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History of mobile phones

The history of mobile phones covers mobile communication devices that connect wirelessly to the public switched telephone network.

While the transmission of speech by signal has a long history, the first devices that were wireless, mobile, and also capable of connecting to the standard telephone network are much more recent. The first such devices were barely portable compared to today's compact hand-held devices, and their use was clumsy.

Drastic changes have taken place in both the networking of wireless communication and the prevalence of its use, with smartphones becoming common globally and a growing proportion of Internet access now done via mobile broadband.

Predecessors
In 1908, Professor Albert Jahn and the Oakland Transcontinental Aerial Telephone and Power Company claimed to have developed a wireless telephone. They were accused of fraud and the charge was then dropped, but they do not really seem to have proceeded with production. In 1917, the Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt successfully filed a patent for a "pocket-size folding telephone with a very thin carbon microphone". Beginning in 1918, the German railroad system tested wireless telephony on military trains between Berlin and Zossen. In 1924, public trials started with telephone connection on trains between Berlin and Hamburg. In 1925, the company Zugtelephonie AG was founded to supply train-telephony equipment and, in 1926, telephone service in trains of the Deutsche Reichsbahn and the German mail service on the route between Hamburg and Berlin was approved and offered to first-class travelers.

Fiction anticipated the development of real-world mobile telephones. In 1906, the English caricaturist Lewis Baumer published a cartoon in  Punch entitled "Forecasts for 1907" in which he showed a man and a woman in London's Hyde Park each separately engaged in gambling and dating on wireless-telegraphy equipment. Cartoonist W. K. Haselden published The Pocket Telephone: When Will It Ring? in 1919, depicting six awkward possibilities. In 1923, Ilya Ehrenburg casually listed "pocket telephones" among the achievements of contemporary technology in a story in his collection Thirteen Pipes (Тринадцать трубок). In 1926, the artist Karl Arnold drew a visionary cartoon about the use of mobile phones in the street, in the picture "wireless telephony", published in the German satirical magazine Simplicissimus. The popular American cartoon detective Dick Tracy acquired a two-way, atomic-battery-powered wrist radio in 1946, upgraded to a wrist TV in 1964.

The Second World War (1939-1945) saw the military use of radio-telephony links. Hand-held radio transceivers have been available since the 1940s. Mobile telephones for automobiles became available from some telephone companies in the 1940s. Early devices were bulky, consumed large amounts of power, and the network supported only a few simultaneous conversations. (Modern cellular networks allow automatic and pervasive use of mobile phones for voice- and data communication.)

In the United States, engineers from Bell Labs began work on a system to allow mobile users to place and receive telephone calls from automobiles, leading to the inauguration of mobile service on 17 June 1946 in St. Louis, Missouri. Shortly after, AT&T offered Mobile Telephone Service. A wide range of mostly incompatible mobile telephone services offered limited coverage areas and only a few available channels in urban areas. As calls were transmitted as unencrypted analog signals, anyone with radio equipment that could receive those frequencies could eavesdrop. The commercial introduction (in Japan in 1979) of cellular technology, which allowed re-use of frequencies many times in small adjacent areas covered by relatively low-powered transmitters, made widespread adoption of mobile telephones economically feasible.

In the USSR, Leonid Kupriyanovich, an engineer from Moscow, developed and presented a number of experimental pocket-sized communications radios in 1957–1961. The weight of one model, presented in 1961, was only 70 g and could fit in a palm. However, in the USSR the decision at first to develop the system of the automobile "Altai" phone was made.

In 1965, the Bulgarian company "Radioelektronika" presented a mobile automatic phone combined with a base station at the Inforga-65 international exhibition in Moscow. Solutions of this phone were based on a system developed by Leonid Kupriyanovich. One base station, connected to one telephone wire line, could serve up to 15 customers.

Advances in mobile telephony can be traced in successive generations from the early "0G" services like MTS and its successor Improved Mobile Telephone Service, to first-generation (1G) analog cellular networks (1979–), second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks (1991–), third-generation (3G) broadband data services (launched commercially in 2001) to the fourth-generation (4G) native-IP networks (launched in 2006 in South Korea). 5G began deployment in 2019.

MTS
In 1949, AT&T commercialized Mobile Telephone Service. From its start in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1946, AT&T introduced Mobile Telephone Service to one hundred towns and highway corridors by 1948. Mobile Telephone Service was a rarity with only 5,000 customers placing about 30,000 calls each week. Calls were set up manually by an operator and the user had to depress a button on the handset to speak and release the button to listen. The call subscriber equipment weighed about 80 lb

Subscriber growth and revenue generation were hampered by the constraints of the technology. Because only three radio channels were available, only three customers in any given city could make mobile telephone calls at one time. Mobile Telephone Service was expensive, costing US$15 per month, plus $0.30–0.40 per local call, equivalent to (in 2012 US dollars) about $176 per month and $3.50–4.75 per call.

In the UK, there was also a vehicle-based system called "Post Office Radiophone Service", which was launched around the city of Manchester in 1959, and although it required callers to speak to an operator, it was possible to be put through to any subscriber in Great Britain. The service was extended to London in 1965 and other major cities in 1972.

IMTS
AT&T introduced the first major improvement to mobile telephony in 1965, giving the improved service the obvious name of Improved Mobile Telephone Service. IMTS used additional radio channels, allowing more simultaneous calls in a given geographic area, introduced customer dialing, eliminating manual call setup by an operator, and reduced the size and weight of the subscriber equipment.

Despite the capacity improvement offered by IMTS, demand outstripped capacity. In agreement with state regulatory agencies, AT&T limited the service to just 40,000 customers system wide. In New York City, for example, 2,000 customers shared just 12 radio channels and typically had to wait 30 minutes to place a call.

Radio Common Carrier

Radio Common Carrier or RCC was a service introduced in the 1960s by independent telephone companies to compete against AT&T's IMTS. RCC systems used paired UHF 454/459 MHz and VHF 152/158 MHz frequencies near those used by IMTS. RCC based services were provided until the 1980s when cellular AMPS systems made RCC equipment obsolete.

Some RCC systems were designed to allow customers of adjacent carriers to use their facilities, but equipment used by RCCs did not allow the equivalent of modern "roaming" because technical standards were not uniform. For example, the phone of an Omaha, Nebraska–based RCC service would not be likely to work in Phoenix, Arizona. Roaming was not encouraged, in part, because there was no centralized industry billing database for RCCs. Signaling formats were not standardized. For example, some systems used two-tone sequential paging to alert a mobile of an incoming call. Other systems used DTMF. Some used Secode 2805, which transmitted an interrupted 2805 Hz tone (similar to IMTS signaling) to alert mobiles of an offered call. Some radio equipment used with RCC systems was half-duplex, push-to-talk LOMO equipment such as Motorola hand-helds or RCA 700-series conventional two-way radios. Other vehicular equipment had telephone handsets and rotary dials or pushbutton pads, and operated full duplex like a conventional wired telephone. A few users had full-duplex briefcase telephones (radically advanced for their day)

At the end of RCC's existence, industry associations were working on a technical standard that would have allowed roaming, and some mobile users had multiple decoders to enable operation with more than one of the common signaling formats (600/1500, 2805, and Reach). Manual operation was often a fallback for RCC roamers.

Other services
In 1969, Penn Central Railroad equipped commuter trains along the 360 km New York-Washington route with special pay phones that allowed passengers to place telephone calls while the train was moving. The system re-used six frequencies in the 450 MHz band in nine sites.

In the UK, Channel Islands and elsewhere the "Rabbit" phone system was briefly used, being a hybrid of "cell" base stations and handsets. One major limitation was that you had to be less than 300 feet feet (closer with buildings) from a base due to power limitations on a portable device. With modern technology a similar variant is being considered for Apple's new 4G "smart watch" so they can be used in large events in a broadly similar way to a femtocell.

European mobile radio networks
In Europe, several mutually incompatible mobile radio services were developed.

In 1966, Norway had a system called OLT which was manually controlled. Finland's ARP, launched in 1971, was also manual as was the Swedish MTD. All were replaced by the automatic NMT, (Nordic Mobile Telephone) system in the early 1980s.

In July 1971, Readycall was introduced in London by Burndept after obtaining a special concession to break the Post Office monopoly to allow selective calling to mobiles of calls from the public telephone system. This system was available to the public for a subscription of £16 month. A year later the service was extended to two other UK towns.

West Germany had a network called A-Netz launched in 1952 as the country's first public commercial mobile phone network. In 1972, this was displaced by B-Netz which connected calls automatically.

Cellular concept
In December 1947, Douglas H. Ring and W. Rae Young, Bell Labs engineers, proposed hexagonal cells for mobile phones in vehicles. At this stage, the technology to implement these ideas did not exist, nor had the frequencies been allocated. Two decades would pass before Richard H. Frenkiel, Joel S. Engel and Philip T. Porter of Bell Labs expanded the early proposals into a much more detailed system plan. It was Porter who first proposed that the cell towers use the now-familiar directional antennas to reduce interference and increase channel reuse (see picture at right) Porter also invented the dial-then-send method used by all cell phones to reduce wasted channel time.

In all these early examples, a mobile phone had to stay within the coverage area serviced by one base station throughout the phone call, i.e. there was no continuity of service as the phones moved through several cell areas. The concepts of frequency reuse and handoff, as well as a number of other concepts that formed the basis of modern cell phone technology, were described in the late 1960s, in papers by Frenkiel and Porter. In 1970, Amos E. Joel, Jr., a Bell Labs engineer, invented a "three-sided trunk circuit" to aid in the "call handoff" process from one cell to another. His patent contained an early description of the Bell Labs cellular concept, but as switching systems became faster, such a circuit became unnecessary and was never implemented in a system.

