title: Roman calendar

text: Julius Caesar, following his victory in his civil war and in his role as "pontifex maximus", ordered a reformation of the calendar in 46BC. This was undertaken by a group of scholars apparently including the Alexandrian Sosigenes and the Roman M. Flavius. Its main lines involved the insertion of ten additional days throughout the calendar and regular intercalation of a single leap day every fourth year to bring the Roman calendar into close agreement with the solar year. The year 46BC was the last of the old system and included three intercalary months, the first inserted in February and two more—' and '—before the kalends of December.


title: Roman calendar

text: After Caesar's assassination, Mark Antony had Caesar's birth month Quintilis renamed July (') in his honor. After Antony's defeat at Actium, Augustus assumed control of Rome and, finding the priests had (owing to their inclusive counting) been intercalating every third year instead of every fourth, suspended the addition of leap days to the calendar for one or two decades until its proper position had been restored. See Julian calendar: Leap year error. In 8BC, the plebiscite "Lex Pacuvia de Mense Augusto" renamed Sextilis August (') in his honor.


title: Roman calendar

text: In large part, this calendar continued unchanged under the Roman Empire. (Egyptians used the related Alexandrian calendar, which Augustus had adapted from their wandering ancient calendar to maintain its alignment with Rome's.) A few emperors altered the names of the months after themselves or their family, but such changes were abandoned by their successors. Diocletian began the 15-year indiction cycles beginning from the AD297 census; these became the required format for official dating under Justinian. Constantine formally established the 7-day week by making Sunday an official holiday in 321. Consular dating became obsolete following the abandonment of appointing nonimperial consuls in AD541. The Roman method of numbering the days of the month never became widespread in the Hellenized eastern provinces and was eventually abandoned by the Byzantine Empire in its calendar.


title: Roman calendar

text: Roman dates were counted inclusively forward to the next one of three principal days within each month:


title: Roman calendar

text: These are thought to reflect a prehistoric lunar calendar, with the kalends proclaimed after the sighting of the first sliver of the new crescent moon a day or two after the new moon, the nones occurring on the day of the first-quarter moon, and the ides on the day of the full moon. The kalends of each month were sacred to Juno and the ides to Jupiter. The day before each was known as its eve ('); the day after each (') was considered particularly unlucky.


title: Roman calendar

text: The days of the month were expressed in early Latin using the ablative of time, denoting points in time, in the contracted form "the 6thDecember Kalends" ('). In classical Latin, this use continued for the three principal days of the month but other days were idiomatically expressed in the accusative case, which usually expressed a duration of time, and took the form "6th day before the December Kalends" ('). This anomaly may have followed the treatment of days in Greek, reflecting the increasing use of such date phrases as an absolute phrase able to function as the object of another preposition, or simply originated in a mistaken agreement of ' with the preposition ' once it moved to the beginning of the expression. In late Latin, this idiom was sometimes abandoned in favor of again using the ablative of time.


title: Roman calendar

text: The kalends were the day for payment of debts and the account books (") kept for them gave English its word "calendar". The public Roman calendars were the "fasti", which designated the religious and legal character of each month's days. The Romans marked each day of such calendars with the letters:


title: Roman calendar

text: Each day was also marked by a letter from A to H to indicate its place within the nundinal cycle of market days.


title: Roman calendar

text: The nundinae were the market days which formed a kind of weekend in Rome, Italy, and some other parts of Roman territory. By Roman inclusive counting, they were reckoned as "ninth days" although they actually occurred every eighth day. Because the republican and Julian years were not evenly divisible into eight-day periods, Roman calendars included a column giving every day of the year a nundinal letter from A to H marking its place in the cycle of market days. Each year, the letter used for the markets would shift along the cycle. As a day when the city swelled with rural plebeians, they were overseen by the aediles and took on an important role in Roman legislation, which was supposed to be announced for three nundinal weeks (between ) in advance of its coming to a vote. The patricians and their clients sometimes exploited this fact as a kind of filibuster, since the tribunes of the plebs were required to wait another three-week period if their proposals could not receive a vote before dusk on the day they were introduced. Superstitions arose concerning the bad luck that followed a nundinae on the nones of a month or, later, on the first day of January. Intercalation was supposedly used to avoid such coincidences, even after the Julian reform of the calendar.


title: Roman calendar

text: The 7-day week began to be observed in Italy in the early imperial period, as practitioners and converts to eastern religions introduced Hellenistic and Babylonian astrology, the Jewish Saturday sabbath, and the Christian Lord's Day. The system was originally used for private worship and astrology but had replaced the nundinal week by the time Constantine made Sunday ("") an official day of rest in AD 321. The hebdomadal week was also reckoned as a cycle of letters from A to G; these were adapted for Christian use as the dominical letters.


title: Roman calendar

text: The names of Roman months originally functioned as adjectives (e.g., the January kalends occur in the January month) before being treated as substantive nouns in their own right (e.g., the kalends of January occur in January). Some of their etymologies are well-established: January and March honor the gods Janus and Mars; July and August honor Julius Caesar and his successor, the emperor Augustus; and the months Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December are archaic adjectives formed from the ordinal numbers from , their position in the calendar when it began around the spring equinox in March. Others are uncertain. February may derive from the Februa festival or its eponymous ' ("purifications, expiatory offerings"), whose name may be either Sabine or preserve an archaic word for sulphuric. April may relate to the Etruscan goddess Apru or the verb ' ("to open"). May and June may honor Maia and Juno or derive from archaic terms for "senior" and "junior". A few emperors attempted to add themselves to the calendar after Augustus, but without enduring success.


title: Roman calendar

text: Dates after the ides count forward to the kalends of the next month and are expressed as such. For example, March19 was expressed as "the 14th day before the April Kalends" ('), without a mention of March itself. The day after a kalends, nones, or ides was also often expressed as the "day after" (') owing to their special status as particularly unlucky "black days".


title: Roman calendar

text: The anomalous status of the new 31-day months under the Julian calendar was an effect of Caesar's desire to avoid affecting the festivals tied to the nones and ides of various months. However, because the dates at the ends of the month all counted forward to the next kalends, they were all shifted by one or two days by the change. This created confusion with regard to certain anniversaries. For instance, Augustus's birthday on the 23rdday of September was ' in the old calendar but ' under the new system. The ambiguity caused honorary festivals to be held on either or both dates.


title: Roman calendar

text: The Republican calendar only had 355days, which meant that it would quickly unsynchronize from the solar year, causing, for example, agricultural festivals to occur out of season. The Roman solution to this problem was to periodically lengthen the calendar by adding extra days "within" February. February was broken into two parts, each with an odd number of days. The first part ended with the Terminalia on the 23rd ('), which was considered the end of the religious year; the five remaining days beginning with the Regifugium on the 24th (') formed the second part; and the intercalary month Mercedonius was inserted between them. In such years, the days between the ides and the Regifugium were counted down to either the Intercalary Kalends or to the Terminalia. The intercalary month counted down to nones and ides on its 5th and 13th day in the manner of the other short months. The remaining days of the month counted down towards the March Kalends, so that the end of Mercedonius and the second part of February were indistinguishable to the Romans, one ending on ' and the other picking up at ' and bearing the normal festivals of such dates.


title: Roman calendar

text: Apparently because of the confusion of these changes or uncertainty as to whether an intercalary month would be ordered, dates after the February ides are attested as sometimes counting down towards the Quirinalia (Feb.17), the Feralia (Feb.21), or the Terminalia (Feb.23) rather than the intercalary or March kalends.


title: Roman calendar

text: When it was thought necessary to add (every two years) an intercalary month of , so that the civil year should correspond to the natural (solar) year, this intercalation was in preference made in February, between the Terminalia [23rd] and Regifugium [24th].


title: Roman calendar

text: The fifth-century writer Macrobius says that the Romans intercalated in alternate years ("Saturnalia", 1.13.12); the intercalation was placed after 23February and the remaining five days of February followed ("Saturnalia", 1.13.15). To avoid the nones falling on a nundine, where necessary an intercalary day was inserted "in the middle of the Terminalia, where they placed the intercalary month".


title: Roman calendar

text: This is historically correct. In 167BC Intercalaris began on the day after 23February and in 170BC it began on the second day after 23February. Varro, writing in the first centuryBC, says "the twelfth month was February, and when intercalations take place the five last days of this month are removed." Since all the days after the Ides of Intercalaris were counted down to the beginning of March Intercalaris had either 27days (making 377 for the year) or 28 (making 378 for the year).


title: Roman calendar

text: There is another theory which says that in intercalary years February had and Intercalaris had 27. No date is offered for the Regifugium in 378-day years. Macrobius describes a further refinement whereby, in one 8-year period within a 24-year cycle, there were only three intercalary years, each of 377days. This refinement brings the calendar back in line with the seasons, and averages the length of the year to 365.25days over 24years.


title: Roman calendar

text: The Pontifex Maximus determined when an intercalary month was to be inserted. On average, this happened in alternate years. The system of aligning the year through intercalary months broke down at least twice: the first time was during and after the Second Punic War. It led to the reform of the 191 BC Acilian Law on Intercalation, the details of which are unclear, but it appears to have successfully regulated intercalation for over a century. The second breakdown was in the middle of the first century BC and may have been related to the increasingly chaotic and adversarial nature of Roman politics at the time. The position of Pontifex Maximus was not a full-time job; it was held by a member of the Roman elite, who would almost invariably be involved in the machinations of Roman politics. Because the term of office of elected Roman magistrates was defined in terms of a Roman calendar year, a Pontifex Maximus would have reason to lengthen a year in which he or his allies were in power or shorten a year in which his political opponents held office.


title: Roman calendar

text: Although there are many stories to interpret the intercalation, a period of is always synodic month short. Obviously, the month beginning shifts forward (from the new moon, to the third quarter, to the full moon, to the first quarter, back the new moon) after intercalation.


title: Roman calendar

text: As mentioned above, Rome's legendary 10-month calendar notionally lasted for 304days but was usually thought to make up the rest of the solar year during an unorganized winter period. The unattested but almost certain lunar year and the pre-Julian civil year were long, with the difference from the solar year more or less corrected by an irregular intercalary month. The Julian year was 365days long, with a leap day doubled in length every fourth year, almost equivalent to the present Gregorian system.


