The Great Geek Manual

Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming.

- John Burdon Sanderson Haldane in his essay “Possible Worlds”
Published in “Possible Worlds and other Essays,” 1927.

1858
The first mail boxes in the United States, which are already in use in Belgium, are installed in New York and Boston.

1870
Tower Subway, the first tube railway in the world, is opened under the River Thames in London, England. The six foot diameter tunnel was created by engineer James Henry near the Tower of London. The first shuttles operated in the tunnel were twelve seat carriages moved by wires drawn by steam engines. It will be closed within three months due to frequent breakdowns.

1926
The first Vitaphone sound-on-disc film is debuted by Warner Bros at the Warner Theatre in New York. The sound is recorded on a sixteen inch disc, playing at 33rpm. It’s thought that the films will eventually replace live theatrical entertainment. The demonstration film features Mary Astor and John Barrymore.

1931
Albert Einstein urges all scientists to refuse military work.
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1774
The element Oxygen is independently discovered for the third time by Joseph Priestley, a British Presbyterian minister and amateur chemist. Priestley discovered that mercury heated in air becomes coated with a red rust, which, heated separately, would convert back to mercury and give off “air.” Studying this “air,” Priestley observes that candles burn very brightly in it. Upon further experimentation, he also discovers that a mouse in a sealed vessel could breathe much longer with the gas present than a mouse sealed in a vessel without it. Joseph Priestley will publishes his conclusions in 1775, giving the element a name and, historically, receiving most of the credit for its discovery.

1790
The first United States census, which is mandated by the country’s constitution, is conducted under the direction of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. The enormous undertaking of conducting the national census will be one of the driving forces behind the development of the earliest computers. A century later, the tabulating machines for which Herman Hollerith received the first three computer patents in history will be used to compile the results of the nation’s eleventh census. The introduction of the computers will reduce the time taken to tabulate the results from the seven years it took for the 1880 results to just two and a half years.

1936
At the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, the Deutsche Reichspost sets up twenty-eight viewing rooms around the city equipped with Fernseh projectors to screen daily transmissions. The projector receives and displays images in a 375-line interlaced format, producing a picture approximately 48 in x 42 in in size.

1946
United States President Harry S. Truman signs the Atomic Energy Act into law, creating the US Atomic Energy Commission about one year after World War II. Congress establishes the Commission to foster and control the peace time development of atomic technology.

1949
A secretary of the Federal Communications Commission, sends a letter to L.E. Parsons, a cable television pioneer in Astoria, Oregon, requesting that he “furnish the Commission full information with respect to the nature of the system you may have developed and may be operating.” This is the FCC’s first known involvement in cable. The FCC will determine that the Commission can exercise common carrier jurisdiction over the medium.
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It’s a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result—collapse, ruin and famine.

- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams, 1980.