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114-638: First released in 1985, the VideoWriter was sold with a moderate degree of success for several years, with worldwide sales in the mid-hundreds-of-thousands. Notable users included Portuguese Nobel Prize Winner José Saramago and American poet Lucille Clifton . Some units were primarily Magnavox -branded and some were just Philips -branded, and there were several models. With the VideoWriter, Magnavox/Philips competed with Coleco , Brother , Smith-Corona and Canon , all of which offered similar inexpensive dedicated word processors . The VideoWriter appeared in

228-490: A PC graphics company; Gulbransen Inc, a digital audio technology maker; ComCore Semiconductor Inc, a maker of digital signal processing for LANs; Cyrix , the maker of Intel x86 clones. On March 11, 1997, National Semiconductor Corporation announced the US$ 550 million sale of a reconstituted Fairchild to the management of Fairchild with the backing of Sterling LLC, a unit of Citicorp Venture Capital. Fairchild carried with it what

342-640: A collaborator into a competitor with Intel. National lost its business with Intel. Intel reinstated the relationship after the sale of Cyrix. The acquisition of Cyrix also carried with it a business obligation to use the IBM Microelectronics Division to fabricate the Cyrix chips, , as well as technical constraint to do the same, while National Semiconductor had plans to transfer their fabrication to its South Portland fab. National incurred huge losses in its processor business and announced

456-496: A compensation dispute with Sporck. In 1968, National shifted its headquarters from Danbury, Connecticut, to Santa Clara, California . However, like many companies, National retained its registration as a Delaware corporation , for legal and financial expediency. Over the years National Semiconductor acquired several companies like Fairchild Semiconductor (1987), and Cyrix (1997). However, over time National Semiconductor spun off these acquisitions. Fairchild Semiconductor became

570-428: A diversification into personal computer and graphics business. He advocated PC-on-a-chip (aka system-on-a-chip) as a business direction for National Semiconductor. During his tenure at LSI, LSI had successfully applied similar concepts. However, LSI had steered clear of getting involved with PC technologies that would make it a competitor with Intel. Halla held the vision that information appliances (IAs) would succeed

684-647: A focus on profits implemented by Sporck was the key element to National surviving the price war and subsequently in 1981 becoming the first semiconductor company to reach the US$ 1 billion annual sales mark. However, the foundation that made National successful was its expertise in analog electronics , TTL ( transistor–transistor logic ) and MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) integrated circuit technologies. As they had while employed in Fairchild, Sporck and Lamond directed National Semiconductor towards

798-461: A notion as "literature for dummies." The Swedish Academy awarded the next two prizes to non-Europeans, Chinese author Mo Yan and Canadian short story writer Alice Munro . French writer Patrick Modiano 's win in 2014 renewed questions of Eurocentrism; when asked by The Wall Street Journal "So no American this year, yet again. Why is that?", Englund reminded Americans of the Canadian origins of

912-766: A pair of West Coast investment firms and a New York underwriter to take control as the chairman of National Semiconductor. At that time Sprague was 27 years old. Jeffrey S. Young characterized the era as the beginning of venture capitalism . That same year National Semiconductor acquired Molectro. Molectro was founded in 1962 in Santa Clara, California, by J. Nall and D. Spittlehouse, who were formerly employed at Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation. The acquisition also brought to National Semiconductor two experts in linear semiconductor technologies, Robert Widlar and Dave Talbert, who were also formerly employed at Fairchild. The acquisition of Molectro provided National with

1026-636: A recipient. However, there were concerns that the academy was not in any condition to credibly present the award. The New Academy Prize in Literature , not affiliated with either the Nobel Foundation or the Swedish Academy, was created as an alternative award for 2018 only. The first and only New Academy Prize in Literature was won by Maryse Condé , a writer from Guadeloupe noted for her novels Segu , Tree of Life: A Novel of

1140-505: A renewed Academy changed focus and began to award literary pioneers like Hermann Hesse , André Gide , T. S. Eliot , and William Faulkner . During this era, "the greatest benefit on mankind" was interpreted in a more exclusive and generous way than before. Since the 1970s, the Academy has often given attention to important but internationally unnoticed writers, awarding writers like Elias Canetti and Jaroslav Seifert . Beginning in 1986,

1254-546: A separate company again in 1997, and the Cyrix microprocessors division was sold to VIA Technologies of Taiwan in 1999. From 1997 to 2002, National enjoyed a large amount of publicity and awards with the development of the Cyrix Media Center, Cyrix WebPad, WebPad Metro and National Origami PDA concept devices created by National's Conceptual Products Group. Based largely on the success of the WebPad, National formed

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1368-859: A similar manner to the Nobel Prize in Literature, it recognises the lifetime achievement of writers, though the Andersen Award focuses on a single category of literary works (children's literature). National Semiconductor National Semiconductor Corporation was an American semiconductor manufacturer , which specialized in analog devices and subsystems, formerly headquartered in Santa Clara , California . The company produced power management integrated circuits , display drivers , audio and operational amplifiers , communication interface products and data conversion solutions. National's key markets included wireless handsets, displays and

1482-582: A variety of broad electronics markets, including medical, automotive, industrial and test and measurement applications. On September 23, 2011, the company formally became part of Texas Instruments as the " Silicon Valley " division. National Semiconductor was founded in Danbury, Connecticut , by Dr. Bernard J. Rothlein on May 27, 1959, when he and seven colleagues, Edward N. Clarke, Joseph J. Gruber, Milton Schneider, Robert L. Hopkins, Robert L. Koch, Richard R. Rau and Arthur V. Siefert, left their employment at

