North Sails

North Sails is an international sailmaker with operations in 29 countries. The company designs, engineers and manufactures sails for racing and cruising sailboats from 8 feet (2.5m) to 200 feet (60m) in length. Licensees manufacture clothing and windsurfing sails. North Sails is the world’s largest sailmaker, with annual sales of $110 million in 2011. Sails by North Sails are used by the majority of competitors in the Volvo Ocean Race and the America’s Cup.

History

North Sails was founded in 1957 by Lowell North, in San Diego, California. An engineer by training, North applied a rigorous, methodical approach to designing sails, with the goal of building sails that were faster than the competition’s. North began testing the strength and stretch characteristics of sailcloth he received from his suppliers, to eliminate variability in his raw materials. He introduced computer-driven cloth cutting machines, to increase the consistency and repeatability of a sail design. North was a pioneer in computer modelling of sail forces and structural loads. North used a laminated Mylar and Dacron sail on the 12-metre Enterprise in 1977. North’s emphasis on computer technologies and new materials is reflected in the company today, which makes intensive use of computer assisted design and specialised finite element analysis (FEA) and Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, and which has introduced a number of innovations in materials and manufacturing processes.

Sail

A sail is a catchment device designed to receive and redirect a force upon a generous surface area. Traditionally, the surface was engineered of woven fabric and supported by a mast, whose purpose is to propel a sailing vessel. Sails may be configured in many ways to include traditionally understood maritime purposes, as well as land vehicles and solar collection purposes. The rich encyclopedic history of maritime sails suggests alternative uses of the technology well documented.

History of sails

Archaeological studies of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture ceramics show use of sailing boats from the sixth millennium onwards. Excavations of the Ubaid period (c. 6000 -4300 BC) in Mesopotamia provides direct evidence of sailing boats. Sails from ancient Egypt are depicted around 3200 BCE, where reed boats sailed upstream against the River Nile's current. Ancient Sumerians used square rigged sailing boats at about the same time, and it is believed they established sea trading routes as far away as the Indus valley. The proto-Austronesian words for sail, lay(r), and other rigging parts date to about 3000 BCE when this group began their Pacific expansion.Greeks and Phoenicians began trading by ship by around 1,200 BCE.

Sails (album)

Sails is an album by Chet Atkins. It was released in 1987 by Columbia Records. Sails follows in the 1980s' vein of Chet Atkins' releases with a smooth jazz and new age atmosphere.

Reception

Allmusic music critic Richard S. Ginell wrote of the album; "this recording veers well across the line into new age wallowing of the most innocuous kind... this is not one of the better Atkins Columbia discs."

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North

North is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. North is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west.

Etymology

The word north is related to the Old High German nord, both descending from the Proto-Indo-European unit ner-, meaning "down" (or "under"). (Presumably a natural primitive description of its concept is "to the left of the rising sun".)

The Latin word borealis comes from the Greek boreas "north wind, north", which, according to Ovid, was personified as the son of the river-god Strymon, the father of Calais and Zetes. Septentrionalis is from septentriones, "the seven plow oxen", a name of Ursa Maior. The Greek arktikos is named for the same constellation, and is the derivation of the English word "Arctic".

Other languages have sometimes more interesting derivations. For example, in Lezgian, kefer can mean both 'disbelief' and 'north', since to the north of the Muslim Lezgian homeland there are areas formerly inhabited by non-Muslim Caucasian and Turkic peoples. In many languages of Mesoamerica, "north" also means "up". In Hungarian the word for north is észak, which is derived from éjszaka ("night"), since above the Tropic of Cancer, the Sun never shines from the north.

Union (American Civil War)

During the American Civil War, the Union was the term used to refer to the United States of America, and specifically to the national government and the 23 free states and five border slave states that supported it. The Union was opposed by 11 southern slave states that formed the Confederate States of America, or "the Confederacy".

All of the Union's states provided soldiers for the U.S. Army; the border areas also sent large numbers of soldiers to the Confederacy. The Border states played a major role as a supply base for the Union invasion of the Confederacy. The Northeast provided the industrial resources for a mechanized war producing large quantities of munitions and supplies, as well as financing for the war. The Midwest provided soldiers, food and horses, as well as financial support and training camps. Army hospitals were set up across the Union. Most states had Republican governors who energetically supported the war effort and suppressed anti-war subversion in 1863–64. The Democratic Party strongly supported the war in 1861 but was split by 1862 between the War Democrats and the anti-war element led by the "Copperheads". The Democrats made major electoral gains in 1862 in state elections, most notably in New York. They lost ground in 1863, especially in Ohio. In 1864 the Republicans campaigned under the Union Party banner, which attracted many War Democrats and soldiers and scored a landslide victory for Lincoln and his entire ticket.

North (Mary Dillon album)

North is the debut solo album by the Irish folk singer Mary Dillon.

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Production

Notes and references