The Great Geek Manual

1911
The first photograph taken from an airplane in the US is taken by Major H.A. “Jimmie” Erickson over San Diego, California from the Curtiss biplane, piloted by Charles Hamilton.

1922
Thomas Alva Edison is issued a patent for a storage-battery electrode and its production. (US No. 1402751)

1927
Fritz Lang’s famous science fiction film Metropolis premieres in theaters. The film took two years to shoot, and it cost more to produce that any other silent film to date. The film’s spectacular special effects, many of which were achieved using the groundbreaking “Schufftan Process“, will earn it a place in history. The Schufftan Process involves shooting an actor through a hole in the silvered back of a mirror which is reflecting a matte painting.

1946
The United States Army Signal Corps successfully bounces radar waves off the surface of the Moon for the first time in an operation code-named “Project Diana.” A 180-cycle wave pulse with a 1/4 second duration is beamed from the Evans Signal Laboratories in Belmar, New Jersey. The echo of the beam was received 2.4 seconds later. The event proves that radio waves can penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere. The experiment was supervised by Lieutenant Colonel John H. De Witt, a broadcasting pioneer and amateur astronomer who first conceived the idea in 1940. His own earlier, amateur attempts were unsuccessful.

1949
Radio Corporation of America (RCA) introduces the “single,” a 45 rpm seven inches in diameter, in the US. A single plays up to eight minutes of sound per side. The format, along with the long-playing records introduced just a year earlier, will soon replace the popular 78 rpm records.
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1839
South African Thomas Henderson first measures the distance to a star (Alpha Centauri) other than the Sun.

1941
The CBS television network gives a demonstration of color television.

1958
In his State of the-Union address, United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces that, “In recognition of the need for single control in some of our most advanced development projects, the Secretary of Defense has already decided to concentrate into one organization all antimissile and satellite technology undertaken within the Department of Defense.” The announcement assigns the National Security Agency (NSA) the responsibility of directing and managing the electronics intelligence activities of the United States military. Visit the official NSA website.

1968
The Surveyor 7 space probe, the last of the American unmanned lunar exploration missions, makes a landing on the Moon, returning pictures.

1969
The supersonic Concorde passenger jetliner embarks on its first test flight from Bristol, England.
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There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than “politicians” think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

- Michel Foucault, as quoted in his biography, Michel Foucault by Didier Eribon, 1991.

1790
In his State of the Union address, United States President George Washington urges the second session of the First US Congress to support the introduction of new and useful inventions from abroad and to recognize the skill and genius of US inventors. Within days, the House of Representatives will set up a committee to draft a patent statute, which George Washington will sign into law on April 10, 1790. The first patent will be granted on July 31, 1790.

1838
The first telegraph message in the US in which letters are represented by dots and dashes is transmitted. The message reads, “A patient waiter is no loser.” The message is transmitted over the system invented by Alfred Vail of Morristown, New Jersey, in September 1837.

1889
Herman Hollerith is awarded the world’s first three computer patents for his tabulating machines (No. 395,781, -2, -3). His system is designed to record statistical data on punch cards. The information on these punch cards can be tallied by running the cards through electromagnetically-operated counters. The patents described the system’s potential use in the compilation of census statistics, for which it will be used in 1890.

1940
The Bell Labs Complex Computer, a full-scale relay calculator designed by Bell Labs engineer Dr. George Stibitz, becomes operational. The machine is capable of performing the complex arithmetic calculations necessary for circuit design. In 1937, Stibitz used flashlight bulbs, surplus relays, tin-can strips, and other bric-a-brack items to construct the K-machine, a digital calculator built on a breadboard capable of adding two bits and displaying the result. By late 1938, Bell Labs had authorized the development of a full-scale relay calculator based on the K-machine to assist in the development of wide-area telephone networks, and, by April 1939, Stibitz’s had begun the construction on the Bell Labs Complex Computer.
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Comics

• Spider-Man meets Barack Obama the new President Elect of the United States in issue #583 of The Amazing Spider-Man.

Film

• Den of Geek runs down the Top 25 fictional ads in sci-fi movies.
• Jonathan McCalmont compares the rhetoric of American foreign and domestic policy with the thematic underpinnings of the super hero movie genre, and explains why he’ll be as glad to see the back of costumed crusaders as he will the back of Bush.

Internet

• Author Bruce Sterling looks forward to the future in his State of the World essay over on the Well, the oldest communities on the net.
• Can U.S. Laws Protect Online Speech from Foreign Libel Suits or was John Perry Barlow really right when he said that, “in cyberspace, the First Amendment is a local ordinance.”

Literature

• Free Fiction: Read the historical urban thriller “The Somnambulist” by Jonathan Barnes over at HarperCollins.
• Free Fiction: Read the “The Last Great Clown Hunt” by Chris Furst at Weird Tales. Isn’t that a great title. If you hate clowns, give this one a read.
• The Books on Mars blog has posted a phenomenal list of 20 Stories you wouldn’t know are Martian Science Fiction in two parts. This is a definite must-see for anyone who has ever considered themselves a Ray Bradbury fan.
• The Books on Mars blog lists award-worthy literature published in 2008 in its Nominees for the 2008 Marooned Awards.
• The Guardian’s Ben Myer reflects on The Joy of Secondhand Bookshops.

Television

• According to SciFi Wire, Fox will be abandoning its attempt to move Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles episodes to standalone format in the hope of recapturing the “magic” of the first season. And I ask myself, what magic?
• Express Night Out reflects on Why BattleStar Galactica is so frakkin’ Cool.
• NBC has announced that it will air an episode of Chuck in 3D on February 2.
• Sci Fi Wire looks back at The Sexiest Sci-Fi Moments of 2008, but loose me about the point where they add Scully and Mulder to the list.

All modern thought is permeated by the idea of thinking the unthinkable.

- Michel Foucault, French philosopher.

Knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting.

- Nietzsche, genealogy, history by Michel Foucault, 1977.

Basic research is when you don’t known what you are doing.

- Charles G. Wilson, U.S. Secretary of Defense, in the journal Nature, 1976.