title: Roman calendar

text: The calendar era before and under the Roman kings is uncertain but dating by regnal years was common in antiquity. Under the Roman Republic, from 509BC, years were most commonly described in terms of their reigning ordinary consuls. (Temporary and honorary consuls were sometimes elected or appointed but were not used in dating.) Consular lists were displayed on the public calendars. After the institution of the Roman Empire, regnal dates based on the emperors' terms in office became more common. Some historians of the later republic and early imperial eras dated from the legendary founding of the city of Rome (" or ). Varro's date for this was 753BC but other writers used different dates, varying by several decades. Such dating was, however, never widespread. After the consuls waned in importance, most Roman dating was regnal or followed Diocletian's 15-year Indiction tax cycle. These cycles were not distinguished, however, so that "year 2 of the indiction" may refer to any of 298, 313, 328, &c. The Orthodox subjects of the Byzantine Empire used various Christian eras, including those based on Diocletian's persecutions, Christ's incarnation, and the supposed age of the world.


title: Roman calendar

text: The Romans did not have records of their early calendars but, like modern historians, assumed the year originally began in March on the basis of the names of the months following June. The consul M. Fulvius Nobilior (r.189BC) wrote a commentary on the calendar at the Temple of Hercules Musarum that claimed January had been named for Janus because the god faced both ways, suggesting it had been instituted as a first month. It was, however, usually said to have been instituted along with February, whose nature and festivals suggest it had originally been considered the last month of the year. The consuls' term of office—and thus the order of the years under the republic—seems to have changed several times. Their inaugurations were finally moved to 1January (') in 153BC to allow Q. Fulvius Nobilior to attack Segeda in Spain during the Celtiberian Wars, before which they had occurred on 15March ('). There is reason to believe the inauguration date had been 1May during the until 222BC and Livy mentions earlier inaugurations on 15May ('), 1July ('), 1August ('), 1October ('), and 15December ("). Under the Julian calendar, the year began on 1January but years of the Indiction cycle began on 1September.


title: Roman calendar

text: In addition to Egypt's separate calendar, some provinces maintained their records using a local era. Africa dated its records sequentially from 39BC; Spain from AD38. This dating system continued as the Spanish era used in medieval Spain.


title: Roman calendar

text: The continuity of names from the Roman to the Gregorian calendar can lead to the mistaken belief that Roman dates correspond to Julian or Gregorian ones. In fact, the essentially complete list of Roman consuls allows general certainty of years back to the establishment of the republic but the uncertainty as to the end of lunar dating and the irregularity of Roman intercalation means that dates which can be independently verified are invariably weeks to months outside of their "proper" place. Two astronomical events dated by Livy show the calendar 4 months out of alignment with the Julian date in 190BC and 2 months out of alignment in 168BC. Thus, "the year of the consulship of Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus and Publius Licinius Crassus" (usually given as "205BC") actually began on 15March 205BC and ended on 14March 204BC according to the Roman calendar but may have begun as early as November or December 206BC owing to its misalignment. Even following the establishment of the Julian calendar, the leap years were not applied correctly by the Roman priests, meaning dates are a few days out of their "proper" place until a few decades into Augustus's reign.


title: Roman calendar

text: Given the paucity of records regarding the state of the calendar and its intercalation, historians have reconstructed the correspondence of Roman dates to their Julian and Gregorian equivalents from disparate sources. There are detailed accounts of the decades leading up to the Julian reform, particularly the speeches and letters of Cicero, which permit an established chronology back to about 58BC. The nundinal cycle and a few known synchronisms—e.g., a Roman date in terms of the Attic calendar and Olympiad—are used to generate contested chronologies back to the start of the First Punic War in 264BC. Beyond that, dates are roughly known based on clues such as the dates of harvests and seasonal religious festivals.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: The 1984 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXIII Olympiad and also known as Los Angeles 1984) were an international multi-sport event held from July 28 to August 12, 1984, in Los Angeles, California, United States. It marked the second time that Los Angeles had hosted the Games, the first being in 1932. California was the home state of the incumbent U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who officially opened the Games. These were the first Summer Olympic Games under the IOC presidency of Juan Antonio Samaranch.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: The 1984 Games were boycotted by a total of fourteen Eastern Bloc countries, including the Soviet Union and East Germany, in response to the American-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; Romania and Yugoslavia were the only Socialist European states that opted to attend the Games. Albania, Iran and Libya also chose to boycott the Games for unrelated reasons.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: Despite the field being depleted in certain sports due to the boycott, 140 National Olympic Committees took part in the 1984 Games, a record number at the time. The United States won the most gold and overall medals, followed by Romania and West Germany.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: The 1984 Summer Olympics are widely considered to be the most financially successful modern Olympics, serving as an example on how to run an Olympic games. As a result of low construction costs, due to the use of existing sport infrastructure, coupled with a reliance on private corporate the 1984 Games generated a profit of over .


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: On July 18, 2009, a 25th anniversary celebration of the 1984 Games was held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The celebration included a speech by former Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee president Peter Ueberroth, as well as a re-enactment of the lighting of the Olympic cauldron.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: After the terrorist attack at the 1972 Summer Olympics, the significant financial debts of Montreal (1976), and various boycotts by National Olympic Committees, few cities by the late 1970s were willing to bid for the Summer Olympics. Only two cities (Tehran and Los Angeles) made serious bids for the 1984 Summer Games, but before the final selection of a "winning" city in 1978, the bid from Tehran was withdrawn as a result of Iran's policy changes following the Iranian Revolution and a change in the country's ruling system. Hence, the selection process for the 1984 Summer Olympics consisted of a single finalized bid from Los Angeles, which the International Olympic Committee (IOC) accepted. The selection was officially made at the 80th IOC Session in Athens on May 18, 1978.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: Los Angeles had unsuccessfully bid for the two previous Summer Olympic Games (1976 and 1980, which went to Montreal and Moscow, respectively). The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) had submitted at least one bid for every Olympics since 1944 but had not succeeded since the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932, the previous time only a single bid had been issued for the Summer Olympics.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: The 1984 Olympic Torch Relay began in New York City and ended in Los Angeles, traversing 33 states and the District of Columbia. Unlike later torch relays, the torch was continuously carried by runners on foot. The route covered more than 9,320 mi (15,000 km) and involved 3,636 runners. Noted athlete O. J. Simpson was among the runners, carrying the torch up the California Incline in Santa Monica. Gina Hemphill, a granddaughter of Jesse Owens, carried the torch into the Coliseum, completed a lap around the track, then handed it off to the final runner, Rafer Johnson, winner of the decathlon at the 1960 Summer Olympics. With the torch, he touched off the flame which passed through a specially designed flammable Olympic logo, igniting all five rings. Johnson became the first person of African descent to light the cauldron in Olympic history. The flame then passed up to the cauldron atop the peristyle and remained aflame for the duration of the Games.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: John Williams composed the theme for the Olympiad, "Los Angeles Olympic Theme" later also known as "Olympic Fanfare and Theme". This piece won a Grammy for Williams and became one of the most well-known musical themes of the Olympic Games, along with Leo Arnaud's "Bugler's Dream"; the latter is sometimes attached to the beginning of Olympic Fanfare and Theme. Composer Bill Conti also wrote a song to inspire the weightlifters called "Power". An album, "The Official Music of the XXIII Olympiad—Los Angeles 1984", featured those three tracks along with sports themes written for the occasion by popular musical artists including Foreigner, Toto, Loverboy, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Christopher Cross, Philip Glass, Paul Engemann and Giorgio Moroder. "Reach Out" was the main soundtrack and is the official theme song of the 1984 Summer Olympics.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: The Brazilian composer Sérgio Mendes also produced a special song for the 1984 Olympic Games, "Olympia," from his 1984 album "Confetti". A choir of approximately one thousand voices was assembled of singers in the region. All were volunteers from nearby churches, schools and universities.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: Vicki McClure, along with the International Children's Choir of Long Beach, sang "Reach Out and Touch".


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: Lionel Richie performed a special extendend 9-minute version of his hit single "All Night Long" at the closing ceremonies.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: The 1984 Summer Olympics was preceded by the 10-week-long adjunct Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival, which opened on June 2 and ended on August 12. It provided more than 400 performances by 146 theater, dance and music companies, representing every continent and 18 countries. It was organized by then-CalArts President Robert Fitzpatrick.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: The Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee named Ernie Barnes "Sports Artist of the 1984 Olympic Games". LAOOC President Peter V. Ueberroth said Barnes and his art "captured the essence of the Olympics" and "portray the city's ethnic diversity, the power and emotion of sports competition, the singleness of purpose and hopes that go into the making of athletes the world over." Barnes was commissioned to create five Olympic-themed paintings and serve as an official Olympic spokesman to encourage inner-city youth.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: Athletes from 140 states competed at the 1984 Summer Olympics. Eighteen states made their Olympic debut: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, British Virgin Islands, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, The Gambia, Grenada, Mauritania, Mauritius, North Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Rwanda, Western Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and the United Arab Emirates. Zaire had previously competed at the 1968 Summer Olympics as "Congo-Kinshasa". The People's Republic of China made its first appearance in a Summer Olympics since 1952, while for the first time the Republic of China team participated under the politically contrived name of "Chinese Taipei".