1596-405: A work in relation to its contribution to humanity's pursuit of the "ideal." Leo Tolstoy , Henrik Ibsen , Émile Zola , and Mark Twain were rejected in favour of authors who mostly are little read today. Later, the prize has often been controversial due to the Swedish Academy's Eurocentric choices of laureates, or for political reasons, as seen in the years 1970 , 2005 , and 2019 , and for

1710-448: Is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel , "in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction" (original Swedish: den som inom litteraturen har producerat det utmärktaste i idealisk riktning ). Though individual works are sometimes cited as being particularly noteworthy,

1824-749: Is also inscribed on the reverse. Between 1902 and 2010, the Nobel Prize medals were struck by the Myntverket , the Swedish royal mint , located in Eskilstuna . In 2011, the medals were made by the Det Norske Myntverket in Kongsberg . The medals have been made by Svenska Medalj in Eskilstuna since 2012. Nobel laureates receive a diploma directly from the King of Sweden . Each diploma

1938-504: Is frequently seen as an indicator of who may be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Gabriel García Márquez (1972 Neustadt, 1982 Nobel), Czesław Miłosz (1978 Neustadt, 1980 Nobel), Octavio Paz (1982 Neustadt, 1990 Nobel), Tomas Tranströmer (1990 Neustadt, 2011 Nobel) were first awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature before being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Another award of note

2052-495: Is included). In 2009, Horace Engdahl , then the permanent secretary of the Academy, declared that "Europe still is the centre of the literary world" and that "the US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature." In 2009, Engdahl's replacement, Peter Englund , rejected this sentiment ("In most language areas ... there are authors that really deserve and could get

2166-566: Is inscribed " Inventas vitam iuvat excoluisse per artes " ("It is beneficial to have improved (human) life through discovered arts"), an adaptation of " inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes " from line 663 of book 6 of the Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil . A plate below the figures is inscribed with the name of the recipient. The text "ACAD. SUEC." denoting the Swedish Academy

2280-624: Is possible for "Swedish professors ... [to] compar[e] a poet from Indonesia , perhaps translated into English with a novelist from Cameroon , perhaps available only in French, and another who writes in Afrikaans but is published in German and Dutch...". As of 2021, 16 of the 118 recipients have been of Scandinavian origin. The Academy has often been alleged to be biased towards European, and in particular Swedish, authors. Nobel's "vague" wording for

2394-786: Is the Spanish Princess of Asturias Award (formerly Prince of Asturias Award) in Letters. During the first years of its existence, it was almost exclusively awarded to writers in the Spanish language, but in more recent times, writers in other languages have been awarded as well. Writers who have won both the Asturias Award in Letters and the Nobel Prize in Literature include Camilo José Cela , Günter Grass , Doris Lessing , and Mario Vargas Llosa . The non-monetary America Award in Literature presents itself as an alternative to

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2508-420: Is uniquely designed by the prize-awarding institutions for the laureate who receives it. The diploma contains a picture and text that states the name of the laureate and normally a citation of why they received the prize. The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 116 times between 1901 and 2024 to 121 individuals: 103 men and 18 women. The prize has been shared between two individuals on four occasions. It

2622-933: The Neustadt International Prize for Literature , the Jerusalem Prize , Franz Kafka Prize , the International Booker Prize , and the Formentor Prix International . The journalist Hephzibah Anderson has noted that the International Booker Prize "is fast becoming the more significant award, appearing an ever more competent alternative to the Nobel". However, since 2016, the International Booker Prize now recognises an annual book of fiction translated into English. Previous winners of

2736-496: The Swedish Academy , has awarded the prize to its own members; Verner von Heidenstam in 1916, the posthumous prize to Karlfeldt in 1931, Pär Lagerkvist in 1951, and the shared prize to Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson in 1974. Selma Lagerlöf was elected a member of the Swedish Academy in 1914, five years after she was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1909. Three writers have declined the prize, Erik Axel Karlfeldt in 1919, Boris Pasternak in 1958 ("Accepted first, later caused by

2850-538: The Wall Street Journal , Joseph Epstein wrote, "You might not know it, but you and I are members of a club whose fellow members include Leo Tolstoy , Henry James , Anton Chekhov , Mark Twain , Henrik Ibsen , Marcel Proust , James Joyce , Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov . The club is the Non-Winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature. All these authentically great writers, still alive when

2964-430: The 18-member academy, who select the recipients, is technically for life. Until 2018, members were not allowed to leave, although they might refuse to participate. For members who did not participate, their board seat was left vacant until they died. Twelve active/participating members are required for a quorum. In 1989, three members, including the former permanent secretary Lars Gyllensten , resigned in protest after

3078-423: The 1960 laureate Saint-John Perse was nominated several times by the 1948 laureate T. S. Eliot . Although the Nobel Prize in Literature has become the world's most prestigious literature prize, the Swedish Academy has attracted significant criticism for its handling of the award. Many authors who have won the prize have fallen into obscurity, while others rejected by the jury remain widely studied and read. In

3192-542: The 1980s, followed by globalisation of Taiwanese and South Korean companies. On May 27, 1991, Charles E. Sporck was replaced by Gil Amelio as CEO and president. Amelio was then president of Rockwell International 's semiconductor division and had a Ph.D. in physics from Georgia Institute of Technology . Amelio had also been formerly employed at Fairchild. Amelio was faced with a company plagued with over-capacity and shrinking market share. Amelio found that, just prior to his taking helm, despite having spent US$ 1 billion over

