Showing posts with label landscape. Show all posts
Showing posts with label landscape. Show all posts

Thursday, March 14, 2024

The International Space Station above the Temple Mount in Jerusalem

 


The International Space Station above the Temple Mount in Jerusalem 




The International Space Station above the Temple Mount in Jerusalem




Sunday, November 26, 2023

Jerusalem - Celestial City




Jerusalem and the modern transportation revolutions that shape it as part of the global city.




Saturday, April 16, 2022

Celebration in the sky: Miraculous sights of bird migration have been documented in Israel

 

The cold winter prevented the flocks of cranes and storks from migrating, and meanwhile they remained in the skies of Israel - leaving spectacular spectacles • The unique natural wonder was documented by the Bird Society of Nature Conservation who described the migration as "crazy" and warned that the sight "may not repeat itself".






Thursday, February 03, 2022

Paul Virilio - Camera movement over eighty years


The properties of the element of fire guide Virilio in writing on the subject. Fire is an almost imageless element, except for three: light, heat, immediacy. The light according to Virilio is the light of the camera, the heat is the weapon, the immediacy is the decision making.

Virilio reviews how the development of the camera was due to the development of the machine gun, and in general how the development of cinematic photography was due to the consequences of various military developments. Observation and visual intelligence are the cornerstone of the military. That is why they have been at the forefront of technology since the dawn of history to the present day. As the weapons became more sophisticated and the slaughter on the battlefield increased, so did the need for more sophisticated means of observation. The observation plane became the most effective means, and in this way the battlefield, and later the whole world, also became cinematic. The war itself became a spectacular visual spectacle, due to the sophistication of the night lights and the intensity of the shells, in parallel with the sophistication of the defenses against them, trenches and fortifications, which created a sense of disconnection.

The function of the camera is first to connect the fragments of the whole that are revealed to it in separate images, into one complete image. Unlike more modern photography, which focuses on details and create resolutions. Nowadays, with the development of means of observation also for the invisible, such as infrared and radar, and other electronic means, the problem is the management of the information that comes from them, which is the most reliable, but also dense. This created the need for computing, and from there it was a short way to make automatic decisions. In this way the war became a nonstop film, and the nonstop time management replaced the management of space. There was also an obsession with stealth weapons, simulations, and electronic deception. As a result, the war became impersonal and intangible.

Because the sense of reality went wrong, so did human reason. The need to filter information under the conditions of human-machine combined activity was first discovered in World War II, with the sophistication of air defense equipment. Thus was founded the science of cybernetics, based on the concept of the system and the feedback, and in particular the negative feedback, which allows for the screening of human errors through practices.

A detached worldview was created as a result, making motion pictures more tangible than reality. Reality, which has been imprisoned and eliminated by the electromagnetic cyber world, is being revived through the worlds of guided imagery of cinema. Movies have become the telescopic rifle through which we look at war in particular, and the world at large.

In World War II, aerial observation, which has become very sophisticated, has become the most important means of feeding raw materials for films designed to portray reality with an objective eye. But the aerial observation also turned the surface into a detached object, as in a laboratory. Everything became too clear and immediate from the air, and repeated evidence was required, as in a laboratory experiment, to confirm any report. This is due to the increasing speed and mobility of the modern ground military movement. The need for a broad verbal interpretation of the outcome of air battles and bombings, has turned silent films into talking films, among viewers in the command rooms. The ability to carry out nocturnal attacks using bright lighting and the use of radar added to the sense of cinematic detachment from reality. The speed of the decision became more important than its correctness. Mobility, the hallmark of the military force, has become a series of means of communication, sent only by the commander-in-chief to any force on the ground. Statistics have become a major tool for him in decision making.

The citizens of the home front have also became partners to the reality of the command rooms. They were attentive to alarms, under the cloud of uncertainty of the bomb approaching them on the one hand, and watched at night the spectacular spectacle of the air defense spotlights and light bombs.

A similar spectacle is currently being experienced by Israeli citizens watching from a protected area in the background during clashes in Gaza, such as in Operation ''Wall Guard'', in which trails of thousands of missiles illuminated the sky. The first Lebanon war is an early and different example of the means of sight taking over the war, using the unmanned aerial vehicles to asist the airplanes.

