The Most Interesting this I did this year (2014)

If you have Alan Parson's I Robot album you've seen this.

I guess the most interesting thing I did this year was visit Paris in April.  I’d always heard there was this city there in France and by god it turned out to be true, when I got on a plane and flew out there.  A little over 8 hours strapped into your tiny coach seat on a United Airlines flight from Chicago and you are at Charles de Gaulle-Roissy airport.  The French did not hassle me much about getting into the country or leaving it, unlike the customs at O’Hare. 

Anyway it is a real country with all these people speaking a language other than English.  A lot of French people were on holiday over what turned out to be Easter holiday and this complicated my plans to visit museums and all.  I thought that over

The Musee d'Orsay used to be a train station

Easter the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay would be closed and unfortunately even if they translate their regs into English you still need some kind of interpreter.  So for example I discovered rather too late that the Louvre, the biggest art museum in the world, was having an “exceptional opening” on Easter Sunday.  What this meant was that the museum was open on Easter Sunday whereas on a normal Sunday it would be closed.  

You could take this picture from inside the Musee d'Orsay

They allow you to take pictures in the Louvre and I did, and ended up visiting the museum twice.  They do not allow you to take pictures in the Musee d’Orsay, in fact, in the Musee d’Orsay they are incredibly anal about everything.  I had to wait about two hours in line before even gaining admission to the museum then when admitted they strictly forbade picture taking.  I did end up taking pictures of non-art and the inside of the giant clock on the top floor, but no art.    While waiting in line there was this Indian fellow who served as kind of the line Nazi who yelled at people to get off walls and other stuff.  That’s what he did all day.  When I left several hours later, he was still yelling at people to get off certain things people naturally wanted to sit on while waiting to get into the museum. 

The Louvre however was okay with photography and in fact didn’t blink when I brought in three cameras,

This painting is humongous.

all hanging around my neck.  I went to see the Mona Lisa which is really a small painting, perhaps 2 feet by 3 feet behind a glass barrier and with maybe 200 onlookers in front of it. 

La Joconde as it is called by the French

I didn’t have the patience to get really close to it, and photographed it from an angle.  On the wall opposite was Veronese’s “the Wedding at Cana” which is a truly enormous work of art.  I think it was something that Napoleon ripped off when he was in Italy.  I am mystified how one could get a painting like that into the museum without some kind of divine intervention.  It was I think about 20 feet by 50 feet.  It was very hard to get an unobstructed view of the painting simply because other people kept posing in front of it.  I got tired of waiting for them to leave and starting taking pictures with them in them.

There are of course signature works that the Louvre is known for, and the Mona Lisa is one of those. 

Others are the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory.  The winged victory and the whole gallery of the museum where it was located was under renovation however so I may never get to see that one.  The Winged Victory was in poor condition as it lacks a head and of course the Venus de Milo is minus a couple of arms. 

Another day I went out to the Palace at Versailles,  which was where Louis the XIV, the sun king had his stately pleasure dome.  It is quite a palace.  I took a train ride out there to see it, and there is a short walk from the station to get to the palace proper. Then there was a long wait in a serpentine line that stretched back and forth in the massive cobblestone courtyard area.

The Hall of Mirrors

   I saw the inside of the palace and the hall of mirrors, the royal bedrooms, etc.  the place is decorated with angels and naked women and cherubim and lions and other things standing on the brink of the rooftops,  there are paintings on the ceilings, faces emerging from the tops of doorways,  etc.  The gates were gilded.  In short the place was decorated to within an inch of its life. 

Maintaining and restoring it must have been an enormous project, but fortunately American philanthropists have come to its rescue, if not Republican France. 

   After that there were the gardens, the many statues lining the paths of the gardens,  the huge canals where holiday goers could rent boats and row themselves around with their girlfriends, their family, or in one case their dog. 

Some had their girlfriends rowing for them.   They have a lot of topiary at Versailles, and fountains, and hidden among the trees and flowers, classical baroque music playing everywhere.  It goes on for miles.  I never did walk entirely around the canal,  I only got as far as the middle of it. 

