research diver, writer, and film and television producer and personality.
	Skip Engblom (godfather)
Tony Hawk (godfather)
Snowboarding	Jake Burton Carpenter
Stock car racing	Bill France, Sr.	Foundation of the sanctioning body for stock car racing
	Mike Goodwin	Organized the first supercross race.
	Frank Chirkinian	Personally responsible for much of the production conventions of modern golf broadcasting.

Technology

Fields

Subject	Father/Mother	Reason
Aerodynamics (modern)	Sir George Cayley	Founding father of modern Aerodynamics. The first to identify the four aerodynamic forces of flight—weight, Lift (force)
[[Architecture	Imhotep	Built the first pyramid
Astronautics	Konstantin Tsiolkovsky	Robert H. GoddardHermann Oberth
Aviation		Book: ''Prodromo alla Arte Maestra'' (1670). First to describe the geometry and physics of a flying vessel.
	Thomas Tompion
Clinical trials	James Lind	Conducted the first Scientific control
[[Computing	Charles Babbage	Inventor of the Analytical Engine which was never constructed in his lifetime.
Cybernetics	Norbert Wiener
Genetics	Gregor Mendel	Founder of the Genetics
	William F. Moran	Founder of the American Bladesmith Society
	Ferdinand Freudenstein	Applied digital computation to the kinematic synthesis of mechanisms.
	Bob Loveless	Founder of the Knifemakers' Guild
Photography

Inventions

Subject	Father/Mother	Reason
Air conditioning	Willis Carrier
	Dennis Ritchie
Chronograph
Compact Disc
Compiler	Grace Hopper
	Konrad Zuse	Invented world's first functional program-controlled computer.
Alan Turing	Was a secret code breaker during WWII and invented the Turing machine (1936).
John von Neumann	Became "intrigued" with Turing's universal machine and later emphasised the importance of the stored-program concept for electronic computing (1945), including the possibility of allowing the machine to modify its own program in useful ways while running.
	Invented the digital computer in the 1930s
	Invented the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) in 1946. ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.
Computer Program	Ada Lovelace	Recognized by historians as the writer of the world's first computer program which was for the Charles Babbage Analytical Engine, but was never complete within either her or his lifetime.
Ekranoplan	Rostislav Alexeev
Helicopter	Igor Sikorsky	Invented the first successful helicopter, upon which further designs were based.
Internet	Vint CerfBob Kahn
Instant noodle	Momofuku Ando	Inventor of the instant noodle, also founder of Nissin Foods to produce and market them.
Japanese television	Kenjiro Takayanagi
Jet engine	Frank Whittle
Karaoke	Daisuke Inoue	Inventor of the machine as a means of allowing people to sing without the need of a live back-up.
Laser	Charles Hard Townes
Lightning prediction system	Alexander Stepanovich Popov	The first lightning prediction system, the Lightning detector, was invented in 1894 by Alexander Stepanovich Popov.
Marine chronometer	John Harrison
Microprocessor	Marcian Hoff Masatoshi Shima
Mobile phone		He is the main brainchild of hand-held phone and with the help of Motorola team he developed the first handset in 1973 weighing in at two kilos.
	Vinod Dham	The original Pentium (P5) was developed by a team of engineers, including John H. Crawford, chief architect of the original 386, and Donald Alpert, who managed the architectural team. Dror Avnon managed the design of the FPU. Dham was general manager of the P5 group. Some media sources have called him the "father of the Pentium".
	Chuck Peddle	Developed the 6502 microprocessor, the KIM-1 and the Commodore PET
Programmable logic controller	Dick Morley
Radio	Alexander Stepanovich Popov Lee De Forest Guglielmo Marconi Jagdish Chandra Bose Nikola Tesla
Radio (Radio broadcasting)	Reginald Fessenden David Sarnoff	Fessenden is credited as the first to broadcast radio signals on Christmas Eve, 1906. Sarnoff proposed a chain of radio stations to Marconi's associates in 1915.
Radio (FM radio)	Edwin H. Armstrong	Obtained the first Federal Communications Commission (FCC) license to operate an FM station in Alpine, New Jersey at approximately 50 megahertz (1939)
Radiotelephony	Reginald Fessenden
Search Engine	Alan Emtage	Created Archie, a pre-Web search engine which pioneered many of the techniques used by subsequent search engines
SGML	Charles Goldfarb
Telephone	Alexander Graham Bell	See Invention of the telephone
Television	Philo T. Farnsworth			Vladimir Zworykin			John Logie Baird	Co-Inventors of the Electronic Television. Farnsworth invented the Image dissector while Zworykin created the Iconoscope, both fully electronic forms of television. Logie Baird invented the world's first working television system, also the first electronic color television system.
Tokamak	Lev Artsimovich
	Fazlur Khan	Invented the tube structural system and first employed it in his designs for the DeWitt-Chestnut Apartments, John Hancock Center and Sears Tower.
World Wide Web	Tim Berners-Lee
Visual Basic	Alan Cooper
XML	Jon Bosak

Towns, cities and regions

Subject	Father/Mother	! Reason
British Columbia		Fur trader and manager for the North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company, Governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island and first Governor of the Colony of British Columbia.
Lan Kwai Fong	Allan Zeman	Noted for turning a small square of streets in
Subject	Father/Mother	! Reason
	[[Henry Ford">Central, Hong Kong