3306-448: The Academy acknowledged the international aspect in Nobel's will, which rejected any consideration of the nationality of the candidates, and awarded authors from all over the world, such as Wole Soyinka from Nigeria, Naguib Mahfouz from Egypt, Octavio Paz from Mexico, Nadine Gordimer from South Africa, Derek Walcott from St. Lucia, Toni Morrison , the first African-American on the list, Kenzaburo Oe from Japan, and Gao Xingjian ,

3420-465: The Academy awarding its own members, as happened in 1974 . The prize's focus on European men, and Swedes in particular, has been the subject of criticism, even from Swedish newspapers. The majority of laureates have been European, with Sweden itself receiving more prizes (8) than all of Asia (7, if Turkish Orhan Pamuk is included), as well as all of Latin America (7, if Saint Lucian Derek Walcott

3534-479: The Academy by 1 February, after which they are examined by the Nobel Committee , a working group within the Academy comprising four to five members. By April, the committee narrows the field to around 20 candidates. By May, a shortlist of five names is approved by the Academy. The next four months are spent reading and reviewing the works of the five candidates. In October, members of the Academy vote, and

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3648-582: The Academy has been reluctant to award shared prizes, because divisions are liable to be interpreted as a result of a compromise. The shared prizes awarded to Frédéric Mistral and José Echegaray in 1904 and to Karl Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan in 1917 were, in fact, both results of compromises. Shared prizes are exceptional, and more recently, the Academy has awarded a shared prize on only two occasions, to Shmuel Yosef Agnon and Nelly Sachs in 1966, and to Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson in 1974. Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature are awarded for

3762-618: The April 4, 2011, closing share price of $ 14.07. The deal made Texas Instruments one of the world's largest makers of analog technology components. On September 19, 2011, the Chinese minister approved the merger, the last one needed. The companies formally merged on September 23, 2011. The reconstitution was characterised by the new Fairchild being allotted the formerly National Semiconductor locations at Penang (Malaysia), Cebu (Philippines), West Jordan/Salt Lake City (Utah) while National retained

3876-567: The Caribbean and Windward Heights . The scandal was widely seen as damaging to the credibility of the prize and its authority. As noted by Andrew Brown in The Guardian in a lengthy deconstruction of the scandal: "The scandal has elements of a tragedy, in which people who set out to serve literature and culture discovered they were only pandering to writers and the people who hang around with them. The pursuit of excellence in art

3990-520: The Don , he has given expression to a historic phase in the life of the Russian people". Nominations are kept secret for 50 years until they are publicly available at The Nomination Database for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Currently, only nominations submitted between 1901 and 1973 are available for public viewing. What about the rumours circling around the world about certain people being nominated for

4104-527: The Information Appliance Division (highly integrated processors & "internet gadgets") in 1998. The Information Appliance Division was sold to AMD in 2003. Other businesses dealing in such products as digital wireless chipsets, image sensors , and PC I/O chipsets have also been recently closed down or sold off as National has reincarnated itself as a high-performance analog semiconductor company. Peter Sprague, Pierre Lamond and

4218-478: The International Booker Prize who have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature include Alice Munro , Olga Tokarczuk , and Han Kang . The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is regarded as one of the most prestigious international literary prizes, often referred to as the American equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Like the Nobel Prize, it is awarded not for any one work but for an entire body of work. It

4332-601: The Miguel de Cervantes Prize include Octavio Paz (1981 Cervantes, 1990 Nobel); Mario Vargas Llosa (1994 Cervantes, 2010 Nobel); and Camilo José Cela (1995 Cervantes, 1989 Nobel). José Saramago is the only author to receive both the Camões Prize (1995) and the Nobel Prize (1998) to date. The Hans Christian Andersen Award is sometimes referred to as "the Little Nobel". The award has earned this appellation since, in

4446-799: The Nobel Foundation to take care of Nobel's fortune and organise the prizes. The members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that were to award the Peace Prize were appointed shortly after the will was approved. The prize-awarding organisations followed: the Karolinska Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June. The Nobel Foundation then reached an agreement on guidelines for how

4560-1049: The Nobel Prize and that goes for the United States and the Americas, as well") and acknowledged the Eurocentric nature of the award, saying that, "I think that is a problem. We tend to relate more easily to literature written in Europe and in the European tradition." American critics are known to object that those from their own country, like Philip Roth , Thomas Pynchon , and Cormac McCarthy , have been overlooked, as have Latin Americans such as Jorge Luis Borges , Julio Cortázar , and Carlos Fuentes , while in their place Europeans lesser-known to that continent have triumphed. The 2009 award to Herta Müller , previously little-known outside Germany but many times named favourite for

4674-568: The Nobel Prize in Literature would once again be awarded, and laureates for both 2018 and 2019 would be announced together. The decision came after several changes were made to the structure of the Swedish Academy as well as to the Nobel Committee members selection, in order to "[restore] trust in the Academy as a prize-awarding institution". The Nobel Prize in Literature is not the only literary prize for which all nationalities are eligible. Other notable international literary prizes include

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4788-538: The Nobel Prize in Literature. Members of the Academy, members of literature academies and societies, professors of literature and language, former Nobel literature laureates, and the presidents of writers' organisations are all allowed to nominate a candidate. It is not allowed to nominate oneself. Between the years 1901 and 1950, around 20 to 35 nominations were usually received each year. Today thousands of requests are sent out each year, and as of 2011 about 220 proposals were returned. These proposals must be received by