On another day I walked from the Gare Du Nord, where my hotel was located over to Cimitiere Pere Lachaise.  The cemetery is enormous, and really unlike anything I had seen in America or even in London.

  Maybe the closest approximation might be the cemeteries of New Orleans.  Once at the cemetery I bought a map of the cemetery which has mapped out all the famous people buried there.  It is a long, long list, and I can’t say I found all the ones I was looking for, although, I found quite a few, as well as some I wasn’t looking for.  Many of course I didn’t even recognize.  I have to say that the ingenuity of grave decoration in the old world far surpasses anything I’ve seen in the new.  Many sculptures, busts, angels, photographs, relics, rusting crosses, etc.  There was a crematorium off to one side of the cemetery, which levels out and forms a grid on the eastern side, whereas the cemetery on the western side is very hilly, with hillsides festooned with graves.  There is hardly any grass to cut, and only the necessary maintenance might be to pull some weeds or volunteer trees on the premises.    I found the graves of Marcel Proust, Jim Morrison, Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Eugene Delacroix, and Honore Balzac. 

I also visited Notre Dame, which is a beautiful cathedral and waited a couple of hours in line in order to visit the Gargoyles in the towers. 

Gargoyle contemplating Paris

The reason it took so long is pretty clear once you got up there.  You had to walk up a very long and very narrow spiral staircase up and descend an equally narrow and long spiral staircase down.  The number and variety of them is astonishing, the view of the plaza in front of the cathedral is breathtaking.  Not sure what the purpose of gargoyles is, perhaps to keep evil spirits away. 

Other things I visited were the Eifel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.  I only went to the second level halfway up the tower.  Naturally there were huge lines but they moved pretty fast and other than the presence of soldiers with automatic weapons and being told that I had to drink my cans of diet coke before going up, it seemed normal.  

There seemed to be a lot of French visiting the tower that day, based on the languages used.  Of course there were also American and British tourists there.   The most useful bits of Frenc

h in all the time I was there was "Parlez vous Ingles?” and “Ou est la Toilette?”

Speaking of Toilettes the automatic ones I saw in a couple of places around Paris were an interesting technological advance on old pissoir, which I did not see anywhere in Paris.  These inventions go through an elaborate cleaning cycle after each use, which takes about two minutes between uses.  I had to wait about half an hour to use the one near Notre Dame.    Fortunately French brasseries keep their toilets downstairs in the front of the restaurant instead of in back.   If you have to go you have to go, I say.  Rick Steves recommends just inviting yourself in and using them.   Better to use them first and apologise for your bodily functions afterwards.  I told the proprietor “Merci” and went forth. 

The only bad thing that happened to me during the whole trip was that I had my wallet lifted by a pickpocket as I was entering a train to go back to the airport.

Fun times at the Gare du Nord

  Voila!  He thus got almost all my money, my credit cards, my driver’s license, and I was left standing there on the train while he beat a retreat back to the platform while the train moved out.   Thank God he didn’t get my passport otherwise I would still be over there.  I had about 8 euros in my pocket in change therefore when I flew back to America.  He also got my train ticket which I needed to exit the station.  Fortunately on arriving at CDG-Roissy airport I got the attendant at the other end to let me leave the station without it. 

I made my plane and I didn’t need much money on my way back to Chicago anyway, but it certainly put me in a black mood for much of the trip back.  My seat mate was someone I took for a British national and I said something unwise to him, saying somewhat bitterly that  “I’ll be glad to be back to a land where they speak English”.  He then informed me in English that he was French and studiously ignored me, speaking French with someone across the aisle.  At this I glared at him, which apparently made him so uncomfortable that he moved to another seat. 

The unexpected benefit of this turn of events  was that I had two seats to occupy on my way back as I gloomily reflected on all the stuff the thief would buy with my credit cards in the 9 or so hours it would take for me to get back to Chicago.   I did not enjoy my trip back very much as a result.

 I contemplated bleakly the possible consequences.  I was unable to cancel my credit card until I was back in Chicago 9 hours later.   When I picked up my car I apologised to the driver  for not having any cash to give him, so I gave him a 2 euro coin which delighted him, because he was a coin collector.

A geneology of the light bulb Manufacturers

Swan

Sir Joseph Swan was a British physicist and chemist who created a light bulb that could be used commercially by 1880, focusing on carbonized filaments in a vacuum. 

Edison

Edison, who made a career of crowding in on other inventions and patents by making small improvements in them, created a commercially feasible carbon filament light bulb in America.  The two men came to an agreement to form a company known as "Edison and Swan electric light company" for its commercial exploitation when it became clear that an alliance was going to be more profitable than an extended legal battle.  

Neither man actually "invented" the light bulb since the ability to make light in a resisting filament in a vacuum had been demonstrated by Sir Humphrey Davy in 1802.   What Swan and Edison did do was create a light bulb efficient enough to actually be sold commercially. Edison often won these little tech wars since he had better lawyers. 

The first tungsten filament light bulb was patented in

Just and Hanaman

Hungary by Alexander Just and Franjo Hanaman in 1904.  This gave brighter light and longer life than carbon filaments.   Edison's General Electric company made improvements in the manufacture of the tungsten filaments in 1906 by sintering, and created ductile tungsten filaments by 1911.  Irving Langmuir in 1913 discovered that filling the light bulb with inert gas was better than attempting a vacuum. 

Edison General Electric was incorporated in New York in 1889, drawing together Edison's Electric Light Company, his electric dynamo manufacturing company, his electric sockets and lighting fixtures.  It merged with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company in 1892 to become General Electric Company.

Meanwhile George Westinghouse who developed the transformer, started an electric company based on the method of transporting electric power from the generating plant to the consumer.  Alternating current, where current changes direction at some frequency allows for the more efficient transport of energy at high voltages over long distances with less loss of power.  The stepping up and down of voltage can be accomplished by transformers, which is not possible with direct current.  He was awarded the contract to harness the hydroelectric power of the Niagara river at Niagara Falls and set up a transmission line to Buffalo, which was about 20 miles away.  This was accomplished in 1896. 

Westinghouse's first and most significant invention was the air brake, which made stopping locomotives easier and safer than before.  Apart from dynamos, home appliances, and other things they also manufactured light bulbs.

  In the 1930s they were trying to make a better filament for light bulbs by using uranium.  While this never panned out for light bulbs, it did turn out to be of use in developing processes for the refining of uranium for their use in nuclear weapons.  Westinghouse subsequently became involved in the development of nuclear energy.   

Sylvania was started as a company that refilled burned out light bulbs.    NILCO, Sylvania, and Hygrade lamp companies merged in 1931, forming the Hygrade Sylvania company. 

This company was responsible for the first linear fluorescent tubes, which originated in 1939.  They also made vacuum tubes and resistors, which were important in the early days of radio and TV manufacturing.  Hygrade Sylvania became Sylvania electric products in 1942.   In 1959 it merged with General Telephone to become GTE (aka General Telephone and Electronics).  Under the name GTE Sylvania it sold a lot of things including breakers, transformers,   In 1981 GTE decided to divest itself of its electrical distribution equipment manufacturing divisions. In 1993 GTE sold its lighting business, Sylvania but to get around restrictions on creating too large a company, the operation was split into two parts.  The part comprising the North American business was sold to Osram GmBH, a German firm to form Osram Sylvania.  The rest of the world's business became SLI Holdings LLC, which was sold to Havells India Ltd. to form Havells Sylvania in 2007.  Another fragment of the company went off to live in Australia and New Zealand.    

Before all this happened, Sylvania did invent some products which were breakthroughs at the time. 

The Flashcube which swiveled and allowed one to take 4 flash pictures without replacing the flash bulb was used in conjunction with Instamatic cameras.  In 1986 they were the first to produce the MR16 halogen lamps. In 1989 they developed the first integrated circuit ballasts, which allowed the miniaturization paving the way to the creation of the first compact fluorescent lamps.  

Osram got its start with the creation of a tungsten and Osmium light bulb in 1906.

  The name was a contraction of the two elements used to make light bulb filaments at the time, Osmium and tungsten, which in German is called Wolfram hence the name "Osram". The merger of three lighting companies in 1919: Auergesellschaft, Siemens and Halske, and Allgemein Elektrizitaets Gesellschaft (company) or AEG led to the company now part of Siemens and known at the time as the Osram light bulb company.   Just last year (2013) Osram was spun off from Siemens and acquired its own listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.  

Phillips was founded in 1891 by Gerard Philips in Eindhoven

in the Netherlands to manufacture carbon filament lamps.  From light bulbs they went on to manufacture other things such as vacuum tubes, electric shavers (Norelco), and radio sets.  Just prior to the invasion of the Netherlands by Germany in 1940, the company moved its capital base to North America with its quasi headquarters in the Netherlands Antilles.  

After the war Phillips reestablished itself in the Netherlands where it went into the business of manufacturing TV sets, and introduced the compact audio cassette,

which became a serious competitor with the then dominant medium the vinyl LP record.  It also made forays into video cassette recorders but was overshadowed in time by the VHS technology.  Later it went on to develop Laser disk technology for the creation of compact laser disks, DVD's or digital video disks and blue ray in collaboration with Sony.   

 

Phillips is today an enormous multinational conglomerate that manufactures many types of electrical consumer products. It was as of 2012 the largest manufacturer of lighting products in the world. 

Regarding Henry (the Eighth)

Henry Tudor (1491-1547)  was certainly something of an overachiever, but he didn't know shit about biology.  After all, he went through six wives any number of ministers and all the wealth of the monasteries of England.  It didn't hurt that he was the surviving younger brother of the heir apparent and son of the king of England at the time, Henry VII.  Henry VII was the first Tudor king, a somewhat peripheral Lancastrian claimant to the throne who managed through conquest,  historical revisionism, and his marriage to Elizabeth of York, to resolved the unpleasant late medieval mess of succession that has come to be known as the "Wars of the Roses".  

It was the excessive fecundity of Edward III (1312-1377) that, ironically, started it all.  Edward had the following children by his wife Phillippa of Hinault:  (1) Edward the black prince,  (2) Isabella, Lady of Coucy, (3)  Joan of England,  (4) William of Hatfield, (5) Lionel of Antwerp , First Duke of Clarence, (6) John of Gaunt, First Duke of Lancaster, (7) Edmund of Langley, First Duke of York, (8) Mary, Duchess of Brittany, (9) Margaret, Countess of Pembroke,  (10) Thomas of Woodstock, First Duke of Gloucester, and finally (11-14) John, Jane, and Joan de Southeray.  This set the stage for some monumental family squabbles concerning who got the prize after Edward shuffled off his mortal coil. 

Then there was the  Hundred Years War, which was a series of conflicts from 1337 to 1453 (more like the hundred and sixteen years war but never mind).   In 1066 William the Conqueror added England to his existing domain in Normandy.  At the same time he was the vassal to the king of France.   This conflict or series of conflicts was the protracted sorting out of the national identities of France and England.  For a long time English kings had claim to a lot of French real estate owing to the complex web of intermarriage and primogeniture.  

Primogeniture of course is the practice of maintaining royal and ducal houses and land by the expedient of granting the eldest son of the household ownership of all.  The younger siblings in this arrangement were left with nothing.  This was thought preferable to the division of kingdoms into however many heirs as there were, which, in time would lead to a fragmentation of kingdoms and an intolerable situation related vividly in Shakespeare's King Lear. 

Getting back to Henry the Eighth,  these successional problems seemed to have been the focus of much of his reign.  It has been speculated that Henry may have been a victim of McLeod Syndrome, which leads to both neurological problems in the possessor but in hemolytic disease in his children (1).  It works in much the same way as Rh disease in which an Rh- mother develops antibodies to her Rh+ child.  The first pregnancy goes without a hitch because the mother gets immunized by exposure to the baby's blood at the time of birth.  However each successive child dies from an immune assault on its blood via antibodies that cross the placenta.  

If only I could have sat down with King Henry and explained this to him without being labelled a heretic and burned at the stake.  And if I could also have explained to him the fact that the father (you, Henry) are the determiner of the sex of the child and that it has very little to do with the woman.   In short the problem was with HIM not with the ladies he was mating with.   

I would say to him: 

"In the process of meiosis, wherin males have an X and a Y chromosome in each of their cells, one of the 23 pairs of chromosomes all normal humans have.

  The production of gametes (sperm and egg) requires the reduction of those chromosomes to half their number (23 individual chromosomes) that then go on to unite with the 23 chromosomes of the mother.   Since each one of your sperm cells contains either an X or a Y you determine the sex of the child.  If an X sperm cell reaches the egg first, then it combines with one of the mother's X chromosomes (She has two X chromosomes) then the child is a girl.  :(      If one of your Y sperm cells reached the egg first then the child is a boy. :)   And your succession is assured.  

"The fact is, Hank, (can I call you Hank?) every child is a crapshoot.  You KNOW that the child gets half of everything you inherited from your parents, but what you don't know is which half.  I am talking only about your "genes" not your royal possessions.   The only way to avoid this problem is if I could take a sample of your precious jizz back to the 21st century and put it in an ultracentrifuge. 

You see, your X chromosome bearing sperm cells are heavier than the Y chromosome bearing ones, enough so that if you speed up the process of gravity (using this machine) the heavier ones you don't want will sink lower in the test tube.  Then we could harvest the Y chromosome ones you want from the top of the density gradient and deliver them to the queen's womb at the right moment in her 28 day cycle and you would have a male heir or at least we'd hope so.  Even in the 21st century this isn't an exact science.  You would have to promise to keep your hands off her until she has conceived.    

"But of course you have to do this when the queen is ovulating.   Some time between the time of her previous period and the next one she will ovulate, and you can kind of tell when this is,  by using this handy digital thermometer.

At that moment give me a sample of your jizz and go back to the 21st century.  I brought along a condom for you.  You aren't allergic to latex are you? 

 Just so I don't try to switch tubes or something let me take Cromwell back to verify the procedure.  Less than an hour later I'll return  and we'll artificially inseminate your queen.   Now just to help you in producing your sample material I have taken the liberty of bringing along these magazines.  I expect you will find something to your liking here, but I'll need those back when you are done, okay?"

As it happened of course, it was a successional train wreck.  "Why can't you accept it, Henry, one boy and two girls isn't bad.  Shame about all those miscarriages however, and in any case, none of your children will make a grandparent of you: your male heir Edward VI, will die when he is only 15,  Mary won't be able to conceive at all, and Elizabeth, seeing what a mess marriage and reproduction had been for you and the gruesome fact that you blithely chose to ax her mum,  will decide not to marry at all.  Can you blame her?  

"So after the last of your heirs die the English will have to bring in this bisexual king from Scotland to carry things on for you royals after 1603. Even James the first will have better luck in the baby daddy game than you did, and he liked boys.  But then England will get Scotland in the bargain so I guess that should be consolation enough, but France will never be your dominion, and besides, around the middle of the next century the people started to get really tired of being jerked around by their kings and queens and also got tired of being dictated to regarding how they were

supposed to worship.   They even had the nerve to execute your cousin Charles for treason.  Imagine it!  A king executed for treason?  The world truly will turn upside down.  

And besides, I suspect a major problem you and all your other royal kindred had was this matter of inbreeding.  If you are going to be marrying your first and second cousins like a bunch of demented hillbillies, you shouldn't have been surprised, knowing what we know now, that you got miscarriages and mental defectives and other problems.  Ask the Habsburgs about it.  They had it even worse. 

And if you must view it from a theological point of view then it is self-evident that God hates inbreeding.  Don't do it, or God will punish you.  Nuff said? 

The Chemical Amusement Park

Phillip Seymour Hoffman 1967-2014

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been. 

-John Greenleaf Whittier 

The tragic death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman comes as  a sad end to another actor's brilliant career.   In retrospect, whether he was playing the pathetic gasoline sniffer in "Love Liza" or the compulsive gambler in "Owning Mahoning", he didn't have to go far to find inspiration from his own life as a recovering addict.  I was blissfully unaware of his problems with drug abuse until late on February 2 when, listening to the BBC news 94.7 I heard the news announcer mentioned that "tributes to Phillip Seymour Hoffman" are pouring in.  I knew right then that he must have died.  No one gets "tributes" unless you have  shuffled off the mortal coil.  

 He was great actor and if he'd not died so suddenly he would certainly gone on to other great roles which now of course will never be. Like Heath Ledger's "Batman, the Dark Knight", Hoffman's last appearances on the screen will be posthumous:  the two upcoming Hunger Games sequels. And "Happyland" will never be.  He was great in just about everything he was in, and even in stuff that otherwise was crap, like "Twister".   And of course he was best remembered for his performance in "Capote" a biopic about another celebrity fixture who like Hoffman came to his end through an overdose. 

And so the heartbeat goes on for some but not for them, these

Ledger 1979-2008

VERY public figures like Heath Ledger, or Whitney Houston, Keith Moon, John Belushi, Elvis Presley, Chris Farley, Michael Jackson etc. These are only the ones I can think of off the top of my head.    I could of course go on and on with the list of show business persons who have died from polypharmacy, drug abuse, alcohol or both.  Show business is very demanding and having to be "up" for the performance is a constant necessity.  Is it any wonder then that all those psychoactive

Belushi 1949-1982

chemical substances are so tempting for a performer, or for anyone else who habitually has to take things beyond normal human endurance.   And of course, with money being no object, or at least less of an object than it is for most of us, there is nothing to restrain the artist from his appetite for mood-altering stuff, from fried food, to drink, and ultimately to cocaine, heroin, or clomethizole.  A delusion about our indestructibility seems to prevail until the moment of death. 


One minute you are on top of the world and the next minute you are a piece of  newly decaying meat on the bathroom floor.   We are God's meat puppets and you never know when he's going to lose interest in you and go on to other toys.  We are fragile, and not enough oxygen or too much dope and it's all over.  Our bladder empties, and our rectum too and all the king's horses and all the king's men aren't going to put you back together again. 

We fill you with preservatives, dress you up in backless tuxedo, present you in an attractive box, say some nice things about you, cry if we must, and then put you in a hole somewhere, since you aren't going to keep in any case. 

We all have to find a way to live within our own skins.  Some of us live from one spurt of dopamine to the next.  Many people, especially those in demanding careers without a regular schedule and lots of money are suddenly given the keys to the candy store and discover all sorts of new ways to control their moods, their energy level.  Sometimes it is the desire to escape from boredom or perhaps at the low end of a mood swing a deliberate choice to escape from life.  Culturally some kinds of drug-like amusements are condoned if not actually recommended by authorities. 

dopamine

Can you go to a baseball game without being offered a beer or maybe two?   Isn't even the common expedient of overeating a kind of self medication?  And of course hundreds of millions of people worldwide can't go more than a few hours without a cigarette.  And so the line between what is licit and illicit is kind of artificial.   Prohibition taught us to leave some forms of chemical amusement alone.  You go ahead and smoke and drink yourselves to death if you want to.  It's your right to do so.  It's perfectly legal if you are old enough to know better.    The only difference is the degree to which the more forbidden drugs will speed your on your way to the grave.  Immortal we may feel sometimes, and it's a tough lesson discovering you are not.  Is the transitory sensation on the way there worth it? 



  

A Summary of the Differences between Christian Denominations part 1

The Roman Catholic Church.  The Catholic Church, as it is called, is an outgrowth of the early Christian church as developed in Ancient Rome and is ruled by a serial monarchy, which, owing to the practice of priestly celibacy was not dynastic but elective, at least in its present form. "Catholic" means "universal" and all-encompassing and it sort of is, although less so than in the past. 

The Council of Elvira in 306 was the first explicit ruling that the upper church hierarchy was forbidden to engage in sexual behavior, even though they may have up till their ordination had children and wives.  Of course 1 Corinthians 7:32-33 famously remarks that "The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife.".  On the other hand those who oppose clerical celibacy cited 1 Timothy 3:2-4, which refers to a bishop as being the husband of one wife, and rules his house well and has his children "in subjection".  In any case, it is clear that up till the 4th Century, celibacy in the church hierarchy was not an issue.  Indeed the Apostle Peter, the first "pope" was himself married. 

The Roman Catholic Church claims to be the original, universal Christian church founded by the apostles of Christ.

  The Eastern Orthodox Church which represents the original Christian Church in Eastern Europe shares with claim with a couple of other ancient groups.  Indeed the Roman Church and the Eastern Church, based in Byzantium were the same church until the formal schism in 1054.    This resulted from a doctrinal dispute over matters such as whether or not to perform the Eucharist with leavened or unleavened bread, and the ultimate authority of the pope in Rome. 

This led to reciprocal excommunications and in time massacres and military actions against one another against a background of the crusades.  Although efforts were made later to patch things up, the two branches of the original church remain separate up to the present day.

The Great Western Schism.  Another pre-reformation split in the church originated in the Avignon papacy.   In 1309 the new pope Clement V, who was French, declined to take up his papacy in Rome but chose Avignon in southern France instead. 

Nine years later Clement V died, was succeeded by John XXII, Benedict XII, Clement VI, Innocent VI, Urban V (who served both in Rome and Avignon), and finally Pope Gregory XI, who returned the papacy to Rome in 1376.   This however was not the end of the problem, but the beginning of the Schism, as different parts of the church sided with either Avignon's or Rome's popes.  France, Castile, Aragon, Naples, and Scotland sided with Avignon.  England, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, and Northern Italy sided with Rome. Portugal and the Holy Roman Empire vacillated between the two.   Avignon continued to name popes (referred to as "anti-popes" after Gregory XI's departure for Rome.  Urban VI, the Roman pope after Gregory was a something of a tyrant and most of the cardinals under him left and set up another papacy in Anagri which nominated the Avignon Anti-pope Clement VII.  This rather unsatisfactory state of affairs lasted until 1409 when a council was held at Pisa to resolve the issue but at the last moment the rival claimants backed out and the council went on to name still another person as pope, this time based in Pisa.  This was Alexander V, who was succeeded by John XXIII (not to be confused with the 20th century John XXIII).  This John XXIII convened still a further council at Constance in 1415, where Martin the V was made pope, while the Roman pope stepped down to accommodate Martin V, and the Avignon anti-pope Benedict XIII, who had refused to step down was excommunicated.   Thus this messy state of affairs came to an end in 1415.

The Reformation   Martin Luther is credited with initiating the Reformation in 1517 by nailing his "95 Theses" to the church door in Wittenberg, a document outlining his differences with the Pope regarding certain church practices.  

A major one of these being the sale of indulgences.  This was the practice of monetary gifts to the Church serving to remit the sins of the benefactors.  Salvation was not won by good deeds or by gifts but only by the grace of God and by faith in Jesus Christ.  This removed material considerations or the judgements of ecclesiastical bureaucrats from the supposed bargain for salvation.  He also objected to all church dogma that could not be supported by scripture.  This got him in a world of trouble, beginning with the Diet of Worms in 1520, where he appeared and from which he fled, as the assembled group declared him a heretic and outlaw.

