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Wire

Specialty Definition: Wire

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Specialty Definition: Public switched telephone network

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The public switched telephone network (PSTN) is the concatenation of the world's public circuit-switched telephone networks, in much the same way that the Internet is the concatenation of the world's public IP-based packet-switched networks. Originally a network of fixed-line analog telephone systems, the PSTN is now almost entirely digital, and now includes mobile as well as fixed telephones.

The PSTN is largely governed by technical standards created by the ITU-T, and uses E.163/E.164 addresses (known more commonly as telephone numbers) for addressing.

The basic digital circuit in the PSTN is a 64-kilobit-per-second channel, originally designed by Bell Labs, called a "DS0" or Digital Signal 0. To carry a typical phone call, the audio sound is digitized at an 8 kHz sample rate using 8-bit pulse code modulation.

The DS0's are the basic granularity at which switching takes place in a telephone exchange. DS0's are also known as timeslots because they are multiplexed together in a time-division fashion. Multiple DS0's are multiplexed together on higher capacity circuits, such that 24 DS0's make a DS1 signal, which when carried on copper is the well-known, T-carrier system, T1 (the European equivalent is an E1, containing 32 64 kbit/s channels). In modern networks, this multiplexing is moved as close to the end user as possible, usually into cabinets at the roadside in residential areas, or into large business premises.

The timeslots are conveyed from the initial multiplexer to the exchange over a set of equipment collectively known as the access network. The access network and inter-exchange transport of the PSTN use synchronous optical transmission (SONET and SDH) technology, although some parts still use the older PDH technology.

Within the access network, there are a number of reference points defined. Most of these are of interest mainly to ISDN but one - the V reference point - is of more general interest. This is the reference point between a primary multiplexer and an exchange. The protocols at this reference point were standardised in ETSI areas as the V5 interface.

Only the very oldest and most backward parts of the telephone network still use analog technology for anything other than the last mile loop to the end user, and in recent years digital services have been increasing rolled out to end users using services such as DSL and ISDN.

In the 1970s the telecommunications industry conceived that digital services would follow much the same pattern as voice services, and conceived a grandiose vision of end-to-end circuit switched services, known as the Broadband Integrated Services Digital Network (B-ISDN). The B-ISDN vision has been overtaken by the disruptive technology of the Internet.

Many observers believe that the long term future of the PSTN is to be just one application of the Internet - however, the Internet has some way to go before this transition can be made: see the article on Voice over IP for more on this subject.

The PSTN was the earliest example of traffic engineering to deliver Quality of Service guarantees. (See the work of A.K. Erlang for some history on this).

Note: there are also a number of large private telephone networks which are not linked to the PSTN, usually for military purposes. There are also private networks run by large companies which are linked to the PSTN only through limited gateways, like a large PABX system.

See also:

• Telecommunication
• Emergency telephone number
• Digital Subscriber Line
• Plain Old Telephone Service or POTS
• Integrated Services Digital Network
• Telephone exchange

  Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Public switched telephone network."

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Telegraphy

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Telegraphy is the long distance transmission of written messages without physical transport of letters. This definition includes recent forms of data transmission such as fax, email, and computer networks in general. (A telegraph is a machine for transmitting and receiving messages over long distances, i.e. for telegraphy.)

• Before the internet came into general use, telegraphy messages were known as telegrams or cablegrams, often shortened to a cable or a wire message. Telegrams sent by the Telex network, a switched network of teleprinters similar to the telephone network, were known as a telex message. Before long distance telephone services were readily available, telegram services were very popular. Telegrams were often used to confirm business dealings and, unlike e-mail, telegrams were commonly used to create binding legal document for business dealings.

• Before fax machines came into general use, wire picture or wire photo was a newspaper picture that was sent from a remote location by a facsimile telegraph. This is why many fax machines have a photo option even today.

• The first fax machine was introduced in 1912, known as the Telex-Faxomatic, and primarily used for the transmission of lunch orders from busy factory floors to any number of delies and cafeterias.