4902-471: The Nobel Prize should be awarded. In 1900, the Nobel Foundation's newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II . According to Nobel's will, the prize in literature should be determined by "the Academy in Stockholm", which was specified by the statutes of the Nobel Foundation to mean the Swedish Academy . Each year, the Swedish Academy sends out requests for nominations of candidates for

5016-427: The Nobel Prize this year? – Well, either it's just a rumour, or someone among the invited nominators has leaked information. Since the nominations are kept secret for 50 years, you'll have to wait until then to find out. Nominated candidates are usually considered by the Nobel committee for years, but it has happened on a number of occasions that an author has been instantly awarded after just one nomination. Apart from

5130-567: The Nobel Prize, re-ignited the viewpoint that the Swedish Academy was biased and Eurocentric . The 2010 prize was awarded to Mario Vargas Llosa , a native of Peru in South America, a generally well-regarded decision. When the 2011 prize was awarded to the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer , permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy Peter Englund said the prize was not decided based on politics, describing such

5244-649: The Nobel Prize. Peter Handke , Harold Pinter , José Saramago , and Mario Vargas Llosa are the only writers to have received both the America Award and the Nobel Prize in Literature. There are also prizes for honouring the lifetime achievement of writers in specific languages, like the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (for Spanish language, established in 1976) and the Camões Prize (for Portuguese language, established in 1989). Nobel laureates who were also awarded

5358-516: The Nobel committee are elected for a period of three years from among the members of the academy and are assisted by specially appointed expert advisers. The award is usually announced in October. Sometimes, however, the award has been announced the year after the nominal year, the latest such case being the 2018 award . In the midst of controversy surrounding claims of sexual assault, conflict of interest, and resignations by officials, on 4 May 2018,

5472-433: The Swedish Academy announced that the 2018 laureate would be announced in 2019 along with the 2019 laureate. Some years, such as in 1949 , no candidate received the required majority of the votes, and for that reason, the prize was postponed and announced the following year. A Literature Nobel Prize laureate receives a gold medal , a diploma bearing a citation , and a sum of money. The amount of money awarded depends on

5586-572: The VideoWriter Smart Keyboard, was well under design at the time of PHIS's shut-down in 1988, principally by Greg Weinstein. The Smart Keyboard was to be roughly 8-1/2 by 11 inches, one inch thick, with a flip-open and adjustable 8-row by 80-column display, a full keyboard, and special function keys . It included the ability to hold over 20 pages of typing, and would have provided a calculator, multi-alarm clock, calculator, and several other convenience functions. When connected to

5700-618: The VideoWriter itself through the RJ14 keyboard connector, documents could be uploaded to the VideoWriter's floppy disk and printed. The hardware chassis was from Kyocera , and was essentially the same as the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer. Nobel Prize in Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature , here meaning for Literature, ( Swedish : Nobelpriset i litteratur )

5814-519: The VideoWriter. Based on a 1984 motherboard design by PHIS engineer Dan Murphy, that was elegantly simple and able to be manufactured for $ 25, the VideoWriter used the Hitachi HD64180 or National Semiconductor NSC800N CPU, clones of the Zilog Z80 with a unique pinout, along with an NCR 7250 video controller . The system included 16K RAM, 64K ROM, a 3-1/2" floppy disk drive (possibly

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5928-411: The academy refused to denounce Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for calling for the death of Salman Rushdie , author of The Satanic Verses . A fourth member, Knut Ahnlund , decided to remain in the academy but later refused to participate in their work and resigned in 2005 in protest of the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Elfriede Jelinek . According to Ahnlund, the decision to award Jelinek ruined

6042-480: The affectionately called Charlie Sporck worked hand-in-hand, with support of the board of directors to transform the company into a multinational and world-class semiconductor concern. Immediately after becoming CEO, Sporck started a historic price war among semiconductor companies, which then trimmed the number of competitors in the field. Among the casualties to exit the semiconductor business were General Electric and Westinghouse. Cost control, overhead reduction and

6156-678: The appropriateness of organisational strategies of National Semiconductor under Sporck. "For 13 of 14 years at National, I was a gung-ho guy. Then, the company started to get big. I kept looking at all the companies whose butts we'd been kicking. And then National started organizing itself like them. It was frustrating." Swanson said in the May 13, 1991, Business Journal-San Jose . Sporck's strategy of outsourcing sales to external sources meant National Semiconductor did not have sufficient or responsive resources to respond to requests from innovators, inventors and academic research—which would have been helpful in

6270-564: The artistic power and truth with which he has depicted human conflict as well as some fundamental aspects of contemporary life in his novel-cycle Les Thibault "; Ernest Hemingway in 1954 "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea ; and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style"; and Mikhail Sholokhov in 1965 "for the artistic power and integrity with which, in his epic of

6384-665: The author's life work, but on some occasions, the Academy has singled out a specific work for particular recognition. For example, Knut Hamsun was awarded in 1920 "for his monumental work, Growth of the Soil "; Thomas Mann in 1929 "principally for his great novel, Buddenbrooks , which has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature"; John Galsworthy in 1932 "for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga "; Roger Martin du Gard in 1937 "for

6498-770: The authorities of his country (Soviet Union) to decline the Prize", according to the Nobel Foundation) and Jean-Paul Sartre in 1964. Alfred Nobel's guidelines for the prize, stating that the candidate should have bestowed "the greatest benefit on mankind" and written "in an idealistic direction," have sparked much discussion. In the early history of the prize, Nobel's " idealism " was read as "a lofty and sound idealism." The set of criteria, characterised by its conservative idealism, holding church, state, and family sacred, resulted in prizes for Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson , Rudyard Kipling , and Paul Heyse . During World War I , there

