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Radio Flyer Inc. Business Information, Profile, and History

6515 Grand Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60707
U.S.A.

Company Perspectives:

Located on Chicago's Far West Side, Radio Flyer is the world's leading wagon maker, manufacturing high-quality products for children since 1917. The makers of the original little red wagon, Radio Flyer is the only company to produce plastic, steel and wood wagons. Radio Flyer is one of the oldest remaining national toy companies still owned and operated by the founding family.

History of Radio Flyer Inc.

Radio Flyer Inc. is the world's leading manufacturer of children's toy wagons. Its principal product is an icon of American childhood, the classic little red wagon. The company is named after its most famous model, the Radio Flyer, a much-beloved article depicted in scores of advertisements and films. Although other companies, too, make red wagons, Radio Flyer has trademarked the shape of its classic model, and the exact red paint the company uses is a formula known only to itself. In addition to classic steel wagons, Radio Flyer also manufactures wooden and plastic wagons. The company makes wagons in varying sizes as well, including products sized for stuffed animals, and miniatures used as key chains. In total the company makes more than 50 wagon models. Radio Flyer also manufactures a line of wagon accessories such as seats, umbrellas, cooler packs, and handle extensions. Though a small company, Radio Flyer dominates the wagon industry, controlling approximately 70 percent of the U.S. market.

Early Years

Radio Flyer Inc. was founded by Italian immigrant Antonio Pasin. Pasin's family had been fine woodworkers for generations, specializing in furniture and cabinetry. Pasin grew up working in wood as well. But he longed to leave his small town outside of Venice and make a new start in the United States. His family backed his plan, selling their mule to raise money for Antonio's ticket. He arrived in Chicago in 1914. Here he hoped to work as a cabinetmaker, but at first he could only find unskilled work, beginning as a water boy for a crew of sewer diggers. Eventually Pasin found a job that used his woodworking skills, finishing pianos in a piano factory. By the time he had been in the United States for three years, he had saved enough to buy his own woodworking tools and to rent one room to use as a shop. In the evenings, Pasin worked alone, crafting children's wooden wagons. During the day, he walked the streets of Chicago peddling his samples. Pasin worked tirelessly and alone until 1923, when his wagon business had picked up enough that he was able to hire helpers. He incorporated his business as the Liberty Coaster Wagon Company, fondly naming it after the Statue of Liberty that had greeted him when he arrived in his new country.

Mass Production in the 1930s

Although Pasin's background was in woodworking, he soon became enamored of a new technology, metal stamping. Henry Ford had used metal stamping in his automobile factories, where huge machines stamped identical pieces out of sheets of steel. Pasin believed the automotive method could be used for his wagons, enabling him to mass-produce a cheap, well-built product. By the late 1920s, Pasin had refitted his factory for metal stamping, and Liberty Coaster began putting out stamped steel wagons. Pasin named a 1927 model the 'Radio Flyer,' capturing the excitement of the burgeoning radio industry. In 1930, Liberty Coaster changed its name to the Radio Steel & Manufacturing Company. This new name made note of both the new metal technology and the popular Radio Flyer model.

Pasin consciously studied Ford's factory method. His aim was not only to adapt metal stamping to toy wagons, but to produce a quality product along efficient lines. Radio Steel grew to be a major employer, putting out at least 1,500 wagons a day in the 1930s. Even though this was the depth of the Great Depression, Pasin provided steady work to scores of people, mostly Italian-Americans like himself. The motto for Radio Steel's wagons was 'For every boy. For every girl.' This rang true, as the wagon was a basic toy that provided years of fun for all kinds of kids, not a fad product or something that appealed only to a niche group. Radio Steel churned out its thousands of identical red wagons just like Ford had produced the Model T, and Pasin won for himself the nickname 'Little Ford.'

Already by the year 1930, Radio Steel was the world's largest producer of children's coaster wagons, and it set the standard for what a wagon should look like. Despite the Depression, which idled many other industries, Radio Steel worked at full capacity throughout the 1930s. Although the company made its mark with the classic, simple red coaster wagon, it also made more sophisticated products, such as the Streak-O-Lite of 1934, a wagon with control dials and working headlights. Another popular 1930s model was the Zep, which imitated the streamlined styling of the day's fancy automobiles. Pasin passed on his success to his workers, initiating generous programs such as English language tutoring within the factory. He also provided interest-free loans to his workers so they could build houses, contributing to the stability of the mostly Italian neighborhood around the factory on Chicago's West Side.

