The Great Geek Manual

1535
The first complete English edition of the Bible, printed in Antwerp as translated by Miles Coverdale, is first published.

1675
Dutch astronomer Christian Huygens patents a pocket watch.

1830
The first power printing press capable of detailed book work is patented by Isaac Adams of Boston, Massachusetts.

1931
The Dick Tracy comic strip, created by cartoonist Chester Gould, debuts in The Detroit Mirror. The next week, The New York Daily News and hundreds of others newspapers will pick up the syndicated series.

1934
Enrico Fermi measures the speed of a neutron.
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I know the year is dying,
Soon the summer will be dead.
I can trace it in the flying
Of the black crows overhead;
I can hear it in the rustle
Of the dead leaves as I pass,
And the south wind’s plaintive sighing
Through the dry and withered grass.

Ah, ’tis then I love to wander,
Wander idly and alone,
Listening to the solemn music
Of sweet nature’s undertone;
Wrapt in thoughts I cannot utter,
Dreams my tongue cannot express,
Dreams that match the autumn’s sadness
In their longing tenderness.

- Autumn Dreams by Mortimer Crane Brown

A macabre but beautiful scene for your desktop: autumn in a graveyard.

A new study reports that Video Gamers are more fit than the average America. LOL

Check out these x-rays of a boy who survived being stabbed in the skull.

Five Great Science Books to Expand Your Mind, all of which are going on my reading list.

Fold up your own origami StormTrooper helmet.

If you’re spending a fortune on gadgets, take the time to protect your gadgets from theft.

Hack-A-Day has an amazing tutorial on how to build a business card-sized web server.

Lifehacker points users to The 20 Best iPod Utilities to improve your control over your tunes.

PC World takes a look at the 10 Most Mysterious Cyber Crimes in history.

Straw Hat Samurai is a flash game that sends you slicing your way through ranks of enemies.

You have to check Wikipedia to even understand the world’s 23 toughest math questions.

Mathematics may be the queen of the sciences and therefore entitled to royal perogatives, but the queen who loses touch with her subjects may loose support and even be deprived of her realm. Mathematicians may like to rise into the clouds of abstract thought, but they should and indeed they must, return to earth for nourishing food or else die of mental starvation. They are on safer and saner ground when they stay close to nature. As Wordsworth put it, “Wisdom oft is nearer when we stoop than when we soar.”

- Mathematics and the Physical World by Morris Kline, 1981.

Art

• What I want to know is, if this is a “Steampunk Tree House“, where are the cannons?

Comics

• Build your own Iron man reactor for Halloween.

Film

• The next Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen will be be shot in IMAX format.

Internet

• Print out your own Zombie in my Pocket solitaire card game at BoardGame Geek.
• Would you pay a hundred dollars for a Storm Trooper hoodie? Yeah, me too. That’s why I’m going to be living with my parents until I’m forty.

Literature

• 5 Great Science Books to Expand Your Mind.
• Author Kim Stanley Robinson has been named a Hero of the Environment 2008… and if that leaves you confused, remember: they didn’t specify which planet’s environment.
• Free Fiction: Listen to “Crystal Nights” by Greg Egan at Transmissions From Beyond.
• Free Fiction: Read “Catch ‘Em in the Act” By Terry Bisson at Tor.
• Free Fiction: Read the vintage story “Children of Tomorrow” by Arthur Leo Zagat at Manybooks.
• I personally think that the Dune series should have been included in i09’s list of The Longest Science Fiction Books of All Time, because while the story may technically be series, you have to admit they all tend to run together into one blur.

Television

• The Aquaman pilot was a flop, but someone thinks Robin should get his own series? Pppppppppppp!

Video Games

• Den of Geek runs down a list of the 13 PC games they can’t wait to play in the next 12 months. Personally, a sequel to StarCraft could fill out all thirteen slots of my own list.

1847
Maria Mitchell becomes the first female astronomer in the United States to discover a comet. From her homemade observatory in Nantucket, Massachusetts, she discovered a star five degrees above the North Star where one hadn’t been previously located. After several nights of observation, she realized that the light was moving, and theorized that it must be a comet. For her discovery, she will be awarded a gold medal by the king of Denmark. She will also become the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

1878
Emma M. Nutt begins work Telephone Dispatch Company in Boston, Massachusetts, becoming the nation’s first female telephone operator. Nutt, who would remain an operate for thirty-three year, was hired in the hope of addressing customer complaints that many of the male operators were rude and surly.

1880
In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Edison Lamp Works, the first electric lamp factory, produces its first commercial electric light bulbs. Opened by Thomas Edison, more than 130,000 bulbs will be manufactured by the time the plant is relocated to Harrison, New Jersey on April 1, 1882.

1891
In California, Stanford University opens.

1908
The Ford Motor Company introduces the Model T, better known as the “tin Lizzy,” in America. The Ford Model T is the first car to be made on an assembly line, an it will become an instant sensation. It will initially be sold for US$850, but as production volumes rise, the price of the vehicles will decline. By 1925, a Coupe will sell for US$525 new, while a two-door Runabout went for only US$260.
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Listen! the wind is rising,
and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings,
now for October eves!

- Humbert Wolfe