The Great Geek Manual

1877
Thomas Edison coins the word “Hello” as a greeting as an alternative to the one suggested by inventor Alexander Bell, “Ahoy, Ahoy.” He remarks in a letter to a friend in Pittsburgh, “I don’t think we shall need a call bell as ‘Hello!’ can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. What do you think?”

Thomas Edison makes the first audio recording in history. The recording is of his voice as he sings “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Hear the recording at NPR Radio

1918
The Sinking of the Lusitania, written and directed by Winsor McCay, is released in the US. It is the first full-length feature cartoon film, featuring over twenty five thousand individual drawings which took twenty-two months to produce. The twelve minute silent film is a an educational explanation of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. It’s the first of many such films published with the express intent of generating anti-German sentiment during World War I.

1939
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) premieres the fantasy film The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming, among several other uncredited directors, and starring Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Billie Burke, and Margaret Hamilton, at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California. While it isn’t the first film presented in color, it’s the film that brings Technicolor into the mainstream. It will be released nationwide August 25, 1939. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: G)
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I believe humans get a lot done, not because we’re smart, but because we have thumbs so we can make coffee.

- Flash Rosenberg

Film

• News: Nollywood (sic) director Tchidi Chikere asks Is Africa Ready for Science Fiction?
• Ebert attacks hesitant adopters of Miyazaki’s work in his review Ponyo: “Is it only dubbed? All animated films are dubbed! Little Nemo can’t really speak!”
• Retrocrush has posted a gallery of video clips from The 20 Best Zombie Movies Of All Time.
• Seriously, I’m never going to trust a New York Press review ever, ever again. WTF?
• The Sprout Blog picks the 9 Greatest Human-Alien Sex Scenes ever seen on the silver screen.

Internet

• Awesome! A paper published at uOttawa presents a Mathematical Model of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection.

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1885
Japan, which will one day become the world’s foremost leader in technological innovation, issues its first patent to the inventor of a rust-proof paint.

1888
Oliver B. Shallenberger, of Rochester, Pennsylvania, receives a patent for the electric meter. The meter is operated by rotating electrical fields, which Shallenberger was the first to observe. Before the invention, Edison had charged customers a fee for each of their lamps. Then, he attempted to employ a notoriously impractical chemical meter. Shallenberger’s meter, proved superior to both methods. Over one twenty thousand of the devices will be in use within a decade.

1894
The first wireless transmission of information using Morse code is demonstrated by Oliver Lodge during a meeting of the British Association at Oxford. A message is transmitted about 150 yards (50m) from the old Clarendon Laboratory to the University Museum. He will later write in Work of Hertz and Some of his Successors, the idea didn’t occur to Lodge at the time to develop the discovery into long-distance telegraphy. “Stupidly enough, no attempt was made to apply any but the feeblest power, so as to test how far the disturbance could really be detected.”

1901
The first purportedly powered flight, made by Gustave Whitehead in his Number 21 takes place. Though the flight is accomplished more than two years in advance of the Wright Brothers, it will go largely undocumented, unnoticed, unremarked until long after the Wrights’ globally renowned feat at Kitty Hawk.
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In going on with these Experiments, how many pretty systems do we build, which we soon find ourselves oblig’d to destroy! If there is no other Use discover’d of Electricity, this, however, is something considerable, that it may help to make a vain Man humble.

- Benjamin Franklin in a letter to Peter Collinson, August 14, 1747.

Film

• Interview: Quentin Tarantino talks Inglourious Basterds with Rotten Tomatoes.
• Alive In Joburg is an amazing short documentary-style film by director Neill Blomkamp that makes it look like his upcoming feature District 9 is going to be amazing. (That and it has a 97% Metascore)
• Here’s a twist on an old theme. Movie Retriever names The Ten All-Time Best Years for Sci-Fi Movies. I find 2006 a dubious choice, but I thought 1997 was a great choice.
• James Cameron talks about his upcoming movie Avatar, saying “This movie is a doorway.“
• Top10Kids.com looks ahead to the Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2010.
• Watch the original Ghostbusters movie online for free at Crackle.com.

Internet

• News: The Studios are finally hopping on the internet bandwagon with EpixHD.com

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1642
Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovers the south polar cap of Mars.

1876
The four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) written by German composer Richard Wagner premieres at the new Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which Wagner had custom built just for performances of the Ring cycle. The cycle takes four nights to perform, for a total of up to fifteen hours of performance. The plot revolves around a magic ring forged by the Nibelung dwarf Alberich from gold stolen from the river Rhine that grants the wearer the power to rule the world. Read more about the opera at the University of Texas.

1889
The first coin-operated telephone box is patented by William Gray of Hartford, Connecticut. He will begin selling the device through the Gray Telephone Pay Station Company, which he will found in 1891. The device is not the first pay telephone however. As early as 1880, a series of telephone pay stations were operating throughout New York City. Customers could use these phones by paying their attendants.

1903
The journal Nature reports that helium gas is produced by the radioactive decay of Radium. This key discovery by William Ramsay and Frederick Soddy will help to reveal the structure of atoms.
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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.

- Possible Worlds and other Essays by John Burden Sanderson Haldane, 1927.