A cellular telephone switching plan was described by Fluhr and Nussbaum in 1973, and a cellular telephone data signaling system was described in 1977 by Hachenburg et al.

Emergence of automated services
The first fully automated mobile phone system for vehicles was launched in Sweden in 1956. Named MTA (Mobiltelefonisystem A), it allowed calls to be made and received in the car using a rotary dial. The car phone could also be paged. Calls from the car were direct dial, whereas incoming calls required an operator to locate the nearest base station to the car. It was developed by Sture Laurén and other engineers at Televerket network operator. Ericsson provided the switchboard while Svenska Radioaktiebolaget (SRA) and Marconi provided the telephones and base station equipment. MTA phones consisted of vacuum tubes and relays, and weighed 40 kg. In 1962, an upgraded version called Mobile System B (MTB) was introduced. This was a push-button telephone, and used transistors and DTMF signaling to improve its operational reliability. In 1971 the MTD version was launched, opening for several different brands of equipment and gaining commercial success. The network remained open until 1983 and still had 600 customers when it closed.

In 1958, development began on a similar system for motorists in the USSR named "Altay". The main developers of the Altay system were the Voronezh Science Research Institute of Communications (VNIIS) and the State Specialized Project Institute (GSPI). In 1963, the service started in Moscow, and by 1970, was deployed in 30 cities across the USSR. Versions of the Altay system are still in use today as a trunking system in some parts of Russia.

In 1959, a private telephone company in Brewster, Kansas, US, the S&T Telephone Company, (still in business today) with the use of Motorola Radio Telephone equipment and a private tower facility, offered to the public mobile telephone services in that local area of NW Kansas. This system was a direct dial up service through their local switchboard, and was installed in many private vehicles including grain combines, trucks, and automobiles. For some as yet unknown reason, the system, after being placed online and operated for a very brief time period, was shut down. The management of the company was immediately changed, and the fully operable system and related equipment was immediately dismantled in early 1960, not to be seen again.

In 1966, Bulgaria presented the pocket mobile automatic phone RAT-0,5 combined with a base station RATZ-10 (RATC-10) on Interorgtechnika-66 international exhibition. One base station, connected to one telephone wire line, could serve up to six customers.

One of the first successful public commercial mobile phone networks was the ARP network in Finland, launched in 1971. Posthumously, ARP is sometimes viewed as a zero generation (0G) cellular network, being slightly above previous proprietary and limited coverage networks.

Handheld mobile phone
Prior to 1973, mobile telephony was limited to phones installed in cars and other vehicles. The first portable cellular phone commercially available for use on a cellular network was developed by E.F. Johnson and Millicom, Inc. It was introduced by Millicom subsidiary Comvik in Sweden in September 1981.

Motorola was the first company to produce a handheld mobile phone. On 3 April 1973, Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive, made the first mobile telephone call from handheld subscriber equipment, placing a call to Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, his rival. The prototype handheld phone used by Dr. Cooper weighed 2 kg and measured 23 by. The prototype offered a talk time of just 30 minutes and took 10 hours to re-charge. Commonly referred to as "the Brick", it was not commercially launched until October 1983, and only then in the U.S.

John F. Mitchell,  Motorola's chief of portable communication products and Cooper's boss in 1973, played a key role in advancing the development of handheld mobile telephone equipment. Mitchell successfully pushed Motorola to develop wireless communication products that would be small enough to use anywhere and participated in the design of the cellular phone.

Early generations
Newer technology has been developed and rolled out in a series of waves or generations. The "generation" terminology only became widely used when 3G was launched, but is now used retrospectively when referring to the earlier systems.

1G – Analog cellular
The first automatic analog cellular systems ever deployed were NTT's system first used in 1979 for car phones in Tokyo (and later the rest of the country of Japan), and the cellular systems released by Comvik in Sweden in September, NMT in the other Nordic countries in October of 1981.

The first analog cellular system widely deployed in North America was the Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS). It was commercially introduced in the Americas on 13 October 1983, Israel in 1986, and Australia in 1987. AMPS was a pioneering technology that helped drive mass market usage of cellular technology, but it had several serious issues by modern standards. It was unencrypted and easily vulnerable to eavesdropping via a scanner; it was susceptible to cell phone "cloning" and it used a Frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) scheme and required significant amounts of wireless spectrum to support.

On 6 March 1983, the DynaTAC 8000X mobile phone launched on the first US 1G network by Ameritech. It cost $100M to develop, and took over a decade to reach the market. The phone had a talk time of just thirty minutes and took ten hours to charge. Consumer demand was strong despite the battery life, weight, and low talk time, and waiting lists were in the thousands.

Many of the iconic early commercial cell phones such as the Motorola DynaTAC Analog AMPS were eventually superseded by Digital AMPS (D-AMPS) in 1990, and AMPS service was shut down by most North American carriers by 2008.

In February 1986, Australia launched its Cellular Telephone System by Telecom Australia. Peter Reedman was the first Telecom Customer to be connected on 6 January 1986 along with five other subscribers as test customers prior to the official launch date of 28 February.

2G – Digital cellular

In the 1990s, the 'second generation' mobile phone systems emerged. Two systems competed for supremacy in the global market: the European developed GSM standard and the U.S. developed CDMA standard. These differed from the previous generation by using digital instead of analog transmission, and also fast out-of-band phone-to-network signaling. The rise in mobile phone usage as a result of 2G was explosive and this era also saw the advent of prepaid mobile phones.

In 1991, the first GSM network (Radiolinja) launched in Finland. In general, the frequencies used by 2G systems in Europe were higher than those in the United States, though with some overlap. For example, the 900 MHz frequency range was used for both 1G and 2G systems in Europe, so the 1G systems were rapidly closed down to make space for the 2G systems. In the United States, the IS-54 standard was deployed in the same band as AMPS and displaced some of the existing analog channels.

In 1993, IBM Simon was introduced. This was possibly the world's first smartphone. It was a mobile phone, pager, fax machine, and PDA all rolled into one. It included a calendar, address book, clock, calculator, notepad, email, and a touchscreen with a QWERTY keyboard. The IBM Simon had a stylus, used to tap the touch screen. It featured predictive typing that would guess the next characters as you tapped. It had applications, or at least a way to deliver more features by plugging a PCMCIA 1.8 MB memory card into the phone. Coinciding with the introduction of 2G systems was a trend away from the larger "brick" phones toward tiny 100 - 200 g hand-held devices. This change was possible not only through technological improvements such as more advanced batteries and more energy-efficient electronics, but also because of the higher density of cell sites to accommodate increasing usage. The latter meant that the average distance transmission from phone to the base station shortened, leading to increased battery life while on the move.

The second generation introduced a new variant of communication called SMS or text messaging. It was initially available only on GSM networks but spread eventually on all digital networks. The first machine-generated SMS message was sent in the UK on 3 December 1992 followed in 1993 by the first person-to-person SMS sent in Finland. The advent of prepaid services in the late 1990s soon made SMS the communication method of choice among the young, a trend which spread across all ages.

2G also introduced the ability to access media content on mobile phones. In 1998, the first downloadable content sold to mobile phones was the ring tone, launched by Finland's Radiolinja (now Elisa). Advertising on the mobile phone first appeared in Finland when a free daily SMS news headline service was launched in 2000, sponsored by advertising.

Mobile payments were trialed in 1998 in Finland and Sweden where a mobile phone was used to pay for a Coca-Cola vending machine and car parking. Commercial launches followed in 1999 in Norway. The first commercial payment system to mimic banks and credit cards was launched in the Philippines in 1999 simultaneously by mobile operators Globe and Smart.

The first full internet service on mobile phones was introduced by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in 1999.

3G – Mobile broadband
As the use of 2G phones became more widespread and people began to use mobile phones in their daily lives, it became clear that demand for data (such as access to browse the internet) was growing. Further, experience from fixed broadband services showed there would also be an ever-increasing demand for greater data speeds. The 2G technology was nowhere near up to the job, so the industry began to work on the next generation of technology known as 3G. The main technological difference that distinguishes 3G technology from 2G technology is the use of packet switching rather than circuit switching for data transmission. In addition, the standardization process focused on requirements more than technology (2 Mbit/s maximum data rate indoors, 384 kbit/s outdoors, for example).

Inevitably, this led to many competing standards with different contenders pushing their own technologies, and the vision of a single unified worldwide standard looked far from reality. The standard 2G CDMA networks became 3G compliant with the adoption of Revision A to EV-DO, which made several additions to the protocol while retaining backwards compatibility: All these were put in place to allow for low latency, low bit rate communications such as VoIP.
 * Introduction of several new forward link data rates that increase the maximum burst rate from 2.45 Mbit/s to 3.1 Mbit/s
 * Protocols that would decrease connection establishment time
 * Ability for more than one mobile to share the same time slot
 * Introduction of QoS flags

The first pre-commercial trial network with 3G was launched by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in the Tokyo region in May 2001. NTT DoCoMo launched the first commercial 3G network on 1 October 2001, using the WCDMA technology. In 2002, the first 3G networks on the rival CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technology were launched by SK Telecom and KTF in South Korea, and Monet in the US. Monet has since gone bankrupt. By the end of 2002, the second WCDMA network was launched in Japan by Vodafone KK (now Softbank). European launches of 3G were in Italy and the UK by Three/Hutchison group, on WCDMA. 2003 saw a further eight commercial launches of 3G, six more on WCDMA and two more on the EV-DO standard.

During the development of 3G systems, 2.5G systems such as CDMA2000 1x and GPRS were developed as extensions to existing 2G networks. These provide some of the features of 3G without fulfilling the promised high data rates or full range of multimedia services. CDMA2000-1X delivers theoretical maximum data speeds of up to 307 kbit/s. Just beyond these is the EDGE system which in theory covers the requirements for 3G system, but is so narrowly above these that any practical system would be sure to fall short.

