Android, operating system for cellular telephones and tablet computers. Android began in 2003 as a project of the American technology company Android Inc., to develop an operating system for digital cameras. In 2004 the project changed to become an operating system for smartphones. Android Inc., was bought by the American search engine company Google Inc., in 2005. At Google, the Android team decided to base their project on Linux, an open source operating system for personal computers.
On November 5, 2007, Google announced the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of dozens of technology and mobile telephone companies, including Intel Corporation, Motorola, Inc., NVIDIA Corporation, Texas Instruments Incorporated, LG Electronics, Inc., Samsung Electronics, Sprint Nextel Corporation, and T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom). The consortium was created in order to develop and promote Android as a free open source operating system with support for third-party applications. Android-based devices use wireless networks in order to take full advantage of features such as one-touch Google searches, Google Docs (e.g., word editors, spreadsheets), and Google Earth (satellite mapping software).
The first cellular telephone to feature the new operating system was the T-Mobile G1, released on October 22, 2008. In 2012 Android became the most popular operating system for mobile devices, surpassing Apple’s iOS, and, as of 2020, about 75 percent of mobile devices run Android.
Minister and social activist Martin Luther King, Jr., was the preeminent leader of the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. His guidance was fundamental to the movement’s success in ending the legal segregation of Black Americans in the South and other parts of the United States. He rose to national prominence as a leader of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955–56 and later as the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which pursued civil rights through nonviolent tactics, such as the Selma March (1965) and the massive March on Washington (1963), at the culmination of which, King, an immensely gifted orator, delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is commemorated by the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington, D.C. Learn more about
Dr. King’s extraordinary accomplishments through our timeline of his life.