The first telegraphs were optical, including the use of smoke signals and beacons. These have existed since ancient times. A semaphore network invented by Claude Chappe operated in France from 1792 through 1846. It helped Napoleon enough that it was widely imitated in Europe and the U.S. The last (Swedish) commercial semaphore link left operation in 1880.

Semaphores are faster than smoke signals and beacons and consume no fuel. They are hundreds of times as fast as post riders and serve entire regions. However they require operators and towers every 30 km (20 mi), and only send about two words per minute. This causes them to have a cost per word-mile roughly thirty times as high as electric telegraphs. This is useful to government, but too expensive for most commercial uses other than commodity price information.

The first commercial electrical telegraph constructed by Sir Charles Wheatstone entered use in London in 1838. An electrical telegraph was US-patented in 1842 by Samuel Morse, whose assistant, Alfred Vail developed the Morse code signalling alphabet. It was quickly deployed in the following two decades. Nikola Tesla and other scientists and inventors showed the usefulness of wireless telegraphy, or radio, beginning in the 1860s.

A continuing goal in telegraphy has been to reduce the cost per message by reducing hand-work, or increasing the sending rate. There were many experiments with moving pointers, and various electrical encodings. However, most systems were too complicated and unreliable.

With the invention of the teletypewriter, telegraphic encoding became fully automated. Early teletypewriters used Baudot code, a 5-bit code. This yielded only thirty two codes, so it was over-defined into two "shifts," "letters" and "figures." An explicit, unshared shift code prefaced each set of letters and figures.

A standard timing system developed for telecommunications. The "space" state was defined as the powered state of the wire. In this way, it was immediately apparent when the line itself failed. The characters were sent by first sending a "start bit" that pulled the line to the unpowered "mark state." The start bit triggered a wheeled commutator run by a motor with a precise speed (later, digital electronics). The commutator distributed the bits from the line to a series of relays that would "capture" the bits. A "stop bit" was then sent at the powered "space state" to assure that the commutator would have time to stop, and be ready for the next character. The stop bit triggered the printing mechanism. Often, two stop bits were sent to give the mechanism time to finish and stop vibrating.

The transatlantic telegraph cable was then successfully completed on July 27, 1866 which for the first time allowed transatlantic telegraph communications. Another advance occurred on August 9, 1892, when Thomas Edison received a patent for a two-way telegraph.

By 1935 message routing was the last great barrier to full automation. Large telegraphy providers began to develop systems that used telephone-like rotary dialing to connect teletypes. These machines were called "telex." Telex machines first performed rotary-telephone-style pulse dialing, and then sent baudot code. This "type A" telex routing functionally automated message routing.

The Third Reich invented the first wide-coverage telex system, and used it to coordinate their bureaucracy. It was a true triumph of German efficiency.

At the then-blinding rate of 45.5 bits per second, up to 25 telex channels could share a single long-distance telephone channel, making telex the least expensive method of performing reliable long-distance communication.

In 1970 Cuba and Pakistan were still running 45.5 baud type A telex. Telex is still widely used in third-world bureaucracies, probably because of its low costs. The U.N. asserts that more political entities are reliably available by telex than by any other single method.

When dictatorships cut off telephone, fax and internet service, their telex networks remain up. A major advantage for dictatorships is that telex networks are easy to tap: Taps automatically generate complete transcripts.

Around 1960[?], some nations began to use the "figures" baudot codes to perform "Type B" telex routing.

Telex grew around the world very rapidly. Long before automatic telephony was available, most countries, even in central Africa and Asia, had at least a few high-frequency (shortwave) telex links. Often these radio links were the first established by government postal and telegraph services (PTTs). The most common radio standard, CCITT R.44 had error-corrected retransmitting time-division multiplexing of radio channels. Most impoverished PTTs operated their telex-on-radio (TOR) channels non-stop, to get the maximum value from them.

The cost of telex on radio (TOR) equipment has continued to fall. Many amateur radio operators ) operate TOR with special softare and inexpensive adapters from computer sound cards to shortwave radios.

Modern "cablegrams" or "telegrams" actually operate over dedicated telex networks, using TOR whenever required.