The high connection speeds of 3G technology enabled a transformation in the industry: for the first time, media streaming of radio (and even television) content to 3G handsets became possible, with companies such as RealNetworks and Disney among the early pioneers in this type of offering.

In the mid-2000s, an evolution of 3G technology began to be implemented, namely High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). It is an enhanced 3G (third generation) mobile telephony communication protocol in the High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) family, also coined 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity. Current HSDPA deployments support down-link speeds of 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.0 Mbit/s.

By the end of 2007, there were 295 million subscribers on 3G networks worldwide, which reflected 9% of the total worldwide subscriber base. About two thirds of these were on the WCDMA standard and one third on the EV-DO standard. The 3G telecoms services generated over $120 billion of revenues during 2007 and at many markets the majority of new phones activated were 3G phones. In Japan and South Korea the market no longer supplies phones of the second generation.

Although mobile phones had long had the ability to access data networks such as the Internet, it was not until the widespread availability of good quality 3G coverage in the mid-2000s (decade) that specialized devices appeared to access the mobile web. The first such devices, known as "dongles", plugged directly into a computer through the USB port. Another new class of device appeared subsequently, the so-called "compact wireless router" such as the Novatel MiFi, which makes 3G Internet connectivity available to multiple computers simultaneously over Wi-Fi, rather than just to a single computer via a USB plug-in.

Such devices became especially popular for use with laptop computers due to the added portability they bestow. Consequently, some computer manufacturers started to embed the mobile data function directly into the laptop so a dongle or MiFi was not needed. Instead, the SIM card could be inserted directly into the device itself to access the mobile data services. Such 3G-capable laptops became commonly known as "netbooks". Other types of data-aware devices followed in the netbook's footsteps. By the beginning of 2010, E-readers, such as the Amazon Kindle and the Nook from Barnes & Noble, had already become available with embedded wireless Internet, and Apple had announced plans for embedded wireless Internet on its iPad tablet devices later that year.

4G – Native IP networks

By 2009, it had become clear that, at some point, 3G networks would be overwhelmed by the growth of bandwidth-intensive applications, such as streaming media. Consequently, the industry began looking to data-optimized fourth-generation (4G) technologies, with the promise of speed improvements up to ten-fold over existing 3G technologies. The first publicly available LTE service was launched in Scandinavia by TeliaSonera, in 2009. In the 2010s, a 4G technology has found diverse applications across various sectors, showcasing its versatility in delivering high-speed wireless communication, such as mobile broadband, internet of things (IoT), fixed wireless access, and multimedia streaming (including music, video, radio, and television).

One of the main ways in which 4G differed technologically from 3G was in its elimination of circuit switching, instead employing an all-IP network. Thus, 4G ushered in a treatment of voice calls just like any other type of streaming audio media, using packet switching over mobile network via VoLTE.

5G – Cellular Mobile Communications

Deployment of fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks commenced worldwide in 2019. The term "5G" was originally used in research papers and projects to denote the next major phase in mobile telecommunication standards beyond the 4G/IMT-Advanced standards. The 3GPP defines 5G as any system that adheres to the 5G NR (5G New Radio) standard. 5G can be implemented in low-band, mid-band or high-band millimeter-wave, with download speeds that can achieve gigabit-per-second (Gbit/s) range, aiming for a network latency of 1 ms. This near-real-time responsiveness and improved overall data performance are crucial for applications like online gaming, augmented and virtual reality, autonomous vehicles, IoT, and critical communication services.

Satellite telephone
A satellite phone is a type of mobile phone that connects to other phones or the telephone network by radio link through satellites orbiting the Earth instead of terrestrial cell sites, as cellphones do. Therefore, they can work in most geographic locations on the Earth's surface, as long as open sky and the line-of-sight between the phone and the satellite are provided. The advantage of a satellite phone is that it can be used in such regions where local terrestrial communication infrastructures, such as landline and cellular networks, are not available. Satellite phones rarely get disrupted by natural disasters on Earth or human actions such as war, so they have proven to be dependable communication tools in emergency and humanitarian situations, when the local communications system have been compromised.

The Inmarsat system is the oldest, originally developed in 1979 for safety of life at sea, and uses a series of satellites in geostationary orbits to cover the majority of the globe. Several smaller operators use the same approach with just one or two satellites to provide a regional service. An alternative approach is to use a series of low Earth orbit satellites much closer to Earth. This is the basis of the Iridium and Globalstar satellite phone services.

Integration into conventional mobile phones
In the early 2020s, manufacturers began to integrate satellite connectivity into smartphone devices for use in remote areas, out of the cellular network range. The satellite-to-phone services use L band frequencies, which are compatible with most modern handsets. However, due to the antenna limitations in the conventional phones, in the early stages of implementation satellite connectivity is limited to satellite messaging and satellite emergency services.

In 2022, the Apple iPhone 14 started supporting sending emergency text messages via Globalstar satellites. In 2023, the Apple iPhone 15 added satellite communication with roadside service in the United States. In 2022, T-Mobile formed a partnership to use Starlink services via existing LTE spectrum, expected in late 2024. In 2022, AST SpaceMobile started building a 3GPP standard-based cellular space network to allow existing, unmodified smartphones to connect to satellites in areas with coverage gaps. In 2023, Qualcomm announced Snapdragon Satellite, the service that will allow supported cellphones, starting with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, to send and receive text messages via 5G non-terrestrial networks (NTN). In 2024, Iridium introduceed Project Stardust, a standard-based satellite-to-cellphone service supported via NB-IoT for 5G non-terrestrial networks, which will be utilized over Iridium's existing low-earth orbit satellites. Scheduled for launch in 2026, the service provides messaging, emergency communications and IoT for devices like cars, smartphones, tablets and related consumer applications.

Mobile device charger standards
Before a universal charger standard was agreed upon in the late 2000s, users needed an adapter which was often proprietary by brand or manufacturer to charge their battery. Later, mobile phones from major brands typically used a USB cable with a micro-USB or, since the mid-2010s, USB-C interface. Apple's iPhone was the sole major brand to retain its own interface (30-pin dock connector replaced by Lightning in 2012). In 2023, Apple's iPhone 15 series finally made the switch to USB-C, since then, all major brands used USB-C as the charger.

In China
, all new mobile phones applying for a license in China are required to use a USB port as a power port for battery charging. This was the first standard to use the convention of shorting D+ and D−.

OMTP/GSMA Universal Charging Solution
In September 2007, the Open Mobile Terminal Platform group (a forum of mobile network operators and manufacturers such as Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and LG) announced that its members had agreed on Micro-USB as the future common connector for mobile devices.

The GSM Association (GSMA) followed suit on 17 February 2009,  and on 22 April 2009, this was further endorsed by the CTIA – The Wireless Association, with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announcing on 22 October 2009 that it had also embraced the Universal Charging Solution as its "energy-efficient one-charger-fits-all new mobile phone solution," and added: "Based on the Micro-USB interface, UCS chargers will also include a 4-star or higher efficiency rating—up to three times more energy-efficient than an unrated charger."

EU smartphone power supply standards
In June 2009, many of the world's largest mobile phone manufacturers signed an EC-sponsored Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), agreeing to make most data-enabled mobile phones marketed in the European Union compatible with a common external power supply (common EPS). The EU's common EPS specification (EN 62684:2010) references the USB Battery Charging Specification and is similar to the GSMA/OMTP and Chinese charging solutions. In January 2011, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) released its version of the (EU's) common EPS standard as IEC 62684:2011.

In 2022, the Radio Equipment Directive 2021/0291 required new smartphones to use USB-C as a universal charger by the end of 2024, and laptops by 2026.

title: History of mobile phones


text: Category:Monty Python albums

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title: Category:Monty Python albums


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User:Ethanvox

Hi, i am ethanvox. I do very sparse editing - mostly obvious corrections - when i get the chance. Feel free to contact me.

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Fatness

Fatness may refer to:

 * Obesity, a medical condition where excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have a negative impact on health
 * The property of a fat object, in geometry, referring to an object in two or more dimensions whose lengths in the different dimensions are similar

title: Fatness


text:
Bill Davidson (businessman)

William Morse Davidson (December 5, 1922 – March 13, 2009) was an American businessman. He was president, chairman and CEO of Guardian Industries, one of the world's largest manufacturers of architectural and automotive glass. He was also owner of several North American professional sports teams and a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

The chairman of Palace Sports and Entertainment, Davidson was principal owner of the Detroit Pistons of the National Basketball Association, the Detroit Shock of the Women's National Basketball Association, and the co-owner of the Detroit Fury of the Arena Football League. Davidson also owned the Tampa Bay Lightning of the National Hockey League and Detroit Vipers of the International Hockey League. His Pistons won the NBA Finals in 1989, 1990 and 2004; his Shock won the WNBA Finals in 2003, 2006 and 2008; his Vipers won the 1997 Turner Cup; and his Tampa Bay Lightning won the 2004 Stanley Cup.

Early life and education
A Detroit native, Davidson was born to a Jewish family on December 5, 1922; he was a 1940 graduate of Central High School. Davidson entered the University of Michigan in 1940, where he was a member of the track and field team; he majored in business at what is now the Ross School of Business. Davidson later joined the U.S. Navy and played Armed Forces Football during World War II.

Following the war, Davidson garnered his Juris Doctor degree from Wayne State University Law School in 1949. After three years of law practice, he rescued a wholesale drug company and a surgical supply company from bankruptcy.

Early career and family business
Davidson would also take over his family's Guardian Glass Co. in 1957, the same year the company declared bankruptcy. Guardian Glass would be the precursor to his company Guardian Industries, one of the largest glass suppliers in the world. Davidson encouraged risk-taking, discouraged second-guessing and was seen as aggressive. Not without controversy, Guardian was sued at least six times between 1965 and 1988. In 1989, Guardian was ordered to pay its competitor Johns Manville $38 million for stealing fibreglass-making technology. Guardian now stands as one of the world's giants of glass manufacturing with facilities in Asia, Europe, Africa and South America in addition to its sprawling North American interests.