World War II and Beyond

When the United States entered World War II, many industries converted to making wartime products. Radio Steel halted its production of wagons to manufacture so-called blitz cans. These were five-gallon containers used for either fuel or water, mounted on tanks, trucks, and jeeps. Radio Steel's blitz cans saw service in Europe, the Pacific, and Africa.

After the war, the factory went back to making wagons and developed several new models in tune with the times. In the era of the station wagon, Radio Steel began producing its Radio Rancher Convertible, a high-capacity wagon with removable steel stake sides. Beginning in 1957, the company branched out, for the first time making garden carts. These were not toys, but metal carts designed to haul yard waste, perhaps a shrewd line extension in view of the growth of suburbia and suburban gardens. Soon the company also began making wheelbarrows.

Yet the classic little red wagon continued to be the company's mainstay. Radio Steel continued production unabated, even though the toy industry in the United States began to change. In the 1970s, the industry consolidated, with many small, private firms being bought out by bigger competitors. These large firms, including Mattel and Hasbro, made inroads into the wagon market with branded products of their own. By the 1980s, the market had swayed away from simple, classic toys to increasingly high-tech items like video games. Big toy companies also poured money into faddish toys and toys that could be marketed through licensing tie-ins to movies and television shows. Despite these developments, Radio Steel plugged away in much the same way it always had. In 1977, the company improved its core product with several patented safety features. These included a new ball joint between the wagon handle and the undercarriage in which fingers could not get pinched, and a controlled turning radius to prevent accidental tipping. It also deployed new toys, such as the Fireball 2000, a 1970s children's car. The company also made bicycles and tricycles.

Changes in the 1990s

In 1987, Radio Steel & Manufacturing changed its name for a third time, to Radio Flyer Inc. This name immediately brought to mind its most popular product. By this time, the company was a distinct anomaly in the U.S. toy industry, because it had remained privately owned and was still run by the family of its founder. Mario Pasin had succeeded his father Antonio, and Mario's sons Robert and Paul also were involved in the firm. Larger companies had made competitive inroads in the wagon business. One competitor was Rubbermaid, mostly known for its kitchenware, but which produced a line of plastic wagons through its Little Tikes division. In the 1990s, Radio Flyer worked to expand its product line and step up its marketing to maintain its market share. It used the Radio Flyer name on toy bicycles, such as the Totally Rad Flyer Bicycle. Its name received wide press in 1992 with the release of a movie called 'Radio Flyer,' the story of the imaginary journeys of two boys in their Radio Flyer wagon. The wagon image also was used extensively in advertising, and the Radio Flyer was featured in advertisement campaigns by car makers Porsche and Chevrolet and in ads for the insurance company Northwestern Mutual Life.

In 1996, Antonio Pasin's grandsons Robert and Paul took over management of the company from their father, with Robert succeeding as president and Paul as executive vice-president. The third generation of the Pasin family moved aggressively to build new types of wagons. In addition to classic red tricycles and steel wagons of various sizes, the company put out plastic wagons with updated designs. In 1996, Radio Flyer introduced the Voyager wagon and the Trailblazer, two plastic wagons that retained the classic red color but were otherwise quite different from the company's standard product. The trailblazer was a very sturdy wagon, ten percent larger than competitors' similar models, but with unique features that made it easy and compact to store. The Voyager was a wagon shaped more like a little car, with an asymmetrical body. It had two seats, one rear- and one front-facing, accessed by a hinged side door. The Voyager also featured a built-in storage compartment and an arched canopy roof. Radio Flyer acted to protect its new wagon features with patents. In 1996 Little Tikes, the wagon division of Rubbermaid, challenged a patent issued to Radio Flyer for a storage system it used. Both companies had wagons with similar storage systems, but only Radio Flyer held a patent. In all, Radio Flyer held 30 patents on various aspects of wagon design, and it had even trademarked the shape of its classic Radio Flyer.