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: The Soviet Union led the Warsaw Pact members and other Communist countries in a boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics, in retaliation for the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Olympics four years earlier (over the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979). The pretexts for the 1984 Soviet-led boycott were concerns over security, "chauvinistic sentiments" and "an anti-Soviet hysteria ... being whipped up" in the United States. However, a handful of communist countries disregarded the boycott and attended the Games anyway, among them Yugoslavia (host of the 1984 Winter Olympics), the People's Republic of China, and Romania (the only Warsaw Pact country that had opted to ignore the Soviet demands). The Romanian team received a particularly warm reception from the United States; when the Romanian athletes entered during the opening ceremonies, they were greeted by a standing ovation from the spectators, who were mostly U.S. citizens. This would turn out to be Romania's most successful Olympic Games – they won 53 medals, including 20 golds.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: Albania, Iran and Libya also boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics, citing political reasons, but these countries were not a part of the Soviet-led boycott. Albania and Iran were the only two countries to boycott both the 1980 and 1984 Summer Games.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: Documents obtained in 2016 revealed the Soviet Union's plans for a statewide doping system in track and field in preparation for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Dated prior to the country's decision to boycott the Games, the document detailed the existing steroids operations of the program, along with suggestions for further enhancements. The communication, directed to the Soviet Union's head of track and field, was prepared by Dr. Sergei Portugalov of the Institute for Physical Culture. Portugalov was also one of the main figures involved in the implementation of the Russian doping program prior to the 2016 Summer Olympics. Filmmaker and director of 2017 movie "Icarus" Bryan Fogel has said that stricter doping controls might have been the main reason for the Soviet boycott.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: Following the news of the massive financial losses of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, the only two cities to express a genuine interest in hosting the 1984 Games were Los Angeles and New York. Given that only one city per country is allowed to bid for any one Games, the USOC vote for the American bid city was effectively the deciding vote for the 1984 Olympics host city. In this case, the Los Angeles bid received 55 votes compared with New York's 39 votes – this is the closest that the city of New York has ever come to being selected to host the Olympic Games, coming closer in 1984 than they did in their 2012 bid (when they lost to London).


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: The low level of interest among potential host cities for the 1984 Games had been viewed as a major threat to the future of the Olympic Games. However, after the financial success of the Los Angeles Games, cities began to show a renewed interest in bidding to become host again. The Los Angeles and Montreal Games are seen as examples of best and worst practice when organizing the Olympics and serve as valuable lessons to prospective host cities.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: Ambitious construction projects for the two previous Summer Olympics, Montreal 1976 and Moscow 1980, had burdened organizers with substantial debts as expenses greatly exceeded revenues. Furthermore, the 1976 and 1980 Olympics were entirely government-funded. Unlike Montreal and Moscow, Los Angeles 1984 was privately funded, with strict controls imposed on expenditure; rather than constructing new venues with overly ambitious designs, the organizers chose instead to utilise existing venues and facilities wherever possible. The main example of this was the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which was also the Olympic Stadium for the 1932 Summer Olympics. The only two new venues constructed specifically for the 1984 Summer Olympics were secured with the backing of corporate sponsors: the Olympic Velodrome was largely funded by the 7-Eleven corporation and the Olympic Swim Stadium by McDonald's.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: In addition to corporate support, the Olympic committee also used the income from the exclusive television rights, and for the first time these contracts would prove to be a significant source of revenue. Adjusted for inflation, the Los Angeles Games secured twice the amount of income received by the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics and four times that of the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: Following the success of the 1984 Games, the Los Angeles OCOG, led by Peter Ueberroth, used the profits to create the LA84 Foundation for promoting youth sports in Southern California, educating coaches and maintaining a sports library.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: McDonald's ran a promotion titled, "When the U.S. Wins, You Win" where customers scratched off a ticket with the name of an Olympic event on it. If the U.S. won a medal in that event, then they would be given a free menu item: a Big Mac for a gold medal, an order of french fries for a silver medal, and a Coca-Cola for a bronze medal. The promotion became more popular than expected due to the Soviet boycott which led to the U.S. winning far more Olympic medals than expected. This promotion was parodied in "The Simpsons" episode "Lisa's First Word", where Krusty Burger runs a similar offer. The promotion was intended to be rigged so that prizes would only be offered in events dominated by the Eastern Bloc, but the Soviet-led boycott causes Krusty to personally lose $44 million. He vehemently promises "to spit in every fiftieth burger," to which Homer retorts "I like those odds!" Chief Wiggum also exclaims that he could kiss Carl Lewis, who won four gold medals at the Games.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: On "NCIS", Tim McGee has an obsession with jet packs, stemming from having attended the 1984 Olympic ceremony as a child and having Bill Suitor fly over his head in his jet pack. This storyline is based on the real experience of executive producer and writer Jesse Stern.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: Pop-punk band Bowling for Soup references the games in the song "I Can't Stand LA". During a section showing appreciation for the city, the song states, "thank you for hair metal and the '84 Olympics."


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: Jilly Cooper's novel Riders has a storyline set at the show jumping event at the 1984 Summer Olympics.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: In the "Seinfeld" episode "The Gymnast", Jerry dates a woman who competed in the 1984 Olympics and won a silver medal for Romania.


title: 1984 Summer Olympics

text: In the same week that the Games began, British pop star Howard Jones released a single called "Like to Get to Know You Well" which eventually made number 4 on the UK Singles Chart and number 49 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States. On the sleeve, the record was "dedicated to the original spirit of the Olympic Games".


title: SIG SG 550

text: The SG 550 is an assault rifle manufactured by Swiss Arms AG (formerly a division of Schweizerische Industrie Gesellschaft, now known as SIG Holding AG) in Switzerland. "SG" is an abbreviation for "Sturmgewehr" ("assault rifle"). The rifle is based on the earlier 5.56×45mm NATO SIG SG 540.


title: SIG SG 550

text: In 1978, the Swiss armed forces formulated requirements for a successor to the Stgw 57 battle rifle (known commercially as the SG 510) using the 7.5×55mm GP 11 cartridge. Emphasis was placed on modularity; the weapon family was to include several variants of the base design, including a compact carbine that would be issued to rear-echelon and support troops, command staff, vehicle crews, special forces personnel and paratroopers. Another aim was to reduce the overall weight of the rifle while retaining comparable or improved accuracy out to 300 m. The solicitation was narrowed down to two designs: the W+F C42 (developed by the state-owned Waffenfabrik Bern, using both 6.45×48mm and 5.56×45mm cartridges) and the SG 541 (developed by SIG). In 1981, the experimental 6.45mm GP 80 cartridge was rejected in favor of the more conventional 5.6×45mm Gw Pat 90 round (with a 4.1 g, tombac-jacketed, lead core projectile) that is the Swiss equivalent to NATO's standard 5.56×45mm cartridge.


title: SIG SG 550

text: In February 1983, the decision to adopt the SG 541 was publicly announced (the designation of the rifle was changed in October of the following year to SG 550, while the carbine version became known as the SG 551). Production began in 1986 and four years later the rifle was officially accepted into service in 1990, hence the military designation Stgw 90. Over 600,000 rifles have been delivered since then and production for the military has now ceased.<ref name="SIG SG 550 (Sturmgewehr Model 550) / Stgw 90 Assault Rifle / Carbine June 22, 2014"></ref>


title: SIG SG 550

text: The SG 550 is a selective-fire 5.56×45mm NATO assault rifle firing from a closed bolt. It has a gas-actuated piston-driven long-stroke operating system derived from the SIG SG 540 series of rifles, which uses burnt powder gases vented through a port in the barrel to power the weapon's moving parts. Once inside the gas cylinder, propellant gases pass through an L-shaped channel machined in the piston head and are directed forward towards the gas valve. The pressure build-up in front of the piston head pushes the piston and bolt carrier rearward. As the piston is driven back, the gas port and the L-shaped channel move out of alignment, cutting off the supply of gas to the cylinder. Surplus gas and powder residues are evacuated through an exhaust port in the gas cylinder. The manually adjustable gas valve has two settings, one for normal operation, and the second setting for use in the presence of heavy fouling or icing.


title: SIG SG 550

text: The rotary bolt locking mechanism consists of two steel locking lugs that engage locking recesses in the breech, and is identical to that used in the SG 540. A spring-loaded extractor is incorporated into the bolt while a fixed protrusion on one of the receiver's internal guide rails ejects the spent cartridge casings.


title: SIG SG 550

text: The rifle is hammer-fired and has a trigger mechanism with an ambidextrous safety and fire selector switch that has 4 settings: "S"—safe, "1"—single fire, "3"—3-round burst and "20"—fully automatic fire. The 3-round burst mode "3" and the fully automatic "20" position can be disabled by a rotating safety guard to avert accidentally activating the continuous fire mode. The trigger is enclosed in a pivoting trigger guard which can be folded down to the left or right side allowing for unhindered operation with winter gloves. The trigger pull is approximately


title: SIG SG 550

text: The firearm is fed by lightweight 20-round box magazines, 30-, 10- and 5-round magazines are also available. The magazines are molded from a translucent polymer and can be locked together using studs in order to facilitate quicker reloading (Jungle style). The empty weight of a 20-round magazine is and for a 30-round magazine.


title: SIG SG 550

text: A bolt hold-open device locks the bolt carrier assembly open after expending the last cartridge from the magazine and is released by lifting the bolt catch lever located on the left side of the receiver. Alternatively, a left-handed shooter may release the bolt by pulling the rubber-coated charging handle to rear a short distance.


title: SIG SG 550

text: The SG 550 has a side-folding skeletonized buttstock (folds to the right side of the receiver) and a lightweight aluminium bipod that folds into grooves in the lower handguard. The hinged stock is firmly locked in the folded position by a socket in the butt which clips into a plastic stud on the handguard; a firm pull will release the stock which is then swung into the closed position and locked by a button catch. A collapsible side-folding stock is also available. The stock, pistol grip, and handguards are made of a high-strength polymer, and are produced in either green or black colour options. The steel receiver housing and several other components are manufactured using stamping and welding; external steel surfaces are finished with a ceramic-reinforced enamel coat known as Ilaflon.


title: SIG SG 550

text: The heavy, cold hammer-forged barrel is screwed into the receiver and is equipped with a slotted "bird cage" type flash suppressor that is also used to launch rifle grenades (using standard, live ammunition) or attach a knife bayonet (the bayonet is supported by a lug located at the base of the gas block). The rifled barrel has 6 right-hand grooves and the Swiss Army specification 254 mm (1:10 in) rifling twist rate is optimized for Swiss military GP 90 ammunition. An export-oriented barrel with a 178 mm (1:7 in) twist rate is also available, designed to stabilize 5.56×45mm NATO rounds with the heavier SS109 and tracer projectiles.