Pistons ownership
Being acquainted with football, Davidson wanted to acquire a football franchise. In 1974, Davidson and college classmate Oscar Feldman enlisted ex-Detroit Lions great Joe Schmidt to be part of a group bidding on the Tampa expansion franchise. The expansion fee soon grew too high for the group's liking, and it bowed out of the bidding.

Two months later, Davidson learned that Pistons owner Fred Zollner was thinking of putting the team up for sale. Zollner had founded the Pistons in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1941 and moved them to Detroit in 1957. However, the Pistons had never turned a profit since the move to Detroit. Davidson and Zollner had known each other for some time, since they both had vacation homes in Golden Beach, Florida. Zollner quickly reached a deal to sell the Pistons to Davidson for $6 million, which closed in late 1974.

At the time, the Pistons played at 10,000-seat Cobo Arena in downtown Detroit. Davidson was displeased with this location, but opted not to join the Detroit Red Wings at the under-construction Joe Louis Arena. Instead, he relocated the team to the Pontiac Silverdome in 1978 and then to The Palace of Auburn Hills, the first NBA arena financed entirely with private funds, in 1988. To help pay the $90 million construction cost, the Bob Sosnick-designed arena featured lower-level suites, then a never-seen-before feature.

His Pistons were at the league's forefront with respect to amenities. The franchise has a state-of-the-art practice facility, solely designed for the Pistons. During the offseason, team members are able to use the facilities while working on personal off-season conditioning goals. Against the advice of friends, Davidson was also the first owner to buy an airplane for his team, nicknamed Roundball One. Roundball Two, a newer, larger, multimillion-dollar aircraft refurbished with 42 luxury seats and a state-of-the-art video system, was purchased in the summer of 1998. Davidson was also the first to encourage globalizing the marketing of the NBA. He has been Chairman of the Board of Governors and was active on several committees, including the one that selected former NBA Commissioner Larry O'Brien in 1975.

In 2009, the value of the Pistons franchise was estimated to be over $430 million. Regularly seen at the team's home games, Davidson had said repeatedly that he would never sell the Pistons and the franchise would remain in his family after he died.

In 1999, Davidson put in an unsuccessful bid to purchase the Tampa Bay Lightning and gain a controlling interest in their home arena, the Ice Palace. He lost to insurance tycoon Art Williams, but only months later Williams sold the team to Davidson and Palace Sports at a huge loss. When Davidson acquired the Lightning franchise in 1999, the price was $100 million; its value has recently been estimated at $136 million. Tampa Bay won the Stanley Cup under Davidson's ownership in 2004. On August 7, 2007, Davidson sold the Lightning franchise.

Davidson was honored by the Pistons in 2006 when he was given a banner next to the team's retired numbers. His name (as "Bill Davidson") was also placed on the Palace floor along with Pistons legends Dave Bing, Bill Laimbeer, Vinnie Johnson, Chuck Daly, Joe Dumars, Isiah Thomas and Bob Lanier.

In 2008, Davidson was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor for his successes as an owner of the Pistons and Shock. He was also an inaugural inductee into the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

At the time of his death, Davidson lived in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan with his wife, Karen. He had two children, Ethan and Marla, and three stepdaughters, including actress Elizabeth Reaser.

His combined business ventures led him to an estimated net worth of $3.5 billion, which led to Forbes ranking him as the 68th-richest man in the United States.

Philanthropic activities
A noted philanthropist, Davidson gave extensively to various organizations. He was one of the founders of the Pistons/Palace Foundation, a charity that has donated more than $20 million in cash and merchandise since 1989. In 1995, the foundation partnered with the City of Detroit's Parks and Recreation Department to establish the Partnership to Adopt and Renovate Parks for Kids (PARK) Program, which provided restoration of Detroit parks, basketball courts, baseball diamonds, running tracks and playground equipment.

In 1992, the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan was created at Davidson's alma mater, the Ross School of Business. A gift of $30 million was given to provide assistance in a special program to help develop market economies throughout the world. In total, Davidson's gifts to the school exceed $55 million.

In 1997, the Council of Michigan Foundations honored Davidson for his lifelong philanthropic efforts locally, nationally and internationally. He was listed as one of America's most generous donors in a New York Times article that same year.

Davidson enabled the Detroit Symphony Orchestra to make long-term touring plans both in the U.S. and internationally with a renewable $2 million donation. He pledged to fight cancer with a gift of $1 million to support collaborative research, prevention and early detection programs in breast and pediatric cancers at the Karmanos Cancer Institute and Children's Research Center of Michigan.

After the Yom Kippur War, he and fellow Detroit-area philanthropist Lloyd J. Paul were flown to Israel by Prime Minister Golda Meir and given the Prime Minister's Club Award for outstanding philanthropic deeds towards Israel. In 1999, Davidson gave $20 million to establish the Davidson Institute of Science Education at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. This was then the largest private donation ever given to the institute, a leading international science research center and graduate school. Davidson later added another gift of $15 million to the same institute. In addition, he endowed the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York with a $15 million gift. The excavations on the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem have been named the Davidson excavations in tribute to his generous donations to the project. He also gave to the American Technion Society to establish the world's first educational institution entirely dedicated to the international management of technology-based companies at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Davidson was also a contributor to the Wexner Foundation which gives grants to graduate students of Jewish studies. In March 2007, Davidson donated $75 million to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem.

Awards and recognition
Davidson was decorated as Commander of the Order of the Oak Crown and as Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

Personal life
Davidson was married four times. He had two children: In 1995, he married his fourth wife, Karen Weidman, who would convert to Judaism upon their marriage. She has three daughters from a prior marriage to John Reaser: Elizabeth Reaser, an actress with 30 movies and television shows to her credit (including the Twilight saga); Emily Reaser; and Mary Aaron.
 * Ethan Daniel Davidson, a musician, who is married to fellow musician Gretchen Gonzales. He is active with the William Davidson Foundation.
 * Marla Davidson Karimipour, married to Cyrus Karimipour.

The book The Wetsmans: Odyssey of an American Family was commissioned in 1988 by William M. Davidson, a grandson in the Wetsmans' family. For more information about the Wetsmans and their extended family, the book has been digitized and is available online.

Death
Davidson died on March 13, 2009, in his home at the age of 86. His health had been deteriorating for the years before his death; he had been using a wheelchair and very infrequently attended Pistons home games. The funeral was held at Congregation Shaarey Zedek, in Southfield, and Davidson was buried in the Clover Hill Park Cemetery, in Birmingham.

His widow Karen succeeded him as owner of the Pistons, and she sold all of Palace Sports & Entertainment, including the Pistons franchise, to Platinum Equity founder Tom Gores in 2011 for a reported $325 million.

title: Bill Davidson (businessman)


text:
John Pocock

Brigadier-General John Pocock (died April 1732) was a British Army officer and a Colonel of the King's Regiment of Foot.

Life
Pocock obtained a commission in a regiment of foot in June 1695, and having signalised himself in the wars of Queen Anne, he was promoted to the rank of colonel in the Army in 1707. In 1710 he succeeded Lord Strathnaver in the colonelcy of a regiment of foot, with which he served in Flanders under the Duke of Marlborough, and afterwards under the Duke of Ormonde. At the Peace of Utrecht his regiment was disbanded, but in 1715 he was commissioned to raise a regiment of foot for the service of King George I. After the suppression of the rebellion of the Earl of Mar, this regiment was sent to Ireland, where it was disbanded in 1718. On 2 December 1720 Pocock was appointed to the colonelcy of the 36th Regiment of Foot, from which he was removed on 21 April 1721 to the 8th, or King's Regiment. On the expectation that Great Britain would become involved in a continental war, in 1727, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. He died in April 1732 at his house in Leicester Fields, London.

title: John Pocock


text:
King Kong

King Kong is a fictional giant monster, or kaiju, resembling a gorilla, who has appeared in various media since 1933. Kong has been dubbed the King of the Beasts, and over time, it would also be bestowed the title of the Eighth Wonder of the World, a widely recognized expression within the franchise. His first appearance was in the novelization of the 1933 film King Kong from RKO Pictures, with the film premiering a little over two months later.

A sequel quickly followed that same year with The Son of Kong, featuring Little Kong, also known as "Kiko". The Japanese film company Toho later produced King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), featuring a giant Kong battling Toho's Godzilla, and King Kong Escapes (1967), a film loosely based on Rankin/Bass' The King Kong Show (1966–1969). In 1976, Dino De Laurentiis produced a modern remake of the original film directed by John Guillermin. A sequel, King Kong Lives, followed a decade later featuring a Lady Kong. Another remake of the original, set in 1933, was released in 2005 by filmmaker Peter Jackson.

Kong: Skull Island (2017), set in 1973, is part of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Entertainment's MonsterVerse, which began with a reboot of Godzilla in 2014. A sequel, Godzilla vs. Kong, once again pitting the characters against one another, was released in 2021. It was followed by the film Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire in 2024, which featured more of Kong's kind.

The character is an international pop culture icon, having inspired a number of sequels, remakes, spin-offs, imitators, parodies, cartoons, books, comics, video games, theme park rides, and a stage play. King Kong has also crossed over into other franchises, such as Planet of the Apes, and encountered characters from other franchises in crossover media, such as the Toho movie monster Godzilla, pulp characters Doc Savage and Tarzan, and the Justice League. His role in the different narratives varies, ranging from an egregious monster to a tragic antihero.

