Fabrique Nationale Herstal, self-identified as FN Herstal and referred to as Fabrique Nationale or FN, is a leading firearms manufacturer located in Herstal, owned by the holding company Herstal Group, in turn owned by the regional government of Wallonia. It is the largest exporter of military small arms in Europe. Herstal Group owns U. S. Repeating Arms Company and Browning Arms Company. FN America is the American subsidiary of FN Herstal. FN Manufacturing, located in Columbia, South Carolina, was the manufacturing branch of FN Herstal in the United States, producing firearms such as the M249 and M240 machine guns and the M16 rifle, among others. FNH USA, located in McLean, was the sales and marketing branch of FN Herstal in the United States. After the merger, the facilities in South Carolina and Virginia remained, but with integrated management. A United Kingdom based manufacturing facility FNH UK is now in operation. Firearms designed and/or manufactured by FN include the Browning Hi-Power and Five-seven pistols, the FAL, FNC, F2000 and SCAR rifles, the P90 submachine gun, the M2 Browning, MAG and Minimi machine guns: all have been commercially successful.

FN Herstal's firearms are used by the militaries of over 100 countries. FN Herstal originated in the small city near Liège; the Fabrique Nationale d'Armes de Guerre was established in 1889 to manufacture 150,000 Mauser Model 89 rifles ordered by the Belgian Government. FN was co-founded by the major arms makers of the Liège region, with Henri Pieper of Anciens Etablissements Pieper being the driving force and the primary shareholder of the new company. In 1897 the company entered into a long-lasting relationship with John Moses Browning, a well-known american firearms designer. FN was an important manufacturer of motor vehicles in Belgium, a development championed by Alexandre Galopin as managing director. Cars were produced in Herstal in the early 1900s until 1935. Production of FN motorcycles continued until 1965, production of trucks until 1970. In 1973, FN changed its name to reflect a product line diversified far beyond just "weapons of war", adopting the current name of Fabrique Nationale d'Herstal.

One of Fabrique Nationale's handguns, a Model 1910 semi-automatic pistol in 9×17mm was one of four weapons that were taken from the assassins of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, although it is unknown which of the four weapons fired the fatal round. John Moses Browning began development of the Browning GP35'High Power' pistol, the GP standing for Grande Puissance or "high power" in French. However, the weapon was finalized by Dieudonné Saive and did not appear until nearly a decade after Browning's death; the FN Manufacturing LLC plant in Columbia, South Carolina is part of the military division of FN. It is responsible for the production of U. S. military weapons, such as M16 rifles, M249 light machine guns, M240 machine guns, M2 machine guns. Barracuda: Double-action multi-caliber revolver that can be switched between three calibers by changing parts of the cylinder. FN 509: Redesigned version of the FNS Compact pistol in 9×19mm Parabellum. FN Five-seveN: Lightweight polymer-framed pistol with a 20-round magazine capacity, designed to use FN's 5.7×28mm cartridge.

In service with military and police forces in over 40 nations throughout the world. FN FNP: Series of polymer-framed pistols offered in 9×19mm Parabellum.357 SIG.40 S&W, and.45 ACP. FN FNX: Updated and reengineered version of the FNP series pistol in 9×19mm Parabellum.40 S&W and.45 ACP. FN FNS: Polymer striker-fired pistols in 9×19mm Parabellum and 40 S&W. FN Forty-Nine: Pistol chambered for 9×19mm Parabellum and.40 S&W. FN Browning Hi-Power: Single-action pistol chambered for 9×19mm Parabellum and.40 S&W. One of the most used military pistols of all time, having been used by the armed forces of over 50 nations. HP-DA: 9×19mm Parabellum pistol, double-action variant of the Browning Hi-Power. FN M1900:.32 ACP blowback semi-automatic pistol. FN Model 1903: Blowback semi-automatic pistol chambered for.32 ACP and 9×20mm Long Browning. FN M1905:.25 ACP vest pocket blowback semi-automatic pistol. FN Model 1910: Single-action pistol chambered for.32 ACP and.380 ACP. FN Model 1922: Similar to the FN 1910 but with a longer barrel.