title: SIG SG 550

text: All rifles are test fired for accuracy and function prior to leaving the factory at the manufacturer's underground 300 m test range. Random new rifles out of production were tested on a machine rest. In a 24 single shot string starting with a cold weapon and using GP 90 ammunition, the R or 50% windage and elevation dispersion of any individual weapon must have been within an group at 300 m, the 50% windage and elevation dispersion must have averaged . The employed circular error probable method cannot be converted and is not comparable to US military methods for determining rifle accuracy. When the R results are doubled the hit probability increases to 93.7%.


title: SIG SG 550

text: The gas system's components are made of stainless steel. The barrel, bolt, bolt carrier, and firing pin are all made with steel that has been gas nitrided, hardened and tempered. The bolt and carrier, along with most other components internal to the receiver undergo a phosphating process.


title: SIG SG 550

text: The SG 550 series rifles have a long sight radius and are equipped with iron sights adjustable for both windage and elevation. The sights are similar to those on some Heckler & Koch weapons, such as the HK G3 or HK MP5. The sights consist of a rear, rotating diopter drum soldered to the receiver and a hooded front post installed in the gas block. The rear sight has an open notch setting marked "1" designed for immediate firing up to 100 m but also contains apertures with settings "2", "3" and "4" corresponding to 200, 300 and 400 m firing ranges. The 400 m setting has a removable iris for sportive shooting. The sights are adjustable via micrometer screws with windage and elevation increments of 0.15 mil (≈0.52 moa), or at 100 m. For night use, the dedicated "1" notch setting in the rear sight drum is provided with two self-luminous tritium-powered inserts fitted laterally on each side of the notch and additionally in a flip-up post attached to the foresight. When firing rifle grenades the front sight hood is aligned with the uppermost edge of the grenade's warhead, this provides an estimated point of impact up to 75 m. The rifle grenades intended for this purpose were FN/Luchaire Type 58-N bullet-though anti-tank grenades.


title: SIG SG 550

text: For designated marksman use, the SG 550 is equipped with a Kern 4×24 telescopic sight on a quick-detachable mount. The sight weighs and includes a variety of features, such as STANAG 2324/MIL-STD-1913 compliant mounting components, a Bullet Drop Compensation (BDC) elevation adjustment knob for ranges from 100 to 600 m, a tritium-illuminated reticle that enables target acquisition in low-light conditions and a diopter eyesight correction adjustment. Included with the sight is a lens hood for mounting on the ocular that reduces image quality-impairing stray light and a gray filter for glare reduction. The basic model of this optical sight was already used on the Stgw 57.


title: SIG SG 550

text: The upper receiver can accept quick-detachable rails and adapters used to mount optics (STANAG 2324 compliant). The scope mounting system consists of a centering hole located on the front face of the rear sight assembly and a dovetail-like mounting point at the front end of the receiver. Swiss Arms (respectively Brügger & Thomet) offer several types of quick-release scope mounts and Picatinny rails. A version of the rifle with an integral receiver-mounted Picatinny rail is also offered; in this configuration the weapon is fitted with flip-up emergency battle sights—a rear aperture sight which folds down into a recess in the rail and a folding front blade.


title: SIG SG 550

text: Both the rifle and carbine come standard with a spare magazine, sling, cleaning kit and a loading aid for rapid magazine filling.


title: SIG SG 550

text: The full-sized SG 550/551 will accept SIG's 40 mm GL 5040/5140 grenade launcher (Swiss military designation: 40 mm "Gewehraufsatz" 97), which is mounted under the barrel via an eccentric latch and replaces the lower handguard. The grenade launcher is a single-shot breech-loaded weapon that is supplied with a leaf sight that attaches to the rifle's rear sight base and enables accurate firing out to 200 m. The lightweight aluminium launcher weighs unloaded, and is operated independently of the rifle. It can use a wide array of 40×46mm grenades, including extended range high-pressure types and non-lethal baton or anti-riot projectiles. The compact SG 552/553 can be fitted with smaller GL 5340 underbarrel grenade launcher.


title: SIG SG 550

text: An Stgw 90 bayonet can also be mounted to the rifle. The bayonet has an overall length of 310 mm and a muzzle ring diameter of 22 mm. The 177 mm long blade is single-edged and it has no fuller. The bayonets are manufactured exclusively for the Swiss Army by Victorinox and in the past by Wenger until Victorinox acquired Wenger in 2005. With a proper lug adaptor, the rifle will also accept a NATO-pattern KCB-77 (made originally by Carl Eickhorn of Solingen, West Germany) or the American M9.


title: SIG SG 550

text: The SG 551 carbine has a short pattern barrel, gas tube and piston compared to the SG 550. The SG 551 series rifles have a long sight radius. The handguards were also changed and the bipod removed. The SG 551 cannot be used with a bayonet or fire rifle grenades. The SG 551 comes in several specialized variants designed for use with security and special forces. Among those variants are:


title: SIG SG 550

text: The compact SG 552 Commando (full designation as the 552-2P) carbine was released in July 1998. It has a shorter barrel (with an open, 3-prong flash suppressor) and gas tube, ventilated handguards and a redesigned bolt carrier group that was integrated with the piston rod to form a single moving assembly. The SG 552 series rifles have a long sight radius. The return mechanism has been moved to the rear of the receiver housing and its recoil spring is guided in a way analogous to that of the AK-47: on a steel guide rod (later models feature a polymer guide rod) resting against the lower receiver's rear surface under tension of the compressed recoil spring. Like the SG 550/551, this model can accept rails and accessories enabling the use of optics. A long barrel version of the SG 552 known as the SG 552 LB incorporates a barrel with provision to fire rifle grenades and support a bayonet. The SG 552 models were discontinued in 2008 and replaced by the SG 553. Upgrade part kits are available to convert a SG 552 in to a SG 553.


title: SIG SG 550

text: The SG 553 is an improved version of the SG 552 and was released in 2008. Even though it mostly resembles the SG 552, the SG 553 has one key advantage, the recoil spring is now wrapped around the piston rod as in the SG 550/551 models, which address several reliability issues encountered in the SG 552 and also allows the usage of the standard SG 550/551 charging handle. The SG 553 series rifles have a long sight radius. A long barrel version of the SG 553 known as the SG 553 LB incorporates a barrel with provision to fire rifle grenades and support a bayonet. Further factory options for the SG 553 rifle series are an integrated receiver Picatinny rail and an adjustable butt stock. The SG 553 R is a variant chambered for the 7.62×39mm cartridge fed from AK family box magazines. There is also a .300 AAC Blackout variant of the SG 553 known as the SG 553 BK which was first shown at IWA OutdoorClassics in 2016.


title: SIG SG 550

text: The SG 552-A1 is a SG 552 rifle that has been modified to function like the SG 553. The modifications are available as a conversion kit that includes a new bolt carrier, charging handle, recoil spring and gas tube.


title: SIG SG 550

text: Another member of the SG 550 family is the SG 550-1 Sniper variant designed at the request of the Swiss Police. Introduced in 1988, This accurized rifle has a refined two-stage trigger (the pull force was reduced from to , a heavy, hammer-forged long barrel with a 254 mm (1:10 in) rifling twist rate (it has no flash hider) and is used exclusively with telescopic sights. The new folding stock has an adjustable cheek piece and a spacer system on the butt, the ergonomic pistol grip's angle of inclination can be regulated, the forend was shortened, and the bipod features a height and cant adjustment mechanism. This model is no longer in production.


title: SIG SG 550

text: The SG 550/551/552/553 are also available in semi-automatic only configurations, intended for the civilian shooting market. Among these variants are the SG 550/551/552 SP, PE 90 and SIG Sport rifles. The SG 550 series is available with either 178 mm or 254 mm (1:7 and 1:10 in) twist rate barrels. Rifles designated SG 55x-1 have a 254 mm (1:10 in) twist rate, while models marked SG 55x-2 have a 178 mm (1:7 in) twist rate. The ordinance GP 90 ammunition is optimized for use with the original Swiss 254 mm (1:10 in) rifling twist rate.


title: SIG SG 550

text: Due to import restrictions, the American civilian market required a partially American-made version assembled by SIG SAUER, Inc. in Exeter, New Hampshire. The SIG556 is designed to meet these requirements. The 556 lacks full-auto capability and the overall length is . One difference is a new aluminum lower receiver that accepts M16 STANAG magazines and an M4 telescoping buttstock. The barrel's twist rate is 178 mm (1:7 in).


title: SIG SG 550

text: There are many variants of this rifle offered for sale. The first variant was sold with an aluminum Picatinny rail on the upper receiver and a series of plastic rails on the handguard. The market pushed SIG to produce the rifle with the slimmer profile 551-type handguards and a hooded front sight; this version is marketed as the SIG556 Classic. Several folding stock models have been released as well as variants with railed forend combinations. Another variant is the SIG 556 DMR featuring a barrel. SIG P556 pistol variants with 10-inch barrels are also available. In 2012 the SIG 556 R or SIG 556 Russian chambered for the 7.62×39mm cartridge and using AK-pattern box magazines was introduced. The first generation of SIG556R rifles had a number of performance issues that were later resolved in later production runs of the SIG556R.


title: SIG SG 550

text: In January 2014, SIG introduced the 556xi series rifles as an improvement to the 556 and 556R series rifles.


title: SIG SG 550

text: As of May 2017, SIG has discontinued the SIG556, SIG556R, and 556xi series of rifles and no longer displays those models on the products section of their website.


title: SIG SG 550

text: The SIG 522LR is a .22-caliber sporting rifle styled after the SG 551. It uses a simple blowback semi-automatic operating system and its barrel has a 406 mm (1:16 in) twist rate. Due to its operating principle, the rifle has no mechanical commonality with other SG 550 variants. The SIG522 accepts commonly available AR-style .22-caliber conversion magazines.


title: SIG SG 550

text: In the U.S, a variety of semi-automatic SwissArms firearms are available for sale. Due to U.S. import regulations, they are imported as a pistol.