6612-415: The award is based on an author's body of work as a whole. The Swedish Academy decides who, if anyone, will receive the prize. The academy announces the name of the laureate in early October. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895. Literature is traditionally the final award presented at the Nobel Prize ceremony. On some occasions, the award has been postponed to

6726-483: The candidate who receives more than half of the votes is named the Nobel laureate in Literature. No one can get the prize without being on the shortlist at least twice; thus, many authors reappear and are reviewed repeatedly over the years. The academicians read works in their original language, but when a candidate is shortlisted from a language that no member masters, they call on translators and oath-sworn experts to provide samples of that writer's work. Other elements of

6840-421: The company's president and chief operating officer, to CEO. Don Macleod became National Semiconductor's chief executive officer on November 30, 2009. He was named chairman of the board on May 31, 2010. On April 4, 2011, Texas Instruments announced that it had agreed to buy National Semiconductor for $ 6.5 billion in cash. Texas Instruments paid $ 25 per share of National Semiconductor stock, an 80% premium over

6954-587: The company's president, chairman and chief executive officer on February 2, 1996. National Semiconductor announced the appointment of Brian L. Halla as its chairman, president and CEO on May 3, 1996. Halla was then the head of LSI logic products division. Prior to LSI, he had been with Intel for 14 years. Halla reinforced Amelio's emphasis on the expertise of National Semiconductor in analog technology. He also was, on occasions, an evangelist for analog technology. However, he found that National Semiconductor under Amelio had too few product offerings. Halla embarked on

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7068-421: The consumer market. Sporck had applied strategies that made National Semiconductor function as a low-cost mass manufacturer of semiconductor commodities. A few key executives and engineers left the company in 1981. Among them was Pierre Lamond , who had been the chief IC designer (now partner at Sequoia Capital ). Robert Swanson's departure in the same year to found Linear Technology was another indication of

7182-420: The control of the Nobel Committee such as the early death of an author as was the case with Marcel Proust , Italo Calvino , and Roberto Bolaño . According to Kjell Espmark , "the main works of Kafka , Cavafy , and Pessoa were not published until after their deaths, and the true dimensions of Mandelstam's poetry were revealed above all in the unpublished poems that his wife saved from extinction and gave to

7296-405: The criteria for the prize has led to recurrent controversy. In the original Swedish, the word idealisk translates as "ideal." The Nobel Committee 's interpretation has varied over the years. In recent years, this means a kind of idealism championing human rights on a broad scale. From 1901 to 1912, the committee, led by the conservative Carl David af Wirsén , assessed the literary quality of

7410-760: The custom operating system was Nicholas (Nick) Vigorito. It was manufactured at the Philips factory in Vienna, originally at the rate of 11 systems/hour, although some of the inventory was remanufactured at the master Magnavox North American warehouse in Jefferson City, Tennessee (an hour away from the PHIS offices). The 3-1/2" floppy disk format was proprietary , utilizing single-sided, double-density (80 tracks, 18 sectors/track, 256 byte sectors) resulting in 360 KB storage. Although never released, an accessory, named

7524-515: The deal better for Sporck's hiring and appointment at half his former salary at Fairchild, Sporck was allotted a substantial share of National's stock. In essence, Sporck took four of his personnel from Fairchild with him as well as three others from TI, Perkin-Elmer, and Hewlett-Packard to form a new eight-man team at National Semiconductor. Incidentally, Sporck had been Widlar's superior at Fairchild before Widlar left Fairchild to join Molectro after

7638-415: The decisions by the Academy. Two former permanent secretaries, Sture Allén and Horace Engdahl, called Danius a weak leader. On 10 April, Danius was asked to resign from her position by the Academy, bringing the number of empty seats to four. Although the Academy voted against removing Katarina Frostenson from the committee, she voluntarily agreed to withdraw from participating in the academy, bringing

7752-535: The eventual disposal of low-margin commodity products, which came to fruition later with the sale of a reconstituted Fairchild. National Semiconductor under Amelio chose to build a brand new eight-inch (200 mm) wafer fabrication plant in South Portland, Maine . It chose to divest itself of its then somewhat new plant in Migdal HaEmek , Israel, which became Tower Semiconductor . In 1995, Amelio

7866-477: The expansion. Among Sporck's cost control efforts was his offshore outsourcing of labour. National Semiconductor was among the pioneers in the semiconductor industry to invest in facilities to perform final manufacturing operations of integrated circuits in developing countries, especially in Southeast Asia. National Semiconductor's manufacturing improvements under Sporck (in collaboration with Lamond)

7980-601: The exterior was created by Duncan Copeland, a Philips designer from Europe assigned to the PHIS operation in Knoxville, Tennessee . The application and thus keyboard layout was designed by Greg L. Weinstein, inspired by the Ashton-Tate MultiMate Advantage software for the IBM PC. Project Manager was Robert S. (Bob) Gepp, lead software engineer was Rexford A. (Rex) Battenberg, and lead developer of

8094-429: The final candidates some years in the 1960s. Graham Greene was nominated for the prize twenty-six times between the years 1950 and 1971. Greene was a celebrated candidate to be awarded the prize in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Academy was criticised for passing him over. French novelist and intellectual André Malraux was seriously considered for the prize in the 1950s. Malraux was competing with Albert Camus but

8208-407: The first laser video disc player (Bob Gepp was the project manager of this effort). After specifying, along with partner Sony , the fundamental specs for CD music and CD-ROM (the so-called Red, Yellow, and Green Books), the storage area was split off into Philips LMS (Laser/Magnetic Storage), which eventually moved from the PHIS office location to Colorado, forming the nucleus of what would become

8322-420: The first laureate in 1901, Sully Prudhomme , these include Theodor Mommsen in 1902, Rudolf Eucken in 1908, Paul Heyse in 1910, Rabindranath Tagore in 1913, Sinclair Lewis in 1930, Luigi Pirandello in 1934, Pearl Buck in 1938, William Faulkner in 1950 (the prize for 1949) and Bertrand Russell in 1950. Former recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature are allowed to nominate their candidates for

8436-557: The first laureate to write in Chinese. In the 2000s, V. S. Naipaul , Mario Vargas Llosa , and the Chinese writer Mo Yan have been awarded, but the policy of "a prize for the whole world" has been less noticeable as the Academy has mostly continued to award European and English-language writers from the Western literary tradition. In 2015, a rare prize to a non-fiction writer was awarded to Svetlana Alexievich . The Nobel Prize in Literature can be shared between two individuals. However,

8550-412: The following year, most recently in 2018. Alfred Nobel stipulated in his last will and testament that his money be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind" in physics , chemistry , peace , physiology or medicine, and literature. Although Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died, and it

8664-558: The formerly Fairchild location of Toa Payoh (Singapore). National Semiconductor also had operations in Migdal (tower) Ha'Emeq (valley), Israel. National Semiconductor had six inch (152 mm) wafer fabrication operations there. In 1993, National Semiconductor divested to retain 19% ownership of the plant. The plant in Migdal Ha'Emeq , Israel is now constituted as Tower Semiconductor of Israel. The following picture excerpts illustrate

8778-498: The growing industrial and commercial markets and began to rely less on military and aerospace contracts. Those decisions coupled with inflationary growth in use of computers provided the market for the expansion of National. Meanwhile, sources of funds associated with Sprague coupled with creative structuring of cash flow buffering due to Sporck and Lamond provided the financing required for that expansion. Lamond and Sporck had also managed to attract and extract substantial funds to finance

8892-456: The highlight is the prize-giving ceremony and banquet on 10 December. It is the second richest literary prize in the world . The literature medal features a portrait of Alfred Nobel in left profile on the obverse . It was designed by Erik Lindberg . The reverse of the medal depicts a 'young man sitting under a laurel tree who, enchanted, listens to and writes down the song of the Muse'. It

9006-399: The income of the Nobel Foundation that year. The literature prize can be shared between two, but not three, laureates. If a prize is awarded jointly, the prize money is split equally between them. The prize money of the Nobel Prize has been fluctuating since its inauguration but as of 2012 it stood at kr  8,000,000 (about US$ 1,100,000), previously it was kr 10,000,000. This

9120-535: The infinitely varied work of scores of different traditions. And why should we ask them to do that?" Although several Scandinavians were awarded, two of the most celebrated writers, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and Swedish author August Strindberg , were repeatedly bypassed by the committee, but Strindberg holds the singular distinction of being awarded an Anti-Nobel Prize, conferred by popular acclaim and national subscription and presented to him in 1912 by future prime minister Hjalmar Branting . Paul Valéry

9234-668: The last five years on research and development, National Semiconductor had a disappointing record in new products. The Business section of The New York Times January 11, 1991, reflected the over-capacity generated by Sporck that had to be inherited by Amelio. Amelio disposed of the non-core products and assets in which National Semiconductor had no market motivation or expertise and turned the company towards its core expertise—analog semiconductors. National Semiconductor under Amelio emphasized on reduction of cost of sales, improving capacity utilization, scrap reduction and cycle-time reduction. Redundant facilities were sold and consolidated. With

9348-633: The movies 52 Pick-Up , Broadcast News , and repeatedly in Licence to Kill . The VideoWriter became the principal product of Philips Home Interactive Systems after management decided to discontinue all development of video game consoles and home PCs (even though in 1984, the Magnavox Odyssey held 55% of worldwide console market share). This system was intended to bring $ 10,000 professional word processors to consumers, targeting high school and college students in particular. While in design, it

9462-480: The original version was released in 1985, it was localized to and sold in 11 European countries, although the character set originally included support for Spanish. About a dozen software engineers from the Magnavox Odyssey video game console group (which became PHIS) worked on the product; overall, PHIS at this time employed over 70. Not only were there follow-up models, but also a sheet feeder accessory

9576-455: The personal computer as a trend. He predicted that IAs would overtake sales of PCs by the year 2000. To achieve the goal, National Semiconductor started acquiring companies that would provide the needed technological complements. Among the acquisitions were Cirrus Logic Inc's PicoPower business, for its specialised expertise in small form factor devices; Mediamatics Inc, which makes multimedia connectivity products; Future Integrated Systems Inc,

9690-555: The previous year's recipient, the Academy's desire for literary quality and the impossibility of rewarding everyone who deserves the prize. In the history of the Nobel Prize in Literature, many critical literary figures were ignored. The literary historian Kjell Espmark admitted that "as to the early prizes, the censure of bad choices and blatant omissions is often justified. Tolstoy , Ibsen , and Henry James should have been rewarded instead of, for instance, Sully Prudhomme , Eucken , and Heyse ." There are omissions which are beyond

9804-462: The printer mechanism, in which case the VideoWriter will print to standard thermal paper sheets, thus allowing the system to be used up to the current day. Although the VideoWriter has the capability to accept program disks, none were ever sold, although game designer Bob Harris designed several entertaining apps, such as an acrostic solver. The groups that became PHIS included the Philips division that invented laser disc technology and designed

