The Great Geek Manual

1625
Johannes Faber of Bamberg, Germany coins the word “microscope” in a letter written to Federigo Cesi, Duke of Aquasparata and founder of Italy’s Lincean Academy (Accademia dei Lincei or Academy of the Lynx).

1941
FM Station W71NY in New York becomes the first commercial broadcaster to sign an advertiser to a contract.

1953
Jonathan Cape publishes the spy novel Casino Royale by Ian Fleming as a hardcover. Its the first of what will become a series of eleven James Bond novels. Length: 213 pages

1959
The United States Air Force (USAF) launches the Discoverer II surveillance satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base into a polar orbit aboard a Thor Agena A.

1960
Transit 1B, first navigational satellite, is launched into Earth orbit for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It is the first satellite to use a magnetic torque device to maintain attitude control. It will remain operable for eighty-nine days.
Read the rest of this entry » » »

Book:WWW: Wake
ISBN-13: 978-0441016792

Author: Robert J. Sawyer
Publisher: Ace Hardcover
Series: The WWW Trilogy (Book 1)
Genre: Cyberpunk / Science Fiction
Release: April 7, 2009
Length: 368 pages (Hardcover)

Rating: C+ (75 / 100)

Verdict

While many sites categorize Wake as “cyberpunk,” lumping this book in with revered giants of geeks culture like Neuromancer and Snow Crash is analogous to shelving Lemony Snicket with James Patterson under the heading mystery.

Wake has succeeded in creating a thought-provoking book of infotainment. It’s chocked full of scientific ideas and concepts that will leave readers running to Wikipedia for more information. Plus, it features a well-written, honest-to-god female protagonist that neither entangles herself in romance nor needs rescuing. (A rare find in today’s science fiction isle.) Unfortunately, Wake was clearly written for a middle school audience, somewhere between the ages of eleven and fourteen. It lacks the both the action sequences and hard, gritty worldview that characterizes most cyberpunk in favor of a passive story with the narrative tone of a school primer.

As such, most readers college-aged or older are going to want to take a pass on this book. However, it is almost certain to join the ranks of such books as Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother in defining the literary tastes of the next generation of geeks just emerging.
Read the rest of this entry » » »

[The black hole] teaches us that space can be crumpled like a piece of paper into an infinitesimal dot, that time can be extinguished like a blown-out flame, and that the laws of physics that we regard as ‘sacred,’ as immutable, are anything but.

- John Archibald Wheeler in “Black Holes & Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics”.
Quoted in his New York Times Obituary, April 14, 2008.

1633
Galileo Galilei is tried for a second time by the Inquisition. At the trial’s conclusion, Galileo’s belief that Earth isn’t the center of the Universe is pronounced heretical.

1888
A French newspaper mistakenly publishes an obituary for Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite, following the death of Albert’s brother Ludwig’s death. The obituary describes him as “a merchant of death,” which shocks Nobel into setting out to change his public image. His efforts will eventually lead to the establishment of the Nobel Prize. Visit the official Nobel Prize website.

1892
The first portable typewriter, the Blickensderfer, is patented by George Blickensderfer of Stamford, Connecticut. (US No. 472,692)

1901
A Mercury arc lamp is first publicly demonstrated in the UK by Peter Cooper Hewitt.
Read the rest of this entry » » »

1876
The stenotype is patented by John C. Zachos of New York City. (US No. 175,892) It is the first US patent for a device that rapidly prints legible text in the English alphabet.

1905
Albert Einstein first unveils his Theory of Relativity.

1936
German civil engineer and early computer pioneer Konrad Zuse files for a patent on the automatic execution of calculations, a process that will become central to the Z-1, Germany’s first computer. In the patent application, Zuse describes the first programmable memory, which he dubs “combination memory” to describe the process of breaking programs into bit combinations for efficient storage. The Z1 is the first device able to make calculations in binary and translate those calculations back to decimal. Read more about the Z1 at Epemag.

1943
The California Rocket Society tests the first hybrid rocket design in the United States, using oxygen and carbon as fuel. Hybrid rocket propulsion systems uses a solid fuel in conjunction with a liquid or gas oxidizer.

1957
During a test flight, a Ryan X-13 Vertijet becomes the first jet to take-off and land vertically, at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Read more about the Ryan X-13 Vertijet at the US AirForce National Museum.
Read the rest of this entry » » »

I have reached the end of your book and… there are so many things that I need to ask you. Sometimes I’m afraid of what you might tell me. Sometimes I’m afraid that you’ll tell me that this is not a work of fiction. I can only hope that the answers will come to me in my sleep. I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to.

- Title character in the film Donnie Darko, 2001.

1790
United States President George Washington signs the first US patent statute into law. The first patent won’t be issued under the statute until July 31, 1790. Read more about the history of US patent law.

1930
The first synthetic rubber is created by Dr. Arnold M. Collins who isolates chloroprene and observes its polymerization. E.I. Du Pont de Nemours and Company will begin manufacturing synthetic rubber on November 2, 1931. Visit the official DuPont website.

1938
The first FM radio programming is transmitted by W2XMN/WFMN/KE2XCC, in Alpine, New Jersey.

1943
The University of Pennsylvania begins constructing the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), which, once completed, will become the first general-purpose electronic computer, capable of making calculations one thousand times faster than any other prior computer. The work will be carried out in secret since the computer is intended to compute trajectory tables for military artillery, though it won’t be completed until after World War II. The calculations were previously carried out by group of women called “computers” who worked with mechanical calculators. The ENIAC will be unveiled to the public in February 1946.
Read the rest of this entry » » »

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

- Cosmos by Carl Sagan, 1980.