In World War II, the culmination of the spectacle of light and fire was the atomic bomb. Immediately after the war it was replaced by the exhaust from the jet aircraft engines, and a few years later the fire emitted by the missile engines launched into space. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which required an immediate response from the United States following fears of launching missiles from the island, expressed the empowerment of the processes that connected the observation, immediacy and weapons, that are a modern incarnation of primodial fire.

In the Vietnam War, unmanned jet aerial vehicles were used for the first time, as part of a sophisticated electronic system of aiming and collecting data from various sensors. The UAVs, and the missiles launched by pilots remotely using the Send and Forget method, contributed to the disengagement of the fighters from the war. What remains is the link between the flash of light and the war. For war as a vision in Vietnam contributed the use of drugs by soldiers. War as a cinema has become a default.

In the 1970s, the advanced flight simulator was developed, which enabled full simulation of operational flight, and became almost its replacement. The flight has become a cinematic misenscene. Strategic deterrence was also practiced through electronic war games. The computerized maps, created using the aerial scan of the surface, created a new world of computer mapping, imaging and navigation. The pilots were given an overhead display, sophisticated helmets, and the ability to fly and launch through speech and eye focus. The flight became automatic. The eye and the weapon merged.




Wednesday, February 02, 2022

The critical space according to Paul Virilio


Global urban geographical decentralization, which is a major phenomenon nowadays, has led to the creation of huge cities and an endless, legal and illegal suburban expansion that extends across entire countries. The State of Israel, in particular, has long since became, due to its small size, population density, and lack of governance in the area of ​​regional planning, a single suburban city. This situation is changing the definition of sovereignty. It marks the end of the uniqueness of the place, which characterizes the old political stage and the historic city, and its replacement by the principle of immediacy, the unity of time, which is a politics of intensity and interactivity, of a technical set-up. Systems architecture has finally replaced the historic architecture and urbanism system.

The ubiquitous, immediate presence is being followed by the replacement of the traditional agenda, which was based on the solar cycle,  with accelerated technological agenda, realized by the electronic and digital media. The accelerated agenda is pushing past habits of populating space. The stable regional and urban planning of the space has long been replaced by a general lack of restraint, under social enslavement to accelerated technology. Accelerated technology accompanies humans on their daily journey by high-speed means of transportation, aircraft, cars and trains. These means of transportation greatly eroded the importance of the traditional urban space. Humans have become transfer players in the geographic space, where they are constantly mobile.

A third reason for the disintegration of traditional space is modern weapons, the operation of which is characterized by automatic remote decision-making at lightning speed. A heavy critical mass has been created, heralding a catastrophe of the dismantled historic city, of the traditional urbanization, as well as of the state.

Because the cohesive spatial layout was lost in favor of an invisible morphological configuration, a committed personal, interactive isolation was created. An atomization of the individual was created. In this accelerated process, the individual is awaiting return to the homeland, but has no escape from life in the suburbs.

The endless urban expansion marches along with the inner urban collapse. Both together eradicated the distinction between urban population and colonial settlement. They obscure national citizenship, the very obligation to grant significant political citizenship to populations under authority. Separating colonialism from state citizenship is completely impractical, given these urban processes. The sense of enclosure in the kibernetic space is common to all sectors.

Both sides live on the scale of individual survival. Each of the two types of citizenship has, in practice, rights and obligations that equal their status. The "colonial" citizen is exempt from military service and other civilian duties. He is able to build his private home on state land without obtaining building permits, not paying taxes, marrying several women and more. The "state" subject is obligated to obey every law, mild or severe, and the authorities take every opportunity to impose authority on him. Both types of citizens enjoy free basic social and health insurance. The economic ties between them are numerous and diverse.

The traditional extroverted international colonialism, which was characterized by the occupation of territories far from the homeland, has now become an internalized colonialism, dominated by global technology and media corporations. The traditional city collapsed into itself and crumbled. The centers of major cities around the world have become slums.

The immediate interactivity of the technologies has led to the decline in the value of the local human workforce. It gives priority to multinational monopolistic centralism. This is an ideology that denies the rule of national freedom movements. It creates opposing niches for the pursuit of self-management. It corresponds to a minimum country claim presented by economists. This claim enables the creation of technologies that do not require full employment and a real and practical presence of employees.

