International Space Station (ISS) Space station assembled from modules in Earth orbit largely by the U.S. and Russia, with assistance and components from a multinational consortium. The project, which began as a U.S. effort, was long delayed by funding and technical problems. Originally called Freedom in the 1980s, it was redesigned in the 1990s to reduce costs and expand international involvement, at which time it was renamed. In-orbit construction started in late 1998 with the launches of a Russian control module and a U.S.-built connecting node, which were linked in orbit by space shuttle astronauts. In mid 2000 a habitat and control-centre module was added, and later in the year the ISS received its first resident crew, comprising two Russians and an American. Other elements were subsequently joined to the station, with the overall plan calling for a complex of laboratories and habitats crossed by a long truss supporting four large solar power arrays. Station construction involved at least 16 countries, including Canada, Japan, Brazil, and 11 members of the European Space Agency. Much of the early work aboard the ISS would focus on long-term life-sciences and material-sciences research in the weightless environment. It was expected to serve as the basis for human operations in Earth orbit for at least the first quarter of the 21st century.
International Standard Book Number (ISBN) Ten-digit num¬ ber assigned before publication to a book or edition thereof. The ISBN identifies various elements of the work, grouping it within a national, geographic, language, or other convenient category and revealing its pub¬ lisher, title, edition, and volume number. The ISBN is part of the Inter¬ national Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD), which was prescribed by the International Organization for Standardization; del¬ egates adopted the numbering system in 1969. The numbers are assigned by publishers and administered by designated national standard book numbering agencies such as the R.R. Bowker Co. in the U.S. and the Standard Book Numbering Agency Ltd. in Britain.
International Style Architectural style that developed in Europe and the U.S. in the 1920s and ’30s and dominated Western architecture in the mid 20th century. The term was first used in 1932 by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson in their essay “The International Style: Architecture Since 1922.” The style’s most common characteristics are rectilinear forms, open interior spaces, large expanses of glass, steel, and reinforced-concrete construction, and light, taut plane surfaces devoid of
Savoye House, Poissy, Fr., an International Style residence by Le Corbusier,
1929-30
PIERRE BELZEAUX—RAPHO/PHOTO RESEARCHERS
applied ornamentation. Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier are among the architects most clearly associated with the style. See also Bauhaus.
International System of Units or Systeme International d'Unites \ses- , tem-a n -ter-na-sy6- , nal-dCe-ne- , ta\ or SI system Interna¬ tional decimal system of weights and measures derived from and extend¬ ing the metric system of units. Adopted by the 11th General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1960, it was developed to eliminate overlapping but different systems of units of measures fostered by rapid advances in science and technology in the 19th-20th centuries. Its fundamental units include the metre (m) for length, the kilogram (kg) for mass, and the sec¬ ond (sec) for time. Derived units include those for force (newton, N), energy (joule, J), and power (watt, W). See table on opposite page.
International Telecommunication Union (ITU) United Nations agency headquartered in Geneva. Its roots can be traced to 1865, when the International Telegraph Union was established to coordinate interna¬ tional development of the telegraph. It acquired its present name in 1934 and became a UN specialized agency in 1947. Its activities include regu¬ lating allocation of radio frequencies, setting standards on technical and operational matters, and assisting countries in developing their own tele¬ communications systems.
International Telephone and Telegraph Corp. (ITT) Former U.S. telecommunications company. It was founded in 1920 by Sosthenes and Hemand Behn as a holding company for their Caribbean-based tele¬ phone and telegraph companies. It expanded into the European market and became a major telecommunications manufacturer. In the 1960s and ’70s ITT became a conglomerate, acquiring firms including the Sheraton Corp. and the Hartford Fire Insurance Co. It divested its telecommunica¬ tions businesses in 1987, and in 1995 it split into three companies: ITT Hartford Group Inc. (insurance); ITT Industries Inc. (defense electronics and auto parts); and a “new” ITT Corp., which merged with Starwood Lodgings in 1997.
international unit Any of several precision standards used in mea¬ suring physical quantities, such as mass, length, and time (see Interna¬ tional System of Units), and also lighting systems, radiation processes, and pharmacology. The luminous intensity or candlepower of a light is expressed in candelas. The second is based on the frequency of radiation emitted by cesium-133 atoms. In radioactive decay, the international unit is the number of disintegrations per second in a sample. In pharmacol¬ ogy, the international unit is the quantity of a substance (vitamin, hor¬ mone, or toxin) that produces a specified effect when tested according to an internationally accepted procedure.
International Whaling Commission (IWC) An intergovernmen¬ tal organization created in 1946 to control the rapid escalation of whal¬ ing. The original purpose of the IWC was to preserve whale stocks for commercial whalers. Whale populations, however, continued to decline, and in 1986 the IWC instituted a moratorium on commercial whaling that remains in effect. At the beginning of the 21st century, 40 countries belonged to the commission, but membership has fluctuated over the years. The commission’s success has been limited by governments leav¬ ing the IWC, ignoring its policies, or breaching regulations.
Internet Publicly accessible computer network connecting many smaller networks from around the world. It grew out of a U.S. Defense Department program called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Net¬ work), established in 1969 with connections between computers at the Uni¬ versity of California at Los Angeles, Stanford Research Institute, the University of California-Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. ARPA¬ NET’S purpose was to conduct research into computer networking in order to provide a secure and survivable communications system in case of war. As the network quickly expanded, academics and researchers in other fields began to use it as well. In 1971 the first program for sending e-mail over a distributed network was developed; by 1973, the year international connections to ARPANET were made (from Britain and Norway), e-mail represented most of the traffic on ARPANET. The 1970s also saw the devel¬ opment of mailing lists, newsgroups and bulletin-board systems, and the TCP/IP communications protocols, which were adopted as standard pro¬ tocols for ARPANET in 1982-83, leading to the widespread use of the term Internet. In 1984 the domain name addressing system was introduced. In 1986 the National Science Foundation established the NSFNET, a distrib¬ uted network of networks capable of handling far greater traffic, and within a year more than 10,000 hosts were connected to the Internet. In 1988 real-
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Internet Protocol address ► Interpol I 951
International System of Units*