IN: A marching band is a group in which instrumental musicians perform while marching, often for entertainment or competition. Instrumentation typically includes brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. Most marching bands wear a uniform, often of a military style, that includes an associated school or organization's colors, name or symbol. Most high school marching bands, and some college marching bands, are accompanied by a color guard, a group of performers who add a visual interpretation to the music through the use of props, most often flags and rifles.

Traditional Style bands, also known as Show Bands, are marching bands geared primarily towards crowd entertainment and perform on football fields. Typically, they perform a routine before the game, another at halftime, and sometimes after the game as well. Competitive show bands perform only one show that is continually refined throughout a season, while bands that focus on entertainment rather than competition usually perform a unique show for each game. These shows normally consists of three to five musical pieces accompanied by formations rooted in origin from Patterns in Motion, a book penned by band director William C. "Bill" Moffit, bandmaster of Purdue University All-American Marching Band and University of Houston Spirit of Houston.  A recognizable style of show band is the one fielded by historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). HBCU bands utilize the traditional "ankle-knee" high step and music selections are largely based on R&B, hip-hop, and contemporary popular music. In addition to traditional drill formations, HBCU bands feature heavily choreographed dance routines as part of their performances. Many of these bands may have a twirler line and/or a dancer line, but not necessarily flag twirlers. One of the most notable depictions of HBCU bands is the film Drumline. HBCU bands are a significant part of African-American musical culture and HBCU bands often surpass their associated football teams in popularity, a phenomenon that is uncommon among collegiate and high school marching bands. In 1989, as part of the celebrations for the bicentennial of the French Revolution, the Florida A&M University Marching 100, one of the most prolific HBCU bands in the country, was selected as the official representative of the United States in the bicentennial parade.  Another style of show band is that used by many of the Big Ten Conference marching bands, a semi-military and semi-corps style. These bands perform a show that is designed to entertain the audience, but feature more traditional symphonic styles of music (marches, film scores, jazz, or older pop music) as well as some contemporary music. Big Ten style show bands have been influential in creating some of the earliest marching band innovations, and the style is used in high schools throughout much of the United States.  Most show bands of either type include the traditional military band instrumentation of woodwinds, brass, and battery percussion. Some also include the front ensemble keyboard percussion, and may also incorporate the use of a color guard for flag, and rifle routines as well as a dance line.

What do they try

OUT: while bands that focus on entertainment rather than competition usually perform a unique show for each game.


IN: Lee de Forest was born in 1873 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the son of Anna Margaret (nee Robbins) and Henry Swift DeForest. He was a direct descendant of Jesse de Forest, the leader of a group of Walloon Huguenots who fled Europe in the 17th Century due to religious persecution. De Forest's father was a Congregational Church minister who hoped his son would also become a pastor. In 1879 the elder de Forest became president of the American Missionary Association's Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama, a school "open to all of either sex, without regard to sect, race, or color", and which educated primarily African-Americans.

At the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, Valdemar Poulsen had presented a paper on an arc transmitter, which unlike the discontinuous pulses produced by spark transmitters, created steady "continuous wave" signals that could be used for amplitude modulated (AM) audio transmissions. Although Poulsen had patented his invention, de Forest claimed to have come up with a variation that allowed him to avoid infringing on Poulsen's work. Using his "sparkless" arc transmitter, de Forest first transmitted audio across a lab room on December 31, 1906, and by February was making experimental transmissions, including music produced by Thaddeus Cahill's telharmonium, that were heard throughout the city.  On July 18, 1907, de Forest made the first ship-to-shore transmissions by radiotelephone -- race reports for the Annual Inter-Lakes Yachting Association (I-LYA) Regatta held on Lake Erie -- which were sent from the steam yacht Thelma to his assistant, Frank E. Butler, located in the Fox's Dock Pavilion on South Bass Island. De Forest also interested the U.S. Navy in his radiotelephone, which placed a rush order to have 26 arc sets installed for its Great White Fleet around-the-world voyage that began in late 1907. However, at the conclusion of the circumnavigation the sets were declared to be too unreliable to meet the Navy's needs and removed.  The company set up a network of radiotelephone stations along the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes, for coastal ship navigation. However, the installations proved unprofitable, and by 1911 the parent company and its subsidiaries were on the brink of bankruptcy.

Did he go to college to learn about this

OUT: