Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Queens, borough of New York City (1990 pop. 1,951,598), land area c.109 sq mi (293 sq km), on the western portion of Long Island, SE N.Y., coextensive with Queens co.; settled by the Dutch 1635, estab...

(Encyclopedia) titanium tītāˈnēəm, tĭ– [key] [from Titan], metallic chemical element; symbol Ti; at. no. 22; at. wt. 47.867; m.p. 1,675℃; b.p. 3,260℃; sp. gr. 4.54 at 20℃; valence +2, +3, or +4. Titani...

(Encyclopedia) Bell, Alexander Graham, 1847–1922, American scientist, inventor of the telephone, b. Edinburgh, Scotland, educated at the Univ. of Edinburgh and University College, London; son of Alexander Melville...

(Encyclopedia) Gershwin, George gŭrshˈwĭn [key], 1898–1937, American composer, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., as Jacob Gershwin. Gershwin wrote some of the most original and popular musical works produced in the United Sta...

(Encyclopedia) Faulkner, William, 1897–1962, American novelist, b. New Albany, Miss., one of the great American writers of the 20th cent. Born into an old Southern family named Falkner, he changed the spelling of ...

(Encyclopedia) Germanic languages, subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages, spoken by about 470 million people in many parts of the world, but chiefly in Europe and the Western Hemisphere. All the modern ...

(Encyclopedia) digital versatile disc or digital video disc (DVD), a small plastic disc used for the storage of digital data. The successor media to the compact disc (CD), a DVD can have more than 100 times the stor...

(Encyclopedia) e-commerce, commerce conducted over the Internet, most often via the World Wide Web. E-commerce can apply to purchases made through the Web or to business-to-business activities such as inventory tran...

(Encyclopedia) cicada sĭkāˈdə [key], large, noise-producing insect of the order Homoptera, with a stout body, a wide, blunt head, protruding eyes, and two pairs of membranous wings. The front wings, which are lo...

(Encyclopedia) fireproofing, method of making normally combustible materials as nearly noncombustible as possible. Fireproofing generally applies to textiles and construction materials that are treated with a soluti...