Transport

Subject	Father/Mother	! Reason
	[[Henry Ford	Noted for introducing a simple and affordable car for the ordinary American masses.
American Interstate Highway System	Dwight D. Eisenhower
	Gene Berg
Hot rod	Ed Winfield
	RJ DeVera	Influential for popularising the import car scene in the mid-1990s.
Kustom Kulture
Monster truck
Mountain bike	Gary Fisher
Rotary engine	Felix Wankel
	Cyrus Avery
Tailfin	Harley Earl
Traffic safety	William Phelps Eno
	Frank W. Cyr

See also

List of inventors

Father of medicare

Founders of statistics

References

Father or mother of something Father or mother of something, List of people known as

ar:آباء العلوم fa:فهرست افراد دارای لقب پدر یا مادر در یک زمینه

:''This article concerns the PIMCO bond manager; for the business-startup manager, see Bill Gross (entrepreneur)''

name	Bill Gross
birth date	April 13, 1944
birth place	Middletown, Ohio
death date
nationality	American
known for	Co-founder of PIMCO
net worth	$2.2 billion (2011)
alma mater	UCLA (M.B.A.) Duke University }}

William Hunt "Bill" Gross (born April 13, 1944) is an American financial manager and investment author who co-founded Pacific Investment Management (PIMCO). Gross also runs PIMCO's $252.2 billion Total Return Fund.

Early life and career

Gross was born in Middletown, Ohio, the son of Shirley, a homemaker, and Sewell M. Gross, a sales manager for AK Steel Holding. He was raised a Presbyterian. His family moved to San Francisco in 1954. Gross graduated from Duke University in 1966 with a degree in psychology. At Duke he joined Phi Kappa Psi. He then served in the Navy and earned an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management in 1971. Gross briefly played blackjack professionally in Las Vegas, Nevada, and has said that he applies many of his gambling methods for spreading risk and calculating odds to his investment decisions. He is also a CFA Charterholder, earning his credentials while working as an investment analyst for Pacific Mutual Life between 1971 and 1976.

Gross manages one of the world's largest mutual funds, focusing mostly on bonds. Called "the nation's most prominent bond investor" by the ''New York Times'', he co-founded Pacific Investment Management (PIMCO) and currently manages PIMCO's Total Return fund (the world's largest bond fund and fifth largest mutual fund) and several smaller ones.

In the 1990s he authored two popular-market books on investing, ''Bill Gross on Investing'' and ''Everything You've Heard About Investing is Wrong.'' In September 2008, by holding large positions in agency backed mortgage bonds of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Gross's funds netted U.S. $1.7 billion after the Federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for which he had lobbied.

According to Forbes, in 2011, he is the 564th richest person in the world, with a net worth of $2.1 billion.

Personal life

Gross is Married to Sue J. Gross. They have two children together.

Gross is also a prominent stamp collector. As of November 2005, he became the third person (after Robert Zoellner in the 1990s and Benjamin K Miller pre-1925) to form a complete collection of 19th century United States postage stamps. In October 2005, he purchased at auction for $2.97 million a unique plate block of the famous 1918 24-cent U.S. airmail stamps known as the "Inverted Jenny," featuring an engraving of a Curtiss JN-4 biplane printed upside-down. He then traded the Inverted Jenny Plateblock to Donald Sundman, President of Mystic Stamp Company, a stamp dealer, for a 1-cent 1868 "Z Grill" depicting Benjamin Franklin, thus completing Gross's 19th century collection.

In 2009, Gross bought a house on Harbor Island in Newport Beach, CA for 23 million and then tore it down.

In July 2011, Gross purchased the former home of actress Jennifer Aniston for a reported $42 million.

Philanthropy

In 2005, Gross donated $23.5 million to Duke University, $20 million of which was set aside for financial aid.

In 2006, Gross donated to Médecins Sans Frontières the 9.1 million U.S. dollars that he earned from the auction at Shreves Philatelic Galleries of his British philatelic collections. His Scandinavian and Finnish collections were sold by Spink auction house in May 2008 to make a donation to the Millennium Villages Project.

Bibliography

References

External links

Speech inducting Bill Gross into the Fixed Income Analysts Society Hall of Fame

New York Times article on Gross's stamp collecting

The Bill Gross' Way of Making Money (Market Thoughts)

The William Gross Stamp Collection

Gross auction at Shreves Philatelic Galleries

Bill Gross interviewed by American business news journalist Consuelo Mack

Category:1944 births Category:American billionaires Category:American finance and investment writers Category:American philatelists Category:Duke University alumni Category:Living people Category:People from California Category:People from Middletown, Ohio Category:University of California, Los Angeles alumni Category:Villa Romana prize winners

de:William H. Gross fr:William H. Gross ko:빌 그로스 zh:比尔·格罗斯

Mark Jeffrey (1825-1903) was an English convict transported to Australia. He was known as "Big Mark", the grave digger on the Isle of the Dead Cemetery at Port Arthur, Tasmania. While a living alone on the island for several years he dug his own grave, which he carefully tended, patting down the sides with a spade to kill marauding worms. Before his death in 1903 he wrote his autobiography which provides an interesting insight into convict life.

References

Category:1825 births Category:1903 deaths Category:Convicts transported to Australia