In 1997, Radio Flyer marked 80 years in the wagon business. For a promotional celebration, the company produced what it billed as the 'World's Largest Wagon,' a 27-foot-long, 15,000-pound behemoth that then visited cities across the United States. Radio Flyer stepped up its marketing at this time. In 1999 it introduced a new model plastic wagon, which it called 'the most innovative wagon ever created.' This was its Quad Shock, a plastic vehicle shaped much like the classic Radio Flyer, but mounted on steel wheels served with four heavy-duty shock absorbers. The company followed the Quad Shock with a Radio Flyer Sport Utility Wagon, capitalizing on the popularity of the Sport Utility Vehicle among suburban families. Radio Flyer also entered licensing agreements with other toymakers. In partnership with Enesco, it produced a series of Christmas ornaments featuring teddy bears and other animals seated in Radio Flyer wagons. It made Radio Flyer train cars, key chains, and refrigerator magnets, and in partnership with Danbury Mint, it produced miniature wagons to go with that company's line of collectible porcelain dolls. Radio Flyer also worked with Mattel, one of the two largest American toy companies, licensing its name on the popular Hot Wheels brand of toy cars to make what appeared to be a souped-up race car-type wagon. Other licensed products included a toy Radio Flyer wagon that held a stuffed toy of the beloved Curious George monkey, and another similar toy with a Gund brand stuffed bear.

Aware that the company was a rarity in the fiercely competitive toy business, the company announced at the 2000 International Toy Fair that it would step up its licensing plans to spread its well-known brand name. The company had plans in 2000 to build two new model tricycles, and it conceded that it was considering launching a series of children's books. President Robert Pasin remarked in a February 15, 2000 interview in the Chicago Tribune that the company had stayed true to its original product line while nevertheless responding to changing tastes. He said: 'When consumers wanted big air tires on their wagons, we gave it to them. When they wanted plastic wagons with cup holders, we produced that. We've continued to innovate, while staying close to the consumer.' Although still a relatively small company, Radio Flyer had managed to maintain its position since 1930 as the world's largest producer of children's toy wagons. In spite of increased competition, the company still held an estimated 70 percent of the wagon market as of the year 2000. Under the leadership of the third generation of the Pasin family, the company seemed ready to adapt to further challenges.

Principal Competitors: Rubbermaid Incorporated; Mattel, Inc.

Related information about Radio

The transmission of sound signals through space by means of radio-frequency electromagnetic waves. In 1888 the German physicist Heinrich Hertz produced and detected radio waves, developing the equations made by James Clerk Maxwell. Guglielmo Marconi constructed a device to translate radio waves into electrical signals, and in 1901 transmitted signals across the Atlantic Ocean. Prior to World War 1, radio messages were sent between land stations and ships, and between land and aircraft. In 1918, a radiotelegraph message was transmitted from Wales to Australia. Radio broadcasting became routinely available during the 1920s, when such institutions as the BBC (1922) came into being. Since the 1920s, radio transmission has improved enormously. The introduction of transistors (1948) and integrated circuits revolutionized receivers, and higher radio frequencies have been introduced (for example, FM or frequency modulation). The development of stereo has proved particularly suitable for the broadcasting of music. Both FM and AM (amplitude modulation) radio depend on analog technology. Most radio broadcasters are now developing digital audio broadcasting, which offers a higher quality of sound and allows a massive increase in the number of radio channels that can be fitted to the world's electromagnetic spectrum. Wavebands for international communication now rely on satellites for transmission. The clockwork or wind-up radio, commercially marketed since 1996, has further revolutionized the scope of radio broadcasting. Needing neither batteries nor electricity, its power-source is an internal spring-driven generator powered by hand, enabling people in remote parts of the world where affordable energy is scarce to keep abreast of current developments.

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Radio is the wireless transmission of signals, by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of light.

Radio waves

Radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation, created whenever a charged object (in normal radio transmission, an electron) accelerates with a frequency that lies in the radio frequency (RF) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. In radio, this acceleration is caused by an alternating current in an antenna. Radio frequencies occupy the range from a few tens of hertz to three hundred gigahertz, although commercially important uses of radio use only a small part of this spectrum.The Electromagnetic Spectrum, University of Tennessee, Dept. margin-top: 4px">

ELF - SLF - ULF/VF - VLF - LF/LW - MW - HF/SW - VHF - UHF - SHF - EHF
Electromagnetic radio spectrum

Other types of electromagnetic radiation, with frequencies above the RF range, are microwave, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. Since the energy of an individual photon of radio frequency is too low to remove an electron from an atom, radio waves are classified as non-ionizing radiation. The word 'radio' is used to describe this phenomenon, and television, radio, and cell phone transmissions are all classed as radio frequency emissions. The word appears in a 1907 article by Lee de Forest, was adopted by the United States Navy in 1912 and became common by the time of the first commercial broadcasts in the United States in the 1920s.

Invention

The identity of the original inventor of radio, at the time called wireless telegraphy, is contentious. The controversy over who invented the radio, with the benefit of hindsight, can be broken down as follows:

Guglielmo Marconi was an early radio experimenter and founded the first commercial organization devoted to the development and use of radio. Further refined as a lightning detector, he presented it to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society on May 7, 1895.
Reginald Fessenden _{www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/59.html} and Lee de Forest invented amplitude-modulated (AM) radio, so that more than one station can send signals (as opposed to spark-gap radio, where one transmitter covers the entire bandwidth of the spectrum).
Edwin H. Armstrong invented frequency-modulated (FM) radio, so that an audio signal can avoid "static," that is, interference from electrical equipment and atmospherics.

Early radios ran the entire power of the transmitter through a carbon microphone. While some early radios used some type of amplification through electric current or battery, until the mid 1920s the most common type of receiver was the crystal set. In the 1920s, amplifying vacuum tube radio receivers and transmitters came into use.

Brief history

In 1893 in St. Louis, Missouri, Tesla made devices for his experiments with electricity. www.ieee-virtual-museum.org/collection/people.php?taid=&id=1234597&lid=1 The descriptions contained all the elements that were later incorporated into radio systems before the development of the vacuum tube. He initially experimented with magnetic receivers, unlike the coherers (detecting devices consisting of tubes filled with iron filings which had been invented by Temistocle Calzecchi-Onesti at Fermo in Italy in 1884) used by Guglielmo Marconi and other early experimenters. Tesla is usually considered the first to apply the mechanism of electrical conduction to wireless practices.

In 1896 Marconi was awarded the British patent 12039, Improvements in transmitting electrical impulses and signals and in apparatus there-for, for radio. In 1897 he established the world's first radio station on the Isle of Wight, England. Marconi opened the world's first "wireless" factory in Hall Street, Chelmsford, England in 1898, employing around 50 people. Around 1900, Tesla opened the Wardenclyffe Tower facility and advertised services. Tesla claimed that Wardenclyffe, as part of a world system of transmitters, would have allowed secure multichannel transceiving of information, universal navigation, time synchronization, and a global location system.

The next great invention was the vacuum tube detector, invented by a team of Westinghouse engineers. On Christmas Eve, 1906, Reginald Fessenden used a synchronous rotary-spark transmitter for the first radio program broadcast, from Brant Rock, Massachusetts. Ships at sea heard a broadcast that included Fessenden playing O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible. The first radio news program was broadcast August 31, 1920 by station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan. The first college radio station, 2ADD, renamed WRUC in 1940, began broadcasting October 14, 1920 from Union College, Schenectady, New York. The first regular entertainment broadcasts commenced in 1922 from the Marconi Research Centre at Writtle, near Chelmsford, England.

One of the first developments in the early 20th century (1900-1959) was that aircraft used commercial AM radio stations for navigation. This continued until the early 1960s when VOR systems finally became widespread (though AM stations are still marked on U.S. aviation charts). In the early 1930s, single sideband and frequency modulation were invented by amateur radio operators. Radio was used to transmit pictures visible as television as early as the 1920s. In 1954, Regency introduced a pocket transistor radio, the TR-1, powered by a "standard 22.5 V Battery".