9918-505: The prize and sometimes their proposals have subsequently been awarded the prize. The 1912 laureate Gerhart Hauptmann nominated Verner von Heidenstam (awarded in 1916) and Thomas Mann (awarded in 1929), the 1915 laureate Romain Rolland proposed Ivan Bunin (awarded in 1933), Thomas Mann nominated Hermann Hesse (awarded in 1946) in 1931, the 1951 laureate Pär Lagerkvist was proposed by both André Gide and Roger Martin du Gard , and

10032-469: The prize, claimed that Joyce's "stature was not properly recognized even in the English-speaking world," but that Joyce doubtless would have been awarded if he had lived in the late 1940s when the Academy began to award literary pioneers like T. S. Eliot . Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was nominated for the prize several times, but the Academy did not award it to him, though he was among

10146-467: The prize, initiated in 1901, was being awarded, didn't win it." Other notable names from the non-western canon who were ignored despite being nominated several times for the prize include Sri Aurobindo and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan . The prize has "become widely seen as a political one – a peace prize in literary disguise", whose judges are prejudiced against authors with political tastes different from theirs. Tim Parks has expressed skepticism that it

10260-451: The process are similar to those of other Nobel Prizes. The Swedish Academy is composed of 18 members who are elected for life and, until 2018, not technically permitted to leave. On 2 May 2018, King Carl XVI Gustaf amended the rules of the academy and made it possible for members to resign. The new rules also mention that a member who has been inactive in the work of the academy for more than two years can be asked to resign. The members of

10374-877: The progress of restructuring, National Semiconductor increased revenues each year. In 1994, National Semiconductor under Amelio posted record net revenues of US$ 2.29 billion. It was also a time when US semiconductor companies had regained market leadership. Amelio introduced benchmarking to evaluate productivity, restructured marketing strategies and reorganised management by introducing modern management practices and workplace environments. Amelio divided products into two divisions: Standard Products Group which comprised low-margin, logic and memory chips—commodity products which were more susceptible to cyclical demands and through which National Semiconductor had matured; and Communications & Computing Group which comprised high-margin, value-added analog and mixed-signal chips. Amelio's division of products seemed to prepare National Semiconductor for

10488-1048: The sale of Cyrix to VIA in 1999. In 1999, National Semiconductor also put out feelers for selling if not the whole, then a majority stake of, its fabrication plant in South Portland, Maine. However, that did not come to fruition. On June 28, 2000, National Semiconductor and TSMC Taiwan signed an agreement that would allow transfer of advanced fabrication technologies from TSMC to the National Semiconductor fabrication plant in South Portland, Maine. On March 11, 2009, National announced plans to close its assembly and test plant in Suzhou, China, and its wafer fabrication plant in Arlington, Texas. On October 9, 2009, Brian Halla announced his retirement as National's CEO. He remains executive chairman. The company promoted Donald (Don) Macleod, who had previously served as

10602-489: The semiconductor division of Sperry Rand Corporation . The founding of the new company was followed by Sperry Rand filing a lawsuit against National Semiconductor for patent infringement. By 1965, as it was reaching the courts, the preliminaries of the lawsuit had caused the stock value of National to be depressed. The depressed stock values allowed Peter J Sprague to invest heavily in the company with Sprague's family funds. Sprague also relied on further financial backing from

10716-559: The storage products industry there. Meanwhile, the Odyssey group had finished designing the next generation Odyssey console as well as the C9000 personal computer system, which would have been the first CD-ROM-based and GUI -based Unix -family system in the personal computer industry. According to PHIS president Lou Arpino, referring to game consoles and PCs: "It's just a Cabbage-Patch Doll phenomenon"—and thus dropping all products except

10830-500: The technological innovation boom of the 1980s. National Semiconductor's lack and loss of innovation meant it was producing products that were easily copied and reproducible. It may have been the cheapest manufacturer in the United States, but it was not the cheapest compared to the Asian manufacturers. This weakness in National Semiconductor was evident in its failure to compete during the globalisation of Japanese semiconductor companies in

10944-433: The technology to launch itself in the fabrication and manufacture of monolithic integrated circuits. In 1967, Sprague hired five top executives away from Fairchild, among whom were Charles E. Sporck and Pierre Lamond . At the time of Sporck's hiring, Robert Noyce was de facto head of semiconductor operations at Fairchild and Sporck was his operations manager. Sporck was appointed president and CEO of National. To make

11058-481: The third system to use one after the 1983 ACT Apricot then the 1984 Macintosh ), and an integral thermal transfer dot matrix printer . While designed originally to sell for $ 399, parts were sourced in Europe and Asia that were greatly affected by the inflation that plagued this period in time, and thus it ended up selling in the U.S. for $ 799 (less than the IBM PC at $ 1500 or Mac at $ 2500). The industrial design for

11172-489: The total of withdrawals to five. Because two other seats were still vacant from the Rushdie affair, this left only 11 active members, one short of the quorum needed to vote in replacements. On 4 May 2018, the Swedish Academy announced that the selection would be postponed until 2019, when two laureates would be chosen. It was still technically possible to choose a 2018 laureate, as only eight active members are required to choose

11286-453: The world long after he had perished in his Siberian exile." British novelist Tim Parks ascribed the never-ending controversy surrounding the decisions of the Nobel Committee to the "essential silliness of the prize and our own foolishness at taking it seriously" and noted that "eighteen (or sixteen) Swedish nationals will have a certain credibility when weighing up works of Swedish literature, but what group could ever really get its mind round