Overview
The King Kong character was conceived and created by American filmmaker Merian C. Cooper. In the original film, the character's name is Kong, a name given to him by the inhabitants of the fictional "Skull Island" in the Indian Ocean, where Kong lives along with other oversized animals, such as plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, and various dinosaurs. An American film crew, led by Carl Denham, captures Kong and takes him to New York City to be exhibited as the "Eighth Wonder of the World".

Kong escapes and climbs the Empire State Building, only to fall from the skyscraper after being attacked by weaponized biplanes. Denham comments, "It wasn't the aeroplanes, it was beauty killed the beast", for he climbs the building in the first place only in an attempt to protect Ann Darrow, an actress originally kidnapped by the natives of the island and offered up to Kong as a sacrifice (in the 1976 remake, her character is named "Dwan").

A pseudo-documentary about Skull Island that appears on the DVD for the 2005 remake (originally seen on the Sci-Fi Channel at the time of its theatrical release) gives Kong's scientific name as Megaprimatus kong ("Megaprimatus", deriving from the prefix "mega-" and the Latin words "primate" and "primatus", means "big primate" or "big supreme being") and states that his species may be related to Gigantopithecus. However, that genus of giant ape is more closely related to orangutans than to gorillas.

Conception and creation

Merian C. Cooper became fascinated by gorillas at the age of 6. In 1899, he was given a book from his uncle called Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa. The book (written in 1861), chronicled the adventures of Paul Du Chaillu in Africa and his various encounters with the natives and wildlife there. Cooper became fascinated with the stories involving the gorillas, in particular, Du Chaillu's depiction of a particular gorilla known for its "extraordinary size", that the natives described as "invincible" and the "King of the African Forest". When Du Chaillu and some natives encountered a gorilla later in the book he described it as a "hellish dream creature" that was "half man, half beast".

As an adult, Cooper became involved in the motion picture industry. While filming The Four Feathers in Africa, he came into contact with a family of baboons. This gave him the idea to make a picture about primates. A year later when he got to RKO, Cooper wanted to film a "terror gorilla picture". As the story was being fleshed out, Cooper decided to make his gorilla giant sized. Cooper stated that the idea of Kong fighting warplanes on top of a building came from him seeing a plane flying over the New York Insurance Building, then the tallest building in the world. He came up with the ending before the rest of the story as he stated, "Without any conscious effort of thought I immediately saw in my mind's eye a giant gorilla on top of the building". Cooper also was influenced by Douglas Burden's accounts of the Komodo dragon, and wanted to pit his terror gorilla against dinosaur-sized versions of these reptiles, stating to Burden: "I also had firmly in mind to giantize both the gorilla and your dragons to make them really huge. However I always believed in personalizing and focusing attention on one main character and from the very beginning I intended to make it the gigantic gorilla, no matter what else I surrounded him with". Around this time, Cooper began to refer to his project as a "giant terror gorilla picture" featuring "a gigantic semi-humanoid gorilla pitted against modern civilization".

When designing King Kong, Cooper wanted him to be a nightmarish gorilla monster. As he described Kong in a 1930 memo: "His hands and feet have the size and strength of steam shovels; his girth is that of a steam boiler. This is a monster with the strength of a hundred men. But more terrifying is the head—a nightmare head with bloodshot eyes and jagged teeth set under a thick mat of hair, a face half-beast half-human". Willis O'Brien created an oil painting depicting the giant gorilla menacing a jungle heroine and hunter for Cooper. However, when it came time for O'Brien and Marcel Delgado to sculpt the animation model, Cooper decided to backpedal on the half-human look for the creature and became adamant that Kong be a gorilla. O'Brien on the other hand, wanted him to be almost human-like to gain audience empathy, and told Delgado to "make that ape almost human". Cooper laughed at the end result, saying that it looked like a cross between a monkey and a man with very long hair. For the second model, O'Brien again asked Delgado to add human features but to tone it down somewhat. The end result (which was rejected) was described as looking like a missing link. Disappointed, Cooper stated, "I want Kong to be the fiercest, most brutal, monstrous damned thing that has ever been seen!" On December 22, 1931, Cooper got the dimensions of a bull gorilla from the American Museum of Natural History telling O'Brien, "Now that's what I want!" When the final model was created, it had the basic look of a gorilla but managed to retain some human-like qualities. For example, Delgado streamlined the body by removing the distinctive paunch and rump of a gorilla. O'Brien would incorporate some characteristics and nuances of an earlier creature he had created in 1915 for the silent short The Dinosaur and the Missing Link into the general look and personality of Kong, even going as far as to refer to the creature as "Kong's ancestor". When it came time to film, Cooper agreed that Kong should walk upright at times (mostly in the New York sequences) in order to appear more intimidating.

Etymology
Merian C. Cooper said he was very fond of strong, hard-sounding words that started with the letter "K". Some of his favorite words were "Komodo", "Kodiak" and "Kodak". When Cooper was envisioning his giant terror gorilla idea, he wanted to capture a real gorilla from the Congo and have it fight a real Komodo dragon on Komodo Island (this scenario would eventually evolve into Kong's battle with the tyrannosaur on Skull Island when the film was produced a few years later at RKO). Cooper's friend Douglas Burden's trip to the island of Komodo and his encounter with the Komodo dragons was a big influence on the Kong story. Cooper was fascinated by Burden's adventures as chronicled in his book Dragon Lizards of Komodo where he referred to the animal as the "King of Komodo". It was this phrase along with "Komodo" and "Kongo" [sic] (and his overall love for hard sounding "K"-words) that gave him the idea to name the giant ape "Kong". He loved the name, as it had a "mystery sound" to it.

After Cooper got to RKO, British mystery writer Edgar Wallace was contracted to write the first draft of the screen story. It was simply referred to as "The Beast". RKO executives were unimpressed with the bland title. David O. Selznick suggested Jungle Beast as the film's new title, but Cooper was unimpressed and wanted to name the film after the main character. He stated he liked the "mystery word" aspect of Kong's name and that the film should carry "the name of the leading mysterious, romantic, savage creature of the story" such as with Dracula and Frankenstein. RKO sent a memo to Cooper suggesting the titles Kong: King of Beasts, Kong: The Jungle King, and Kong: The Jungle Beast, which combined his and Selznick's proposed titles. As time went on, Cooper would eventually name the story simply Kong while Ruth Rose was writing the final version of the screenplay. Because David O. Selznick thought that audiences would think that the film, with the one word title of Kong, would be mistaken as a docudrama like Grass and Chang, which were one-word titled films that Cooper had earlier produced, he added the "King" to Kong's name in order to differentiate it.

Appearances and abilities
In his first appearance in King Kong (1933), Kong was a gigantic prehistoric ape. While gorilla-like in appearance, he had a vaguely humanoid look and at times walked upright in an anthropomorphic manner.

Like most simians, Kong possesses semi-human intelligence and great physical strength. Kong's size changes drastically throughout the course of the film. While creator Merian C. Cooper envisioned Kong as being "40 to 50 feet tall", animator Willis O'Brien and his crew built the models and sets scaling Kong to be only 18 ft tall on Skull Island, and rescaled to be 24 ft tall in New York.

This did not stop Cooper from playing around with Kong's size as he directed the special effect sequences; by manipulating the sizes of the miniatures and the camera angles, he made Kong appear a lot larger than O'Brien wanted, even as large as 60 ft in some scenes.

As Cooper said in an interview:

"I was a great believer in constantly changing Kong's height to fit the settings and the illusions. He's different in almost every shot; sometimes he's only 18 feet tall and sometimes 60 feet or larger. This broke every rule that O'Bie and his animators had ever worked with, but I felt confident that if the scenes moved with excitement and beauty, the audience would accept any height that fitted into the scene. For example, if Kong had only been 18 feet high on the top of the Empire State Building, he would have been lost, like a little bug; I constantly juggled the heights of trees and dozens of other things. The one essential thing was to make the audience enthralled with the character of Kong so that they wouldn't notice or care that he was 18 feet high or 40 feet, just as long as he fitted the mystery and excitement of the scenes and action."

Concurrently, the Kong bust made for the film was built in scale with a 40 ft ape, while the full sized hand of Kong was built in scale with a 70 ft ape. Meanwhile, RKO's promotional materials listed Kong's official height as 50 ft.

In the 1960s, Toho Studios from Japan licensed the character for the films King Kong vs. Godzilla and King Kong Escapes.

In 1975, Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis paid RKO for the remake rights to King Kong. This resulted in King Kong (1976). This Kong was an upright walking anthropomorphic ape, appearing even more human-like than the original. Also like the original, this Kong had semi-human intelligence and vast strength. In the 1976 film, Kong was scaled to be 42 ft tall on Skull island and rescaled to be 55 ft tall in New York. Ten years later, Dino De Laurentiis got the approval from Universal to do a sequel called King Kong Lives. This Kong had more or less the same appearance and abilities, but tended to walk on his knuckles more often and was enlarged, scaled to 60 ft.

Universal Studios had planned to do a King Kong remake as far back as 1976. They finally followed through almost 30 years later, with a three-hour film directed by Peter Jackson. Jackson opted to make Kong a gigantic silverback gorilla without any anthropomorphic features. This Kong looked and behaved more like a real gorilla: he had a large herbivore's belly, walked on his knuckles without any upright posture, and even beat his chest with his palms as opposed to clenched fists. In order to ground his Kong in realism, Jackson and the Weta Digital crew gave a name to his fictitious species Megaprimatus Kong and suggested it to have evolved from the Gigantopithecus. Kong was the last of his kind. He was portrayed in the film as being quite old, with graying fur and battle-worn with scars, wounds, and a crooked jaw from his many fights against rival creatures. He is the dominant being on the island, the king of his world. Like his film predecessors, he possesses considerable intelligence and great physical strength and also appears far more nimble and agile. This Kong was scaled to a consistent height of 25 ft tall on both Skull Island and in New York. Jackson describes his central character:

"We assumed that Kong is the last surviving member of his species. He had a mother and a father and maybe brothers and sisters, but they're dead. He's the last of the huge gorillas that live on Skull Island ... when he goes ... there will be no more. He's a very lonely creature, absolutely solitary. It must be one of the loneliest existences you could ever possibly imagine. Every day, he has to battle for his survival against very formidable dinosaurs on the island, and it's not easy for him. He's carrying the scars of many former encounters with dinosaurs. I'm imagining he's probably 100 to 120 years old by the time our story begins. And he has never felt a single bit of empathy for another living creature in his long life; it has been a brutal life that he's lived."

