Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Elko ... Elsheimer, Adam

Elko: county, northeastern corner of Nevada, U.S., bordering Idaho on the north and Utah on the east. The county is mountainous, including the Independence, Ruby, and Pequop ranges, with occasional valleys and a high plateau in the northwest, and contains two ...
Elkton: town, seat (1786) of Cecil county, northeastern Maryland, U.S. It lies near the Delaware state line, 21 miles (34 km) west-southwest of Wilmington. It was patented as Friendship in 1681 but was later known as Head of Elk (for its ...
Ellenborough, Edward Law, Earl of, Viscount Southam Of Southam, Baron Ellenborough Of Ellenborough: British governor-general of India (1842-44), who also served four times as president of the board of control for India and was first lord of the British Admiralty. He was recalled from India for being out of control and later resigned ...
Ellensburg: city, seat (1883) of Kittitas county, central Washington, U.S., on the Yakima River, 28 miles (45 km) north of Yakima. The first white man settled there in 1867, and three years later the valley's first trading post, called Robbers Roost, ...
Ellesmere Island: largest island of the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Baffin region, Nunavut territory, Canada, located off the northwest coast of Greenland. The island is believed to have been visited by Vikings in the 10th century. It was seen in 1616 by the ...
Ellesmere Port and Neston: borough (district), administrative and historic county of Cheshire, England, extending from the River Mersey to the River Dee at the southern end of the Wirral peninsula. Ellesmere Port is very much a 20th-century creation. The building of the Ellesmere Canal ...
Ellesmere, Lake: coastal lagoon, eastern South Island, New Zealand, just west of Banks Peninsula. It measures 14 by 8 miles (23 by 13 km) and is 70 square miles (180 square km) in area. Receiving runoff from a 745-square-mile (1,930-square-kilometre) basin through ...
Ellet, Charles: American engineer who built the first wire-cable suspension bridge in America.
Ellet, Elizabeth Fries Lummis: American historical writer, best remembered for her several extensive volumes of portraits of American women of the Revolutionary War and of Western pioneer days.
Ellington, Duke: American pianist who was the greatest jazz composer and bandleader. One of the originators of big-band jazz, Ellington led his band for more than half a century, composed thousands of scores, and created one of the most distinctive ensemble sounds ...
Elliot Lake: city, Algoma district, south-central Ontario, Canada. It lies along the Elliot and Horne lakes, midway between Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury and about 15 miles (25 km) north of Lake Huron's North Channel. Established in 1954 as a planned community ...
Elliotson, John: English physician who advocated the use of hypnosis in therapy and who in 1849 founded a mesmeric hospital. He was one of the first teachers in London to emphasize clinical lecturing and was one of the earliest of British physicians ...
Elliott, Denholm: British actor who appeared in many supporting character roles in theatre, in motion pictures, and on television during his 47-year career.
Elliott, Harriet Wiseman: American educator and public official, a highly effective teacher and organizer who held a number of governmental advisory roles during the administrations of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Elliott, Herb: Australian middle-distance runner who was world-record holder in the 1,500-metre (metric-mile) race (1958-67) and the mile race (1958-62). As a senior runner he never lost a mile or a 1,500-metre race.
ellipse: a closed curve, the intersection of a right circular cone (see cone) and a plane that is not parallel to the base, the axis, or an element of the cone. It may be defined as the path of a point ...
ellipsis: figure of speech characterized by the deliberate omission of a word or words that are, however, understood in light of the grammatical context. The device is exemplified in W.H. Auden's poem "This Lunar Beauty": But this was neverA ghost's endeavorNor ...
ellipsoid: closed surface of which all plane cross sections are either ellipses or circles. An ellipsoid is symmetrical about three mutually perpendicular axes that intersect at the centre.
elliptic equation: any of a class of partial differential equations describing phenomena that do not change from moment to moment, as when a flow of heat or fluid takes place within a medium with no accumulations. The Laplace equation, u_xx + u_yy ...
Ellis Island: island in Upper New York Bay, formerly the United States' principal immigration reception centre. The island lies about 1 mile (1.6 km) southwest of Manhattan Island, New York City, and about 1,300 feet (400 metres) east of the New Jersey ...
Ellis, Havelock: English essayist and physician who studied human sexual behaviour and challenged Victorian taboos against public discussion of the subject.
Ellison, Harlan: American writer of short stories, novels, essays, and television and film scripts; he is best known for his science-fiction writing and editing.
Ellison, Ralph: American teacher and writer who won eminence with his first and only novel, Invisible Man (1952).
Ellmann, Richard: American literary critic and scholar, an expert on the life and works of James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Oscar Wilde, and other modern British and Irish writers.
Ellora Caves: a series of 34 magnificent rock-cut temples located near the village of Ellora, 19 miles (30 km) northwest of Aurangabad town and 50 miles (80 km) southwest of the Ajanta Caves in Maharashtra state, western India. Spread over a distance ...