FN P90: Ambidextrous bullpup personal defense weapon with a top-mounted 50-round magazine and chambered for FN's 5.7×28mm cartridge. In service with military and police forces in over 40 countries. Uzi: Built under licence from Israel Military Industries. Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_Trombone Browning 22 Semi-Auto rifle.22 LR.22 Short. Takedown rifle. Production continued through 1974 in Belgium. FN CAL: Carabine Automatique Légère, 5.56×45mm NATO assault rifle. FN F2000: 5.56×45mm NATO bullpup assault rifle, part of a system with a computerized sight and 40mm grenade launcher or 12 gauge shotgun. FN FS2000: Semi-automatic sporting version of the F2000 rifle. FN FAL: Fusil Automatique Léger, 7.62×51mm NATO battle rifle. One of the most used rifles in history, having been used by over 90 nations. FN-15 FN FNAR: Semi-automatic rifle chambered in 7.62×51mm NATO. FN FNC: Fabrique Nationale Carabine, 5.56×45mm NATO assault rifle. M16: 5.56×45mm NATO rifle. M4A1: 5.56×45mm NATO rifle. Mle 1930: Belgian variant of the Browning M1918

Periophthalmodon septemradiatus is a species of mudskipper found along tropical shorelines of the eastern Indian Ocean where it occurs in marine and fresh waters from India to Indonesia. It is found along in estuaries as well as in the rivers; this species inhabits mud banks which are covered by such vegetation as mangroves, nypah palms where the water is of low salinity, near 0 ppt, in the upper reaches of estuaries and in small tributaries. It can grow to a length of 10 centimetres TL; this species is of no interest to local commercial fisheries. The specific name means "seven rayed" and refers to the seven short rays in this fish's first dorsal fin. P. Septemradiatus is the only fish known to communicate acoustically while out of water and when they are alarmed they dash towards land rather than water

A reading machine is a piece of assistive technology that allows blind people to access printed materials. It scans text, converts the image into text by means of optical character recognition and uses a speech synthesizer to read out what it has found; the first prototype of reading machine, called optophone, was developed by Dr. Edmund Fournier d'Albe of Birmingham University in 1913. Five vertically-aligned photo-detectors were used to scan a line of printed text; each cell generated a different tone when detecting black print, so that each character was associated with a specific time-varying chords of tones. With some practice, blind users were able to interpret this audio output as a meaningful message. However, the reading speed of this device was slow. From 1944 until up to the 1970s, new prototypes of reading machine were developed at Haskins Laboratories under contract from the Veterans Administration; the research project was conducted by Franklin S. Cooper and Alvin Liberman, their first attempts to improve the optophone all ended in failures, users were still unable to read more than 5 words per minutes in average after long training sessions.

This observation led Alvin Liberman to suppose that the limitation was cognitive rather than technical, to formulate his Motor theory of speech perception. He realized that the speech signal was not heard like an acoustic "alphabet" or "cipher," but as a "code" of overlapping speech gestures, due to coarticulation. Therefore, a reading machine cannot convert the printed characters into a series of abstract sounds, rather it must be able to identify the characters and to produce a speech sound as output using a speech synthesizer; the first commercial reading machine for the blind was developed by Kurzweil Computer Products in 1975. Walter Cronkite used this machine to give his signature soundoff, "And that's the way it is, January 13, 1976." In the mid-1960s, Francis F. Lee joined Dr. Samuel Jefferson Mason's Cognitive Information Processing Group in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT to work on a reading machine for the blind, the first system that would scan text and produce continuous speech.

Early reading machines were desk-based and large, found in libraries and hospitals or owned by wealthy individuals. In 2009, a cellphone running Kurzweil-NFB software works as a reading machine