In the 2017 film Kong: Skull Island, Kong is scaled to be 104 ft tall, making it the second largest and largest American incarnation in the series until the 2021 film Godzilla vs. Kong, in which he became the largest incarnation in the series, standing at 337 ft. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts stated in regard to Kong's immense stature:

"The thing that most interested me was, how big do you need to make [Kong], so that when someone lands on this island and doesn't believe in the idea of myth, the idea of wonder – when we live in a world of social and civil unrest, and everything is crumbling around us, and technology and facts are taking over – how big does this creature need to be, so that when you stand on the ground and you look up at it, the only thing that can go through your mind is: 'That's a god!'"

He also stated that the original 1933 look was the inspiration for the design:

"We sort of went back to the 1933 version in the sense that he's a bipedal creature that walks in an upright position, as opposed to the anthropomorphic, anatomically correct silverback gorilla that walks on all fours. Our Kong was intended to say, like, this isn't just a big gorilla or a big monkey. This is something that is its own species. It has its own set of rules, so we can do what we want and we really wanted to pay homage to what came before ... and yet do something completely different, and if anything, our Kong is meant to be a throwback to the '33 version. I don't think there's much similarity at all between our version and Peter [Jackson]'s Kong. That version is very much a scaled-up silverback gorilla, and ours is something that is slightly more exaggerated. A big mandate for us was, 'How do we make this feel like a classic movie monster'?"

Co-producer Mary Parent also stated that Kong is still young and not fully grown as she explains that "Kong is an adolescent when we meet him in the film; he's still growing into his role as alpha".

Ownership rights
While one of the most famous movie icons in history, King Kong's intellectual property status has been questioned since his creation, featuring in numerous allegations and court battles. The rights to the character have always been split up with no single exclusive rights holder. Different parties have also contested that various aspects are public domain material and therefore ineligible for copyright status.

When Merian C. Cooper created King Kong, he assumed that he owned the character, which he had conceived in 1929, outright. Cooper maintained that he had only licensed the character to RKO for the initial film and sequel, but had otherwise owned his own creation. In 1935, Cooper began to feel something was amiss when he was trying to get a Tarzan vs. King Kong project off the ground for Pioneer Pictures (where he had assumed management of the company). After David O. Selznick suggested the project to Cooper, the flurry of legal activity over using the Kong character that followed—Pioneer had become a completely independent company by this time and access to properties that RKO felt were theirs was no longer automatic—gave Cooper pause as he came to realize that he might not have full control over this product of his own imagination after all.

Years later in 1962, Cooper found out that RKO was licensing the character through John Beck to Toho studios in Japan for a film project called King Kong vs. Godzilla. Cooper had assumed his rights were unassailable and was bitterly opposed to the project. In 1963 he filed a lawsuit to enjoin distribution of the movie against John Beck, as well as Toho and Universal (the film's U.S. copyright holder). Cooper discovered that RKO had also profited from licensed products featuring the King Kong character such as model kits produced by Aurora Plastics Corporation. Cooper's executive assistant, Charles B. FitzSimons, said that these companies should be negotiating through him and Cooper for such licensed products and not RKO. In a letter to Robert Bendick, Cooper stated:

"My hassle is about King Kong. I created the character long before I came to RKO and have always believed I retained subsequent picture rights and other rights. I sold to RKO the right to make the one original picture King Kong and also, later, Son of Kong, but that was all."

Cooper and his legal team offered up various documents to bolster the case that Cooper owned King Kong and had only licensed the character to RKO for two films, rather than selling him outright. Many people vouched for Cooper's claims, including David O. Selznick, who had written a letter to Mr. A. Loewenthal of the Famous Artists Syndicate in Chicago in 1932 stating (in regard to Kong), "The rights of this are owned by Mr. Merian C. Cooper". Cooper however lost key documents through the years (he discovered these papers were missing after he returned from his World War II military service) such as a key informal yet binding letter from Mr. Ayelsworth (the then-president of the RKO Studio Corp.) and a formal binding letter from Mr. B. B. Kahane (also a former president of RKO Studio Corp.) confirming that Cooper had only licensed the rights to the character for the two RKO pictures and nothing more.

Without these letters, it seemed Cooper's rights were relegated to the Lovelace novelization that he had copyrighted (he was able to make a deal for a Bantam Books paperback reprint and a Gold Key comic adaptation of the novel, but that was all that he could do). Cooper's lawyer had received a letter from John Beck's lawyer, Gordon E. Youngman, that stated:

"For the sake of the record, I wish to state that I am not in negotiation with you or Mr. Cooper or anyone else to define Mr. Cooper's rights in respect of King Kong. His rights are well defined, and they are non-existent, except for certain limited publication rights."

In a letter addressed to Douglas Burden, Cooper lamented:

"It seems my hassle over King Kong is destined to be a protracted one. They'd make me sorry I ever invented the beast, if I weren't so fond of him! Makes me feel like Macbeth: 'Bloody instructions which being taught return to plague the inventor'."

The rights over the character did not flare up again until 1975, when Universal Studios and Dino De Laurentiis were fighting over who would be able to do a King Kong remake for release the following year. De Laurentiis came up with $200,000 to buy the remake rights from RKO. When Universal got wind of this, they filed a lawsuit against RKO, claiming that they had a verbal agreement from them regarding the remake. During the legal battles that followed, which eventually included RKO countersuing Universal, as well as De Laurentiis filing a lawsuit claiming interference, Colonel Richard Cooper (Merian's son and now head of the Cooper estate) jumped into the fray.

During the battles, Universal discovered that the copyright of the Lovelace novelization had expired without renewal, thus making the King Kong story a public domain one. Universal argued that they should be able to make a movie based on the novel without infringing on anyone's copyright because the characters in the story were in the public domain within the context of the public domain story. Richard Cooper then filed a cross-claim against RKO claiming that, while the publishing rights to the novel had not been renewed, his estate still had control over the plot/story of King Kong.

In a four-day bench trial in Los Angeles, Judge Manuel Real made the final decision and gave his verdict on November 24, 1976, affirming that the King Kong novelization and serialization were indeed in the public domain, and Universal could make its movie as long as it did not infringe on original elements in the 1933 RKO film, which had not passed into the public domain. Universal postponed their plans to film a King Kong movie, called The Legend of King Kong, for at least 18 months, after cutting a deal with Dino De Laurentiis that included a percentage of box office profits from his remake.

However, on December 6, 1976, Judge Real made a subsequent ruling, which held that all the rights in the name, character, and story of King Kong (outside of the original film and its sequel) belonged to Merian C. Cooper's estate. This ruling, which became known as the "Cooper judgment", expressly stated that it would not change the previous ruling that publishing rights of the novel and serialization were in the public domain. It was a huge victory that affirmed the position Merian C. Cooper had maintained for years. Shortly thereafter, Richard Cooper sold all his rights (excluding worldwide book and periodical publishing rights) to Universal in December 1976. In 1980 Judge Real dismissed the claims that were brought forth by RKO and Universal four years earlier and reinstated the Cooper judgement.

In 1982 Universal filed a lawsuit against Nintendo, which had created an impish ape character called Donkey Kong in 1981 and was reaping huge profits over the video game machines. Universal claimed that Nintendo was infringing on its copyright because Donkey Kong was a blatant rip-off of King Kong. During the court battle and subsequent appeal, the courts ruled that Universal did not have exclusive trademark rights to the King Kong character. The courts ruled that trademark was not among the rights Cooper had sold to Universal, indicating that "Cooper plainly did not obtain any trademark rights in his judgment against RKO, since the California district court specifically found that King Kong had no secondary meaning". While they had a majority of the rights, they did not outright own the King Kong name and character. The courts ruling noted that the name, title, and character of Kong no longer signified a single source of origin so exclusive trademark rights were impossible. The courts also pointed out that the Kong rights were held by three parties:

 * RKO owned the rights to the original film and its sequel.
 * The Dino De Laurentiis company (DDL) owned the rights to the 1976 remake.
 * Richard Cooper owned worldwide book and periodical publishing rights.

The judge then ruled that "Universal thus owns only those rights in the King Kong name and character that RKO, Cooper, or DDL do not own".

The court of appeals would also note:

"First, Universal knew that it did not have trademark rights to King Kong, yet it proceeded to broadly assert such rights anyway. This amounted to a wanton and reckless disregard of Nintendo's rights.

Second, Universal did not stop after it asserted its rights to Nintendo. It embarked on a deliberate, systematic campaign to coerce all of Nintendo's third party licensees to either stop marketing Donkey Kong products or pay Universal royalties.

Finally, Universal's conduct amounted to an abuse of judicial process, and in that sense caused a longer harm to the public as a whole. Depending on the commercial results, Universal alternatively argued to the courts, first, that King Kong was a part of the public domain, and then second, that King Kong was not part of the public domain, and that Universal possessed exclusive trademark rights in it. Universal's assertions in court were based not on any good faith belief in their truth, but on the mistaken belief that it could use the courts to turn a profit."