The pursuit of sovereignty today is a symptom of a simultaneous search for momentum. It is an acceleration that characterizes all separation movements, that exists between all contemporary urban classes, regardless of their national identity. The aspiration for political isolation is of extraordinary dimensions, and includes all sectors of the population. The anti-establishment ecological movement has long exhibited its enormous dimensions, for example in the North American survival movements. Survival movements can also serve as a touchstone for their absurd chances as a counterculture.

Today the spatial disruption has become the disruption of time. Transience has become a key concept in employment. Technical unemployment, temporary employment, dispersal of the wage burden, fragmentation of the labor system, fragmentation of residence, fragmentation of the family, and so on, have become the distinctive hallmark of life today. In addition, a culture of online social networking has been created, based on similar principles.

The traditional family and community, which were the building blocks of national identity, have disappeared. They fell apart following the modern lifestyle. This disintegration also has negative consequences for the status of citizenship, as it allows for disobedience to state institutions, such as through a tax revolt and a lack of governance. There is no real civic center, almost no valuable political center. The real weapon is first and foremost the position, array and direction of the forces present in the current systemic deployment, which tends to completely neutralize the ties between the citizens, the neighborhood unit.

As a result, the development of terrorism today is limited. Terrorism has nothing to do with substansive actions today. In fact, the various national terrorist movements have never had anything to do with opposition to the collapse of traditional urban systems. They expressed a utopian connection to the homeland, while the land of their longings had long since became a suburb. 

Traditional terrorist bodies are today  inefficient and irrelevant, in the reality of mega cities, which are spreading and collapsing simultaneously and uncontrollably. First, they arose to present a false utopian vision of the homeland, but not to deal with the urban issue as reality requires, by way of presenting an independent alternative to urban renewal. Second, they operate in a crumbling society, because the family and the traditional community, which are the source of classically organized resistance, no longer exist for all the inhabitants of the mega cities. Third, they operate in an outdated strategy, of conventional weapons, while the key today is the technological weapon, based on speed.

Military technological progress, which nowadays dictates political decision-making, is characterized by ballistic missiles. Everything is known today in very short durations, a few minutes and sometimes even less. The first response doctrine argues that in order to achieve the target, the nuclear missiles must be launched before those of the enemy have left the ground. These characteristics are similar to those of unmanned aerial vehicles, which are currently the most common weapons in the war against terror.

In order to be able to express themselves, the various political resistance bodies must adopt quick quantum thinking like lightning, based on time and not on space, and act according to commutes between center and fringe, in the territory in which they are located. Speed also requires action in attacks instead of defense. This is at the risk of losing self-identity, which is typical for quantum decision makers. They also run the risk of lack of public support, engaged in time management in a technological and informative race, and baseless political promises, in an urban environment that has lost its original identity.


The article was written based on Paul Virilio's book "The Critical Space".




Friday, January 28, 2022

Style and Content in Paul Virilio's Works


Quotes on Paul Virilio, the French Post- Modernist thinker, from the book: The Virilio Reader,  editor James Der Derian:

Preview: Reading Paul Virilio's writings is an oral reading. It is well understood only when read. This is because the word being heard has the ability, because of the time needed to be spoken, to pause on the visual image for the appropriate period of time to decipher it, while producing and creating the appropriate mental stimulus for deciphering, something which is impossible when the eye experiences constantly changing images in silent reading, or as in the everyday reality in general. In this respect, Virilio is like other Post Modern French thinkers, including Gaston Bacheler, who also create difficulties in understanding them without getting into their shoes. Thus, any reading of a summary or article of their writings is worthless. Read the source first to understand what it is all about, like reading a song.

Paul Virilio character impression was of  of a proud yet somewhat shy man, with none of  the character that marks many of the nouveaux philosophes. He was popular and received many invitations to speak, and accepted only few.  Born in 1932, as a child his first encounter with the speed of the war machine came at the outset of the Second World War, listening to the radio in his hometown of Nantes, hearing that the Germans had reached it, and then, almost simultaneously, hearing the sound of tanks outside his window. It was his first brush with Blitzkrieg. Aerial bombardments also left a deep impression, as they destroyed the city completely. He was drafted to fight in France's war with Algeria, before taking up a career practicing and teaching urban architecture. In between he learned the art of stained-glass making.  His official bios usually begin with his tenure as professor (1969), general director (1975), and president (1990) of the Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture.

Beside his contributions to the philosophy of technology and society he wrote numerous shorter pieces on film, art, architecture, and current diplomatic-military affairs.

Virilio represents the power of will, intellect, and belief over the technological predestinations of late modernity. Virilio believes that accidents play a double game, as both disaster and diagnostic of the human condition. They can serve as a powerful agnostic wrench in the works of the new techno-deities. 

Virilio's gift for original and often un anticipated transition from seemingly commonplace discussions to profound, at times transcendent, critical syntheses, requires a particular attentiveness to the interplay of the topical and rhetorical. He is able, in part, to accomplish these transitions - which might best be described as accidental syntheses – by virtue of the specific sensibilities of the French language and culture not easily reproduced in other lenguages. 

What is for some panache, others will consider indulgent. At times these unwieldy sentences appear to be nothing more than an expedient means for imparting raw information. In other instances the task of reading him involved recognizing moments in which a shift in registers occurs from what at first appears only to be informational, to what finally amounts, in a quasi haphazard fashion - by virtue of a sheer glut, a vertiginous welter of references - to one of those unique accidental syntheses. 

The task may then best be described as sensing, approximating, or even guessing in a manner which strives for a certain rapport.

Internet browsing, hypertext and other computer-related stuff, goes well with Paul Virilio's theories about the impact of speed on the western world as we know it. Climbing up across Searching in the Internet tree, one will find the complete collapse of distance accompanied by a radical attenuation of identity. Lost sight, as well as the original site of the "Person'' are characteristic to browsing. He - or she are thinned out, disappearing into the infosphere, seven degrees removed from everything. Something that one moment had been so close, seemingly so significant, had become nothing at all.

Virilio is not the first to discern this dark side to an Enlightenment which had, for the most part, contracted a new happy, progressive marriage of self, reason, and technology. Earlier warnings about the possible perils of technologies of reproduction have been powerfully and persuasively voiced. 

First on just about every list would be Walter Benjamin. Writing in Germany in the 1930s, he observed how mechanically reproduced art, especially film, would become useful for Fascism, for the rendering of politics into aesthetics, with the advantage of mobilizing the masses for war without endangering traditional property relations. In the essay, “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” he anticipates Virilio's linking of technologies of acceleration and war in citing an early analyst and advocate of speed, the Futurist, Filippo Marinetti.

Second is Guy Debord, leader of the Situationniste movement in France in the 1950s and 1960s, author of the short but highly influential, Society of the Spectacle. Surveying the spread of spectacle, the fetishization of the image, and the rise of a consumer society, he anticipated the failure of conventional, radical, spatial politics in May of 1968 in France. 

Third, there is Michel Foucault's extra-disciplinary genealogies of politiwas techniques of control arising from pan-opticism. Displaying no anxiety of influence, Virilio takes Foucault's pan-opticon model to an extraterrestrial level of discipline and control, offering a microanalysis of how new technologies of oversight and organizations of control, innovated by strategic alliances of the military, industrial, and scienti communities, have made the crossover into civilian and political sectors create a global administration of fear. 

All of these critical thinkers and others have provided key insights into the political and social implications of the advent of new technologies of reproduction. Yet they seem out of date, stuck in place, when compared to the restless yet, in all its timefullness, strangely rustless conceit of Virilio, that the proliferation of highspeed, realtime, cinematic, global, computer networked - in a word – virtual systems of how we see, has forever changed how we know. 

In an essay which originally appeared in Le Monde Diplomatique, Virilio maps the social consequences: What lies ahead is a disturbance in the perception of what reality is; it is a shock, a mental concussion. And this outcome ought to interest us. Why? Because never has any progress in a technique been achieved without addressing its specific negative aspects. The specific negative aspect of these information super highways is precisely this loss of orientation regarding the other and with the world. It is obvious that this loss of orientation, this nonsituation, is going to usher in a deep crisis which will affect society and hence, democracy. In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.

