Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Tekke carpet ... Telluride

Tekke carpet: floor covering woven by the Tekke Turkmen, the major population group of Turkmenistan. Although elements of the tribe still migrated with their flocks until the Soviet era, most of them were sedentary during the 20th century. Their rugs are the ...
tektite: any of a class of small, natural glassy objects that are found only in certain areas of the Earth's surface. The term is derived from the Greek word tektos, meaning "melted," or "molten." Tektites have been the subject of intense ...
Tel Aviv-Yafo: city of Israel that lies on the Mediterranean coast and is the hub of the nation's largest urban centre. It was formed in 1950 by the incorporation of the ancient port of Jaffa, or Yafo, with its former suburb, Tel ...
Tel Hay: former settlement, now a national memorial, in Upper Galilee, northern Israel, near the Lebanese border. One of the first Jewish settlements in northern Palestine, it was intermittently inhabited from 1905, and permanently settled as a pastoral camp and border outpost ...
Tel Quel: French avant-garde literary review published from 1960 to 1982 by Editions du Seuil. Founded by Philippe Sollers and other young writers, this eclectic magazine published works by such practitioners of the nouveau roman ("new novel") as Alain Robbe-Grillet and Nathalie ...
Tela: city, northern Honduras. It lies along Tela Bay, off the Gulf of Honduras. The old village of Tela lies across the Tela River from the modern port works and town, which were constructed by the United Fruit Company. Tela gained ...
Telakhon: one of the oldest Buddhist-influenced prophet cults among the Karen hill peoples of Myanmar (Burma). In their mythology, the restoration of their lost Golden Book by their white younger brothers heralds the millennium. Ywa, a withdrawn high god whose offer ...
Telangana Plateau: plateau in western Andhra Pradesh state, southeastern India. Comprising the northeastern part of the Deccan Plateau, the Telangana Plateau has an area of about 57,370 square miles (148,000 square km), a north-south length of about 480 miles (770 km), and ...
Telde: city, Las Palmas provincia, Canary Islands comunidad autonoma ("autonomous community"), Spain. It lies on the southeastern part of the island of Gran Canaria (Grand Canary). It extends beneath the Telde Cliff south of Las Palmas city, near the eastern coast. ...
telecommunication: science and practice of transmitting information by electromagnetic means. A wide variety of information can be transferred through a telecommunications system, including voice and music, still-frame and full-motion pictures, computer files and applications, and telegraphic data. For details on the ...
telecommunications media: equipment and systems-metal wire, terrestrial and satellite radio, and optical fibre-employed in the transmission of electromagnetic signals.
telecommunications network: electronic system of links and switches, and the controls that govern their operation, that allows for data transfer and exchange among multiple users.
teledu: species of badger (q.v.) found in Southeast Asia.
Telegonus: in Greek mythology, especially the Telagonia of Eugamon of Cyrene, the son of the hero Odysseus by the sorceress Circe. Telegonus went to Ithaca in search of his father, whom he killed unwittingly. His spear had been tipped with the ...
telegraph: any device or system that allows the transmission of information by coded signal over distance. Many telegraphic systems have been used over the centuries, but the term is most often understood to refer to the electric telegraph, which was developed ...
Teleki, Pal, Grof: (count) Hungarian prime minister who cooperated with Nazi Germany in the early stages of World War II.
Teleki, Samuel, Grof: (count) Hungarian explorer who discovered and named Lake Rudolf (now also called Lake Turkana) and Lake Stefanie (now Chew Bahir), in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia. He also added significantly to the knowledge of the previously unexplored highlands of East ...
Telemachus: in Greek mythology, son of the Greek hero Odysseus and his wife, Penelope. When Telemachus reached manhood, he visited Pylos and Sparta in search of his wandering father. On his return, he found that Odysseus had reached home before him. ...
Telemann, Georg Philipp: German composer of the late Baroque period, who wrote both sacred and secular music but was most admired for his church compositions, which ranged from small cantatas to large-scale works for soloists, chorus, and orchestra.
Telemark: fylke (county), southeastern Norway. It extends from the Hardanger Plateau in the northwest to the Skagerrak, an arm of the North Sea in the southeast. The mountains in the northwest become hills, interspersed with many long, narrow glacial lakes in ...
telemetry: highly automated communications process by which measurements are made and other data collected at remote or inaccessible points and transmitted to receiving equipment for monitoring, display, and recording. Originally, the information was sent over wires, but modern telemetry more commonly ...
teleological ethics: (Greek telos, "end"; logos, "science"), theory of morality that derives duty or moral obligation from what is good or desirable as an end to be achieved. It is opposed to deontological ethics (from the Greek deon, "duty"), which holds that ...
teleology: (from Greek telos, "end"; logos, "reason"), explanation by reference to some purpose or end; also described as final causality, in contrast with explanation by efficient causes only. Human conduct, insofar as it is rational, is generally explained with reference to ...