In 1960, Sony introduced its first transistorized radio, small enough to fit in a vest pocket, and able to be powered by a small battery. In 1963 color television was commercially transmitted, and the first (radio) communication satellite, TELSTAR, was launched. In the late 1960s, the U.S. long-distance telephone network began to convert to a digital network, employing digital radios for many of its links. In the 1970s, LORAN became the premier radio navigation system. Soon, the U.S. Navy experimented with satellite navigation, culminating in the invention and launch of the GPS constellation in 1987. In the early 1990s, amateur radio experimenters began to use personal computers with audio cards to process radio signals. In 1994, the U.S. Army and DARPA launched an aggressive, successful project to construct a software radio that could become a different radio on the fly by changing software.

Uses of radio

Many of radio's early uses were maritime, for sending telegraphic messages using Morse code between ships and land. One of the most memorable uses of marine telegraphy was during the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, including communications between operators on the sinking ship and nearby vessels, and communications to shore stations listing the survivors.

Radio was used to pass on orders and communications between armies and navies on both sides in World War I; The United States passed on President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points to Germany via radio during the war.

Another use of radio in the pre-war years was the development of detecting and locating aircraft and ships by the use of radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging).

Today, radio takes many forms, including wireless networks, mobile communications of all types, as well as radio broadcasting. Read more about radio's history.

Before the advent of television, commercial radio broadcasts included not only news and music, but dramas, comedies, variety shows, and many other forms of entertainment. For more, see radio programming.

There are a number of uses of radio:

Audio

AM broadcast radio sends music and voice in the Medium Frequency (MF?0.300 MHz to 3 MHz) radio spectrum. AM radio uses amplitude modulation, in which louder sounds at the microphone causes wider fluctuations in the transmitter power while the transmitter frequency remains unchanged. Transmissions are affected by static because lightning and other sources of radio add their radio waves to the ones from the transmitter.

FM broadcast radio sends music and voice, with higher fidelity than AM radio. In frequency modulation, louder sounds at the microphone cause the transmitter frequency to fluctuate farther, the transmitter power stays constant. During unusual upper atmospheric conditions, FM signals are occasionally reflected back towards the Earth by the ionosphere, resulting in Long distance FM reception. FM receivers are subject to the capture effect, which causes the radio to only receive the strongest signal when multiple signals appear on the same frequency. FM receivers are relatively immune to lightning and spark interference.

FM Subcarrier services are secondary signals transmitted "piggyback" along with the main program. In some countries, FM radios automatically retune themselves to the same channel in a different district by using sub-bands.

Aviation voice radios use VHF AM. (Use of FM would result in stronger stations blocking out reception of weaker stations due to FM's capture effect). Aircraft fly high enough that their transmitters can be received hundreds of miles (kilometres) away, even though they are using VHF.

Marine voice radios can use AM in the shortwave High Frequency (HF?3 MHz to 30 MHz) radio spectrum for very long ranges or narrowband FM in the VHF spectrum for much shorter ranges. Fidelity is sacrificed to use a smaller range of radio frequencies, usually five kHz of deviation, rather than the 75 kHz used by FM broadcasts and 25 kHz used by TV sound.

Civil and military HF (high frequency) voice services use shortwave radio to contact ships at sea, aircraft and isolated settlements.

TETRA, Terrestrial Trunked Radio is a digital cell phone system for military, police and ambulances. Commercial services such as XM, WorldSpace and Sirius offer encrypted digital Satellite radio.

Telephony

Cell phones transmit to a local cell site (transmitter/receiver) that ultimately connects to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) through an optic fiber or microwave radio and other network elements. Satellite phones come in two types: INMARSAT and Iridium.

Video

Television sends the picture as AM and the sound as FM, with the sound carrier a fixed frequency (4.5 Mhz in the NTSC system) away from the video carrier.

Digital television uses quadrature amplitude modulation. Although many current and future codecs can be sent in the MPEG-2 transport stream container format, as of 2006 most systems use a standard-definition format almost identical to DVD: MPEG-2 video in Anamorphic widescreen and MPEG layer 2 (MP2) audio. High-definition television is possible simply by using a higher-resolution picture, but H.264/AVC is being considered as a replacement video codec in some regions for its improved compression. Loran systems also used time-of-flight radio signals, but from radio stations on the ground. VOR systems (used by aircraft), have an antenna array that transmits two signals simultaneously. When the VOR station is collocated with DME (Distance Measuring Equipment), the aircraft can determine its bearing and range from the station, thus providing a fix from only one ground station.