In short, virtuality destroys reality. On its own, perhaps not a great loss; but Virilio has his eye where others do not, on the collateral damage done to the ethos of reality, the highly vulnerable public space where individuals responsively interact. For Virilio, the interconnectivity of virtual systems is not ushering in a new day for democracy but a new order of telepresence; high-paced interconnectivity is becoming, technically and literally, a substitute for the slower-paced intersubjectivity of traditional political systems. He sees the self as a kind of virtually targeted ground-zero; once voided, concentric circles of political fallout spread, leaving in the vitrified rubble.

reading Virilio will, inevitably, leave one feeling mentally disturbed, usually compounded by a bad case of vertigo, since speed is not only the subject but also the style of Virilio. In a typical Virilio sentence, which often elongates a full paragraph, the concepts can spew out. Many get recycled in later books. Some, benefiting from a new empirical settings, stand out like polished gems. But almost all of them them provide radically different takes on the social implications of technological forces, liberating their analysis from the customary.

a very important and central claim of his books is ''Critical Space'': The exo-colonialism of the industrial, imperial period has become introverted – internally, by the de-industrialization and pauperization of the urban center, and externally by the rise of an intensive transnational capital and transpolitical megalopoles. Mega cities are in   a post-industrial endo-colonization. 

Virilio was arguing from the perspective of a post-Einsteinian relativity, that not only seemed to play fast and loose with analoging, but also seemed to violate some of the basic laws of physics. The inadequacy of language to describe results and the field of quantum mechanics in general, confirmed with Virilio's point of view. The reader might have to suffer some conceptual gymnastics to get it. Yet, for every one of Virilio's oblique concepts or extravagant theoretical claims, there are others which slice right through the sludge that is served up as political analysis.

By this quality alone, there is no question that he belongs in the company of Benjamin and Adorno, Debord and Baudrillard, Foucault and Deleuze, Barthes and Derrida, for taking our understanding of the discursive relationship of technology, society, and politics to a higher plane of political as well as critical consciousness. After the millennium turn he stands out from the critical crowd, as a conceptual innovator and intellectual provocateur, the one who goes to the edge and sees beyond the traditional maps of modernity. 



Sunday, October 17, 2021

Human mosaic in motion - Walk on Sukkot in Jerusalem


Human mosaic in motion: A walk on Sukkot in Jerusalem. From Jaffa Gate to the Western Wall and from there to the entertainment complex of the old train station.






Friday, August 27, 2021

Journey to Ikaria


A trip to Greece, from Athens Airport to the islands of Mykonos and Ikaria, with songs from the composition ''To Axion Esti''.
 

 



Friday, December 18, 2020

Paris Domes - Essay on the Binaric Space in the Parisian Sphere



Paris Domes

 