Ellsworth: city, seat (1789) of Hancock county, southern Maine, U.S. It lies at the falls of the Union River just south of Graham Lake, 26 miles (42 km) southeast of Bangor. It was settled in 1763, and its early development as ...
Ellsworth Land: region in Antarctica at the base of the Antarctic Peninsula, between the Ronne Ice Shelf and the Bellingshausen Sea, east of Marie Byrd Land. It embraces several mountain ranges, including the Ellsworth Mountains, the tallest peak of which, Vinson Massif ...
Ellsworth, Lincoln: American explorer, engineer, and scientist who led the first trans-Arctic (1926) and trans-Antarctic (1935) air crossings.
Ellsworth, Oliver: American statesman and jurist, chief author of the 1789 act establishing the U.S. federal court system. He was the third chief justice of the United States.
Ellul, Jacques: French political and social scientist, Protestant theologian, and philosopher of technology, best known for his antitechnological views, as expressed in his masterwork La Technique: ou, L'enjeu du siecle (1954; The Technological Society).
Ellwangen: city, Baden-Wurttemberg Land (state), southern Germany, on the Jagst River, north of Aalen. It originated around a Benedictine abbey, founded in 764 and transformed into a college of secular canons in 1460. Chartered in 1229, the town passed to Wurttemberg ...
elm: (genus Ulmus), any of about 18 species of forest and ornamental shade trees of the family Ulmaceae native primarily to North Temperate areas. Many are cultivated for their height and attractive foliage. Elm leaves are doubly toothed and often lopsided ...
elm bark beetle: any of several species of insect pests in the family Scolytidae (order Coleoptera). See bark beetle.
Elman, Mischa: violin virtuoso in the Romantic tradition, one of the foremost violinists of the 20th century.
Elmbridge: district and borough, administrative and historic county of Surrey, England. The borough comprises the former urban districts of Esher and of Walton and Weybridge. At the southwestern edge of the Greater London metropolitan area, the district is largely residential. It ...
Elmen, Gustav Waldemar: American electrical engineer and metallurgist who developed permalloys, metallic alloys with a high magnetic permeability. This property enables the alloy to be easily magnetized and demagnetized, and such alloys are important for use in electrical equipment.
Elmhurst: city, DuPage county, northeastern Illinois, U.S. It is a suburb of Chicago, lying 16 miles (26 km) west of downtown. Potawatomi Indians were early inhabitants of the area. Settled in 1836, it was originally called Cottage Hill for the Hill ...
Elmira: city, seat (1836) of Chemung county, southern New York, U.S. It lies on the Chemung River, near the Pennsylvania border, 60 miles (97 km) west of Binghamton. The first European settlement (1787) was incorporated as the village of Newtown in ...
Elmira College: private, coeducational institution of higher learning in Elmira, New York, U.S. It is a liberal arts college dedicated to undergraduate study in the arts and sciences. A master's degree program in education is also available. The college sponsors several study-abroad ...
Elmira system: American penal system named after Elmira Reformatory, in New York. In 1876 Zebulon R. Brockway became an innovator in the reformatory movement by establishing Elmira Reformatory for young felons. Brockway was much influenced by the mark system, developed in Australia ...
Elmore, Francis Edward and Alexander Stanley: British technologists, joint developers of flotation processes by which valuable ore, such as that of copper, is separated from the worthless material (gangue) with which it is usually extracted from the Earth.
Elmslie, George Grant: architect whose importance in the Prairie school of U.S. architecture in the first two decades of the 20th century was second only to that of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Elodea: genus of submerged aquatic plants useful in aquariums and in laboratory demonstrations of cellular activities. Elodea comprises 12 species in the frog's-bit family (Hydrocharitaceae), native to the New World. The common names waterweed and ditch moss reflect their weedy character ...
Elohim: (Hebrew: God), the God of Israel in the Old Testament. A plural of majesty, the term Elohim-though sometimes used for other deities, such as the Moabite god Chemosh, the Sidonian goddess Astarte, and also for other majestic beings such as ...
Elohist source: biblical source and one of four that, according to the documentary hypothesis, comprise the original literary constituents of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. It is so called because of its use of the Hebrew term Elohim ...
elongation: in astronomy, the angular distance in celestial longitude separating the Moon or a planet from the Sun. The greatest elongation possible for the two inferior planets (those closer than the Earth to the Sun) is about 48° in the case ...
elopiform: any member of the order Elopiformes, a group of fishes considered to be the most primitive of bony fishes. The order contains about 12 species of marine and brackish water fishes, the best known of which are bonefish, tarpons, and ...
Elphinstone, Mountstuart: British official in India who did much to promote popular education and local administration of laws.
Elphinstone, William: Scottish bishop and statesman, founder of the University of Aberdeen.
Elsasser, Walter M.: German-born American physicist notable for a variety of contributions to science.
Elsheimer, Adam: (christened March 18, 1578, Frankfurt am Main [Germany]-d. December 1610, Rome [Italy]), German painter and printmaker, recognized as an important figure in the development of 17th-century landscape painting, noted especially for his atmospheric use of light.