In Germany alone, more than 400,000 telex lines remain in daily operation. Over most of the world, more than three million telex lines remain in use.

Almost in parallel with Germany's telex system, Bell Labs in the 1930s decided to go telex one better, and began developing a similar service (with pulse dialing and all!) called "Teletype Wide-area eXchange" (TWX).

TWX originally ran 75 bits per second, sending Baudot code and dial selection. However, Bell developed a second generation of "four row" modems called the "Bell 101 dataset," which is the direct ancestor of the Bell 103 that launched computer time-sharing. The 101 was revolutionary because it ran on ordinary subscriber lines that could (at the office) be routed to special exchanges called "wide-area data service." Because it was using the public switched telephone network, TWX had special area codes: 510, 610, 710, 810 and 910, some of which remain in use.

The "four row" TWX service had "control characters" that let the machine behave like office typewriters. These provided paragraph indentation, form feeds, and other services that were never available with Baudot codes. However, the TWX code only used 93 of 128 characters.

The Teletype corporation was founded by a Dr. Kleinschmidt. It had the cheapest teletypewriters that could be adapted to the TWX code. Bell purchased the corporation to assure its supply of "model 33" TWX teletypewriters.

The model 33 was the cheapest teletypewriter available for use with computers. Computer people of course wanted a full set of characters. Teletype provided them.

ASCII was born from TWX code. It was formalized as CCITT international alphabet 5. Careful study will show that ASCII traces many character codes back to Baudot, which in turn traces some characters back to manual telegraphy.

Bell's original consent agreement limited it to international dial telephony. WUTCo (Western Union Telegraph Company) had given up its international telegraphic operation in a 1939 bid to monopolize U.S. telegraphy by taking over ITT's PTT business. The result was deemphasis on telex in the U.S. and a cat's cradle of small U.S. international telex and telegraphy companies. These were known by regulatory agencies as "International Record Carriers"

• Western Union Telegraph Company developed a spinoff called "Cable System." Cable system later became Western Union International.
• ITT's "World Communications" was amalgamated from many smaller companies: "Federal Telegraph," "All American Cables and Radio," "Globe Wireless," and a common carrier division of Mackay Marine.
• RCA communications had specialised in crossing the Pacific. It later joined with Western Union International to become MCI.
• Before World War I, Tropical Radiotelegraph put radio telegraphs on ships for its owner, The United Fruit Company, in order to deliver bannanas to the best-paying markets. Communications expanded to UFC's plantations, and were eventually provided to local governments. TRT Telecommunications (as it is now known) eventually became the national PTT of many small nations.
• The French Telegraph Cable Company (owned by French investors) had always been in the U.S. It laid cable from the U.S. to France. It was formed by "Monsieur Puyer-Quartier." This is how it got its telegraphic routing ID "PQ."
• Firestone Rubber developed its own IRC, the "Trans-Liberia Radiotelegraph Company." It operated shortwave from Akron OH to the rubber plantations in Liberia. TL is still based in Akron.

Bell telex users had to select which IRC to use, and then append the necessary routing digits. The IRCs converted between TWX and Western Union Telegraph Co. standards.

Around 1965, in a near-psychotic break with existing standards, DARPA commissioned a study of decentralized switching systems, hoping to find something more advanced than TOR that could still hope to survive a nuclear war. The contractors developed the internet.

The internet was a radical break in three ways. First, it was designed to operate over any media. Second, routing was decentralized. Third, large messages were broken into fixed size packets, and then reassembled at the destination. All previous networks had used controlled media, centralized routers and dedicated connections.

The internet was designed with nearly grotesque economies. It is commonplace for internet packets to use less than 1% of their bits for overhead. This cheapness combines synergistically with the internet's ability to live on other media. A typical cycle occurs when the internet encounters another network, like telex, fidonet, ATM, or (as we are seeing with cable-modem based internet phones) the public switched telephone network:

• First, internet protocols are tunneled through the other network, as a convenience, usually for some specialized or office application.
• Second, users come to expect the reliable global interconnectivity of the Internet, often for e-mail, or nowadays, for web access. Just because it's old and well debugged, the internet can seduce a user with a young, poorly behaved proprietary network.
• Third, native applications of the competing network are deprecated, often because "nonproprietary" internet versions of similar services become available.
• Fourth, an alternative cheaper or higher-speed internet-compatible medium becomes available, and the organization begins to install it.
• Fifth, the proprietary network is rationalized out of existence as a cost-cutting maneuver, often because the internet protocols have such low percentages of overhead (i.e. wasted) data.

