The Great Geek Manual

1785
The University of Georgia, the first public university in the United States, is founded. Visit the official University of Georgia website.

1880
Thomas Edison receives a patent for “an electric lamp for giving light by incandescence” which he first invented on November 21, 1879. (US No. 223,898) Edison’s invention will have a tremendous impact on the electronics industry. In the course of developing the light bulb, one of Edison’s assistants discovered the flow of energy from one electrode to another in what will later come to be known as the “Edison effect,” which will later be fundamental principal of the electron tube, which will be, in turn, the foundation of electronics industry. To view a high resolution scan of the patent application, or to read a transcript of the patent application, visit US News online.

1888
In Washington, D.C., the National Geographic Society is founded as a non-profit organization for the purpose of disseminating geographical knowledge.

1926
This date is often incorrectly cited as the day John Logie Baird first publicly demonstrated the television. The date will be accidentally given to reporters during a series of talks in 1931 by Baird himself. The actual date is January 26, 1926.
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The advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.

- Foundation’s Edge by Isaac Asimov, 1982.

Art

• The Avalanche Software Art Blog suggests a few Potential Disney Heroines.
• Here’s a logo of Conan in the style of Mad Men.
• PSDTuts+ showcases the matte paintings of artist Jaime Jasso in an interview.

Film

• Interview: Kristine Kathryn Rusch answers reader questions.
• News: Fresh from the desk of I Told You So: O’Reilly drops ebook DRM, sees 104% increase in sales. Now if only other publishers would follow suit.
• News: Gaiman: “Graveyard Book” Movie Not Happening.
• Astrobiology explains why Avatar’s Moon Pandora Could Be Real.
• Darren Naish has written up the Tet Zoo Guide to the Creatures of Avatar.
• Evolution of Horror Movie Poster Designs: 1922 – 2009
• MovieMaker has compiled a list of the 50 Best Blogs for Moviemakers.

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Art

• CrativeFan has posted a gallery of 33 Astounding CG Environments.

Film

• News: Harry Potter VII to be 3-D.
• News: Avatar Inspires New Name for a Chinese Mountain.
• AMC runs down The Five Real Reasons Why Video Game Movies Usually Stink.
• NPR Radio interviews Mark Coleran, the guy who designs computer interfaces for Hollywood movies.

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In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

- Eric Hoffer

The mathematician’s best work is art, a high perfect art, as daring as the most secret dreams of imagination, clear and limpid. Mathematical genius and artistic genius touch one another.

- Gösta Mittag-Leffler

1881
Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell found the Oriental Telephone Company, the world’s first telephone company.

1915
Alexander Graham Bell inaugurates the first transcontinental telephone service in the United States with a phone call placed from New York City to Dr. Thomas Watson in San Francisco, California. Bell, age 68, makes the ceremonial first call and speaks the first complete sentence transmitted by telephone across a continent, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!” The circuit consists of 2,500 tons of copper wire, 130,000 poles, and three vacuum tube repeaters.

1921
R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) by Karel Čapek premieres at the National Theater in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The play marks the first use of the term “robot,” which Capek coined from the Czech word “robota,” which is the word for the labor serfs were required to perform on their masters’ land. In the play robot laborers who are created to replace human labor go on a killing rampage.
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1925
A two minute long motion picture of a solar eclipse is recorded by the United States Navy from the dirigible Los Angeles from an elevation of about 4,500 feet, about nineteen miles east of Montauk Point, Long Island, New York. It is the first time a dirigible has been used for astronomical observations in the US.

1948
International Business Machines (IBM) dedicates the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC), also known as the Poppa, at the company’s world headquarters in New York City. The SSEC is the first computer to combine electronic computation with stored instructions, and it will be the first computer to run a stored program and the last large electromechanical computers to be built. It contains 13,500 vacuum tubes and 21,000 relays and occupies three sides of a 1,800 square foot room. Among it’s most notable accomplishments will be the calculation of a table of the Moon’s positions which will be used to plot the course of the 1969 Apollo flight.
It will be decommissioned in 1952.

1950
Percy LeBaron Spencer is issued a patent for the original microwave oven, which he describes in his application as a “Method of Treating Foodstuffs.” (US No. 2,495,429) However, the first commercial microwave oven, the 1161 Radarange, won’t be marketed to the public until 1954.
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