The Great Geek Manual

1869
Richard Wagner‘s opera Das Rheingold, the first of the four operas that comprise Der Ring des Nibelungen, debuts in Munich.

1888
The first issue of National Geographic Magazine is published, though it is dated October. The magazine is the scientific journal of the National Geographic Society, but in 1905, the magazine will shift to photojourrnalism with an issue featuring full page shots from Tibet.

The terms ampere, ohm, and volt are indoctrinated at the Electrical Conference in Paris, France.

1893
The Duryea Brothers publicly demonstrate their automobile, the first to be built in America, two days after it’s completion in Springfield, Illinois. In 1896, the brothers will found the first company in the world to manufacture gasoline powered automobiles.

1955
The first commercial television broadcast in Britain is transmitted by Rediffusion, an Independent Television (ITV) contractor, in London. The first advertisement shown at 9:12pm shows Gibbs SR toothpaste in a block of ice. The ad was produced by AB-Pathé.
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Imagine what it would be like if TV actually were good. It would be the end of everything we know.

-Marvin Minksy

Yeah, this is everywhere this morning, so you’ll have seen it a dozen times before your RSS Feeder makes it this far down your morning rounds, but it’s my blog. So, there. Laugh, sofa monkies!

Art

• The Terrible Yellow Eyes is a great exhibition dedicated to Where the Wild Things Are tribute art.

Comics

• After The Chameleon stole Peter Parker’s identity and had sex with his roommate, some fans have been left asking Do DC and Marvel Need a Special Victims Unit?
• Topless Robot counts down The 11 Least Necessary Star Wars Comic Book Stories.

Film

• News: Outraged Nigerian minister wants District 9 banned.
• So, Did chicks dig Jennifer’s Body? Turns out, not so much. Who knew girls don’t like softcore porn?
• There’s a new set of retro-chic posters out for Duncan Jones’ Moon.

Internet

• FirstShowing asks When does Sci-Fi Become Fantasy? To which I respond, why not just call it speculative fiction when the boundaries blur?
• Google has been displaying UFO designs into their logo for weeks now, hinting at what they’re memorializing with including clues and codes. Today, they’ve finally come out and marked the occasion openly – the birth of HG Wells.
• Maxim magazin explains How To Tell Which ‘Star Wars’ You’re Watching.
• Over at The Science Creative Quarterly, Justin Kahn explains HOW I GOT OUT OF WRITING AN ESSAY ON H.G. WELL’S THE TIME MACHINE.

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1784
The Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, the first daily paper in America, is first published.

1897
The The New York Sun runs a letter sent in by Virginia O’Hanlon, asking, “I am eight years old. Some of my friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in “The Sun”, it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth. Is there a Santa Claus?” Along with the letter, the paper runs the famous response written by editor Frank Church. “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay ten times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.” Read the text of the original article and view digital images of the original newspaper.

1937
George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. publishes the first edition of the fantasy novel The Hobbit written (and illustrated) by J.R.R. Tolkien, a professor at Oxford University. The story, which draws strongly on mythology and Anglo-Saxon history, follows the adventures of a Hobbit named Bilbo Baggins, who will later be cited by literary historians as fantasy literature’s first bourgeois character. By introducing a character through which his middle class readers could relate to medieval archetypes, he transformed the genre forever. All 1,500 copies of the first print run will sell out by December 15, and the American edition will be published on March 1, 1938. It will eventually go on to become an international bestseller, available in forty languages. Length: 312pp Read Anne T. Eaton’s 1938 review of The Hobbit from the New York Times. Visit the official Tolkien website.
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Our technological revolution is quickly making degrees irrelevant for many of even the top jobs. Bill Gates didn’t graduate from college. Tumblr founder David Karp dropped out of high school. So did blip.tv founder Mike Hudack. Dropping out of the standard school curriculum is not a dead end if it leads you toward a trade where you can earn a living and be proud of your achievements.

- “What Obama Should Have Told The Kids Today” by John Carney, September 8, 2009.

Material culture is the thing that makes us human, driving human evolution from the outset with its continually modifying power. Our species’ particular dilemma is that in order to safeguard what we have, we have continually to change. The culture of things-invention and technology-is ever changing under the tide of words and routines whose role is to image fixity and agreement when, in reality, none exists. This form of change is no trivial thing because it is essential to our longer term survival. At least, the longer term survival of anything we may be proud to call universally human.

- “The World Question Center” by Timothy Tayler at Edge.org, 2009.

1633
Galileo Galilei is tried before the Inquisition of the Catholic Church on charges of heresy for teaching his theory that the Earth orbits the Sun.

1891
The first gasoline-powered car is debuted in in Springfield, Massachusetts.

1938
The Radio Manufacturers Association adopts standards for a US television system and submits proposals to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

1940
Genevieve Grotjan completes the decryption of the Japanese Purple code diplomatic cryptographic machine. The information uncovered from decryptions was eventually code-named Magic within the US government. Read more about The Purple Machine.

1951
Production of the first receivers for the CBS Broadcasting, Inc. (CBS) sequential color system begins at the Air-King electronics manufacturing subsidiary of Hytron Radio and Electronics Corporation, which is owned by CBS. CBS bought Hytron, according to president Frank Stanton, “to assure at least some source for colour receivers to the public.” The sets go on sale at Gimbels store in New York, priced at US$499.95. Rival manufacturer Allan B DuMont will later claim that only two hundred units were manufactured and that only half of them were sold.
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