Around this time, T-1 "synchronous" networks became commonplace in the U.S. A T-1 line has a "frame" of 24 bits that repeats 64000 times per second. The first bit, calle the "sync" bit, was used to find the start of the frame. It alternates between 1 and 0. Customarily, a T-1 link is sent over a balanced twisted pair, isolated with transformers to prevent current flow. Each bit of a frame is usually used to send a single voice or data channel. The Europeans began to use a similar system (E-1) that sent bits as "octets" of eight related bits.

In 1982, the U.S. Congress deregulated the IRCs. They began combining to get economies of scale. All of their descendants offer voice, video and data services.

In 1992, computer access via modem combined with cheap computers, and graphic point & click interfaces to give a radical alternative to conventional telex systems: personal e-mail.

E-mail was first invented for Multics in the late 1960s. However it was limited to a single computer until the internet connected them around 1968. Various private networks (UUNET, the Well, GENIE, DECNET) had e-mail from the 1970s, but subscriptions were quite expensive for an individual- $25 to $50 a month, just for e-mail. Internet use was then pretty much limited to government, academia and other government contractors until the net was opened to commercial use around 1989[?]. Individual e-mail accounts were not widely available until local ISPs were in place, funded by people's desire for web access. This was about 1992.

By using the time-shared systems almost end-to-end, the cost of data communications plummeted to less than 10 cents a message.

International Telex remains available via e-mail ports. It is one's e-mail address with numeric or alpha prefixes specifying one's IRC and account.

Telex has always had a feature called "answerback", that asks a remote machine to send its address. If using telex via e-mail, this address is what a remote telex user will want in order to contact an e-mail user.

This is how smoke-signals became modern digital telecommunications.

See optical telegraph, electrical telegraph, Morse code, Samuel Morse.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Telegraphy."

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Wire

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

A wire is a single, usually cylindrical, elongated strand of metal. Wires are used to bear loads and to carry electricity and fixed telephony.

Wire has many uses. It forms the raw material of many important manufactures, such as the wire-net industry, wire-cloth making and wire-rope spinning, in which it occupies a place analogous to a textile fibre. Wire-cloth of all degrees of strength and fineness of mesh is used for sifting and screening machinery, for draining paper pulp, for window screens, and for many other purposes. Vast quantities of copper and steel wire are employed for telephone and data wires and cables, and as conductors in electric power transmission. It is in no less demand for fencing, and much is consumed in the construction of suspension bridges, and cages, etc. In the manufacture of stringed musical instruments and scientific instruments wire is again largely used. Among its other sources of consumption it is sufficient to mention pin and hair-pin making, the needle and fish-hook industries, nail, peg and rivet making, and carding machinery; indeed there are few industries into which it does not more or less enter.

Not all metals and metallic alloys possess the physical properties necessary to make useful wire. The metals must in the first place be ductile and strong in tension, the quality on which the utility of wire principally depends. The metals suitable for wire, possessing almost equal ductility, are platinum, silver, iron, copper, aluminium and gold; and it is only from these and certain of their alloys with other metals, principally brass and bronze, that wire is prepared. By careful treatment extremely thin wire can be produced. Special purpose wire is however made from other metals (e.g. Tungsten wire for light bulb and vacuum tube filaments, because of its high melting temperature).