title: SIG SG 550

text: On 27 February 2014, the Canadian semi-automatic "Classic Green" sporting rifle, also known as the "Swiss Arms PE 90", was re-classified as a "prohibited weapon". The rifle had been popular with hunters and gun enthusiasts, who until February 2014, only required a possession and acquisition licence to obtain the rifle. However, late in 2013, a gun dealer had imported some PE 90 rifles from Switzerland and brought them to Canada for sale. After some were sold, it was alleged that the rifles in question were of a variant not allowed in Canada (PE90). Upon investigation and examination by the RCMP, this was proven inconclusive, however, the RCMP went further and decided the versions in Canada were too close to the PE90 and reclassified the rifles and declared the entire model line prohibited, with possible confiscation for destruction. This caused outrage amongst owners and lobbyists, who felt that the RCMP exceeded their authority, and that such policy changes should be enacted by legislation. The National Firearms Association of Canada considered pursuit of the matter through the legal system. On 31 July 2015, the Canadian government overturned the reclassification and returned the Swiss rifles to the original classifications. On 1 May 2020, in the wake of the Nova Scotia attacks, the rifles were again reclassified as Prohibited Firearms via Order in Council.


title: SIG SG 550

text: The following tables list accuracy statistics for typical in service Stgw 90 rifles firing Swiss 5,6 mm Gw Pat 90 service ammunition obtained by firing from the bipod. The statistics were computed under the 1990s Swiss method for determining accuracy, which is more complex than Western methods which usually involve firing a group of shots and then measuring the overall diameter of the group. The Swiss method differs in that after a group of shots is fired into the target from a machine rest hits on the outer part of the target are disregarded, while only half of the hits on the inner part of the circles are counted (50% or R), which significantly reduces the overall diameter of the groups. The vertical and horizontal measurements of the reduced groups are then used to measure accuracy. This circular error probable method used by the Swiss and other European militaries cannot be converted and is not comparable to US military methods for determining rifle accuracy. When the R results are doubled the hit probability increases to 93.7%.


title: SIG SG 550

text: For reference a 1 minute of arc (MOA) circle at has a diameter of . The radius of a circle is half its diameter.


title: SIG SG 550

text: The R dispersion of × from the above table was also the accuracy standard any Stgw 90 had to pass, firing a 24-round group of a machine rest. During production the Swiss military additionally demanded for acceptance at random selected new Stgw 90 weapons out of a production batch, firing a 24-round group with Swiss 5,6 mm Gw Pat 90 service ammunition of a machine rest at a range of , the R horizontal and vertical dispersion had to average × . Any result from an individual as such tested weapon, was not allowed to exceed a maximal R dispersion of × .


title: Tablet computer

text: A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being computers, do what other personal computers do, but lack some input/output (I/O) abilities that others have. Modern tablets largely resemble modern smartphones, the only differences being that tablets are relatively larger than smartphones, with screens or larger, measured diagonally, and may not support access to a cellular network. Unlike laptops which have traditionally run off operating systems usually designed for desktops, tablets usually run mobile operating systems, alongside smartphones.


title: Tablet computer

text: The touchscreen display is operated by gestures executed by finger or digital pen (stylus), instead of the mouse, touchpad, and keyboard of larger computers. Portable computers can be classified according to the presence and appearance of physical keyboards. Two species of tablet, the "slate" and "booklet", do not have physical keyboards and usually accept text and other input by use of a virtual keyboard shown on their touchscreen displays. To compensate for their lack of a physical keyboard, most tablets can connect to independent physical keyboards by Bluetooth or USB; 2-in-1 PCs have keyboards, distinct from tablets.


title: Tablet computer

text: The form of the tablet was conceptualized in the middle of the 20th century (Stanley Kubrick depicted fictional tablets in the 1968 science fiction film "") and prototyped and developed in the last two decades of that century. In 2010, Apple released the iPad, the first mass-market tablet to achieve widespread popularity. Thereafter, tablets rapidly rose in ubiquity and soon became a large product category used for personal, educational and workplace applications. Popular uses for a tablet PC include viewing presentations, video-conferencing, reading e-books, watching movies, sharing photos and more. As of 2021 there are 1.28 billion tablet users worldwide according to data provided by Statista.


title: Tablet computer

text: The market for tablets is split relatively evenly between Apple's iPad and Android tablets, with iPads capturing slightly more global market share.


title: Tablet computer

text: The tablet computer and its associated operating system began with the development of pen computing. Electrical devices with data input and output on a flat information display existed as early as 1888 with the telautograph, which used a sheet of paper as display and a pen attached to electromechanical actuators. Throughout the 20th century devices with these characteristics have been imagined and created whether as blueprints, prototypes, or commercial products. In addition to many academic and research systems, several companies released commercial products in the 1980s, with various input/output types tried out.


title: Tablet computer

text: Tablet computers appeared in a number of works of science fiction in the second half of the 20th century; all helped to promote and disseminate the concept to a wider audience. Examples include:


title: Tablet computer

text: Following earlier tablet computer products such as the Pencept PenPad, and the CIC Handwriter, in September 1989, GRiD Systems released the first commercially successful tablet computer, the GRiDPad. All three products were based on extended versions of the MS-DOS operating system. In 1992, IBM announced (in April) and shipped to developers (in October) the ThinkPad 700T (2521), which ran the GO Corporation's PenPoint OS. Also based on PenPoint was AT&T's EO Personal Communicator from 1993, which ran on AT&T's own hardware, including their own AT&T Hobbit CPU. Apple Computer launched the Apple Newton personal digital assistant in 1993. It used Apple's own new Newton OS, initially running on hardware manufactured by Motorola and incorporating an ARM CPU, that Apple had specifically co-developed with Acorn Computers. The operating system and platform design were later licensed to Sharp and Digital Ocean, who went on to manufacture their own variants.


title: Tablet computer

text: Pen computing was highly hyped by the media during the early 1990s. Microsoft, the dominant PC software vendor, released Windows for Pen Computing in 1992 to compete against PenPoint OS. The company launched the WinPad project, working together with OEMs such as Compaq, to create a small device with a Windows-like operating system and handwriting recognition. However the project was abandoned two years later; instead Windows CE was released in the form of "Handheld PCs" in 1996. That year, Palm, Inc. released the first of the Palm OS based PalmPilot touch and stylus based PDA, the touch based devices initially incorporating a Motorola Dragonball (68000) CPU. Also in 1996 Fujitsu released the Stylistic 1000 tablet format PC, running Microsoft Windows 95, on a 100 MHz AMD486 DX4 CPU, with 8 MB RAM offering stylus input, with the option of connecting a conventional Keyboard and mouse. Intel announced a StrongARM processor-based touchscreen tablet computer in 1999, under the name WebPAD. It was later re-branded as the "Intel Web Tablet". In 2000, Norwegian company Screen Media AS and the German company Dosch & Amand Gmbh released the "FreePad". It was based on Linux and used the Opera browser. Internet access was provided by DECT DMAP, only available in Europe and provided up to 10Mbit/s. The device had 16 MB storage, 32 MB of RAM and x86 compatible 166 MHz "Geode"-Microcontroller by National Semiconductor. The screen was 10.4" or 12.1" and was touch sensitive. It had slots for SIM cards to enable support of television set-up box. FreePad were sold in Norway and the Middle East; but the company was dissolved in 2003. Sony released its Airboard tablet in Japan in late 2000 with full wireless Internet capabilities.


title: Tablet computer

text: In the late 1990s, Microsoft launched the Handheld PC platform using their Windows CE operating system; while most devices were not tablets, a few touch enabled tablets were released on the platform such as the Fujitsu PenCentra 130 or Siemens's SIMpad. Microsoft took a more significant approach to tablets in 2002 as it attempted to define the Microsoft Tablet PC as a mobile computer for field work in business, though their devices failed, mainly due to pricing and usability decisions that limited them to their original purpose – such as the existing devices being too heavy to be held with one hand for extended periods, and having legacy applications created for desktop interfaces and not well adapted to the slate format.


title: Tablet computer

text: Nokia had plans for an Internet tablet since before 2000. An early model was test manufactured in 2001, the Nokia M510, which was running on EPOC and featuring an Opera browser, speakers and a 10-inch 800×600 screen, but it was not released because of fears that the market was not ready for it. Nokia entered the tablet space in May 2005 with the Nokia 770 running Maemo, a Debian-based Linux distribution custom-made for their Internet tablet line. The user interface and application framework layer, named Hildon, was an early instance of a software platform for generic computing in a tablet device intended for internet consumption. But Nokia did not commit to it as their only platform for their future mobile devices and the project competed against other in-house platforms and later replaced it with the Series 60. Nokia used the term "internet tablet" to refer to a portable information appliance that focused on Internet use and media consumption, in the range between a personal digital assistant (PDA) and an Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC). They made two mobile phones, the N900 that runs Maemo, and N9 that run Meego.


title: Tablet computer

text: Before the release of iPad, Axiotron introduced an aftermarket, heavily modified Apple MacBook called Modbook, a Mac OS X-based tablet computer. The Modbook uses Apple's Inkwell for handwriting and gesture recognition, and uses digitization hardware from Wacom. To get Mac OS X to talk to the digitizer on the integrated tablet, the Modbook was supplied with a third-party driver.


title: Tablet computer

text: Following the launch of the Ultra-mobile PC, Intel began the Mobile Internet Device initiative, which took the same hardware and combined it with a tabletized Linux configuration. Intel codeveloped the lightweight Moblin (mobile Linux) operating system following the successful launch of the Atom CPU series on netbooks. In 2010, Nokia and Intel combined the Maemo and Moblin projects to form MeeGo, a Linux-based operating system supports netbooks and tablets. The first tablet using MeeGo was the Neofonie WeTab launched September 2010 in Germany. The WeTab used an extended version of the MeeGo operating system called WeTab OS. WeTab OS adds runtimes for Android and Adobe AIR and provides a proprietary user interface optimized for the WeTab device. On September 27, 2011, the Linux Foundation announced that MeeGo would be replaced in 2012 by Tizen.