Because Universal misrepresented their degree of ownership of King Kong (claiming they had exclusive trademark rights when they knew that they did not) and tried to have it both ways in court regarding the "public domain" claims, the courts ruled that Universal acted in bad faith (see Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd.). They were ordered to pay fines and all of Nintendo's legal costs from the lawsuit. That, along with the fact that the courts ruled that there was simply no likelihood of people confusing Donkey Kong with King Kong, caused Universal to lose the case and the subsequent appeal.

Since the court case, Universal still retains the majority of the character rights. In 1986 they opened a King Kong ride called King Kong Encounter at their Universal Studios Tour theme park in Hollywood (which was destroyed in 2008 by a backlot fire), and followed it up with the Kongfrontation ride at their Orlando park in 1990 (which was closed down in 2002 due to maintenance issues). They also finally made a King Kong film of their own, King Kong (2005). In the summer of 2010, Universal opened a new 3D King Kong ride called King Kong: 360 3-D at their Hollywood park, replacing the destroyed King Kong Encounter. In July 2016, Universal opened a new King Kong attraction called Skull Island: Reign of Kong at Islands of Adventure in Orlando. In July 2013, Legendary Pictures made an agreement with Universal to market, co-finance, and distribute Legendary's films for five years starting in 2014 and ending in 2019, the year that Legendary's similar agreement with Warner Bros. Pictures was set to expire. One year later, at the San Diego Comic-Con, Legendary announced (as a product of its partnership with Universal), a King Kong origin story, initially titled Skull Island, with Universal distributing. After the film was retitled Kong: Skull Island, Universal allowed Legendary to move to Warner Bros., so they could do a King Kong and Godzilla crossover film (in the continuity of the 2014 Godzilla movie), since Legendary still had the rights to make more Godzilla movies with Warner Bros. before their contract with Toho expired in 2020.

Richard Cooper, through the Merian C. Cooper Estate, retained publishing rights for the content that Judge Real had ruled on December 6, 1976. In 1990, they licensed a six-issue comic book adaptation of the novelization of the 1933 film to Monster Comics, and commissioned an illustrated novel in 1994 called Anthony Browne's King Kong. In 2013, they became involved with a musical stage play based on the story, called King Kong: The Eighth Wonder of the World which premiered that June in Australia and then on Broadway in November 2018. The production is involved with Global Creatures, the company behind the Walking with Dinosaurs arena show. In 1996, artist/writer Joe DeVito partnered with the Merian C. Cooper estate to write and/or illustrate various publications based on Merian C. Cooper's King Kong property through his company, DeVito ArtWorks, LLC. Through this partnership, DeVito created the prequel/sequel story Skull Island on which DeVito based a pair of original novels relating the origin of King Kong: Kong: King of Skull Island and King Kong of Skull Island. In addition, the Cooper/DeVito collaboration resulted in an origin-themed comic book miniseries with Boom! Studios, an expanded rewrite of the original Lovelace novelization, Merian C. Cooper's King Kong (the original novelization's publishing rights are still in the public domain), and various crossovers with other franchises such as Doc Savage, Tarzan and Planet of the Apes. In 2016, DeVito ArtWorks, through its licensing program, licensed its King Kong property to RocketFizz for use in the marketing of a soft drink called King Kong Cola, and had plans for a live action TV show co-produced between MarVista Entertainment and IM Global. Other products that have been produced through this licensing program include Digital Trading Cards, Board Games, a Virtual Reality Arcade Game, a remake of the original King Kong Glow-In-The-Dark Model Kit, and a video game developed by IguanaBee called Skull Island: Rise of Kong. In April 2016, Joe DeVito sued Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros., producers of the film Kong: Skull Island, for using elements of his Skull Island universe, which he claimed that he created and that the producers had used without his permission. Devito partnered with Dynamite Entertainment to produce comic books and board games based on the property, resulting in the comic book series called King Kong: The Great War published in May 2023. In 2022, DeVito had partnered with Disney to produce a live-action series tentatively called King Kong that explores the origin story of Kong. The series is slated to stream on Disney+. Stephany Folsom is attached to write the series and to be executive produced by James Wan via his production company Atomic Monster.

RKO (whose rights consisted of only the original film and its sequel) signed over the North American, Latin American and Australian distribution rights to its film library to Ted Turner's Turner Entertainment in a period spanning 1986 to 1989. Following a series of mergers and acquisitions, Warner Bros. owns those distribution rights today, with the copyright over the films (including King Kong and The Son of Kong) remaining with RKO Pictures, LLC (various companies distribute the RKO library in other territories). In 1998, Warner Bros. Family Entertainment released the direct-to-video animated musical film The Mighty Kong, which re-tells the plot of the original 1933 film. Nineteen years later, Warners co-produced the film Kong: Skull Island and in 2021 co-produced the film Godzilla vs. Kong, after Legendary Pictures brought the projects over from Universal to build up the MonsterVerse. According to Godzilla Vs. Kong director Adam Wingard, the rights to the character may have also been transferred to Warner Bros.

DDL (whose rights were limited to only their 1976 remake) did a sequel in 1986 called King Kong Lives (but they still needed Universal's permission to do so). Today most of DDL's film library is owned by StudioCanal, which includes the rights to these two films. The domestic (North American) rights to the 1976 King Kong film still remain with the film's original distributor Paramount Pictures, with Trifecta Entertainment & Media handling television rights to the film via their license with Paramount.

Toho incarnations
In the 1960s, Japanese studio Toho licensed the character from RKO and produced two films that featured the character, King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) and King Kong Escapes (1967). Toho's interpretation differed greatly from the original in size and abilities. Among kaiju, King Kong was suggested to be among the most powerful in terms of raw physical force, possessing strength and durability that rivaled that of Godzilla. As one of the few mammal-based kaiju, Kong's most distinctive feature was his intelligence. He demonstrated the ability to learn and adapt to an opponent's fighting style, identify and exploit weaknesses in an enemy, and utilize his environment to stage ambushes and traps.

In King Kong vs. Godzilla, Kong was scaled to be 45 m tall. This version of Kong was given the ability to harvest electricity as a weapon and draw strength from electrical voltage. In King Kong Escapes, Kong was scaled to be 20 m tall. This version was more similar to the original, where he relied on strength and intelligence to fight and survive. Rather than residing on Skull Island, Toho's version of Kong resided on Faro Island in King Kong vs. Godzilla and on Mondo Island in King Kong Escapes.

In 1966, Toho planned to produce Operation Robinson Crusoe: King Kong vs. Ebirah as a co-production with Rankin/Bass Productions, but Ishirō Honda was unavailable at the time to direct the film and, as a result, Rankin/Bass backed out of the project, along with the King Kong license. Toho still proceeded with the production, replacing King Kong with Godzilla at the last minute and shot the film as Ebirah, Horror of the Deep. Elements of King Kong's character remained in the film, reflected in Godzilla's uncharacteristic behavior and attraction to the female character Daiyo. Toho and Rankin/Bass later negotiated their differences and co-produced King Kong Escapes in 1967, loosely based on Rankin/Bass' animated show.

Toho Studios wanted to remake King Kong vs. Godzilla, which was the most successful of the entire Godzilla series of films, in 1991 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the film, as well as to celebrate Godzilla's upcoming 40th anniversary. However, they were unable to obtain the rights to use Kong, and initially intended to use Mechani-Kong as Godzilla's next adversary. It was soon learned that even using a mechanical creature who resembled Kong would be just as problematic legally and financially for them. As a result, the film became Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, with one last failed attempt made to use Kong in 2004's Godzilla: Final Wars.

Television
Four television shows have been based on King Kong: The King Kong Show (1966), Kong: The Animated Series (2000), Kong: King of the Apes (2016), and Skull Island (2023).

A live-action series exploring the origin story of Kong is in development for Disney+, written by Stephany Folsom and executive produced by James Wan via Atomic Monster.

King Kong appeared in episode 27 of the anime show The New Adventures of Gigantor titled King Kong vs Tetsujin (キングコング対鉄人). This episode aired April 10 1981, and featured King Kong battling the giant robot hero Gigantor. In the story it turns out it was just a robot disguised as King Kong. To avoid any copyright issue the episode was renamed The Great Garkonga when it was dubbed into English.

The character appears in the final episode of season one of the television series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

Cultural impact

King Kong, as well as the series of films featuring him, have been featured many times in popular culture outside of the films themselves, in forms ranging from straight copies to parodies and joke references, and in media from comic books to video games.

The Beatles' 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine includes a scene of the characters opening a door to reveal King Kong abducting a woman from her bed.

The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror III" features a segment called "King Homer" which parodies the plot of the original film, with Homer as Kong and Marge in the Ann Darrow role. It ends with King Homer marrying Marge and eating her father.

The 2005 animated film Chicken Little features a scene parodying King Kong, as Fish out of Water starts stacking magazines thrown in a pile, eventually becoming a model of the Empire State Building and some plane models, as he imitates King Kong in the iconic scene from the original film.

The British comedy TV series The Goodies made an episode called "Kitten Kong", in which a giant cat called Twinkle roams the streets of London, knocking over the British Telecom Tower.

The controversial World War II Dutch resistance fighter Christiaan Lindemans—eventually arrested on suspicion of having betrayed secrets to the Nazis—was nicknamed "King Kong" due to his being exceptionally tall.

Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention recorded an instrumental about "King Kong" in 1967 and featured it on the album Uncle Meat. Zappa went on to make many other versions of the song on albums such as Make a Jazz Noise Here, You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 3, Ahead of Their Time, and Beat the Boots.

The Kinks recorded a song called "King Kong" as the B-side to their 1969 "Plastic Man" single.

In 1972, a 550 cm fiberglass statue of King Kong was erected in Birmingham, England.

The second track of The Jimmy Castor Bunch album Supersound from 1975 is titled "King Kong".

Filk Music artists Ookla the Mok's "Song of Kong", which explores the reasons why King Kong and Godzilla should not be roommates, appears on their 2001 album Smell No Evil.