Wire was originally made by beating the metal out into plates, which were then cut into continuous strips, and afterwards rounded by beating. The art of wire-drawing does not appear to have been known until the 14th century, and it was not introduced into England before the second half of the 17th century. Wire is usually drawn of cylindrical form; but it may be made of any desired section by varying the outline of the holes in the draw-plate through which it is passed in the process of manufacture. The draw-plate or die is a piece of hard cast-iron or hard steel, or for fine work it may be a diamond or ruby. The object of utilizing precious stones is to enable the dies to be used for a considerable period without losing their size, and so producing wire of incorrect diameter. Diamond dies must be rebored when they have lost their original diameter of hole, but the metal dies are brought down to size again by hammering up the hole and then drifting it out to correct diameter with a punch.

Wire is often reduced to the desired diameter and properties by repeated drawing through progressively smaller dies. The wire can be reheated for further drawing; the annealing is done in cast-iron pots, holding coils of wire which are raised to a red heat and then allowed to cool. Although the wire is kept air-tight as much as possible, some amount of scaling occurs, and pickling must be done to remove this scale before redrawing.

An important point in wire-drawing is that of lubrication to facilitate the operation and to lessen the wear on the dies. Various lubricants, such as oil, are employed. Another method is to immerse the wire in a copper sulphate solution, so that a film of copper is deposited which forms a kind of lubricant, easing the drawing considerably; in some classes of wire the copper is left after the final drawing to serve as a preventive of rust.

The wire-drawing machines include means for holding the dies, accurately in position and for drawing the wire steadily through the holes. The usual design consists of a cast-iron bench or table having a bracket standing up to hold the die, and a vertical drum which rotates and by coiling the wire around its surface pulls it through the die, the coil of wire being stored upon another drum or "swift" which lies behind the die and reels off the wire as fast as required. The wire drum or "block" is provided with means for rapidly coupling or uncoupling it to its vertical shaft, so that the motion of the wire may be stopped or started instantly. The block is also tapered, so that the coil of wire may be easily slipped off upwards when finished. Before the wire can be attached to the block, a sufficient length of it must be pulled through the die; this is effected by a pair of gripping pincers on the end of a chain which is wound around a revolving drum, so drawing the pincers along, and with them the wire, until enough is through the die to be coiled two or three times on the block, where the end is secured by a small screw clamp or vice ready for the drawing operation. Wire has to be pointed or made smaller in diameter at the end before it can be passed through the die; the pointing is done by hammering, filing, rolling or swaging in dies, which effect a reduction in diameter. When the wire is on the block the latter is set in motion and the wire is drawn steadily through the die; it is very important that the block shall rotate evenly and that it shall run true and pull the wire in an even manner, otherwise the "snatching" which occurs will break the wire, or at least weaken it in spots.

Continuous wire-drawing machines differ from the single-block machines in having a series of dies through which the wire passes in a continuous manner. The difficulty of feeding between each die is solved by introducing a block between each, so that as the wire issues it coils around the block and is so helped on to the next die. The speeds of the blocks are increased successively, so that the elongation due to drawing is taken up and slip compensated for. The operation of threading the wire first through all the dies and around the blocks is termed "stringing-up." The arrangements for lubrication include a pump which floods the dies, and in many cases also the bottom portions of the blocks run in lubricant. The speeds at which the wire travels vary greatly, according to the material and the amount of reduction effected.

Wires and cables for electrical purposes are covered with various insulating materials, such as cotton, rubber, or plastic, wrapped in spiral fashion and further protected with, substances such as paraffin, some kind of preservative compound, bitumen or lead sheathing or steel taping. The stranding or covering machines employed in this work are designed to carry supplies of material and wind it on to the wire which is passing through at a rapid rate. Some of the smallest machines for cotton covering have a large drum, which grips the wire and moves it through toothed gears at a definite speed; the wire passes through the centre of disks mounted above a long bed, and the disks carry each a number of bobbins varying from six to twelve or more in different machines. A supply of covering material is wound on each bobbin, and the end is led on to the wire, which occupies a central position relatively to the bobbins; the latter being revolved at a suitable speed bodily with their disks, the cotton is consequently served on to the wire, winding in spiral fashion so as to overlap. If a large number of strands are required the disks are duplicated, so that as many as sixty spools may be carried, the second set of strands being laid over the first. For the heavier cables, used for electric light and power, and submarine cables, the machines are somewhat different in construction. The wire is still carried through a hollow shaft, but the bobbins or spools of covering material are set with their spindles at right angles to the axis of the wire, and they lie in a circular cage which rotates on rollers below. The various strands coming from the spools at various parts of the circumference of the cage all lead to a disk at the end of the hollow shaft. This disk has perforations through which each of the strands pass, thence being immediately wrapped on the cable, which slides through a bearing at this point. Toothed gears having certain definite ratios are used to cause the winding drum for the cable and the cage for the spools to rotate at suitable relative speeds which do not vary. The cages are multiplied for stranding with a large number of tapes or strands, so that a machine may have six bobbins on one cage and twelve on the other.

Rubber covering of wires and cables is done by passing them through grooved rollers simultaneously with rubber strips above and below, so that the rubber is crushed on to the wires, the latter emerging as a wide band. The separate wires are parted forcibly, each retaining its rubber sheathing. Vulcanizing is afterwards done in steam-heated drums.

Many auxiliary machines are necessary in connection with wire and cable-covering, as plant for preparing the rubber and paper, etc., cutting it into strips, winding it, measuring lengths, etc.

Wire Gauges

In commerce, the sizes of wire are estimated by gauges which consist of plates of circular or oblong form having notches of different widths round their edges to receive wire and sheet metals of different thicknesses. Each notch is stamped with a number, and the wire or sheet, which just fits a given notch, is stated to be of, say, No. 10, 11, 12, etc., of the wire gauge.

Gauges may be broadly divided into two groups, the empirical and the geometrical. The first include all the old ones, notably the Birmingham (B.W.G.) and the Lancashire or Stubs. The origin of the B.W.G. is lost in obscurity. The numbers of wire were in common use earlier than 1735. It is believed that they originally were based on the series of drawn wires, No. 1 being the original rod, and succeeding numbers corresponding with each draw, so that No. 10, for example, would have passed ten times through the draw plate. But the Birmingham and the Lancashire gauge, the latter being based on an averaging of the dimensions collated from a large number of the former in the possession of Peter Stubs of Warrington, have long held the leading position, nod are still retained and used probably to a greater extent than the more recent geometrical gauges. There is no need, therefore, to give an account of the other and less known gauges which have been used by manufacturers. In no case is there any regular increment of dimensions from which a regular curve could be drawn.

The first attempt to adopt a geometrical system was made by Messrs Brown & Sharpe in 1855. They established a regular progression of thirty-nine steps between the English sizes, No. 0000 (460 mils or about 12 mm) and No. 36 (5 mils or about 0.13 mm). Each diameter was multiplied by 0.890522 to give the next lower size. This is now the American gauge, and is used to a considerable extent in the U.S.A

The Imperial Standard Wire Gauge, which has been sanctioned by the British Board of Trade, is one that was formulated by J. Latimer Clark. Incidentally, one of its recommendations is that it differs from pre-existing gauges scarcely more than they differ among themselves, and it is based on a rational system, the basis being the mil. No. 7/0, the largest size, is 0.50 in. (500 mils or 12.7 mm) in diameter, and the smallest, No. 50, is 0.001 in. (1 mil or about 25 µm) in diameter. Between these the diameter, or thickness, diminishes by 10.557%, and the weight diminishes by 20%.

The circular forms of gauge are the most popular, and are generally 3 3/4 in. (95 mm) in diameter, with thirty-six notches; many have the decimal equivalents of the sizes stamped on the back. Oblong plates are similarly notched. Rolling mill gauges are also oblong in form. Many gauges are made with a wedge-like slot into which the wire is thrust; one edge being graduated, the point at which the movement of the wire is arrested gives its size. The graduations are those of standard wire, or in thousandths of an inch. In some cases both edges are graduated differently to serve for comparison between two systems of measurement. A few gauges are made with holes into which the wire has to be thrust. All gauges are hardened and ground to dimensions.

includes material from a 1911 encyclopedia

The telegraph was for a while called "the wire". That usage is still evident in the verb "to wire", meaning to send information by means of a telegraph.

