Free Essays on Thomas Shepard

Many people spend their lives searching for answers to their problems or past misfortunes, answers that most people will never find. Seeking out truth is no easy task, especially when you don’t know where to start looking. People die every day, and their loved ones are left behind to ponder why. Death has no scheme, no rhyme or reason or prejudices. So why is it that someone can smoke cigarettes for sixty year and pass away peacefully in their sleep from natural causes, and someone who has never taken a drag get cancer in the prime of their life. Some people would say bad luck, Thomas Shepard would say that it was gods will. He was a man whose life was filled with hardships and tragedy, yet he was able to find peace at times through some of his own, and others experiences, and most importantly, he was able to find peace through God. Throughout much of The Spiritual Accounts of Thomas Shepard, tragedy surrounds his life. He was born into religious persecution, coming from a puritan family during a time in England when anyone who was not an Anglo-Saxon was frowned upon. This did not so much effect his childhood but other misfortunes did. When the plague struck his town of Towchester he was sent away to live with his grandparents in Fossecut. While he was tending to farm animals at the ripe age of four the plague was ravishing his fathers family. It was during this time that his mother passed away, not of the plague, but from some other disease that followed. Shepard then returned home not to the receptive arms of his loving mother, but to his father and his new wife who, â€Å"did let me see the difference between my own mother and a stepmother†(3). This is a relevant situation even today that many people may find themselves in. It is not easy to get over the death of your mother, especially when your fath er replaces her with a cold-hearted woman who shows no compassion. â€Å"She did not seem to love me but incensed my father often agai... Free Essays on Thomas Shepard Free Essays on Thomas Shepard Many people spend their lives searching for answers to their problems or past misfortunes, answers that most people will never find. Seeking out truth is no easy task, especially when you don’t know where to start looking. People die every day, and their loved ones are left behind to ponder why. Death has no scheme, no rhyme or reason or prejudices. So why is it that someone can smoke cigarettes for sixty year and pass away peacefully in their sleep from natural causes, and someone who has never taken a drag get cancer in the prime of their life. Some people would say bad luck, Thomas Shepard would say that it was gods will. He was a man whose life was filled with hardships and tragedy, yet he was able to find peace at times through some of his own, and others experiences, and most importantly, he was able to find peace through God. Throughout much of The Spiritual Accounts of Thomas Shepard, tragedy surrounds his life. He was born into religious persecution, coming from a puritan family during a time in England when anyone who was not an Anglo-Saxon was frowned upon. This did not so much effect his childhood but other misfortunes did. When the plague struck his town of Towchester he was sent away to live with his grandparents in Fossecut. While he was tending to farm animals at the ripe age of four the plague was ravishing his fathers family. It was during this time that his mother passed away, not of the plague, but from some other disease that followed. Shepard then returned home not to the receptive arms of his loving mother, but to his father and his new wife who, â€Å"did let me see the difference between my own mother and a stepmother†(3). This is a relevant situation even today that many people may find themselves in. It is not easy to get over the death of your mother, especially when your fath er replaces her with a cold-hearted woman who shows no compassion. â€Å"She did not seem to love me but incensed my father often agai...

A Brief History of Plasma Television

A Brief History of Plasma Television The very first prototype for a plasma display monitor was invented in July 1964 at the University of Illinois by professors Donald Bitzer and Gene Slottow, and then graduate student Robert Willson. However, it was not until after the advent of digital and other technologies that successful plasma televisions became possible. According to Wikipedia a plasma display is an emissive flat panel display where light is created by phosphors excited by a plasma discharge between two flat panels of glass. During the early sixties, the University of Illinois used regular televisions as computer monitors for their in-house computer network. Donald Bitzer, Gene Slottow, and Robert Willson (the inventors listed on the plasma display patent) researched plasma displays as an alternative to the cathode ray tube-based televisions sets being used. A cathode-ray display has to constantly refresh, which is okay for video and broadcasts but bad for displaying computer graphics. Donald Bitzer began the project and enlisted the help of Gene Slottow and Robert Willson. By July of 1964, the team had built the first plasma display panel with one single cell. Todays plasma televisions use millions of cells. After 1964, television broadcast companies considered developing plasma television as an alternative to televisions using cathode ray tubes. However, LCD or liquid crystal displays made possible flat screen television that squelched the further commercial development of plasma display. It took many years for plasma televisions to became successful and they finally did due to the efforts of Larry Weber. University of Illinois author Jamie Hutchinson wrote that Larry Webers prototype sixty-inch plasma display, developed for Matsushita and bearing the Panasonic label, combined the size and resolution necessary for HDTV with the addition of thinness.