We were born and raised in cities

in them we breathe and travel

there is nothing inhuman in the city

except for the two of us sometimes


In the heart of the city flows the river Seine

like a silver snake twist and plain

It is a pair in cities everywhere

the full circle and the line of fair


Dialectics takes place

between station and road as circle and line

the square or dome are for peace of mind

and a plot unfold in the alley and boulevard


This design is a key

for everything that exists in the city

a circle or line dominate the space

as in the letters of the alphabet


A central urban circle is the dome

built on top public and state buildings

an important question for the tourist is

which dome to first visit


By the river you can see glass domes

of a huge structure in metal frame

it host important exhibitions

of art, fashion, cars and fairs



The dome most striking of them all

is the cathedral in white color

at the top of Montmartre the mount of arts 

where people for their portraits drawing lust


This dome seems to float in the sky

hovering over the greater city sphere

inside there is a huge fresco of Jesus 

spreading his arms as an airplane


The decorated dome is reminiscent

of invention older then two centuries

which gave Paris premiere

and the hot air balloon is its name


The dome express a view

of the sky is a core 

an inspiration for all mankind

regardless of religion or roots


Another magnificent and large dome

is that of the Opera Hall 

decorated with soul paintings

of people for compassion longing


In Lafayette Gallery department store

there is a huge and colorful dome

it is like in a palace or church 

and give inspiration to the place


Napoleon’s tomb dome

tower on top of all with pride 

It became a symbol 

for France in the first class


On the left bank of the River Seine

is the  impressive Pantheon Hall

with abstract dome and decorations

a shrine for French spiritual giants


Chatelet is a huge metro station

with a transparent glass ceiling

the amount of people passing through

is enormous inconceivably


Paris like any metropolis 

grow on major traffic arteries

the museums are designed the same

for tours along long hallways


The avenues are long and wide

the whole metropolis they glorify

champs Elysees sing in chord

between the Victory Gate and Concord 


Near the historic Bastille Square

there is a long and ancient aqueduct

which has become a green promenade

symbol of how modern France revitalize


Arriving to Paris is through endless tunnel

starting at the airport

it includes many parts

of terminals and transportation passages



The building which symbolize this tunnel 

is the municipal library with the tubes 

in them you ascend in escalators

to the reading halls on all floors


Once you exit the tunnel

Paris unfold in all its glory

with occupants of coffee shops

all along every vacant sidewalk


The square is like macaroon cookie

complicated and difficult to prepare

the bread baguette is like the street

popular and simple to treat and eat


Many Africans live in Paris

who are looking for original content

a reality of a futuristic experiment

based on their digital orientation


Paris is in need for urban renewal

which will contain its suburban sprawl

without it its center is decaying

and the suburbs become negative


Like photography the modern city does not 

reflect human reality correctly

visual appearance is a cheap attitude

insulting the magnitude of history


The colorful Pride Parade is an example

of how human spirit in the city prevail

a world of people participate in it

enriching presence of Paris


Paris preserve its uniqueness

with punctuation in every corner

people are striving to reach it

and it will stay in the peak


The art of local street paintings

is an excellent demonstration of creation

original expressions on the walls

are imaginary treasure maps for all


From its start the city has been personified

as expression of planning and medicine

created for a healthy environment

to embody sights and mind


Chief destination for the tourists

are the great museums

in which many walls are decorated

with Impressionist masterpieces

 

The modern city is a broad subject

foundation of society and creativity

but it is experienced as an image

and is hooked to its bright lights


Man lives in his spatial world 

far more than in his time 

and In-Out are like Yes-No

to define all that is alive


Sunday, January 14, 2018

The Domes of Paris

When the Dreyfus affair broke out in 1895, a very important development in the field of aviation also occurred, the invention of Zeppelin. The zeppelin was a German invention, which the French were very afraid of. Behind them were 100 years of almost exclusive control of the air. This was thanks to the invention of the hot-air and hydrogen manned balloons, back in 1783, seven years before the French Revolution. Now, for the first time, there was an aircraft not at the mercy of the winds. Zeppelins could reach anywhere, at any time, and stay above the target as much as they wished. The military and political reality has changed completely. World War I broke out and was largely influenced by the air raids of the German zeppelins. It shaped the modern state.

The period of the Dreyfus trial is also known as the "beautiful period" or the "Belle Epoque" in the history of France. During this period French culture reached its peak. The balloon was the technological symbol, as well as the cultural source of inspiration. All sectors of were influenced by it, especially architecture and painting. Everything that was high was decorated in detail. The most notable feature was the Eiffel Tower, which was originally designed for tying balloons as part of the international trade fair in honor of the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. But the most appropriate architectural and periodical symbol was the ornate dome, which was built in many institutions in Paris at that time. These ornate domes resemble the first balloons, which were made of silk sheets. On the outside, the domes are prominent features in the urban landscape and are integrated as architectural pearls between the roofs. Anyone who enters them is immediately impressed by their unique size and decoration. Time stands and the soul expands.

It is important to say that unlike the domes of religious buildings around the world, the Parisian dome is secular. It is located in public buildings of all kinds. It is addressed for the secular citizen. The domes illustrate the French worldview during the Belle Epoque. They saw the sky as a painting of unlimited inspiration, not only religious, but cultural and human in general. It was now possible to use the sky as a colorful background for Impressionist painting, which became the flagship of French culture. This is expressed in the city's most important museums.

Paris was completely rebuilt during the Belle Epoque period, with Large squares leading to long boulevards. The boulevards cross the city like air routes. There are dialogues between the square and the boulevard, the circle and the straight line, the dome and the long hall. The dome and the square are a place of convergence and a sense of eternal perfection. In contrast, the long hall or the boulevard represent a story plot developing over time.

The dome or the square can be compared to the French ''macron'' cookie, which was created at the beginning of the 20th century, as a cookie made up of two discs, including a filling. The macron is considered difficult for baking.

The long hall or boulevard can be compared to the baguette, the long and narrow French bread. The baguette is a simple bread and was invented in World War I. when French did not have enough time to puff the dough for complex breads during the war nights.