Wire is also the name of a British punk/experimental rock band. See Wire.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Wire."

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Wire (band)

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Wire is a British punk/experimental rock band formed in 1976 by Graham Lewis (bass, vocals), Bruce Gilbert (guitar), Colin Newman (vocals, guitar) and Robert Gotobed (drums). Their sound is often associated with a vague subgenre of punk called "art punk," mostly due to their often obscure lyrical themes and somewhat situationist political stance. The group exhibited a steady development from an early raucous style (1977's Pink Flag) to a more complex, structured sound involving increased use of synthesizers (1978's Chairs Missing and 1979's 154). As a result, they had a tremendous influence through later decades on a variety of bands and rock music genres, notably in The Urinals, Minutemen, and R.E.M, who covered Wire's "Strange" on their Document album. After a period of suspension (1980-1985) in favour of solo and non-Wire collaborative projects, the group reformed to renewed critical acclaim, but without carving quite the same niche as in the earlier decade, continuing briefly as Wir following Gotobed's departure in 1990 and reforming for a short while in May 1996 and on a (to date) permanent basis in September 1999.

This reformation has led to the release of two EPs and an album (Send, 2003) thus far, as well as live collaborations with Es Devlin and Jake and Dinos Chapman.

Their influence on the Britpop movement should also not be understated; a particularly celebrated plagiarism case between Wire and Elastica over the similarity between the songs Three Girl Rhumba and Connection resulting in an out-of-court settlement. Blur's work, along with many more minor Britpop bands, has been particularly redolent of 70s Wire at various points; like the Velvet Underground, Wire are a band whose influence has outshone their (comparatively modest) record sales by some distance.

External links

• pinkflag.com - official site
• Pinkflag Records - record label
• Wire Sound Archive

  Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Wire (band)."

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Abbreviations & Acronyms: Wire

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Synonyms within Context: Wire

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Modern Usage: Wire

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Image Slideshow: Wire

Photos: Wire More pictures...

Illustrations: Wire More pictures...

Computer Images: Wire More pictures...

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Photo Album: Wire

Thumbnail	Description & Credit	Thumbnail	Description & Credit
	Automatic tide gauge at Port Protection Installation by Wire Drag Party No. 4. Credit: Coast & Geodetic Survey Historical Image Collection.		Setting up a Raydist tower About half-way up Party off of wire drag vessels WAINWRIGHT and HILGARD Photograph #5 of sequence. Credit: Coast & Geodetic Survey Historical Image Collection.
	Trawl net being towed. Small diameter wire attached to net mensuration sensors and holds sensors at constant tension so as not to foul net. Credit: Paths Less Taken - NOAA at the Ends of the Earth.		Hydro wire over the side of the NATHANIEL B. PALMER. Credit: Paths Less Taken - NOAA at the Ends of the Earth.
	Chief Boatwain Nutting reading wire angle during Bongo net tow. Credit: Fisheries.		General Vessel Assistant King runs winch and Chief Boatswain Nutting reads wire angle during bongo tow operations. Credit: Fisheries.
	In the foreground, an Elkhorn coral, Acropora palmatta, fragment is reattached to the reef. Stainless steel nails are holding the wire in place. Credit: NOAA Restoration Center.		A coral fragment reattached using the experimental plastic ties that were later discarded in favor of stainless steel wire that could be tightened more securely. Credit: NOAA Restoration Center.
	Wire corals and snappers on the slope off Hawaii. Credit: National Undersea Research Program (NURP).		Sub grabs a wire coral on limestone bottom off Hawaii. Cirrhipathes. Credit: National Undersea Research Program (NURP).
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits.

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Digital Photo Gallery: Wire
 

"Telephone wire box" by Johnnie Crash Commentary: "Photo of a very messy telephone wire box."	"Barbed Wire Fence" by Kim Groves Commentary: "Picture taken alongside a road in Crossfield, Alberta, Canada."
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers.

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Use in Literature: Wire

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Usage Frequency: Wire

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Name Usage Frequency: Wire

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Usage in Company Names: Wire

Source: compiled by the editor from Icon Group International, Inc.

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