Radar

Radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging) detects things at a distance by bouncing radio waves off them. Some can superimpose sonar data and map data from GPS position.

Search radars scan a wide area with pulses of short radio waves.

Emergency services

Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRBs), Emergency Locating Transmitters (ELTs) or Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs) are small radio transmitters that satellites can use to locate a person or vehicle needing rescue.

Data (digital radio)

Most new radio systems are digital, see also:Digital TV, Satellite Radio, Digital Audio Broadcasting. The oldest form of digital broadcast was spark gap telegraphy, used by pioneers such as Marconi. This is very wasteful of both radio frequencies and power.

The next advance was continuous wave telegraphy, or CW (Continuous Wave), in which a pure radio frequency, produced by a vacuum tube electronic oscillator was switched on and off by a key. A receiver with a local oscillator would "heterodyne" with the pure radio frequency, creating a whistle-like audio tone. Strictly, on-off keying of a carrier should be known as "Interrupted Continuous Wave" or ICW.

Radio teletypes usually operate on short-wave (HF) and are much loved by the military because they create written information without a skilled operator. Microwave dishes on satellites, telephone exchanges and TV stations usually use quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). A special bit pattern is used to locate the beginning of a frame.

Systems that need reliability, or that share their frequency with other services, may use "corrected orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing" or COFDM. Modern COFDM systems use a small computer to make and decode the signal with digital signal processing, which is more flexible and far less expensive than older systems that implemented separate electronic channels. COFDM is used for WiFi, some cell phones, Digital Radio Mondiale, Eureka 147, and many other local area network, digital TV and radio standards. Microwave ovens use intense radio waves to heat food. The microwave frequencies used are actually about a factor of ten below the resonant frequency.) Diathermy equipment is used in surgery for sealing of blood vessels. Induction furnaces are used for melting metal for casting. Conceptually, spacecraft propulsion: Radiation pressure from intense radio waves has been proposed as a propulsion method for an interstellar probe called Starwisp.

Other

Amateur radio is a hobby in which enthusiasts purchase or build their own equipment and use radio for their own enjoyment. Several forms of radio were pioneered by radio amateurs and later became commercially important, including FM, single-sideband AM, digital packet radio and satellite repeaters.

Personal radio services such as Citizens' Band Radio, Family Radio Service, Multi-Use Radio Service and others exist in North America to provide simple, (usually) short range communication for individuals and small groups, without the overhead of licensing. Various plans included transmitting power using microwaves, and the technique has been demonstrated. These schemes include, for example, solar power stations in orbit beaming energy down to terrestrial users.

Radio remote control use sof radio waves to transmit control data to a remote object as in some early forms of guided missile, some early TV remotes and a range of model boats, cars and aeroplanes. Large industrial remote-controlled equipment such as cranes and switching locomotives now usually use digital radio techniques to ensure safety and reliability. Energy autarkic radio technology consists of a small radio transmitter powered by environmental energy (push of a button, temperature differences, light, vibrations, etc.).

References

Leigh White, Buck Fuller and the Dymaxion World (refers to Waldo Warren as the inventor of the word radio), in: The Saturday Evening Post, 14 October 1944, cited in: Joachim Krausse and Claude Lichtenstein (eds.), Your Private Sky, Lars M端ller Publishers, Baden/Switzerland, 1999, page 132.

Chronology

Key Dates:
1917: Italian immigrant Antonio Pasin begins producing and selling children's wooden wagons in Chicago.
1923: Pasin founds the Liberty Coaster Wagon Company.
1930: Company is renamed Radio Steel & Manufacturing.
1941: Radio Steel converts to wartime manufacturing.
1957: Firm extends product lines beyond toys, to garden carts.
1987: Radio Steel changes name again, to Radio Flyer Inc.
1994: Company begins producing new line of plastic wagons.

Additional topics

Company HistoryToys & Games

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