title: Tablet computer

text: Android was the first of the 2000s-era dominating platforms for tablet computers to reach the market. In 2008, the first plans for Android-based tablets appeared. The first products were released in 2009. Among them was the Archos 5, a pocket-sized model with a 5-inch touchscreen, that was first released with a proprietary operating system and later (in 2009) released with Android 1.4. The Camangi WebStation was released in Q2 2009. The first LTE Android tablet appeared late 2009 and was made by ICD for Verizon. This unit was called the Ultra, but a version called Vega was released around the same time. Ultra had a 7-inch display while Vega's was 15 inches. Many more products followed in 2010. Several manufacturers waited for Android Honeycomb, specifically adapted for use with tablets, which debuted in February 2011.


title: Tablet computer

text: Apple is often credited for defining a new class of consumer device with the iPad, which shaped the commercial market for tablets in the following years, and was the most successful tablet at the time of its release. iPads and competing devices were tested by the US military in 2011 and cleared for secure use in 2013. Its debut in 2010 pushed tablets into the mainstream. Samsung's Galaxy Tab and others followed, continuing the trends towards the features listed above. In March 2012, "PC Magazine" reported that 31% of U.S. Internet users owned a tablet, used mainly for viewing published content such as video and news. The top-selling line of devices was Apple's iPad with 100 million sold between its release in April 2010 and mid-October 2012, but iPad market share (number of units) dropped to 36% in 2013 with Android tablets climbing to 62%. Android tablet sales volume was 121 million devices, plus 52 million, between 2012 and 2013 respectively. Individual brands of Android operating system devices or compatibles follow iPad with Amazon's Kindle Fire with 7 million, and Barnes & Noble's Nook with 5 million.


title: Tablet computer

text: The BlackBerry PlayBook was announced in September 2010 that ran the BlackBerry Tablet OS. The BlackBerry PlayBook was officially released to US and Canadian consumers on April 19, 2011. Hewlett Packard announced that the TouchPad, running WebOS 3.0 on a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU, would be released in June 2011. On August 18, 2011, HP announced the discontinuation of the TouchPad, due to sluggish sales. In 2013, the Mozilla Foundation announced a prototype tablet model with Foxconn which ran on Firefox OS. Firefox OS was discontinued in 2016. The Canonical hinted that Ubuntu would be available on tablets by 2014. In February 2016, there was a commercial release of the BQ Aquaris Ubuntu tablet using the Ubuntu Touch operating system. Canonical terminated support for the project due to lack of market interest on April 5, 2017 and it was then adopted by the UBports as a community project.


title: Tablet computer

text: As of February 2014, 83% of mobile app developers were targeting tablets, but 93% of developers were targeting smartphones. By 2014, around 23% of B2B companies were said to have deployed tablets for sales-related activities, according to a survey report by Corporate Visions. The iPad held majority use in North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and most of the Americas. Android tablets were more popular in most of Asia (China and Russia an exception), Africa and Eastern Europe. In 2015 tablet sales did not increase. Apple remained the largest seller but its market share declined below 25%. Samsung vice president Gary Riding said early in 2016 that tablets were only doing well among those using them for work. Newer models were more expensive and designed for a keyboard and stylus, which reflected the changing uses. As of early 2016, Android reigned over the market with 65%. Apple took the number 2 spot with 26%, and Windows took a distant third with the remaining 9%. In 2018, out of 4.4 billion computing devices Android accounted for 2 billion, iOS for 1 billion, and the remainder were PCs, in various forms (desktop, notebook, or tablet), running various operating systems (Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, Linux, etc.).


title: Tablet computer

text: Since the early 2020's various companies such as Samsung are beginning to introduce foldable technology into their tablets.


title: Tablet computer

text: Tablets can be loosely grouped into several categories by physical size, kind of operating system installed, input and output technology, and uses.


title: Tablet computer

text: The size of a slate varies, but slates begin at 6 inches (approximately 15 cm). Some models in the larger than 10-inch (25 cm) category include the Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2 at 12.2 inches (31 cm), the Toshiba Excite at 13.3 inches (33 cm) and the Dell XPS 18 at 18.4 inches (47 cm). As of March 2013, the thinnest tablet on the market was the Sony Xperia Tablet Z at only 0.27 inches (6.9 mm) thick. On September 9, 2015, Apple released the iPad Pro with a screen size, larger than the regular iPad.


title: Tablet computer

text: Mini tablets are smaller and weigh less than slates, with typical screen sizes between . The first commercially successful mini tablets were introduced by Amazon.com (Kindle Fire), Barnes & Noble (Nook Tablet), and Samsung (Galaxy Tab) in 2011; and by Google (Nexus 7) in 2012. They operate identically to ordinary tablets but have lower specifications compared to them.


title: Tablet computer

text: On September 14, 2012, Amazon, Inc. released an upgraded version of the Kindle Fire, the Kindle Fire HD, with higher screen resolution and more features compared to its predecessor, yet remaining only 7 inches. In October 2012, Apple released the iPad Mini with a 7.9-inch screen size, about 2 inches smaller than the regular iPad, but less powerful than the then current iPad 3. On July 24, 2013, Google released an upgraded version of the Nexus 7, with FHD display, dual cameras, stereo speakers, more color accuracy, performance improvement, built-in wireless charging, and a variant with 4G LTE support for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. In September 2013, Amazon further updated the Fire tablet with the Kindle Fire HDX. In November 2013, Apple released the iPad Mini 2, which remained at 7.9 inches and nearly matched the hardware of the iPad Air.


title: Tablet computer

text: Smartphones and tablets are similar devices, differentiated by the former typically having smaller screens and most tablets lacking cellular network capability. Since 2010, crossover touchscreen smartphones with screens larger than 5 inches have been released. That size is generally considered larger than a traditional smartphone, creating the hybrid category of the "phablet" by Forbes and other publications. "Phablet" is a portmanteau of "phone" and "tablet".


title: Tablet computer

text: At the time of the introduction of the first phablets, they had screens of 5.3 to 5.5 inches, but as of 2017 screen sizes up to 5.5 inches are considered typical. Examples of phablets from 2017 and onward are the Samsung Galaxy Note series (newer models of 5.7 inches), the LG V10/V20 (5.7 inches), the Sony Xperia XA Ultra (6 inches), the Huawei Mate 9 (5.9 inches), and the Huawei Honor (MediaPad) X2 (7 inches).


title: Tablet computer

text: Nowadays In spite of this, touchscreen gaming laptop are becoming more popular among professional workers, such as graphic designers, who also require a lot of storage and a powerful processor. They can be used as a tablet and laptop both.


title: Tablet computer

text: A 2-in-1 PC is a hybrid or combination of a tablet and laptop computer that has features of both. Distinct from tablets, 2-in-1 PCs all have physical keyboards, but they are either concealable by folding them back and under the touchscreen ("2-in-1 convertible") or detachable ("2-in-1 detachable"). 2-in-1s typically also can display a virtual keyboard on their touchscreens when their physical keyboards are concealed or detached. Some 2-in-1s have processors and operating systems like those of laptops, such as Windows 10, while having the flexibility of operation as a tablet. Further, 2-in-1s may have typical laptop I/O ports, such as USB 3 and DisplayPort, and may connect to traditional PC peripheral devices and external displays. Simple tablets are mainly used as media consumption devices, while 2-in-1s have capacity for both media consumption and content creation, and thus 2-in-1s are often called "laptop" or "desktop replacement computers".


title: Tablet computer

text: Some tablets are modified by adding physical gamepad buttons such as D-pad and thumb sticks for better gaming experience combined with the touchscreen and all other features of a typical tablet computer. Most of these tablets are targeted to run native OS games and emulator games. Nvidia's Shield Tablet, with an display, and running Android, is an example. It runs Android games purchased from Google Play store. PC games can also be streamed to the tablet from computers with some higher end models of Nvidia-powered video cards. The Nintendo Switch hybrid console is also a gaming tablet that runs on Nintendo Switch system software, features detachable Joy-Con controllers with motion controls and three gaming modes: table-top mode using its kickstand, traditional docked/TV mode and handheld mode. While not entirely an actual tablet form factor due to their sizes, some other handheld console including the smaller version of Nintendo Switch the Nintendo Switch Lite and PlayStation Vita are treat as an gaming tablet or tablet replacement by community and reviewer/publisher due to their capabilities on browsing the internet and multimedia capabilities.


title: Tablet computer

text: Booklets are dual-touchscreen tablet computers with a clamshell design that can fold like a laptop. Examples include the Microsoft Courier, which was discontinued in 2010, the Sony Tablet P (considered a flop), and the Toshiba Libretto W100.


title: Tablet computer

text: Customized business tablets are built specifically for a business customer's particular needs from a hardware and software perspective, and delivered in a business-to-business transaction. For example, in hardware, a transportation company may find that the consumer-grade GPS module in an off-the-shelf tablet provides insufficient accuracy, so a tablet can be customized and embedded with a professional-grade antenna to provide a better GPS signal. Such tablets may also be ruggedized for field use. For a software example, the same transportation company might remove certain software functions in the Android system, such as the internet browser, to reduce costs from needless cellular network data consumption of an employee, and add custom package management software. Other applications may call for a resistive touchscreen and other special hardware and software.


title: Tablet computer

text: A table ordering tablet is a touchscreen tablet computer designed for use in casual restaurants. Such devices allow users to order food and drinks, play games and pay their bill. Since 2013, restaurant chains including Chili's, Olive Garden and Red Robin have adopted them. As of 2014, the two most popular brands were Ziosk and Presto. The devices have been criticized by servers who claim that some restaurants determine their hours based on customer feedback in areas unrelated to service.


title: Tablet computer

text: Any device that can display text on a screen may act as an E-reader. While traditionally E-readers are designed primarily for the purpose of reading digital e-books and periodicals, modern E-readers that use a mobile operating system such as Android have incorporated modern functionally including internet browsing and multimedia capabilities; for example Huawei MatePad Paper is a tablet that uses e-ink instead of typical LCD or LED panel, hence focusing on the reading digital content while maintaining the internet and multimedia capabilities. Some E-reader such as PocketBook InkPad Color and ONYX BOOX NOVA 3 Color even came with colored e-ink panel and speaker which allowed for higher degree of multimedia consumption and video playback.


title: Tablet computer

text: Kindle line from Amazon mostly retain on the E-reading capabilities, however the recent update to their Kindle firmware had allowed the Kindle reader line to browse the internet and audio playback that can be substitute to traditional tablet due to more readable e-ink panel and battery life, while still allowing user to access to wider multimedia capabilities compared to the older model.


title: Tablet computer

text: Two major architectures dominate the tablet market, ARM Ltd.'s ARM architecture and Intel's and AMD's x86. Intel's x86, including x86-64 has powered the "IBM compatible" PC since 1981 and Apple's Macintosh computers since 2006. The CPUs have been incorporated into tablet PCs over the years and generally offer greater performance along with the ability to run full versions of Microsoft Windows, along with Windows desktop and enterprise applications. Non-Windows based x86 tablets include the JooJoo. Intel announced plans to enter the tablet market with its Atom in 2010. In October 2013, Intel's foundry operation announced plans to build FPGA-based quad cores for ARM and x86 processors.


title: Tablet computer

text: ARM has been the CPU architecture of choice for manufacturers of smartphones (95% ARM), PDAs, digital cameras (80% ARM), set-top boxes, DSL routers, smart televisions (70% ARM), storage devices and tablet computers (95% ARM). This dominance began with the release of the mobile-focused and comparatively power-efficient 32-bit ARM610 processor originally designed for the Apple Newton in 1993 and ARM3-using Acorn A4 laptop in 1992. The chip was adopted by Psion, Palm and Nokia for PDAs and later smartphones, camera phones, cameras, etc. ARM's licensing model supported this success by allowing device manufacturers to license, alter and fabricate custom SoC derivatives tailored to their own products. This has helped manufacturers extend battery life and shrink component count along with the size of devices.


title: Tablet computer

text: The multiple licensees ensured that multiple fabricators could supply near-identical products, while encouraging price competition. This forced unit prices down to a fraction of their x86 equivalents. The architecture has historically had limited support from Microsoft, with only Windows CE available, but with the 2012 release of Windows 8, Microsoft announced added support for the architecture, shipping their own ARM-based tablet computer, branded the Microsoft Surface, as well as an x86-64 Intel Core i5 variant branded as Microsoft Surface Pro. Intel tablet chip sales were 1 million units in 2012, and 12 million units in 2013. Intel chairman Andy Bryant has stated that its 2014 goal is to quadruple its tablet chip sales to 40 million units by the end of that year, as an investment for 2015.


title: Tablet computer

text: A key component among tablet computers is touch input on a touchscreen display. This allows the user to navigate easily and type with a virtual keyboard on the screen or press other icons on the screen to open apps or files. The first tablet to do this was the GRiDPad by GRiD Systems Corporation; the tablet featured both a stylus, a pen-like tool to aid with precision in a touchscreen device as well as an on-screen keyboard. The system must respond to on-screen touches rather than clicks of a keyboard or mouse. This operation makes precise use of our eye–hand coordination.


title: Tablet computer

text: Since mid-2010s, most tablets use capacitive touchscreens with multi-touch, unlike earlier resistive touchscreen devices which users needed styluses to perform inputs.


title: Tablet computer

text: There are also electronic paper tablets such as Sony Digital Paper DPTS1 and reMarkable that use E ink for its display technology.


title: Tablet computer

text: Many tablets support a stylus and support handwriting recognition. Wacom and N-trig digital pens provide approximately 2500 DPI resolution for handwriting, exceeding the resolution of capacitive touch screens by more than a factor of 10. These pens also support pressure sensitivity, allowing for "variable-width stroke-based" characters, such as Chinese/Japanese/Korean writing, due to their built-in capability of "pressure sensing". Pressure is also used in digital art applications such as Autodesk Sketchbook. Apps exist on both iOS and Android platforms for handwriting recognition and in 2015 Google introduced its own handwriting input with support for 82 languages.


title: Tablet computer

text: After 2007, with access to capacitive screens and the success of the iPhone, other features became common, such as multi-touch features (in which the user can touch the screen in multiple places to trigger actions and other natural user interface features, as well as flash memory solid state storage and "instant on" warm-booting; external USB and Bluetooth keyboards defined tablets.


title: Tablet computer

text: Most tablets released since mid-2010 use a version of an ARM processor for longer battery life. The ARM Cortex family is powerful enough for tasks such as internet browsing, light creative and production work and mobile games.


title: Tablet computer

text: Other features are: High-definition, anti-glare display, touchscreen, lower weight and longer battery life than a comparably-sized laptop, wireless local area and internet connectivity (usually with Wi-Fi standard and optional mobile broadband), Bluetooth for connecting peripherals and communicating with local devices, ports for wired connections and charging, for example USB ports, Early devices had IR support and could work as a TV remote controller, docking station, keyboard and added connectivity, on-board flash memory, ports for removable storage, various cloud storage services for backup and syncing data across devices, local storage on a local area network (LAN).


title: Tablet computer

text: Tablets, like conventional PCs, use several different operating systems, though dual-booting is rare. Tablet operating systems come in two classes:


title: Tablet computer

text: Desktop OS-based tablets are currently thicker and heavier. They require more storage and more cooling and give less battery life. They can run processor-intensive graphical applications in addition to mobile apps, and have more ports.


title: Tablet computer

text: Mobile-based tablets are the reverse, and run only mobile apps. They can use battery life conservatively because the processor is significantly smaller. This allows the battery to last much longer than the common laptop.


title: Tablet computer

text: In Q1 2018, Android tablets had 62% of the market, Apple's iOS had 23.4% of the market and Windows 10 had 14.6% of the market. In late 2021, iOS has 55% use worldwide (varies by continent, e.g. below 50% in South America and Africa) and Android 45% use. Still, Android tablets have more use than iOS in virtually all countries, except for e.g. the US and China.


title: Tablet computer

text: Android is a Linux-based operating system that Google offers as open source under the Apache license. It is designed primarily for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Android supports low-cost ARM systems and others. The first tablets running Android were released in 2009. Vendors such as Motorola and Lenovo delayed deployment of their tablets until after 2011, when Android was reworked to include more tablet features. Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), released in 2011 and later versions support larger screen sizes, mainly tablets, and have access to the Google Play service. Android includes operating system, middleware and key applications. Other vendors sell customized Android tablets, such as Kindle Fire and Nook, which are used to consume mobile content and provide their own app store, rather than using the larger Google Play system, thereby fragmenting the Android market. In 2022 Google began to re-emphasize in-house Android tablet development — at this point, a multi-year commitment.


title: Tablet computer

text: As mentioned above, Amazon Fire OS is an Android-based mobile operating system produced by Amazon for its Fire range of tablets. It is forked from Android. Fire OS primarily centers on content consumption, with a customized user interface and heavy ties to content available from Amazon's own storefronts and services.


title: Tablet computer

text: Several devices that run ChromeOS came on the market in 2017–2019, as tablets, or as 2-in-1s with touchscreen and 360-degree hinge.


title: Tablet computer

text: HarmonyOS (HMOS) () is a distributed operating system developed by Huawei to collaborate and interconnect with multiple smart devices on the Internet of Things ecosystem. In its current multi-kernel design, the operating system selects suitable kernels from the abstraction layer for devices with diverse resources. For IoT devices, the system is known to be based on LiteOS kernel; while for smartphones and tablets, it is based on a Linux kernel layer with AOSP libraries to support APK apps using ART through the Ark Compiler, in addition to native HarmonyOS apps.


title: Tablet computer

text: The iPad runs on iPadOS. Prior to the introduction of iPadOS in 2019, the iPad ran iOS, which was created for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The first iPad was released in 2010. Although built on the same underlying Unix implementation as macOS, its user interface is radically different. iPadOS is designed for touch input from the user's fingers and has none of the features that required a stylus on earlier tablets. Apple introduced multi-touch gestures, such as moving two fingers apart or together to zoom in or out, also termed "pinch to zoom". iPadOS and iOS are built for the ARM architecture.


title: Tablet computer

text: Kindle firmware is mobile operating system specifically design for Amazon Amazon Kindle e-readers, it is based on custom Linux kernel however it is entirely closed-source and proprietary, and only runs on Amazon Kindle line up manufactured under Amazon brand.


title: Tablet computer

text: The Nintendo Switch system software (also known by its codename Horizon) is an updatable firmware and operating system used by the Nintendo Switch hybrid video game console/tablet and Nintendo Switch Lite handheld game console. It is based on a proprietary microkernel. The UI includes a HOME screen, consisting of the top bar, the screenshot viewer ("Album"), and shortcuts to the Nintendo eShop, News, and Settings.


title: Tablet computer

text: The PlayStation Vita system software is the official firmware and operating system for the PlayStation Vita and PlayStation TV video game consoles. It uses the LiveArea as its graphical shell. The PlayStation Vita system software has one optional add-on component, the PlayStation Mobile Runtime Package. The system is built on a Unix-base which is derived from FreeBSD and NetBSD. Due to it capabilities on browsing the internet and multimedia capabilities, it is treat as an gaming tablet or tablet replacement by community and reviewer/publisher.


title: Tablet computer

text: Ubuntu Touch is an open-source (GPL) mobile version of the Ubuntu operating system originally developed in 2013 by Canonical Ltd. and continued by the non-profit UBports Foundation in 2017. Ubuntu Touch can run on a pure GNU/Linux base on phones with the required drivers, such as the Librem 5 and the PinePhone. To enable hardware that was originally shipped with Android, Ubuntu Touch makes use of the Android Linux kernel, using Android drivers and services via an LXC container, but does not use any of the Java-like code of Android. As of February 2022, Ubuntu Touch is available on 78 phones and tablets. The UBports Installer serves as an easy-to-use tool to allow inexperienced users to install the operating system on third-party devices without damaging their hardware.


title: Tablet computer

text: Following Windows for Pen Computing for Windows 3.1 in 1991, Microsoft supported tablets running Windows XP under the Microsoft Tablet PC name. Microsoft Tablet PCs were pen-based, fully functional x86 PCs with handwriting and voice recognition functionality. Windows XP Tablet PC Edition provided pen support. Tablet support was added to both Home and Business versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. Tablets running Windows could use the touchscreen for mouse input, hand writing recognition and gesture support. Following Tablet PC, Microsoft announced the Ultra-mobile PC initiative in 2006 which brought Windows tablets to a smaller, touch-centric form factor. In 2008, Microsoft showed a prototype of a two-screen tablet called Microsoft Courier, but cancelled the project.


title: Tablet computer

text: In 2012, Microsoft released Windows 8, which features significant changes to various aspects of the operating system's user interface and platform which are designed for touch-based devices such as tablets. The operating system also introduced an application store and a new style of application optimized primarily for use on tablets. Microsoft also introduced Windows RT, an edition of Windows 8 for use on ARM-based devices. The launch of Windows 8 and RT was accompanied by the release of devices with the two operating systems by various manufacturers (including Microsoft themselves, with the release of Surface), such as slate tablets, hybrids, and convertibles.


title: Tablet computer

text: Released in July 2015, Windows 10 introduces what Microsoft described as "universal apps"; expanding on Metro-style apps, these apps can be designed to run across multiple Microsoft product families with nearly identical code – including PCs, tablets, smartphones, embedded systems, Xbox One, Surface Hub and Windows Holographic. The Windows user interface was revised to handle transitions between a mouse-oriented interface and a touchscreen-optimized interface based on available input devices – particularly on 2-in-1 PCs; both interfaces include an updated Start menu. Windows 10 replaced all earlier editions of Windows.


title: Tablet computer

text: Several hardware companies have built hybrid devices with the possibility to work with both Android and Windows Phone operating systems (or in rare cases Windows 8.1, as with the, by now cancelled, Asus Transformer Book Duet), while Ars Technica stated: "dual-OS devices are always terrible products. Windows and Android almost never cross-communicate, so any dual-OS device means dealing with separate apps, data, and storage pools and completely different UI paradigms. So from a consumer perspective, Microsoft and Google are really just saving OEMs from producing tons of clunky devices that no one will want."


title: Tablet computer

text: BlackBerry 10 (based on the QNX OS) is from BlackBerry. As a smartphone OS, it is closed-source and proprietary, and only runs on phones and tablets manufactured by BlackBerry.


title: Tablet computer

text: One of the dominant platforms in the world in the late 2000s, its global market share was reduced significantly by the mid-2010s. In late 2016, BlackBerry announced that it will continue to support the OS, with a promise to release 10.3.3. Therefore, BlackBerry 10 would not receive any major updates as BlackBerry and its partners would focus more on their Android base development.


title: Tablet computer

text: BlackBerry Tablet OS is an operating system from BlackBerry Ltd based on the QNX Neutrino real-time operating system designed to run Adobe AIR and BlackBerry WebWorks applications, currently available for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet computer.


title: Tablet computer

text: The BlackBerry Tablet OS is the first tablet running an operating system from QNX (now a subsidiary of RIM).


title: Tablet computer

text: BlackBerry Tablet OS supports standard BlackBerry Java applications. Support for Android apps has also been announced, through sandbox "app players" which can be ported by developers or installed through sideloading by users. A BlackBerry Tablet OS Native Development Kit, to develop native applications with the GNU toolchain is currently in closed beta testing. The first device to run BlackBerry Tablet OS was the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet computer.


title: Tablet computer

text: Apps that do not come pre-installed with the system are supplied through online distribution. These sources, termed "app stores", provide centralized catalogs of software and allow "one click" on-device software purchasing, installation and updates.


title: Tablet computer

text: Mobile device suppliers may adopt a "walled garden" approach, wherein the supplier controls what software applications ("apps") are available. Software development kits are restricted to approved software developers. This can be used to reduce the impact of malware, provide software with an approved content rating, control application quality and exclude competing vendors. Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Barnes & Noble all adopted the strategy. B&N originally allowed arbitrary apps to be installed, but, in December 2011, excluded third parties. Apple and IBM have agreed to cooperate in cross-selling IBM-developed applications for iPads and iPhones in enterprise-level accounts. Proponents of open source software say that the iPad (or such "walled garden" app store approach) violates the spirit of personal control that traditional personal computers have always provided.


title: Tablet computer

text: Around 2010, tablet use by businesses jumped, as business began to use them for conferences, events, and trade shows. In 2012, Intel reported that their tablet program improved productivity for about 19,000 of their employees by an average of 57 minutes a day. In October 2012, display screen shipments for tablets began surpassing shipments for laptop display screens. Tablets are increasingly used in the construction industry to look at blueprints, field documentation and other relevant information on the device instead of carrying around large amounts of paper.


title: Tablet computer

text: As of the start of 2014, 44% of US online consumers own tablets, a significant jump from 5% in 2011. Tablet use has also become increasingly common among children. A 2014 survey found that mobiles were the most frequently used object for play among American children under the age of 12. Mobiles were used more often in play than video game consoles, board games, puzzles, play vehicles, blocks and dolls/action figures. Despite this, the majority of parents said that a mobile was "never" or only "sometimes" a toy. As of 2014, nearly two-thirds of American 2- to 10-year-olds have access to a tablet or e-reader. The large use of tablets by adults is as a personal internet-connected TV. A 2015 study found that a third of children under five have their own tablet device. By 2017, tablet sales worldwide had surpassed sales of desktop computers, and worldwide PC sales were flat for the first quarter of 2018. In 2020 the tablet market saw a large surge in sales with 164 million tablet units being shipped worldwide due to a large demand for work from home and online learning.


title: Tablet computer

text: According to a survey conducted by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) now called Digital Content Next (DCN) in March 2012, it found that 72% of tablet owners had an iPad, while 32% had an Android tablet. By 2012, Android tablet adoption had increased. 52% of tablet owners owned an iPad, while 51% owned an Android-powered tablet (percentages do not add up to 100% because some tablet owners own more than one type). By end of 2013, Android's market share rose to 61.9%, followed by iOS at 36%. By late 2014, Android's market share rose to 72%, followed by iOS at 22.3% and Windows at 5.7%. As of early 2016, Android has 65% marketshare, Apple has 26% and Windows has 9% marketshare. In Q1 2018, Android tablets had 62% of the market, Apple's iOS had 23.4% of the market and Windows 10 had 14.6% of the market.


title: Tablet computer

text: The blue wavelength of light from back-lit tablets may impact one's ability to fall asleep when reading at night, through the suppression of melatonin. Experts at Harvard Medical School suggest limiting tablets for reading use in the evening. Those who have a delayed body clock, such as teenagers, which makes them prone to stay up late in the evening and sleep later in the morning, may be at particular risk for increases in sleep deficiencies. A PC app such as F.lux and Android apps such as CF.lumen and Twilight attempt to decrease the impact on sleep by filtering blue wavelengths from the display. iOS 9.3 includes Night Shift that shifts the colors of the device's display to be warmer during the later hours.


title: Tablet computer

text: Because of, among other things, electromagnetic waves emitted by this type of device, the use of any type of electronic device during the take-off and landing phases was totally prohibited on board commercial flights. On November 13, 2013, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) announced that the use of mobile terminals could be authorized on the flights of European airlines during these phases from 2014 onwards, on the condition that the cellular functions are deactivated ("airplane" mode activated). In September 2014, EASA issued guidance that allows EU airlines to permit use of tablets, e-readers, smartphones, and other portable electronic devices to stay on without the need to be in airplane mode during all parts of EU flights, however each airline has to decide to allow this behavior. In the US, the Federal Aviation Administration allowed use of portable electronic devices during all parts of flights while in airplane mode in late 2013.


title: Tablet computer

text: Some French historical monuments are equipped with digital tactile tablets called "HistoPad". It is an application integrated with an iPad Mini offering an interaction in augmented and virtual reality with several pieces of the visit, the visitor being able to take control of their visit in an interactive and personalized way.


title: Tablet computer

text: Some professionals – for example, in the construction industry, insurance experts, lifeguards or surveyors – use so-called rugged shelf models in the field that can withstand extreme hot or cold shocks or climatic environments. Some units are hardened against drops and screen breakage. Satellite-connectivity-equipped tablets such as the Thorium X, for example, can be used in areas where there is no other connectivity. This is a valuable feature in the aeronautical and military realms. For example, United States Army helicopter pilots are moving to tablets as electronic flight bags, which confer the advantages of rapid, convenient synchronization of large groups of users, and the seamless updating of information. US Army chaplains who are deployed in the field with the troops cite the accessibility of Army regulations, field manuals, and other critical information to help with their services; however power generation, speakers, and a tablet rucksack are also necessary for the chaplains.


title: First Lady of the United States

text: The first lady of the United States (FLOTUS) is the title held by the hostess of the White House, usually the wife of the president of the United States, concurrent with the president's term in office. Although the first lady's role has never been codified or officially defined, she figures prominently in the political and social life of the United States. Since the early 20th century, the first lady has been assisted by official staff, now known as the Office of the First Lady and headquartered in the East Wing of the White House.


title: First Lady of the United States

text: Jill Biden is the current first lady of the United States, as wife of the 46th and current president of the United States, Joe Biden.


title: First Lady of the United States

text: While the title was not in general use until much later, Martha Washington, the wife of George Washington, the first U.S. president (1789–1797), is considered to be the inaugural first lady of the United States. During her lifetime, she was often referred to as "Lady Washington".


title: First Lady of the United States

text: Since the 1790s, the role of first lady has changed considerably. It has come to include involvement in political campaigns, management of the White House, championship of social causes, and representation of the president at official and ceremonial occasions.


title: First Lady of the United States

text: As first ladies now typically publish their memoirs, which are viewed as potential sources of additional information about their husbands' administrations, and because the public is interested in these increasingly independent women in their own right, first ladies frequently remain a focus of attention long after their husbands' terms of office have ended. Additionally, over the years individual first ladies have held influence in a range of sectors, from fashion to public opinion on policy, as well as advocacy for female empowerment. Historically, should a president be unmarried or a widower the president usually asks a relative to act as White House hostess.