Teleorman: judet (county), south-central Romania. It is bounded on the south by Bulgaria. The Danube River drains eastward, constituting the southern border of the county. The Vedea, Teleorman, Olt, and Neajlov rivers flow southeastward, emptying into the Danube. Lake Suhaia lies ...
teleost: any member of the infraclass Teleostei, a large and extremely diverse group of ray-finned fishes. Along with the chondrosteans and the holosteans, they are one of the three major subdivisions of the class Actinopterygii, the most advanced of the bony ...
telepathy: direct transference of thought from one person (sender or agent) to another (receiver or percipient) without using the usual sensory channels of communication, hence a form of extrasensory perception (ESP). While the existence of telepathy has not yet been proved, ...
telephone: an instrument that is designed for the simultaneous transmission and reception of the human voice. Inexpensive, simple to operate, and offering its user a personal type of communication that cannot be obtained through the written word, the telephone has become ...
telephone and telephone system: instrument designed for simultaneous two-way voice communication and the technological system through which it is employed. It is a central part of modern telecommunication.
teleprinter: any of various telegraphic instruments that transmit and receive printed messages and data via telephone cables or radio relay systems. Teleprinters became the most common telegraphic instruments shortly after entering commercial use in the 1920s. They were used by operators ...
telescope: device used to form magnified images of distant objects.
Telesilla: Greek poet noted for saving the city of Argos from attack by Cleomenes and his Spartan troops after their defeat of the Argive men. She wrote lyric poetry dedicated to Apollo and Artemis, of which only brief fragments remain. Her ...
Telesio, Bernardino: Italian philosopher and natural scientist who inaugurated the Renaissance empiricist reaction against the practice of reasoning without reference to concrete data.
Telesphorus, Saint: pope from about 125 to about 136. Telesphorus is said to have been a Greek, possibly from Calabria. Successor to St. Sixtus I, he was the eighth pope and a witness to the persecution of Christians by the Roman emperor ...
television: the electronic delivery of moving images and sound from a source to a receiver. By extending the senses of vision and hearing beyond the limits of physical distance, television has had a considerable influence on society. Conceived in the early ...
Television: American rock group that played a prominent role in the emergence of the punk-new-wave movement. With Television's first single, "Little Johnny Jewel" (1975), and much-touted debut album, Marquee Moon (1977), the extended guitar solo found a place in a movement ...
telex: international telegraphic message-transfer service consisting of a network of teleprinters. Subscribers to a telex service can exchange textual communications and data directly with one another. Communication is opened by entering the assigned call number of the destination subscriber, using a ...
Telford: new town in Telford and Wrekin unitary authority, geographic and historic county of Shropshire, England. It lies north and east of the hill of the Wrekin, which has an elevation of 1,335 feet (407 metres). Dawley, now part of Telford, ...
Telford and Wrekin: unitary authority, geographic and historic county of Shropshire, west-central England, in the east-central part of the county. The unitary authority, drained in the south by the River Severn, is a plain covered by glacial drift soils in the north. Historically ...
Telford, Thomas: versatile Scottish civil engineer whose crowning achievement was the design and construction (1819-26) of the Menai Bridge in Wales.
telharmonium: earliest musical instrument to generate sound electrically. It was invented in the United States by Thaddeus Cahill and introduced in 1906. The electrophonic instrument was of the electromechanical type, and it used rotating electromagnetic generators (and thus was a predecessor ...
Telimele: town, western Guinea. It is situated at the junction of trade routes from Kindia, Pita, Gaoual, and Boke. A trading centre (cattle, rice, millet, and oranges) for the Muslim Fulani (Peul) people of the Fouta Djallon plateau, it is also ...
Telingana: historical and linguistic region of peninsular India, comprising the north-central and northeastern portions of Andhra Pradesh state. The Dravidian Telugu tongue is chiefly spoken there. The region was ruled by the Andhra Buddhist kings (Satavahanas) from the 3rd century BC ...
teliospore: in fungi (division Mycota), a thick-walled, winter or resting spore of rust fungi (order Uredinales) borne in a fruiting structure (telium) from which a club-shaped structure (basidium) is produced.
Telipinus: last king of the Hittite Old Kingdom in Anatolia (reigned c. 1525-c. 1500 BC).
tell: ("hill" or "small elevation"), in Middle Eastern archaeology, a raised mound marking the site of an ancient city. For specific sites, see under substantive word (e.g., Hasi, Tel).
Tell Atlas: range of the Atlas Mountains in North Africa, extending about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from eastern Morocco through Algeria to Tunisia. In Morocco, from Ceuta east to Melilla (150 miles [240 km]), the Er-Rif mountain range of the Tell Atlas ...
Tell, William: Swiss legendary hero who symbolized the struggle for political and individual freedom.
Teller, Edward: Hungarian-born American nuclear physicist who participated in the production of the first atomic bomb (1945) and who led the development of the world's first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb.
Tellicherry: city, northern Kerala state, southwestern India. It was established in 1683 by the British for the pepper and cardamom trade and was their first settlement on the Malabar Coast. A fort was built there in 1708 and was attacked unsuccessfully ...
telluric current: natural electric current flowing on and beneath the surface of the Earth and generally following a direction parallel to the Earth's surface. Telluric currents arise from charges moving to attain equilibrium between regions of differing electric potentials; these differences in ...
Telluride: town, seat (1883) of San Miguel county, southwestern Colorado, U.S., located on the western flank of the San Juan Mountains at an elevation of 8,750 feet (2,667 metres). Telluride sprang up in 1875 as a mining camp called Columbia and ...