Daniel Johnston wrote and recorded a song called "King Kong" on his fifth self-released music cassette, Yip/Jump Music in 1983, rereleased on CD and double LP by Homestead Records in 1988. The song is an a cappella narrative of the original movie's story line. Tom Waits recorded a cover version of the song with various sound effects on the 2004 release, The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Discovered Covered.

ABBA recorded "King Kong Song" for their 1974 album Waterloo. Although later singled out by ABBA songwriters Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus as one of their weakest tracks, it was released as a single in 1977 to coincide with the 1976 film playing in theaters.

Tenacious D wrote "Kong" to be released as a bonus track for the Japanese version of The Pick of Destiny to accompany the film.

The 1994 Nintendo Game Boy title Donkey Kong features the eponymous character grow to a gargantuan size as the game's final boss.

title: King Kong


text: Category:Monty Python films

title: Category:Monty Python films


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Lay brother

Lay brother is a largely extinct term referring to religious brothers, particularly in the Catholic Church, who focused upon manual service and secular matters, and were distinguished from choir monks or friars in that they did not pray in choir, and from clerics, in that they were not in possession of (or preparing for) holy orders.

In female religious institutes, the equivalent role is the lay sister. Lay brothers were originally created to allow those who were skilled in particular crafts or did not have the required education to study for holy orders to participate in and contribute to the life of a religious order.

History
“In early Western monasticism, there was no distinction between lay and choir religious. The majority of St. Benedict's monks were not clerics, and all performed manual labour, the word conversi being used only to designate those who had received the habit late in life, to distinguish them from the oblati and nutriti. But, by the beginning of the 11th century, the time devoted to study had greatly increased, thus a larger proportion of the monks were in Holy Orders, even though great numbers of illiterate persons had embraced the religious life. At the same time, it was found necessary to regulate the position of the famuli, the hired servants of the monastery, and to include some of these in the monastic family. So in Italy the lay brothers were instituted; and we find similar attempts at organization at the Abbey of St. Benignus at Dijon, under William of Dijon (d. 1031) and Richard of Verdun (d. 1046), while at Hirschau Abbey, Abbot William (d. 1091) gave a special rule to the fratres barbati and exteriores.”

“At Cluny Abbey the manual work was relegated mostly to paid servants, but the Carthusians, the Cistercians, the Order of Grandmont, and most subsequent religious orders possessed lay Brothers, to whom they committed their secular cares. In particular, at Grandmont, the complete control of the order's property by the lay brothers led to serious disturbances, and finally to the ruin of the order; whereas the wiser regulations of the Cistercians provided against this danger and formed the model for the later orders. In England, the Benedictines made but slight use of lay brothers, finding the service of paid attendants more convenient.” Nonetheless, they are “mentioned in the customaries of the Abbey of St. Augustine at Canterbury and the Abbey of St. Peter at Westminster.”

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council issued the document Perfectae Caritatis, which called upon all religious institutes to re-examine and renew their charism. As part of the subsequent reforms and experimentation, many of the distinctions between lay and choir religious in terms of dress and spiritual regimen were abolished or mitigated. In many religious institutes, lay and choir religious wear the same habit.

Life as a lay brother
Lay brothers were found in many religious orders. Drawn from the working classes, they were pious and hardworking people, who though unable to achieve the education needed to receive holy orders, were still drawn to religious life and were able to contribute to the order through their skills. Some were skilled in artistic handicrafts, others functioned as administrators of the orders' material assets. In particular, the lay brothers of the Cistercians were skilled in agriculture, and have been credited for the tilling of fertile farmland.

Lay brothers were sometimes distinguished from their brethren by some difference in their habit: for instance, the Cistercian lay brother previously wore a brown tunic, instead of white, with the black scapular; in choir they wore a large cloak, instead of a cowl; the Vallombrosan lay brothers wore a cap instead of a hood, and their habit was shorter; the English Benedictine lay brothers wore a hood of a different shape from that of the choir monks, and no cowl; a Dominican lay brother would wear a black, instead of a white, scapular. In some orders they were required to recite daily the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but usually their labor in the fields (and hence away from the church) prevented them from participating in the Liturgy of the Hours. Lay brothers would instead pray Paters, Aves, and Glorias.

Lay sisters
Lay sisters were found in most of the orders of women, and their origin, like that of the lay brothers, is to be found in the necessity of providing the choir nuns with more time for the Office and study, as well as creating the opportunity for the illiterate to join the religious life. They, too, wore a habit different from those of the choir sisters, and their required daily prayers consisted of prayers such as the Little Office or a certain number of Paters.

The system of lay sisters seem to have appeared earlier than that of lay brothers, being first recorded in a ninth century hagiography of Saint Denis. In the early medieval period, there was also mention of lay brothers attached to convents of women and of lay sisters attached to monasteries. In both configurations, the two sexes were strictly kept separate, housed in distinct buildings. This arrangement, however, has since been long abolished.

title: Lay brother


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King Kong (band)

King Kong is an American indie rock music project fronted by musician Ethan Buckler. Buckler left his previous band, Slint, in 1989 to start a new musical project. King Kong's first release, Movie Star, featured the other three members of Slint, David Pajo, Britt Walford, and Brian McMahan. King Kong would go on to feature an ever-changing lineup of performers including John McEntire, David Grubbs, and Peter Townsend.

The song "Movie Star" was used in the end credits of the 2014 Slint documentary, Breadcrumb Trail.

In 2018, King Kong released three singles: "60s Apartment Building Balcony", "Pawnshopolis", and "Pigeon Man". Each one was accompanied with a music video.

On March 8, 2021, Jimmy Fallon included Old Man On The Bridge in his "Do Not Play" segment on The Tonight Show.

Studio albums

 * Old Man on The Bridge (1991, Homestead Records)
 * Funny Farm (1993, Drag City)
 * Me Hungry (1995, Drag City)
 * Kingdom of Kong (1997, Drag City)
 * The Big Bang (2002, Drag City)
 * Buncha Beans (2007, Drag City)

Compilations

 * Breeding Ground (2001, Sea Note)

Singles & EPs

 * Movie Star EP (1989, Self-released)
 * "Bring It On" (1990, Trash Flow Records)
 * "Hot Dog Days" (1994, Drag City)
 * "60s Apartment Building Balcony" (2018, Drag City)
 * "Pawnshopolis" (2018, Drag City)
 * "Pigeon Man" (2018, Drag City)

title: King Kong (band)


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Kuroishi

Kuroishi (黒石) may refer to:
 * Kuroishi, Aomori, a city in Aomori Prefecture
 * Kuroishi Domain, a feudal domain that existed between 1809 and 1871
 * The, the jin'ya (administrative headquarters) of the Kuroishi domain
 * Kuroishi, Ōtoyo, a sub-municipal area in Ōtoyo, Kōchi
 * Kuroishi, Shimanto, a sub-municipal area in Shimanto, Kōchi

title: Kuroishi


text:
Day trip

A day trip is a visit to a tourist destination or visitor attraction from a person's home, hotel, or hostel in the morning, returning to the same lodging in the evening. The day trip is a form of recreational travel and leisure to a location that is close enough to make a round-trip within a day but does not require an overnight stay. The logistics and/or costs of spending nights on the road are worth avoiding. Such travel of using one location as a homebase is popular with budget and active travelers to avoid finding new lodging at each destination. A caregiver may take a day trip from their home to return to their children or pets.

History
In medieval times a destination for such a trip would be religious (to a nearby shrine) or commercial (for example, to a seasonal fair). Later, in England, visits to stately homes by those who regarded themselves middle class became frequent, and it was the tradition to reward the butler or housekeeper with a tip (gratuity) for providing access to their employer's home. As such homes were meant for show, it is unlikely that the owning family would object, provided they were not in residence at the time.

The arrival of the railway excursion, often using Day Tripper tickets, in the mid 19th century saw the blossoming of a distinctive day-tripper industry. Trippers also travelled in their thousands by paddlesteamer or steamship to the many piers around Victorian era seaside resorts. The General Slocum excursion was an example.

Cycling became a very popular day-tripper activity, especially amongst urban and suburban workers, from the mid-1880s onwards.

Coach and charabanc outings followed as the internal combustion engine became reliable enough to get the paying customers out and back again. Works outings and church or chapel excursions were extremely popular until the 1970s.

While all of the foregoing still exist, the modern day-tripper experience is usually by motor car as a result of the growth of car ownership. Also, airlines such as (formerly) Palmair promote day trips.

Statistics
In Germany in 2011, day trips were the predominant type of tourism. According to figures from the Hanover Chamber of Industry and Commerce, 2.84 billion day trippers spent an average of 28 euros in total (gross) that year, around 79.5 billion euros and 564 million Day business travelers €14.2 billion. Other surveys also assume an added value of between €20 and €30 per day tourist. The city of Berlin has, on average, calculated an added value of €32.50 per visitor in recent years with 132 million day visitors. The numbers are i. i.e. R. collected by a representative survey in the source area (survey at the place of residence). The reason for a day stay is often to visit local attractions or sights, to visit sports and leisure facilities, museums, cultural events such as musicals, opera/operettas, concerts and theater performances or just to shop in the city's shops.

title: Day trip


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Irish Society

Irish Society or The Irish Society may refer to:
 * Category:Society of Ireland; in particular:
 * Demographics of Ireland (disambiguation)
 * Culture of Ireland
 * The Irish Society for Promoting the Education of the Native Irish through the Medium of Their Own Language (1818–1914) Protestant missionary society
 * The Honourable The Irish Society, London society set up in 1613 for the plantation of County Londonderry
 * The Society of United Irishmen 1790s radical organisation
 * Benevolent Irish Society, Newfoundland philanthropic organisation

title: Irish Society


text:
User talk:Sk19842

Welcome!

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title: User talk:Sk19842