Beacon (disambiguation)

Look up beacon in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

The word beacon can refer to several things:

Beacon, traditionally a fire lit on a hill to attract attention
Electric beacon, a type of beacon used with direction-finding equipment to find one's relative location
Aerodrome beacon, a lighting device which indicates the location of a civilian airport
Distress radiobeacon, a tracking transmitter that aids in the detection and location of boats, aircraft, and/or persons in distress
Beacon mode service, a simple signal that some space probes use to indicate their status
Web beacon, an object used to track a user's visit to a web page
Belisha beacon, a flashing light atop a black-and-white pole placed at pedestrian crossings
Beacon (Facebook), a part of Facebook's Ads system that collects and publishes activities of its users from external websites
Beacon frame, one of the management frames in wireless local-area networks (WLANs) based on IEEE 802.11
Beacon (supercomputer), an Appro International, Inc. Xtreme-X Supercomputer named Beacon, deployed by NICS of the University of Tennessee, which topped the Green500 list as of November 2012

Place names

Beacon Communications (publisher), a publisher of weekly newspapers in Rhode Island
Beacon Communications Corporation, a defunct newspaper publisher in Massachusetts
Beacon Pictures, formerly Beacon Communications, an American film production company
Beacon, a discount gas station brand owned by Valero Energy Corporation