The fact of the invention of a movable type printing press by Gutenberg in 1450 had the effect of greater dissemination of printed matter, more reading of the bible and more of the faithful thinking for themselves after reading it.  The 95 Theses was translated into German and other languages, printed and disseminated throughout Europe.   Luther also, in his spare time translated the bible into German, which led to a hitherto unknown standardization of what became High German.

Lutherans in general view the Eucharist in a subtly different way from the Roman Catholics or the Eastern Orthodox churches.  Transubstantiation is the the belief of the church that the consecrated bread and wine are transformed magically (i.e. in a way surpassing understanding)  into the actual blood and flesh of Christ.  Lutherans believe that the bread and wine are transformed "in, within, and under" the form of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. 

John Calvin was a French theologian who broke with the Catholic church in France in 1530. 

This led to his exile to Basel, Switzerland, and eventually settling in Geneva, where he came to dominate the religious affairs of that city.  He is considered the founder of the Reformed, Congregational, and Presbyterian churches.  Chief among his beliefs was the idea of predestination, or the idea that those chosen to be saved have been known from the beginning.  This goes against the idea of free will and seems to be incompatible with it.  Only God can save your soul and only if God wills it.  This goes against the idea that humans through their own works or by their own will can find a way to salvation.

Opposed to the ideas of Calvin in Protestant circles were the ideas of Jacobus Arminius.  His "Five articles of remonstrance"  stated that (1) Salvation is conditional on upon faith in Christ, (2)  Christ died for all sinners,  (3)  Man is totally depraved and can't be saved unless through grace, (4) man has the choice through free will to resist God's grace, and (5) disagrees with the Calvinist idea that once a believer is saved, nothing will separate him from his salvation, ie "perseverance of the Saints". 

The Arminians were known as "Remonstrants".   Calvinists believe on the other hand that (1) Man is totally depraved and incapable of salvation by his own efforts (2) God chooses to save whom he will, which is a matter of his mercy towards particular sinners,  (3) Christ died to save only God's elect, i.e. the ones through God's mercy he has chosen to save,  (4)  Grace is irresistably provided to those whom God has chosen, and (5) once saved, nothing will separate the chosen or elect from his or her salvation. 

The Anglicans, or Church of England (in America the Episcopal Church) were formed when Henry VIII made his celebrated break with Rome and made himself head of the English church.  

In doing this Henry and his successors made a limited foray into things Protestant, going so far as to stop requiring priestly celibacy, allowing the bible to be owned and read by lay people (as long as they were nobility), and other matters, but preserving much of the ritual and trappings of the Roman church.  The governance of the church is through what is called "apostolic succession" in which the leaders of the church are its bishops, such as the Bishop of Canterbury, who choose their own successors.   This is in contrast with the Presbyterian Church (see below) which is governed by a committee of elders in each congregation. 

Back in the time of Henry VIII and in the early reformation, there was only one legal church, the Church of England, and it encompassed a spectrum of views regarding the bible, its sacraments, and ritual.  In time the "dissenters" moved on to form their own churches more closely as religious diversity began to be allowed.

The Methodists started as a movement within the Church of England, with "Methodist" being originally a term of disapprobation.  It was founded as a movement by John and Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield at Oxford when they were students there in the early 18th century. 

It was a movement against the apathy and stuffiness of he Church of England, trying harder to be socially conscious, helping the poor, witnessing to prisoners, and with preaching with enthusiasm.   Central to its beliefs were the ideas that (1) people are by nature, sinners,  (2) faith alone will "justify them",  and (3) faith makes one holy.  While John Wesley favored the Arminian view that salvation was not pre-ordained, George Whitefield took a more Calvinist view as did many of the early Methodists who later went on to form the Free Church of England, or joined the Presbyterians.  

What finally led to the split between the Anglicans and the Methodists was the shortage of preachers during the American Revolutionary War.  This led Wesley to begin ordaining ministers according to his own criteria rather than those specified by the Anglican Church.