11400-520: The worth of the Nobel Prize in Literature for a long time. In April 2018, three members of the academy board resigned in response to a sexual misconduct investigation involving author Jean-Claude Arnault , who is married to board member Katarina Frostenson . Arnault was accused by at least 18 women of sexual assault and harassment. He and his wife were also accused of leaking the names of prize recipients on at least seven occasions so friends could profit from bets. He denied all accusations, although he

11514-475: Was a policy of neutrality, which partly explains the number of awards to Scandinavian writers. In the 1920s, "idealistic direction" was interpreted more generously as "wide-hearted humanity," leading to awards for writers like Anatole France , George Bernard Shaw , and Thomas Mann . In the 1930s, "the greatest benefit on mankind" was interpreted as writers within every person's reach, with authors like Sinclair Lewis and Pearl Buck receiving recognition. In 1946,

11628-406: Was among the final candidates for the prize several times, but the Academy favoured other writers. In 1964 Auden and Jean-Paul Sartre were the leading candidates, and the Academy favoured Sartre as Auden's best work was thought "too far back in time." In 1967 Auden was one of three final candidates along with Graham Greene and the awarded Guatemalan author Miguel Ángel Asturias . Membership in

11742-461: Was elected as the chairman of the board of directors of National Semiconductor. In 1996, Amelio accepted an invitation from Apple Computer , a customer of National Semiconductor, to join its board of directors. Troubles at Apple later prompted the board to invite Amelio to take on the position of CEO, which he accepted in February 1996. National Semiconductor announced the resignation of Amelio as

11856-423: Was enabled not by emphasizing process innovation but by improving and standardizing processes already established by other companies like Fairchild and Texas Instruments, as well as by frequent raiding to hire from Fairchild's pool of talents. National Semiconductor under Sporck was not particularly invested in marketing strategies, even though it had the vision to launch itself into new and apparent opportunities in

11970-412: Was entangled with the pursuit of social prestige. The academy behaved as if the meals in its clubhouse were as much an accomplishment as the work that got people elected there." King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden said a reform of the rules may be evaluated, including the introduction of the right to resign in respect of the current lifelong membership of the committee. On 5 March 2019, it was announced that

12084-431: Was later convicted of rape and sentenced to two years and six months in prison. Sara Danius , the board secretary, hired a law firm to investigate if Frostenson had leaked confidential information and if Arnault had any influence on the Academy, but no legal action was taken. The investigation caused a split within the Academy. Following a vote to exclude board member Frostenson, the three members resigned in protest over

12198-816: Was mostly the Standard Products group previously segregated by Amelio. Incidentally, the effective price of acquisition of Cyrix was also US$ 550 million. On November 17, 1997, National Semiconductor and Cyrix announced the merger of the companies. Cyrix would become an autonomous wholly owned subsidiary. Halla had earlier emphasized that National was after the low-end CPU market as part of the system-on-a-chip pursuit and therefore would not place emphasis on Cyrix's current development of high-end 6x86MX design. However, Cyrix later announced that its merger with National Semiconductor would not change its development or marketing plans. The acquisition of an independent-minded Cyrix subsequently turned National Semiconductor from

12312-480: Was nicknamed the PWP, or the "Little Orange" (as the local University of Tennessee sports nickname was "Big Orange"), but this was dropped when Coleco started using the name PWP. The 100+ column amber screen was selected for the very best in readability, along with extra space for on-screen help to the right of the typing area. Similarly, the keyboard was designed with quality ease of typing in mind in all aspects. After

12426-523: Was nominated twelve times between 1930 and 1945 but died just as the Academy intended to award him the prize in 1945. James Joyce wrote the books that rank 1st and 3rd on the Modern Library 100 Best Novels – Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – but Joyce was never nominated for the prize. Kjell Espmark , a member of the Nobel Prize committee and author of the history of

12540-406: Was not awarded on seven occasions. The laureates have included writers in 25 languages. The youngest laureate was Rudyard Kipling , who was 41 years old when he was awarded in 1907. The oldest laureate to receive the prize was Doris Lessing , who was 88 when she was awarded in 2007. It has been awarded posthumously once, to Erik Axel Karlfeldt in 1931. On some occasions, the awarding institution,

12654-467: Was not the first time the prize amount was decreased—beginning with a nominal value of kr 150,782 in 1901 (worth 8,123,951 in 2011 SKr ) the nominal value has been as low as kr 121,333 (2,370,660 in 2011 SKr) in 1945—but it has been uphill or stable since then, peaking at an SKr-2011 value of 11,659,016 in 2001. The laureate is also invited to give a lecture during "Nobel Week" in Stockholm ;

12768-440: Was rejected several times, especially in 1954 and 1955, "so long as he does not come back to novel." Thus, Camus was awarded the prize in 1957. Malraux was again considered in 1969 when he was competing with Samuel Beckett for the prize. Some members of the Nobel committee supported a prize to Malraux, but Beckett was awarded. W. H. Auden was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nineteen times between 1961 and 1971, and

12882-425: Was released for the VideoWriter. Recognizing that the ink cartridges and the special VideoWriter floppies (which included a 50,000 word dictionary) were ephemeral, the application designed included the ability for the VideoWriter to recognize blank 3-1/2" floppies and format them for VideoWriter use (although without the dictionary feature). Also, the non-reusable thermal transfer ink cartridge can be removed from

12996-655: Was signed at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895. Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets, 31 million Swedish kronor ( US$ 198 million, €176 million in 2016), to establish and endow the five Nobel Prizes. Due to the level of scepticism surrounding the will, it was not until 26 April 1897 that the Storting (Norwegian Parliament) approved it. The executors of his will were Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, who formed

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