Stafford Town and borough (pop., 2001: 120,653), county seat of Staffordshire, west-central England. Founded by the daughter of Alfred the Great, the town had its own mint from the reign of Aethelstan to that of Henry II. After being chartered in 1206, it grew as a market town. Par¬ liamentarians demolished its 11th-century walls and castle in 1643 dur¬ ing the English Civil Wars. It is situated on the London-Birmingham- Manchester road and rail routes; its industries include electrical and mechanical engineering. It was the birthplace of Izaak Walton, and its Swan Hotel was associated with Charles Dickens. The borough of Stafford includes a large rural agricultural area and the towns of Stone and Stafford.
Staffordshire Vsta-ford-.shirX Administrative (pop., 2001: 806,737), geographic, and historic county, west-central England. Staffordshire’s northern moorlands form the southern tip of the Pennines, and it encom¬ passes the coalfield region known as The Potteries. Traces of Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age settlements remain. The Romans built roads through the area; it was the centre of the kingdom of Mercia in the 7th- 9th centuries. The Danes ravaged it at the end of the 9th century. Stafford-
Germaine de Stael, portrait by Jean- Baptiste Isabey, 1810; in the Louvre, Paris
GIRAUDON/ART RESOURCE, NEW VORK
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Staffordshire figure ► stalactite work I 1809
shire has mined coal and iron since the 13th century. Its pottery industry became famous in the 18th century with the innovations of Josiah Wedg¬ wood. The seat of the administrative county of Staffordshire is Stafford.
Staffordshire figure Type of pottery figurine made in Staffordshire, Eng., beginning c. 1740. The figu¬ rines were made first in salt-glazed stoneware, later in lead-glazed earth¬ enware. Subjects included musicians, animals, shepherds, classical deities, allegorical figures, portraits, theatri¬ cal and political personages, and even criminals. Staffordshire artists included the Wood family of potters.
Staffordshire terrier See pit bull
stage design Aesthetic composi¬ tion of a dramatic production as cre¬ ated by lighting, scenery, costumes, and sound. While elements such as painted screens and wheeled plat¬ forms were used in the Greek theatre of the 4th century bc, most innova¬ tions in stage design were developed in the Italian Renaissance theatre, where painted backdrops, perspec¬ tive architectural settings, and numerous changes of scenery were common. Italian staging was intro¬ duced in England in 1605 by Inigo Jones for court masques. In the late 19th century staging was influenced by the new naturalism, which called for historically accurate sets. In the
Staffordshire lead-glazed earthenware figure, c. 1780; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
20th century simplified stage design
focused attention on the actor. Stage design has been greatly affected by advances in lighting, from the use of candles in the Renaissance to oil lamps in the 18th century and gas and electric lights in the 19th century. Modern stage lighting, which employs computerized control boards to achieve complex effects, can unify all the visual elements of a stage pro¬ duction. See also stage machinery.
stage machinery Devices designed for the production of theatrical effects, including rapid scene changes, lighting, sound effects, and illu¬ sions. Such devices have been in use since the 5th century bc, when the Greeks developed a crane to lower to the stage an actor playing a god (see deus ex machina), as well as movable scenery mounted on wheels. Medi¬ eval mystery plays used trapdoors to allow the emergence of devils and used flying machines for angels. In the Italian Renaissance, elaborate machinery was used for spectacles produced in the churches on holy days. In the 17th century the Italian Giacomo Torelli (1608-78) invented a sys¬ tem for moving the stage wings that made it possible to change scenery quickly. In the 19th century magical illusions were created with mirror devices and refined trapdoors. By the late 20th century spectacle had fallen out of fashion except in musical theatre, but hydraulic stage machin¬ ery allowed for swift and soundless scene changes. See also stage design.
stagecoach Public coach pulled by horses regularly traveling a fixed route between stations or stages. Stagecoaches appeared in London by 1640 and in Paris by 1660. In the 19th century they were most widely used in the U.S. and in England, where in 1828 stagecoaches ran 12 times a day from Leicester to London. In the U.S. they were the only means of travel for long distances overland, carrying passengers and mail to loca¬ tions especially in the West. As railroad travel became more common, stagecoach travel diminished except to remote locations.
staged rocket Launch vehicle driven by several rocket systems mounted in vertical sequence. The lowest, or first, stage ignites and lifts the vehicle (sometimes assisted by attached booster rockets) at increasing speed until its propellants have been used up. The first stage then drops off, which makes the vehicle lighter, and the second stage ignites and accelerates the vehicle further. The use of additional stages generally follows the same pattern until the payload—the spacecraft —has reached the velocity needed to achieve orbit or leave the vicinity of Earth. The number of stages required depends on the details of the mission, the launch vehicle’s
characteristics, and other factors. Some early vehicles needed five stages to reach orbit; most current launch vehicles need only two.
Stagg, Amos Alonzo (b. Aug. 16, 1862, West Orange, N.J., U.S.—d. March 17, 1965, Stockton, Calif.) U.S. college gridiron football coach. Stagg played end for Yale University and was chosen for the first All- America team in 1889. During his 41-year tenure at the University of Chicago (1892-1932), he devised the end-around play, the man in motion, the huddle (also credited to another), the shift play, and the tackling dummy. He later coached at three other colleges, not retiring until 1960. His 71 years of coaching represent the longest coaching career in the his¬ tory of the sport. He died at age 102.
Stahl, Franklin W(illiam) (b. Oct. 8,1929, Boston, Mass., U.S.) U.S. geneticist. Educated at Harvard University and the University of Roch¬ ester, he worked primarily at the University of Oregon. With Matthew Stanley Meselson he discovered and described (1958) the mode of repli¬ cation of DNA. They found that the double-stranded helix breaks apart to form two strands, each of which directs the construction of a new sis¬ ter strand.
stained glass Coloured glass used to make decorative windows and other objects through which light passes. Stained glass is often made in large, richly detailed panels that are set together in a framework of lead. Like all coloured glass, it acquires its colour by the addition of metallic oxides to molten glass. A purely Western phenomenon, stained glass origi¬ nated as a fine art of the Christian church, beginning in the 12th—13th century, when it was combined with Gothic architecture to create brilliant, moving effects. A decline set in after the 13th century, when stained-glass artists began to seek the realistic effects sought by Renaissance painters, effects to which the technique was less suited and which diverted artists from exploiting the all-important light-refracting quality of glass. More recently, stained-glass artists have again achieved high quality: during the 19th-century Gothic revival, in the Art Nouveau designs of Louis Comfort Tiffany, and in the work of such 20th-century artists as Marc Chagall.